Dragon Frost

by S. J. Wist

  "Stupid pigeon has a Gate. I took the liberty of using it when he opened fire on our asses."

  "Where's Nafury?" Ubi asked. She had to know he was still alive.

  "He made his own way out," Kenshe answered.

  "Tell him to go away or I will kill him," Cirrus warned, and only her ears could hear him.

  "Kenshe, stop!" Ubi said as she looked back at the phelan shifter, as it was clear that he couldn't see Cirrus like she could.

  Kenshe stopped approaching her, but more out of the fear that resonated from her than by command. He looked around, trying to sense what might have terrified her so. Finding nothing, he tried to look into her psi, but it was completely sealed off. "Ubi, what's wrong?"

  She knew that if she screamed for help, Cirrus would kill him. So she turned her fear on him. "I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore! Just get away from me!"

  "That's not going to happen. Let's go back to the Atrum. You can finished whining about how you hate everything while there and wait for Nafury to come back." Kenshe took another step forward, but she screamed at him again to stop. "I know you're not scared of me."

  "Then you're wrong. Now back--!" Before Ubi could finish, the ground started to shake faster and faster.

  Kenshe looked around for just what was causing the earthquake. The Calls were saying that it was coming from Toria. At the same time a shockwave of aeri energy hit Atrum City like a hurricane. He instinctively ran the rest of the way to Ubi, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Cirrus standing there. The aeri energy left a sticky glow to his invisible form. "Cirrus?"

  "It's been a while, Kenshe," Cirrus replied.

  Kenshe took immediate notice of his life Threads in the former dragoon's grasp. There was also a black, twisting Mei on the Awl's arm. Sybl was still Bonded to him. He instinctively charged at Cirrus, brushing Cirrus' pull on his life Threads aside. Colliding with the former dragoon, he pulled them both into the Keol. He struck the former dragoon in the face once on the other side, then backed off from him. He could see that the Mei to Sybl was keeping Cirrus from burning up from the Keol. It was possible that every bit of pain he dealt him was felt by her as well. "What did you do to Sybl? What's happened to you?"

  "Ah, Kenshe. Always the faithful one to leave your ayame unattended," Cirrus said cooly.

  At Cirrus's words, Kenshe reopened a Rift back to the surface. He shifted and chased after Ubi's scent, landing on her just as a Sentry's scythe-like arm hit. The strike hit him instead, and he let out a yelp of pain. He retaliated and spun around in one swift motion, landing his teeth in the neck of the creature. He tore flesh and bone free of the monster, until it ceased moving.

  The Calls for battle were out in force now, and he could hear his Pack's psi reaching out for him. He picked up Ubi between his teeth, and made a mad dash for the Atrum. Another Sentry nearly pinned his tail to the ground. He jumped up and over one that had been made visible before him, but didn't see the other one in time. It slashed his leg and sent him tumbling in a roll across the street. He shook off the hit, and looked around for where Ubi had landed. He found her unconscious nearby, and quickly unshifted as he gathered her into his arms.

  "Where you going, Kenshe?" Cirrus asked as he emerged from his restored invisibility in front of him.

  Kenshe set Ubi down and got a grip his own and her life Threads.

  "Do you really hope to fight me and win?" Cirrus said as he walked closer.

  Cirrus' question was answered when Tank came down on him from an overhead rooftop. The giant phelan shifter grabbed the Awl by the neck, before throwing him across the street.

  Kenshe wasted no time using the distraction and grabbed Ubi, pulling them into the Keol. He had to find Sybl before he bled to death, and get her daughter as far away from Cirrus as he could.

  Ubi opened her eyes as everything in her body started to hurt at once. She felt as if she had been sunburned three miles from the sun and then rolled across the width of the planet. She rolled to her side and found Kenshe lying down next to her on his stomach. His face was tucked into his arm. A pool of blood around his torso had begun to make its way to where she was for help.

  She sat up and tried not to panic as she shook him to wake up. When he didn't respond, she looked around the abandoned building he had brought them too. It took her a moment to realize that they were at the Sanctus, within its lower ruins.

