Return of the Dragonborn: The Complete Trilogy

by N. M. Howell

  “Carmen, over here!” Andie shouted.

  Carmen got to her feet, trying to defend herself from the barrage of spells.

  “What about Yara?” she asked.

  Andie strengthened her shield and then stepped out into the floor. She flicked her wrist and Yara’s body snapped over into her arms. She returned to her shelter and moments later Carmen joined her. Carmen worked on trying to revive Yara while Andie cast retaliation spells. She caught one professor right in the face and the woman fell instantly, taken by the purple flames.

  “Your kind are destroyers,” Mharú’s voice said. “You cannot be allowed to survive.”

  “We’re destroyers?” she responded, incredulous. “You’re the ones who’ve been hunting us for centuries. You’re the ones who slaughtered the dragons. It was you and all the people like you who made sure that the reign of terror lasted all these centuries without any hope or quarter for my people. Don’t talk to me about destroyers!”

  “We are the rightful rulers of this land! The dragonborn had their chance and they were too weak to withstand! They were insects compared to us!”

  “Is that why you were so scared? Why you’re still terrified that one day they could come back? What did the dragonborn ever do to you? To anybody? What was it about them and the dragons that just seemed so dangerous and so insurmountable that you people had to slaughter them continuously without remorse?”

  “They existed.”

  And that was enough. Andie had had enough.

  Andie was growing more and more furious: with the sorcerers, with the plight of her people, with the threats and the hatred and the fact that Carmen still couldn’t wake Yara. Andie stood and released a wave of magic that ran hot and rapid through the room. She erected a second shield, but this one stretched from floor to ceiling and ensured a safe path to the portal. The professors continued to cast at the shield, but to no effect. Andie ran to the portal and prepared to project.

  “Carmen, don’t worry about Yara just now. You can cast spells from behind the shield. Give me as much time as you can.”

  Carmen nodded and gently laid Yara down. She rose and took a stance behind the shield, beginning to cast with a stunning ferocity. Andie projected again, this time drawing on the core of her magic, and found a multitude of spells suddenly appearing in her mind. Without questioning it, she began to recite them over the portal with her eyes closed. She followed Saeryn’s words and simply trusted the history and power in her own blood. Soon she could hear Saeryn below, chanting along with her. Then all the people began to join in. It felt good to give in, to be one with her people, but the spell was powerful. So powerful. Andie wasn’t used to this: channeling so much magic, doing a spell with others, pulling on the very root of her dragon magic. It began to overwhelm her almost immediately and the more she pushed herself, the harder it became.

  Behind her, Carmen was fighting with everything inside her. The shield was beginning to fail as Andie lost strength and cracks and holes began to appear in the soft light of the barrier. Carmen continued to cast, fierce and unstoppable as ever. Andie was feeling weak now, weak enough to want to lay down, but she kept pushing and reaching and reciting. Her head began to droop and her sense began to go, but she kept reciting. She began to bleed again and the dragon magic within her stopped healing, but she kept reciting. She fell to her knees, but she kept reciting.

  “Please,” she thought. “Just let me have the strength to do this one thing.” But she continued to weaken. Against her own wishes, she began to lose hope. She could barely hold herself up and the shield was almost down. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the end of everything.

  But just as she was growing faithless, there was a blast near the door. Andie had just enough strength to turn her face in that direction. A group of people in black came rushing in, tight, quick, and casting spells as if they were born to it. And at the head of the group were Raesh and Marvo.

  Chapter Thirty

  Raesh cast a spell at the nearest professor and when it left his body on its trajectory it looked like a bolt of light with a hundred whipping tails, twisting furiously as it shot across the room and sent the professor soaring so far up and away in the cavernous room that Andie lost track of him. Raesh had said his magic was unpredictable and now she saw what he meant. He cast again and again and again, making his way across the room to Carmen. The others with him were casting rapidly as well, and the professors were finally starting to understand there was a chance the tide could turn against them.

  Marvo was the only one not casting and that was because he had a gun; not the unpredictable, blood fueled weapons of modern-age Noelle, but one of the Old-World weapons. Every time he shot it, the barrel flashed and boomed. Unlike the spells that were flying wild, the gun was deadly accurate and Marvo knew how to use it. The professors had to erect shields of their own to protect themselves from him.

  Tarven, whether out of his extreme cowardice or premeditated feint, launched an attack on the newcomers from behind. They hadn’t seen him when they came into the room and he was taking full advantage of it. He took down two of the newcomers with a few snaps of his wrists and then he reached in his coat and pulled out the new plant species he and Andie had bred together. He waved his hand in front of the blooms and extracted the liquid from the plant. He threw it into the faces of three of the newcomers and they began to choke and shrivel. Soon their faces were smoking and they dropped to the floor, bodies limp before they even touched the ground. Andie couldn’t believe it. There was a mirror room full of people dancing under thousands of those flowers.

  “You’ll pay for this,” she said in his direction, weakly.

  “Not before I see you dead,” he said back to her.

