by Jon Hollins
They didn’t know. She, and Will, and Quirk, and Balur, and Barph were too well hidden. So the dragons lashed out indiscriminately at the crowds.
She saw one massive brown brute slam into the ground, his vast jaws smashing through the crowd. He scooped up five or six bodies, bit down. Blood, bone, and viscera sprayed out in great sloppy arcs. A woman was struck full in the face by her husband’s severed leg, was sent sprawling and screaming. Another creature, a sinuous red, writhing in a great red tantrum through the sky, breathed fire and immolated thirty more lives in an instant.
Even if they were not attacking Lette directly, the dragons were killing the people powering her. This surge in people’s faith in the old gods was a local event, Lette knew. As vast as the crowds were, they were but a thimbleful in relation to the ocean of people who stood upon the surface of the entire world.
But there was still time. With every bite and bludgeon and murder that the dragons brought down upon this crowd, they also turned more and more people away from their own worship and more and more back to the old gods. The tide of power flooding into Lette was not yet diminishing but instead seemed to grow ever more strong. She felt full to bursting with power. Her guts hurt from holding it all in.
Two dragons slammed into the buildings surrounding their bowl of devastation. One was only a few houses away from her. Its claws tore through stone and mortar, through shutters and door, through lives. People tumbled screaming from roofs. She saw the dragon—a beast of charcoal gray—reach out and snatch one body as it fell. Its throat convulsed massively as it swallowed.
Another dragon, a blunt powerhouse of muscle sketched in yellow and green, was flying along the rooftops, raking its claws through tiles. People were screaming, leaping, tumbling, diving down for windows and attics. Bodies dangled from balconies. Blood dripped down through great tears in beams and pooled on garret floors below.
Other dragons were dive-bombing the crowd, snuffing out lives with flame and talon. This was, Lette knew, more than just a failure for them. It was an embarrassment. This was to be their glory, and instead all of these people had witnessed their shame, their humiliation. They were trying to scour the witnesses from the earth.
The dragons weren’t the only ones doing the killing, though. The crowds were doing their own part to kill each other too. The number of people gathered here was vast; the number of exits from the bowl were not. Some people were trampled, others crushed. People screamed and fought to get away. They clawed at each other with no less ferocity than the dragons who sent them running.
There were other, less self-serving murders as well. Other men and women were caught up in the tussle and tangle of emotions and powers, and now they killed for a cause. For a belief. Some screamed the name of Barph, or Lawl, or Klink, or Toil, and others howled for the dragons, for flame and authority. They clawed at each other, bit and gouged, throttled and smashed. And for every drop of blood that fell, for every breath that came as someone’s last, for every life that became nothing but a memory that day—Lette felt herself grow yet more powerful.
She wasn’t sure if she was breathing anymore. She wasn’t sure she needed to. The power of divinity was burning inside her, a limitless well of energy that mocked the petty constraints of mortality. The power was transforming her into something else, something greater. It ran through her like a wild horse through a field, begging to be broken and bent to her will.
She looked out of the apartment window, over the seething chaotic bowl, and saw a dragon flying straight toward her. It was teeth, and claws, and flame, and hatred. It was a thunderbolt of rage launched straight from the Hallows, and aimed at her heart. It was death, stripped of all beauty and pretense, all ceremony and wonder. It was pure in a way, almost perfect. It was everything a dragon was meant to be. The grimmest, most brutal statement of finality that the gods and nature could devise.
She reached out, raised up an arm to fend it off. It was an automatic gesture, and if it had been one she’d had the time to think about, she would have dismissed it as futile and ridiculous. The creature outweighed her by a factor of what surely must have been a thousand to one. Not only was her demise guaranteed; so was that of the entire building surrounding her.
She felt her hand collide with muscle and scale. A cold, hard impact that shook her whole body.
And her arm held.
She had closed her eyes at the last, at the inevitable moment. She opened them slowly.
The dragon was caught just short of her building. Its silver body dangled, writhing and thrashing, claws raking the air. Its tail whipped back and forth. And it was held. Held by the neck.
She held it by the neck.
It didn’t make sense. The physics and biology of it didn’t make sense. Here she was, inside the room. There it was, hanging … ten … fifteen yards outside the apartment window. She couldn’t reach that far.
And yet she felt it in her hand. A neck too broad for her grasp. She could feel the muscles in it working. She could feel the scales biting into her skin. She could feel her palm starting to bleed.
It made no sense. But she began to squeeze. She watched the dragon convulse and twitch. She felt the strength of its neck muscles fighting her.
The silver dragon’s throat bulged, its jaws opened. Flame filled her vision. She threw up an arm, smashed the dragon sideways, felt the whole structure of the buildings quake as the beast impacted with the building to her left. Flames boiled over her, enveloped her, became her entire world. And this was death, had to be death. She knew it, clear as she knew that the sun rose and that humanity made an ass of itself beneath its withering stare.
But the crowd below did not know. The crowd below knew only their gods. And they poured all their hope and belief into her. And so she felt the scalding, unending heat of the flame, felt it, and screamed in fear and regret at all that she had left unsaid, and undone … And then it was over, and she was alive. Her skin smarted, was red perhaps, but she was not the twitching pile of ash and charred sinew she expected to be.