  Ubi stood up and looked around for something she could use to slow the bleeding. Everything around her that wasn't solid stone had been reduced to ashes and dust a long time ago. She wondered what kind of a bomb had been set off in her father's temple. "Everyone keeps coming back here," Ubi said as she pulled off her sapphire blue cloak. She tore a strip off of the bottom of it, and the tearing sound cut into her heart and her memories of Xirel. Kneeling next to Kenshe, she tore off what was left of his grey, blood-soaked tunic. Then she started to wrap the blue fabric around him.

  "Don't...die..." Kenshe mumbled.

  Ubi stopped for a moment. He was talking while unconscious. She touched his wound as the fabric from her cloak began to soak through. His bleeding wouldn't stop. She was sobbing now from fear. Fear of Kenshe dying and leaving her here alone. Fear of dying again and of being completely useless to do anything about it.

  "Ubi," a familiar voice called to her. When it registered that it was Cirrus', she sprung to her feet.

  She wiped the tears from her face and looked back at Kenshe. She pulled her father's sword from its sheath at his side and lifted it before her.

  "Just what do you hope to do with that?" Cirrus' voice sounded amused.

  The Awl had a point. Kenshe had only taught her the basics of manipulating Threads beyond magic tricks. She had never used a sword. So she looked for her second weapon of choice. Kenshe's shift moved along the wall like a protective shadow. She called it to her, and it walked over to her outstretched hand. Ubi kept a careful watch for where Cirrus' voice would appear next. How she wished that she could take the phelan's form and kill Cirrus who had taken everything from her.

  "You blame me for all the wrong things. I did not take your mother away from you. She would have never have fallen for me if Kas had not abandoned you both to a life of loneliness and suffering."

  "So that's supposed to be an excuse for destroying the first Aster and then coming after this one!?"

  "What do you care? This is not your world and neither was its previous incarnation. You belong on Earth. We're on the same side and we can help each other, Ubi."

  "I'm not helping a delusional freak! You killed Xirel!" Ubi looked back for Kenshe's shift, but the wolf-like creature had disappeared. As her fear rose, so did Cirrus' laughter.

  "The phelan shift is far smarter than you are. But I'm not cruel. Come with me quietly and I'll even throw in the extra favour of healing Kenshe there for you. He will continue to bleed and will die if you do nothing."

  "You have some nerve to trespass on this sacred ground, Awl!"

  Ubi looked back and found Kas standing there. He looked alive and whole.

  "I thought you might show up," Cirrus said as he jumped down to the other side of Ubi. She was now in the center of the imminent fight. "After all, Fay don't really die."

  "I said to leave!" Kas took his blade from Ubi and pointed it at Cirrus.

  "I always wondered if you would have been able to give me a satisfying fight on the beach ten years ago." Cirrus unsheathed his own long sword and aimed it at the dark Fay. "I think I've waited long enough to find out."

  Ubi didn't so much as get a blink off when Kas vanished in a swirl of estus energy and reappeared behind Cirrus. The Awl turned in time to catch the dark Fay's sword against his own. Their steel sung to a quick beat as they continued to battle it out. The ruins of pillars and collapsed walls was now their arena.

  Ubi looked back at Kenshe as he still wasn't moving. "Dad, he's going to die!" she said in a whisper of a panic. "How do I get him to safety?"

  'Cirrus can only
be defeated on Earth. You must go there with Kenshe.'

  "Won't he burn up from the sun?" Ubi responded to his psi by voice.

  'Not if you Bind him to you. I can feel that you truly love him as he does you. Do not make the same mistake I made with your mother in thinking that such feelings can be pushed aside.'

  Ubi couldn't think of anything else she could do to save Kenshe. As the clash of steel drew closer to her again, she rolled Kenshe onto his back and picked up his right wrist. She had no idea how to form such a link to him, especially with him unconscious. Ubi closed her eyes and pressed the back of his hand against her lips, willing the Thread around her to give him to her. Her tears fell to his hand and down his wrist. When she looked at it, she saw several silver Threads begin to grow around her left wrist and his right. She could sense his shift again too, and it made its way back to her.

