97. The Battle of Eight Dragons IV

97. THE BATTLE OF EIGHT DRAGONS IV

“Hi,” Galen yelled at the giant white dragon. “We’ve never been properly introduced. I’m your … cousin? I guess? Your father’s nephew. But also sort of your uncle, because I don’t care what anyone says, Kihrin’s always going to be my brother.”

She breathed a stream of freezing wind laced with ice shards at him.

“Right. Don’t mention your dad. Got it,” Galen said from the other side of the steam cloud formed by all that ice hitting his hastily erected wall of fire.

“Look, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop doing that,” he said a second later after she tried the trick again. “If you keep it up, I’ll have to kill you, and really, I’ve lost too many family members this year. Granted, some of them weren’t as lost as I’d initially thought…” He paused to deflect another ice blast. “And sure, my grandfather’s sleeping with the woman who killed most of those family members, and I’m still sorting out how I feel about that…” He dove to the side and rolled through the snow as the dragon tried to swat him with a claw. “But all the same, I’m feeling pretty good about me and your—oops, I promised I wasn’t going to mention him again. Sorry.”

Aeyan’arric took off into the air, flew a tight circle, and tried to breathe on him from behind. That attack also turned to steam, which refroze in the cold air and fell like fresh powder.

“Not a talker, huh? I respect that,” Galen said. “But seriously, stop trying to kill me—” He leaped aside as she crashed into the spot where he’d been. Then he had to keep rolling since she did too. She slapped out with a wing, which would have crushed him if he wasn’t the new sun god. Instead, she singed her own wing and retracted it with a yelp.

Galen stood, cradling his ribs. “That does it. I’m going to hurt you now.” With one hand, he blasted her with blisteringly hot jets of flame.

Aeyan’arric screamed as the fire hit her, and she launched herself into the air once more. She favored her left foreleg on takeoff, however. “Seriously, you could leave!” Galen yelled up at her. “I won’t tell anyone. Just go away so I don’t have to kill you.”

Much to Galen’s surprise, she flew up and up, spiraling ever higher until she was lost in the clouds. “Wait, really?” he said to no one in particular.

Then the giant ice boulders began to fall.1 One crashed near where Kihrin’s lovers were tussling with that fire dragon, another almost crushed Thurvishar, one hit the dragon who looked like he was a skeleton (it didn’t seem to bother him at all, which Galen felt was fundamentally unfair). And, of course, one came right at Galen himself.

He wasn’t sure he could melt something that big in time, and he hadn’t mastered the trick of teleporting just yet. “F—”

A scintillating rainbow of energy surrounded him. Suddenly, he stood several dozen yards away as the ice boulder smashed harmlessly to the ground where he’d been.

“—uck,” he finished, staggered and disoriented.

He made a mental note to find out later if that was Senera or Irisia who’d saved him.²

“Fine,” Galen said. “I need to fly. I know it can be done because gods do it all the time.³ It can’t be that hard, right?” Galen visualized himself lifting off the ground and then poured tenyé into that idea.

Galen crashed into the ground, two ice boulders, and a frozen wave of obsidian before he figured the trick of aiming himself. At last, he lifted into the clouds in search of his technically-not-actually-related-to-him cousin.

He was disappointed to discover that clouds didn’t count as darkness. Nor did being the new sun god allow him to see through them. Think, he told himself. What would Qown do? Qown would use Worldhearth to look for the coldest thing up here. My power’s fire or fire-ish. I can do that. Sure. Why not?

He concentrated on using his connection to the concept of “energy” to “see” various degrees of heat. And very nearly plummeted to his death before figuring out how to keep himself aloft and do that at the same time.

There. Something even darker and colder than the icy clouds around him. That had to be Aeyan’arric. He flew toward that dark spot and almost smashed right into a falling ice boulder.

“Not her,” he gasped, dodging the boulder and ascending once more. This time when he spotted what he thought might be the dragon, he launched a line of fire at it. A draconic cry of pain greeted his efforts.

“Found you,” he said and began rising to meet her.