Gods … she was … she was a god.
She could feel the belief of the people outside flooding into her, rejecting the injuries and the harm. She could feel them defending her.
She could feel the dragon still held in her hand.
With a savagery she thought Balur would be proud of, she slammed her fist back toward the building, hauling the dragon with her. Over and over she smashed its body into the building façade. Over and over she saw the walls facing her quake and crack. Plaster and stone fell away. The building started to tilt. And still she beat the dragon against the wall, feeling the blood running down over her knuckles, making her grip slick. Until she no longer held a dragon, only the corpse of one.
72
Goddess Among Us
Lette unfolded out of the window of the apartment. She felt her body expanding to accommodate the power pouring into it. She could feel herself growing even as she emerged, standing over the broken body of the dragon she had dropped onto the crowd. She towered over them all, head level with the rooftops, feet upon the ground, the world suddenly having become a smaller, pettier thing.
This was not the plan anymore, but she didn’t care. This moment had become something else, something greater, something more profound. She had blood on her hands now. And she wanted more.
Around her ankles, people dropped to their knees, spoke in tongues, screamed the names of Betra, and Cois, and Knole. They didn’t know who she was. They didn’t care. She was simply there, and thus they worshipped her.
They were not the only ones who noticed.
A contingent of the dragons hurtled through the air toward her. Three of the beasts. Flame heralded their charge.
She caught the first in her right hand, the second in her left, abbreviating their desperate charges.
Diffinax ducked beneath her guard, then slammed into her gut with all the grace and subtlety of a battering ram.
The air whistled out of her. No matter
that the power of three gods was in her. No matter that she was at least as tall as it was long. No matter that she had slain one of the dragon’s compatriots. It was a blow with the force to knock the people around her to the ground. She staggered back a step, sprawled into another building. She could feel people tumbling down around her shoulders. She tried to grab at them but she still had a fistful of dragon.
One of the beasts twisted the free part of its head and sank its teeth into her wrist. The pain was bright and sharp. She howled with what little breath she’d regained. She brought her fist up and around, plunged it into the ground, using the dragon’s body as a glove.
She felt the creature’s bones break, its ribs bursting through its skin. She felt the tremor of its heart rupturing. She felt its life tear out through the back of its smashed skull.
But even as one dragon died, Diffinax tore and tore at her chest. His claws slashed through her leathers and her shirt, scored deep, ragged gashes down her chest. His fire enveloped her. She howled in pain. And she felt the belief of the crowd quiver. They had seen this fight before. It was one the dragons had consistently won.
Diffinax’s head lanced up, striking like a snake. She felt his teeth close on her throat, felt his body begin to twist and tear. With her free hand she grasped at the back of his neck. The other dragon, still caught in her left hand, jackknifed and clawed, shredding the skin of her arm like so much paper.
She danced down a knife’s edge of belief. The crowd’s commitment wavered. A clown they could clap for. A heartfelt sentiment they could cheer for. But this … flesh and blood, dirt and grit. This stomping, screaming, fighting, bleeding monster that had come stampeding into this chaos … There was a reason Will had asked them to hide in the shadows, to show their hands but not their faces.
The pain was excruciating. She flickered between two realities, one where she was impervious to these ridiculous wounds, and one where she was lying on the ground gasping out her final breaths. She collapsed, still grappling with Diffinax.
“You almost killed my friend, you fucker,” she gasped into its hate-filled, snapping face. Jaws slammed shut inches in front of her eyes. Flame snorted out of nostrils. Somewhere, and somewhen, her hair was on fire.
“We’ve both got teeth, fuckwad.” She lunged forward, bit down hard on the dragon’s snout. She felt it try to howl. She felt fire blast down her throat. In some version of reality, in the heads of some people in the crowd she was dead then, her head nothing more than charred stump. She could feel that reality clawing at her, sinking talons into her as savage as any beast.
And she did not give one single fuck. She would not succumb to that or this dragon. She would define her own gods-hexed reality. She would not be dictated to by beast or man.
She reached up with her spare hand and gouged at the dragon’s right eye. It howled as the orb burst under her pressure, as she rooted around in the oozing socket for a better grip.
Its blood was filling her mouth, bitter and scalding. She bit down harder.
And then, with a great wrenching bite, she tore the snout right off Diffinax’s face.
The dragon fell away, a gushing, twisting fountain of blood. Its screams of pain were lost in the deluge. It twisted back, wings flapping, clawing at the air for what little purchase on life was left to it.
And Lette felt the crowd’s faith surge back to her. She felt the wounds on her chest knitting together. She felt the burns in her throat healing. She grabbed at the dragon, still savaging her left arm. She seized its tail and ripped it away from her arm while still desperately clinging to its neck with her other hand.
The dragon’s vast muscles contracted against her, but the momentum of the crowd was with her now. Blood still poured from her wounds, but this was about will now, not muscle and sinew. She felt the dragon’s spine pull straight. She held it tight as a bowstring. Heaved, with a scream as pain exploded through her chest, half-closed wounds bursting open under the pressure.