  'Nafury is the only one who can break the Curse that is giving Cirrus his power.' Kas' voice said to her mind.

  "He's on Earth too?" A sense of dread filled Ubi, and it seemed to spread as a black hole of a Rift from under her. She gripped Kenshe's hand tight as she let the Rift pull them under to an uncertain destination.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Several hours later, Nafury opened his eyes as a cold chill stung sharply enough to wake him. He stared up at the blue eyes looking down at him. They were the same colour as Cirrus'.

  "You have to get out of here."

  "Cirrus?"

  "Wake up, now."

  Nafury blinked as the room around him began to move faster, blurring out the image of his dead best friend.

  "Is he conscious?" a voice asked.

  The fog cleared and the light over him became more blinding and revealed the truth of where he was.

  "Nothing is working on him. It's as if his body is destroying anything we put into him."

  Nafury blinked again and took in a deep breath. The room he was in had a chemical and unnatural smell to it.

  "Doctor, what do we do?"

  Nafury didn't have an answer for the woman. He looked behind her to where a spirit form of a woman with long, blond hair stood watching him. It wasn't Cirrus here with him, but Alexia. The last thing he remembered was falling into the Soph Aur. You brought me here? Nafury asked by psi to Alexia. I thought Cirrus had captured you.

  'The griffin was able to disable me and push me through the Gate to Earth. I am captured by no one unless I wish it. You landed rather rough and I had no choice but to let them bring you here until you recovered.

  "Earth?" Nafury asked aloud and sat up, before looking at his arms and chest where several wires had been hooked up to him. So he had made it.

  "Yeah, welcome back to it," one the white-dressed workers said to him. Then he pushed him back down.

  Nafury found the man's words ironic. The last time he was on Earth he had almost destroyed the whole planet. He pulled the wires off of himself and started to get to his feet. The doctors backed off when he struck their hands away and started to call for security.

  Alexia silenced them by pulling all the air from their lungs. The doctors were left gasping and fleeing into the hallway for air.

  Sybl didn't save his life so he could cause havoc on Earth all over again, and he called Alexia's attack off. Nafury knew that he was pushing his luck with how far he could harm the humans before Hino retaliated. Even if there was no guessing to how long it would take the One God's Sentries to try and kill him.

  He sensed more trouble coming from the voices at the end of the hall and Alexia's energy began to rise in response. In the time it took him to blink his eyes, people were blown against the surrounding walls with a vengeance when they entered the room. They were then held there by Alexia's intense wind.

  The shouting in the room became chaotic and he looked at the nurse that had moments ago been looking down at him. She sat shaking against the wall of the hospital, a smear of blood behind her. He crouched down in front of her and the woman trembled. Nafury wondered if this was how so many had been terrified of him once. It was a sad kind of irony, as he had always hated his adoptive father for instilling fear on others. Now, he had become just like Simera. He reached out to the woman and used his aeri to heal the wound on the back of her head.

  She seemed to have some idea of what he did as she reached to where he had touched her and found that the wound was now closed. "What are you? Some kind of wizard?"

  "No," Nafury replied, wiping the blood from his hand onto his black pants. "Wizards are imaginary, but dragons are real." Standing up straight, he looked to a nearby window. He opened it and looked down to the busy city street twenty stories below, before stepping off of the ledge.

  Atrum City was in chaos when Sybl emerged from the Gate and left the black castle. The aeri still stuck to the Sentry and made them visible, but they were outnumbering the phelan shifters in the streets. She walked with her festra in hand for the first one she saw, and made sure that it saw her in turn. It was enough to get all their attention, as the giant, insect-like creatures were all connected to one another. She swiftly cut down the Sentry focused on her, then took to the rooftops as she sung her song of death, and trailed one attacker behind her. It made her presence known, and the Sentry were agitated by the aeri pulsing now through the Animus Threads, which betrayed their invisibility even more. Sybl wasted no time going for the next one as it joined her on the rooftop and cut its legs out from under it. The Sentry fell helplessly into the waiting teeth below.

  All Calls ceased for mere moments, as Prisca reorganized the song of death. Only the Caelestis had ever sung it. She could see Sybl from the window of the Atrum, as she attacked non-stop the Sentry with her festra and aeri. Sybl was luring them away from the City and into the fields. Assist your Caelestis! Don't let them capture her!

