51. How Relos Var Helped Drehemia

51. HOW RELOS VAR HELPED DREHEMIA

It had all gone wrong from the very start. The Lash had been so happy, so very profoundly happy, when the small ones had given Drehemia back to her, cured of the curse that had left her beyond the Lash’s reach. Drehemia had experienced such periods of … irritability … before, but never so serious and never for so long. This had been different.

So when Drehemia woke and the Lash saw comprehension and reason and awareness behind her eyes, she had rejoiced.

The rejoicing quickly turned into horror.

Drehemia had taken one look at the area around her, one look at the Lash, and had rushed away, flying and screaming both in a sound of anguish and confusion.

What could the Lash do but follow? Or try to follow, limited as she was to the sea while Drehemia had no such obstacles and could fly with equal felicity. Tracking Drehemia wasn’t easy, and the Lash was forced to take refuge in magical skills she seldom needed to keep track of her lover’s location.1 For some time, it seemed Drehemia’s movements were random—rage- and chaos-induced blind turns with no goal—but eventually, the dragon began making her way back to her own lair, deep in the waters near Da’utunse.

When the Lash arrived at the lair and tried to say soothing words to her lover, Drehemia attacked her.

“What monstrous outrage is this? What trick? What curse! What have you done to me?!” Drehemia’s claws dug deep furrows into the ground as she spat out the words, while all around her the shadows twisted like kelp in a storm.

“Drehemia, what are you saying?” the Lash whispered, soothed. “It’s me. You know me. You’ve known me for ages. I would never hurt you!”

The reverse didn’t seem to be true.

Still, Drehemia’s powers were most effective against crowds of small ones, not against a daughter such as the Lash. She tried to claw and bite at the Lash, but quickly found herself constrained by a creature with more than enough arms to trap every limb, and her tail and neck besides.

And then he arrived.

The Lash didn’t notice him at first. She’d always had a difficult time noticing the small ones unless they were doing something to directly capture her attention. This one seemed normal enough, a collection of browns and drab colors in a body with too few limbs and too small a head. She hadn’t thought he was a threat.

That had been her fatal mistake.

“It’s normal,” the small one said. When the Lash twisted in his direction, he repeated his words. “It’s normal. The shock of having her Cornerstone returned to her is great. To her mind, she shouldn’t be a dragon, so this seems like a curse. But fortunately, this can be healed.”

“Who are you?” the Lash demanded. “How did you get here?”

“Magic,” the man explained, which … fine. Yes, likely magic. The small ones were annoyingly good at magic, much to all her kind’s remorse. “My name is Relos Var. With your permission, I’d like to help Drehemia better cope with her situation. I know what it’s like. I know how difficult it is to adjust to such a change.”

She should have said no. She should have told Relos Var to go away or, better yet, struck him where he stood with everything she had, so fast that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself.

But alas, she didn’t. She’d been in love, and she’d only cared about making Drehemia happy.

“Kindly bring her head down closer,” Relos Var said. “This will be easier if she can more readily see me.”

Drehemia calmed down right away.

“It’s me,” Relos Var said. “Rev’arric. I know everything seems horrible right now. You must have so many memories that are nothing but chaos and violence.” He reached a hand out and touched the dragon on the nose. “I’ve been through the same. It’s not an easy thing to experience. Will you let me help you? Will you let me show you how to turn back into what you were before?”

Drehemia didn’t say anything. Not anything the Lash heard. Perhaps he saw something in her eyes. Perhaps he hadn’t actually cared how she answered.

Regardless, he did something. The Lash always wore her shields, her protections against magic, but still she could feel the power of what he’d done.

Drehemia vanished.

The Lash staggered as she found herself holding nothing at all. She nearly fell over.

Now, standing next to this “Relos Var” was another small one, pale white all over and with none of the filaments the small ones so often seemed to have on their heads. She immediately began to sob.

“Drehemia!” the Lash pleaded. “Drehemia, is that you?”

The woman took a step back, behind the man. “Keep it away from me! Keep it away!”