  Tarven disappeared behind a pillar and Marvo fired off a couple rounds while making his way to Andie.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Well, what a fine way to say thank you,” he said, digging for something in his pocket. “Let’s just call it a rescue mission. Unless of course you don’t need us?”

  “But how did you know? How did you find us?”

  “Andie, I promised your father I would watch over you. He never told me you were dragonborn, but I’m no fool. I knew your mother was and I always suspected she passed on the gene. I’ve kept a closer watch on you since you’ve been in Arvall than I ever have on anyone else, even Raesh. You’re important to me. But to answer your question, when you split up from Carmen earlier tonight she called Raesh and told him she thought you were up to something dangerous. This isn’t the first time she’s called us about you, but like every other time we got ready just in case. When she didn’t call us back to say it was a false alarm, we came. Of course, with the festival going on, it was the perfect cover to get into the University and it didn’t take a genius to figure out where you’d be.”

  He stood up to take a few more shots and then kneeled down again. He found something in his pocket and gave it to Andie.

  “Here. Drink this and don’t waste time asking me what it is.”

  Without hesitation, Andie turned the vial up and drank every drop of the liquid. She couldn’t describe the effect other than to say that it put a fire in her. It didn’t heal her, but it dampened the pain so that she could hardly feel it.

  “I have to be honest,” Marvo said, still shooting, “You’ve looked better. Can you finish what you started?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said.

  Andie pushed her fists against the ground and gained her feet. She leaned over the portal again and projected.

  “Can you hold them off?” she asked Marvo.

  “I was born for it,” he said, cocking the gun and moving with a dexterity she wouldn’t have thought he had.

  Andie went back to chanting as the spells and gunshots flew around her. Marvo and the newcomers were strong and more than able to hold their own against the professors. Andie’s shield had fallen, but Carmen had erected a new one. Andie felt a hand
on her shoulder and realized that Carmen was standing behind her, one hand on Andie and another hand casting angrily. Andie felt stronger just having her there.

  Across the room, Raesh was unleashing his magic like a madman. His magic was unpredictable and by the look on his face you could tell he didn’t always cast the spell he meant to, but he was a terrible force in that room. He guarded Yara’s body fiercely. Marvo couldn’t shoot the professors now that they had shields, but his incredible aim kept them from getting too close or going anywhere he didn’t want them to. The newcomers, whoever they were, were expert sorcerers and sorceresses. They were relentless, unafraid, powerful. The professors were as arrogant and destructive as ever, but they grew desperate. They tried to bring down the pillars and even some spots of the wall to kill their opponents. They fought with no decency and no shame.

  Andie felt numb, weak, cold, but she didn’t stop chanting this time. Saeryn and her people below were doing their part and it was Andie’s duty to do hers. Everyone around her was fighting with all they had. She couldn’t do any less. Suddenly someone was kneeling beside her.

  “Andie.”

  It was Raesh. Andie couldn’t stop chanting, but she felt a wave of relief wash over her. She was happy he was there beside her.

  “Andie, what were you thinking? How could you come in here with just Carmen and Yara, without even knowing what you’re doing, without even having other people who know where you are? You could’ve been killed! You could’ve gotten them killed!”

  “We could still be killed, Raesh!” Carmen interrupted. “Leave her alone, she can’t stop! She has to finish the spell or everybody in that portal dies! Come cast while I hold up the shield! I’ll fill you in!”

  Raesh huffed in frustration, but didn’t say anything else. He kissed Andie on the cheek and went to help Carmen. He didn’t see it, but she smiled.

  Andie pushed harder, chanted louder. The fight was now being carried across the entire side of the room. The newcomers must have numbered at least forty and more professors had come running in shortly after Raesh and Marvo arrived. The air was dangerously alive with vivid spells and shrapnel and whatever was coming out of Marvo’s gun. In some places the fighters had gotten so close that it turned into a fist brawl, like the old ages. The black marble was cratered and reduced to ash and blown across the room and the air was thick with magic and dust, the sound was unimaginable. It was so loud. So unbelievably loud.

  Somehow a professor got around Carmen’s shield. He must have run around the outer edge to come up behind. By the time anyone saw him it was too late. He cast a viscous light into Carmen and she collapsed into a heap, the shield falling with her. He was quicker than the rest and blocked the incoming retaliation, but he opened himself up to do one more thing. He held both his hands out and sent a red beam right into Andie’s side. She couldn’t defend herself or stop chanting; all she could do was try to stay on her knees, despite the unbearable pain of the beam burning her side. They tried and tried to break his shield, but they couldn’t and he kept fueling the beam. Finally, a spell hit his shield and decayed the light in a matter of moments, following which he took a blast from Marvo’s gun and a spell from Raesh at the same time. He was torn in half.

  It was Yara. She’d woken up. She came running over to Andie. She casted as she went, sending the decaying spell at several other professor’s shields and leaving them vulnerable. She dropped to Andie’s side.

  “Someone get a shield back up!” she yelled. “Andie, how bad is it? Let me see.”

