95. THE BATTLE OF EIGHT DRAGONS III

Sheloran’s story

Raenora Valley

Fighting Morios

“Thanks!” Sheloran yelled in Thurvishar’s direction. She looked around, taking stock of the fight.

Teraeth and Janel were fighting the big black-and-red volcano dragon … Sharanakal, she thought his name was.

Talea stood on a promontory with a good view of the battlefield, bow in hand, firing arrows blindly into a pool of inky darkness that Sheloran recognized as the handiwork of Drehemia. The fact that the shadow dragon was once again insane and on the bad guy’s side irritated her on a personal level, as if all their pain and sacrifices on Devors had amounted to little more than a temporary holiday.

She’d have liked to see more of the battle, but Morios was still breathing those damnable metal slivers of his. “Does he ever run out?” she asked Qown.

“No, I don’t think so,” the former Vishai priest said. “Can you keep doing this?” He indicated the point twenty feet in front of him where the cylinder of fléchettes divided and passed to either side of them.

Sheloran laughed, holding up Skyfire. “With this little trinket? I can do this all day.”

“Look out!” Qown yelled, pointing behind her.

She didn’t look. She couldn’t look. She might have been able to deflect Morios’s hail of daggers, but that required sight. She couldn’t look away. Instead, she threw herself flat and hoped that it was enough.

It was. A small flock of skeletal crows flew through the spot where she’d been standing. “Sorry,” Senera’s voice called from somewhere to her left.

Sheloran didn’t reply, but instead stood and dusted dirt off her skirt. “We need to take this fight to him,” she told Qown as she continued diverting the metal darts. “You weren’t kidding; he really isn’t going to run out of those things. The financial implications of something that can generate unlimited metal on command…” She shook her head.

“Plot the economic collapse of the Quuros Empire later,” Qown suggested. “I think he’s decided to change tactics.”

Indeed, the district-size behemoth had stopped breathing razors at them and was now charging at them far faster and more gracefully than she would’ve imagined possible.

“I don’t suppose you can…” Qown made a swatting motion as he backpedaled quickly.

Sheloran laughed. The idea was absurd. And yet, with Skyfire’s power … Why not? She tried to shove Morios aside. And it … sort of worked? The dragon stumbled. A moment later, he staggered as a huge chunk of obsidian slammed into him from the side. More of Thurvishar’s doing.

But a several-ton block of volcanic stone smashing into the dragon didn’t do more than idly inconvenience him. Morios resumed his advance.

Sheloran was reminded of a cat stalking a mouse. She hated being the mouse.

“You’re not Panag Khael,” Morios said, his voice like a thousand swords scraping against a thousand whetstones. “Why do you wear his aura?” The monster was clearly talking to Qown, so Sheloran took the opportunity to draw more power from Skyfire and weave the tenyé into a subtle pattern.

“No, I’m not Khael,” Qown agreed. “But I am the new Argas. Just like your brother isn’t Khored anymore.” He pointed across the battlefield to where Mithros was helping the old Joratese woman Dorna fight Gorokai.

The distraction worked. Morios turned his head to look. “Brother?” he said, then snarled. “I’ll kill him later. For now, you’re right here and—what in Hell is happening?” The dragon craned his head to look behind him.

Sheloran had released the shaping she’d done. Morios’s metal body stretched and thinned, starting at the tail, wrapping around itself into a massive coil of metal wire. Half of his tail was already elongated and wrapped around itself in this way.

The dragon’s head whipped back, and Sheloran realized she’d made a mistake. Once again, she underestimated the dragon’s speed. She was unable to stop the burst of razor-sharp daggers this time as dozens of them impaled Qown and herself. The last thing she saw was Morios bellowing in triumph, already turning to stalk after Mithros.

She stared down at herself, disbelieving. A large, nasty-looking stain of blood bloomed over her chest. It hurt, but just for a moment. Then it didn’t hurt at all. Nothing did.

Everything turned black.

And then the world came into focus again. Sheloran turned her head and coughed blood. “Oh fuck, that hurts,” she said, slowly rolling onto her side. The cold ice felt good on her still-stinging injuries. She fought down a sense of hysterical panic.