“Drehemia!” The Lash reared back as though she had touched lava. “What have you done to her? You haven’t fixed her. You’ve made her worse. You’ve changed her!”

“People change,” Relos Var answered. “And you have it backward, I think. She was cursed when she knew you. Her mind was broken. If it had been otherwise, she never would have been with you at all.”

“No! I don’t believe you!” The Lash roared, meaning to destroy this horrible, spiteful small one who had ruined everything. Everything!

Things happened very quickly after that.

The ground underneath Drehemia opened in a perfect circle, and Drehemia, now small enough to fit easily, fell through. A half second later, there was a surge of motion and pressure.

The walls of the cave exploded as a second dragon appeared in front of the Lash, lunging at her head.

The Lash wasn’t so easily killed, however, or more to the point, couldn’t be easily killed. She carried Grimward, after all. Killing her was beyond the ability of almost all small ones, even the ones they called “gods.”

Then the white dragon pulled her out of the ocean, grabbing one of her tentacles. She found herself stretched between the rocks she had rooted against. His claws grabbed at her. His wings beat with gale-force strength against the water, sending it splashing into the air. She knew she would have to do something quickly to survive this. If Drehemia was the night incarnate, the beauty of secrets and shadows, this was a far less subtle force of nature.

Then the dragon opened his mouth and breathed blue fire at her.

She screamed as she boiled away under a flame hotter than anything she had ever experienced before. She who had played in magma vents in her youth and was doubly protected by both her own wards and the Cornerstone embedded in her flesh. The fire burned, and it seared, and it charred.

And it didn’t stop.

From a dim, faraway place, the Lash knew that she’d dropped back down to the water with a thunderous booming noise that would travel halfway around the globe for anyone with the skill to listen. She damned the fake dragon a hundred times, or she would have.

But she didn’t live that long. That was the moment she learned that immortal or not, she could still be destroyed.

In the seconds before her soul was pulled into the Current Between Oceans, she saw the white dragon turn back into a small one. He retrieved Grimward from her corpse and then proceeded to vaporize the rest of her corpse until there was nothing left but ash and cinder.

He opened a portal and left.

Xivan’s story

The Afterlife

One day after Vol Karoth’s escape, early morning

Xivan listened to the story with a growing sense of dread. She’d known roughly how it would go, of course—after all, the Lash was dead—but that didn’t mean she didn’t still wince at the idea that Relos Var had been the one to slay the Lash.

He had said at some point or another that he’d take the stone back himself if he had to. Relos Var had made good on that promise.

Drehemia, though …

Xivan shivered. “What do we know about Drehemia?”

“Before or after she became a dragon?” Janel asked.

“Before.”

Janel nodded. “She was Argas’s daughter, one of Relos Var’s protégés. Very smart. Very clever. Very good at holding secrets close to her chest. And she hung on Relos Var’s every word. If there were any of the dragons that I could imagine Var wouldn’t mind seeing restored to their full sanity—barring his son, perhaps—it would be Drehemia.”

“Fucking fantastic,” Xivan muttered. “What about her powers? Is she a walking embodiment of the Name of All Things now?”

“I don’t—” Janel made a face. “I don’t think so. Relos Var’s Cornerstone Cynosure made its wearer immune to the other Cornerstones, but after Grizzst used it to restore Relos Var, he didn’t have that same immunity.”

“But it could be,” Xivan pressed.

“Yes. It could be.” Janel didn’t explain the ramifications, but she didn’t need to. Xivan was perfectly aware.

Relos Var having access to the Name of All Things—or someone with the same abilities as the Name of All Things—put the entire plan in jeopardy.

Talea sighed and stood up. “Well, at least we know ahead of time, right? Because I really wouldn’t want to let her sneak up on me while something important was going on.”

Xivan looked out over the ocean toward the kraken, who had lapsed into uncomfortable silence with the completion of her tale. “Thank you. I’m sorry it worked out like this.”

“I curse the day your awful race came to my world,” the Lash mourned. “Now keep your promise. Kill Relos Var.”

The Daughter of Laaka slipped back into the dark waters, leaving only the ripples behind.