  Yara lifted Andie’s shirt. Andie never let her focus fail, even to look at the wound, but she could feel the blood rolling down her side.

  “I can heal this,” Yara said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, Andie. You’re so brave.”

  Yara put her hands against Andie’s side and pressed in. Andie winced but didn’t move. Yara began to whisper an incantation and Andie began to feel better within a matter of moments—though the wound felt large and it would likely take actual medicine to fully heal it. But Andie kept her mind on the portal; she and they continued the spell.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Andie couldn’t tell which was more haunting: the screaming in the room or the screaming coming from the portal. The men and women on the mountain were reciting the incantation, but the children couldn’t conquer their fear. The screams of children were terrible.

  Finally, something began to happen. A tiny, gossamer connection began to manifest between herself and her people. Andie focused on it, focused every ounce of will and strength and magic on it, and tried to pull on it with the dragon essence inside of her. Now she understood what the spell was for: it was to reestablish the blood connection between herself and her people. She’d denied herself the benefit of her heritage for too long and had drifted, spiritually, from everything that made the dragonborn who they were. Even her ‘natural’ appearance had dimmed over the years because she hadn’t allowed herself to live as she was.

  Andie seized the connection, something like a supernatural thread, and began to try to reel her people back. She couldn’t tell if she was summoning them or drawing them in or something else, but she knew she couldn’t let go. Suddenly the pain spiked in her side and she lost focus for a split-second. The connection slipped some, but she held it. She began the incremental process again. She couldn’t afford to fail now.

  Her friends were fighting admirably and in fact they were proving stronger than their foes, but more professors kept coming. Andie knew that at this rate they would soon be overrun and there was only one way out of that room. But if she could get the dragonborn out, if she could set them free, they just might live to see another day.

  “Andie!” Marvo shouted from somewhere behind her. “I don’t know what you’re doing or how much strength you have left, but your father wanted you to know something. He told me I couldn’t tell you until you were ready and that I would know when that was. I think it’s now. He wanted you to let go. To let go of everything: the past, what happened to your mother, your fear, your instinct to hide. He wanted you to be everything you were born to be, not what the world demanded from you. He said you couldn’t be his protector or your mother’s mourner or an outcast in a world that hated its own history. Let go. Embrace the power in your blood.”

  Her father. It had been so long since she’d seen him, but as Marvo spoke those words she could hear his voice, feel his arms. Even now, miles and circumstances apart, he was still guiding her. Still loving her. She rose to her feet, forgetting all her cares of the world and the times and the dangers of the night. In that moment, she knew only one thing: the dragon inside of her. As she tapped into that power and it exploded within her. Her hair grew and the color of it and her eyes intensified to what it was always supposed to be. Her skin took on a pearlescent sheen and the faint outlines of scales, barely noticeable, appeared on her arms. Her wounds healed in mere moments and she lifted off the ground. The thread was solid now and she reeled it in, faster and faster. She saw the end of it approach and shouted the final words of the spell, opening the portal to world.

  The dragonborn poured from the portal, so many and so quickly it was impossible to count. Women, children, men, warriors, all were returning to the earth. The professors crowded together and probably would have run for the door if they were not so frightened. The newcomers smiled at the return of the dragonborn, but even they moved back. And then the real magic came. Dragons began to burst through the portal, almost too large to fit through the pool. They were incredible, colorful, powerful. Their riders were already on their backs as they circled the room.

  For several brief but eternal moments, the room was frozen; newcomers, professors, monitors, Marvo, Raesh, Yara, and even Andie was frozen as they watch the dragonborn leap from the portal. Those few moments when no one moved was like a magic all its own, soundless, inert, and historic. The expressions of dragonborn were matched only by the sheer gravity of their presence. An entire race had been brought for
ward in time. They had very nearly been extinguished forever and yet there they stood, alive and happy and powerful. The bloodlines had become so diluted and so uncertain that it was doubtful there were many dragonborn left in the world. For all Andie knew she was the only one. But now she was surrounded by her people and by her friends, too. Andie had so many questions, so much joy, so many things to say, but she knew there would be time later. That’s what the return of the dragonborn meant: time.

  Suddenly, a huge wave of professors and monitors flooded the room, all of them shocked and disheartened to see the dragonborn alive again. But they weren’t alone; following the monitors were the Searchers and their guns. It was clear that this was meant to be more than an attack; they were prepared to wage a small-scale war in that room and who knew how many more would come. They were right in the heart of the University. Soon enough, the shock wore off and from somewhere in the room she heard Chancellor Myamar Mharú shout over everyone’s heads.

  “Kill them! Kill them all!”

  “Not so fast, Mharú,” said Saeryn.

  “You dare speak to me? Like I was your equal?”

  “You know him?” Andie asked.

  “No. At least not directly,” Saeryn said, gliding forward with the grace of a thousand queens and fierceness of that entire room of dragon warriors. “But the Mharú family has always hated us and they’ve always had those horse faces. Easily recognizable, a feature they never lost when they came over from the Old World. Of course, the name used to be Melpomene. One of the so-called great founding families.”