  The Packs re-synced with their ayames, as the song of death continued. They immediately turned their focus and energies to pulling of the Sentry off of Sybl's tail.

  Sybl held her own against the Sentry, as she sent several flares of aeri energy back at her pain train. The ones she hit dead on were vaporized, and any nearby were blinded. She knew she had only so much energy to get this done. The phelan assisted her in tearing asunder the ones temporarily blinded. They ganged up on the bigger, more dangerous of the Sentry by instinct and experience, and made quick work of the creatures.

  Blood covered the field as the slaughter continued. Sybl's bladed festra didn't slow as it cut down enemy in a flurry that lasted for thirty minutes. Finally, the phelan overwhelmed the last Sentry and the fight was over. Many of the Sentry corpses remained, as the estus energy in the air didn't allow their bodies to turn into stardust.

  Sybl was spent as she collapsed to one knee. She held onto her festra that she stuck upright in the ground to keep herself from toppling over.

  "Sybl!" Feryl's voice said and he unshifted as he ran to her. "Are you hurt?"

  "Just a bit...tired," Sybl replied and pulled herself to her feet. As she did, the Call went out that the Sentry were all dead. Cheers erupted from the phelan and they unshifted in their own exhaustion. The entirety of the massacre strewn around them made for an unbelievable sight.

  "Well, that went a lot better than expected. I feel like kicking myself for not believing Nafury that you were back," Feryl said as he looked at his Pack. They were equally happy to see the Caelestis again.

  "It's not over yet," Tank said as he pointed to someone behind Sybl.

  Sybl turned around and saw Cirrus walking over to them. The shifters took in hand their blades at the sight of the Awl, as others shifted and flared their teeth in warning. But the Awl wasn't alone, as Cirrus dragged and held Loki hostage in the grip of his arm. "Let him go you bastard!"

  "I will, as soon as you give up this pointless fight and come with me," Cirrus replied.

  "I will not let you kill anyone else who is important to me!" Sybl snapped back and got a grip of Loki's Threads. She pulled her hand back, and Loki vanished in a blink of stars. In a hea
rtbeat, he reappeared under her hand, whole again.

  "That was...scary," Loki said as he regained himself and started looking for Cirrus' Threads.

  "Impressive, Sybl. Or with the presentation of your latest remembered powers, should I call you Asteria?" Cirrus taunted.

  Sybl lifted her Cursed arm as she tried to resist the control he tried to force over her.

  "You cannot resist," Cirrus said and cut the Threads to one of her legs, causing her to collapse. "You belong entirely to me!"

  Loki retaliated as he snapped the control to Cirrus' arm, then sent one of his daggers for the Awl's heart. But Cirrus caught the weapon before it could hit its mark with his other hand.

  Sybl picked up her festra as she channeled Sial's power over Gravity under Cirrus. "I've had about all I can stomach of you. Begone!"

  The ground exploded and hurled Cirrus into the air. Loki swiftly grabbed every Thread he could of the Threads to the Awl. He snapped them, but just as he did, Cirrus vanished into thin air.

  "Is he dead?" Feryl asked as he looked everywhere.

  "I can't kill him as long as he Bonded to Sybl," Loki said and looked to Sybl. The black Thread of the Bond to Cirrus was still on her wrist.

  "You cannot defeat me," Cirrus said. The Packs scrambled to try and find him.

  "Sybl, can you Nova him out?" Loki asked.

  "He's holding my voice," she said as she collapsed to her knees. She raised her festra, just as a scythe-like arm came down on her.

  "I've played long enough with you," Cirrus said. He pulled back and tore her festra from her hands, throwing it across the field.

  Before anyone could react, his other arm swept them across the field. Then Cirrus pulled Sybl into his invisibility.

  "Sybl!" Loki shouted as he tried to grab a Thread--any that led to her or Cirrus, but they had all vanished. "Sybl, no! Bring her back!" He collapsed to his hands in tears as there was no way to follow as he couldn't see them or their Threads.