Sheloran knew what had just happened. She‘d grown annoyingly familiar with the sensation of dying.

She just hadn’t stayed that way for long this time.

“Are you okay?” Qown asked Sheloran. Qown had been impaled too, but with a Guardian’s resources, had been able to heal himself faster than he could die.

“I’ll live,” Sheloran decided, then laughed darkly. “Again.”

“It’s better than the alternative,” Qown agreed. “Come on, we still have a dragon to figure out how to kill.”

The two of them helped each other to their feet.

“I think you were on the right track,” Qown said. “But we need to do something to stop him from retaliating before you can finish.”

“Yes,” Sheloran said. “That was my one free death. So unless Xivan is…” She looked around. “Nope, still busy with Xaloma. We’re on our own. What do you suggest?”

“Can you pull tenyé from Skyfire while at the same time using it to melt everything?”

“No idea,” Sheloran said. “Let’s find out.” She found two of the metal shards that had killed her and levitated them into the air. She stretched one into fine wire and wove an intricate net with it, pulling on Skyfire’s power to make it a trivially easy task. At the same time, she willed the Cornerstone to melt the second dart into slag.

The second dart glowed, softened, melted.

“Yes,” she said, “but it’s not easy.”

“Oh!” Qown’s eyes lit up. “Can you maintain concentration on one of your metal sculpture things without being able to see it?”

“Yes.” Sheloran didn’t need to experiment with that. She’d done it dozens of times. “Why?”

“I have an idea,” said Qown. “First, we’re going to need a bunch of those daggers he’s been breathing at everyone. And we need to work quickly. I think he’s about to kill Mithros.”

“Okay,” Sheloran said and gathered every fragment of unattended metal she could on the battlefield. “What am I doing with this?”

When Qown told her, she began to laugh.

Not long after, Qown landed in front of the dragon, between Morios and his brother. “As I said, I’m the new Argas. Knowledge. And the first thing I did was learn the secrets of life and death. You can’t defeat me.”

Morios cocked his head as though he’d just been presented with a riddle. On the ground, Mithros took the opportunity to heal himself, although the man was on his last legs in terms of tenyé. Sheloran imagined that having unlimited energy for millennia would cause quite the culture shock when you suddenly had only what your own body could generate by itself.

The dragon peered at Qown. “I doubt that. Life is Galava’s realm and Death is Thaena’s. What trickery is this?”

Qown spread his arms. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Morios slammed a giant hand down, crushing the man like so much paper. As he lifted his hand again, however, Qown stood up, unharmed. “Told you,” said Qown’s voice.

Mithros staggered away from the conversation. Sheloran could have kissed the old campaigner, for although he’d almost certainly figured out what was going on, he didn’t give it away.

Morios shook his head. “Impossible,” he said. “I know not what trickery this is, but you’ll not survive it!” The dragon inhaled and opened his mouth wide to rain metal-barbed death on Qown.

But the moment that mouth opened wide enough, Qown moved forward. Not at a walk or even a run. Instead, he simply flew through the air without otherwise shifting his position. He flew straight down Morios’s throat.

From behind one of Aeyan’arric’s half-melted glaciers, Sheloran muttered, “Here’s a little trick I learned from Janel.”

At which point, the metal simulacrum of Qown began to heat up. She’d crafted the basic form, and Qown had used his new powers to make it look like himself, sound like himself. The metallic mass softened inside Morios’s throat, melted. The metal boiled as Sheloran poured the power of Skyfire into something ultimately forged from Morios.

Morios shook his head violently. He exhaled, which was his undoing. The metal darts hit the molten mass and were added to the mix as Sheloran poured more and more of the sun’s energy into the growing ball inside Morios’s throat. Each of his own fléchettes added to the superheated metal in his throat, and he’d taken a deep breath indeed. The dragon croaked something that might have been an angry curse.

And then his head fell off.1

Qown and Sheloran looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction. Then they stood up to see who else needed help.