There was a ragged, booming crack from the dragon’s back, and suddenly all resistance was gone. It squealed in her hands as she yanked it down and pressed its body like a garrote across the throat of the gasping, twitching body of Diffinax.
Slowly, and with great pleasure, she throttled the life out of the beast.
She stood and roared at the crowd. They would know her fucking name. Because she had saved them. And perhaps, just perhaps in doing so, she might have saved herself.
“For Will!” she shouted at them. “For you! For us! For fucking humanity!”
Another dragon lanced down out of the sky toward her, a thunderbolt of flesh and claw. She whipped out with the limp body of the dragon whose neck she’d broken. It flailed through the air, smashed into the plummeting dragon. Its tail wrapped around the newcomer’s body like a well-weighted whip. Pivoting on her back heel, Lette slammed the massive weight of the beasts into the ground. She heard bone snaps.
“Fuck the gods!” she bellowed, stamping down again and again on the bodies, feeling skin and blood squish beneath her heel. “And fuck you too!”
The crowd was in chaos. This was something else. This was anarchy in the heavens. They did not know what to believe. They did not understand. Their faith tore back and forth through her, and each time it left, the pain of her wounds was fresh again. She was weeping, howling, roaring all at once. All in different people’s heads. She felt like she was being torn apart.
“For Will!” she yelled again. “For all of you ungrateful bastards!” She held on to that, whatever that was, whatever core piece of her that she wouldn’t let divinity touch.
I’m human, she told herself. I’m here for humanity. That was the rallying cry. Not gods. Not dragons. Not lords and fucking ladies. Not hierarchies and power structures. Humanity.
She felt something crash into her back. Somethings. Claws tearing at her. She was bowled forward, crashed into what was left of a building, felt it give way beneath her massive bulk. And then she was falling, gasping into blackness.
73
About That Victory …
Lette was bleeding. She was trying to work out if she was dying. She thought perhaps she was. She’d almost died before, a couple of times. This felt a lot like that.
She was in darkness and smoke. Rubble was scattered all around her. She could hear sounds of fighting. Massive, epic fighting. It was hard to take much else in beyond her own pain. Her chest was slashed to a ruin. Her left forearm was virtually gone in its entirety, not much left beyond the bones. She closed her eyes.
She had dreamt she was a god, fighting dragons …
She tried to heave herself up, dazed. Something was buzzing inside her, an energy she couldn’t quite place, something carrying her forward despite her wounds.
She was in a room, or … no … A room had collapsed on top of her. The surviving corner of it formed a pyramid above her head. There was a door up there just out of reach. She thought perhaps she could pull some rubble beneath it. At least she could if she had a left fucking arm.
She looked down at the ragged stump. Gods … She was … Fucking … Gods … A sob tore its way out of her.
And yet still she kept moving, couldn’t keep still despite her desire to fall down, curl up, and see if she woke up in the morning.
Movement above her made her look up. There was a figure perched over the doorway in the wall above her head, a black shape in a field of gray smoke.
“Will?” In other circumstances she might have been ashamed of the desperation she heard in her voice. But she needed help now. Help out of here. Help to deal with her wounds. With her missing fucking arm. Help with whatever the hell was going on in her head.
She had fought a dragon. She had curb-stomped one to death. Crowds had cheered her, had hated her, had worshipped her, had feared her. She had stood like a giant upon the world.
“Not quite,” said the figure above her, and dropped down.
It took her a moment to place the voice. “Barph?” she said.
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br /> It was hard to pick out his bow in the darkness. He straightened, appeared to regard her.
“Oh,” he said, “look at you.”
She couldn’t quite keep the second sob down. “It hurts,” she said. “So fucking much.”
“They are a fickle bunch,” Barph said. There was such a depth of sympathy in his voice. “You just tore the life from four dragons in front of them. You just destroyed their faith in those beasts utterly, and then you are knocked out of sight and …”
He shook his head sadly.
Lette pressed her right hand to her temple. “I can’t take this. It’s doing my head in.”
“Once they see you again,” said Barph. “Once you make them remember.” She could hear something mocking in his voice, but something affectionate too. “Fickle arseholes.”
“I …” Lette gestured with her stump of an arm, grit her teeth against the pain. “I can’t.”
“You still have divinity within you,” said Barph, stepping closer. “More now than ever.” There was a note now in his voice that she couldn’t so easily identify. Something like hunger, perhaps? “You can heal yourself.”
And he was right. She knew what the force keeping her upright and moving was. It was the will of the people at her disposal. She tried to place a hand on her wounded arm, but the pain made her cry out again.
“I can’t.” She felt so fucking stupid. She had been so defiant, so powerful, and now here she was, begging for help.
“I can.” Balur stepped toward her, put a hand on her shoulder. His palm felt warm against her cold skin. She was shivering, she realized. Shock and blood loss taking their toll. But she would be whole soon.
“I really killed four dragons?” she asked. She could hold on to pieces of it now. She had been knocked into the collapsing building. She must have taken a serious blow to the head. Along with the blood loss, and the unfamiliar pressures of the crowd’s desires in the back of her head …