He imagined that the battle would be epic, a deadly aerial duet of finesse and cunning, feint and counter-feint, thrust and riposte …

… if only either of them could see what the hell was going on. Instead, he launched blast after blast of heat at a dark blob he dimly perceived through the clouds, and Aeyan’arric launched spray after spray of ice, to be melted at the last second.

In all his time training under his father, in all the fights he’d had since, Galen had never imagined that a life-and-death battle between a fledgling godling and a dragon would be … tedious.

And yet, there they were.

Aeyan’arric must have felt the same way, because after about five or so minutes of this nonsense, she twisted and dove toward the ground, out of the cloud layer. Galen chased after her, too late to stop her from breathing a line of ice and freezing death toward … someone. He couldn’t tell who from that distance.

The dragon banked. He threw more fire at her wing. Unfortunately for the brilliance of his plan, a flock of dead birds chose that exact moment to fly between them. They made spectacular flying bonfires as they fell, but also covered for Aeyan’arric turning around to rush at Galen at high speed.

“Whoops!” he said. Galen let himself fall backward, then caught himself a couple dozen feet above the rocks. As Aeyan’arric flew over him, he fired straight up at her underside.

The dragon opened from gullet to craw, her insides curling up into a black charred mass. She crashed to the ground, landing on top of a suspiciously life-like stone statue of a dragon. The force of the landing broke off the statue’s head. It took Galen a moment to realize that the stone dragon was Sharanakal, now shattered into a dozen pieces.

Galen landed beside Qown and his wife. “And exactly where did you learn to do that?” Sheloran asked.

“Be amazing, you mean?” Galen grinned. “Natural talent.”

Xivan’s story

Raenora Valley

Fighting Xaloma

They hadn’t fought Xaloma that long ago, really. Less than a day.

And she’d kicked their asses.

That had been in the middle of a deathless sea, though. Now they were on land, in the Living World, where Xaloma would never be at her strongest. Xivan hoped that might give her an edge over the dragon.

Unfortunately, after a few ineffectual rounds, Xivan realized that she’d misjudged the situation. Their powers were too alike. They were immune to too many of the same things.

They couldn’t hurt each other.

Xivan ducked under cover to avoid a Morios flyover and made her way to Dorna’s side.

The old woman was facing off against a truly disgusting, shifting mass of flesh and bone. It animated, only to fall apart again, tendons and muscles failing to attach to bone.

For a second, Xivan thought Dorna was fighting Rol’amar. But no.

This was Gorokai. And every time he took a new shape, Dorna dismantled it.

“Hey, Dorna,” Xivan said. “Want to help me kill a death dragon? I think you’re the woman for the job, not me.”

Dorna glanced over at her from where she was concentrating on the writhing bundle of flesh. “A bit busy here, dear.”

“Sure,” Xivan said. “But my dear old ghost dragon counterpart isn’t really something I can kill, as it turns out. If I send her to the Afterlife, she just comes bouncing back. But this is your world. I could send her back, and then you could keep her from returning.”

Dorna eyed Gorokai’s monstrous pulsing flesh and pursed her lips. “I can try? Ain’t no guarantee it’ll work, though.”

“Better than nothing.”

Xivan wasted no time. She attacked Xaloma, this time trying to do so as the Goddess of Death, rather than just a girl from Khorvesh who happened to be exceptionally good with a sword.

She felt the dragon’s souls rip free of their moorings (to which they’d always been poorly attached) and banished them to the other side of the Veil. Xivan had already done that a few times—it hadn’t mattered when Xaloma could just dash back and inhabit her body again, often only a few seconds later.

“Now, Dorna!”

That was the moment it all went wrong.

It wasn’t Dorna’s fault. It’s just that while Xivan had been concentrating on banishing Xaloma to the Afterlife, Drehemia had been sneaking up on both of them.

That moment of distraction was when the shadow dragon attacked. Drehemia tore a claw through Dorna’s chest, scraping downward in a terrible spray of blood and gore.

Dorna went down and stayed there.

“Shit,” Xivan cursed.

Drehemia didn’t savage her kill. Instead, the dragon screamed as an arrow embedded itself in the soft tissues of her mouth, and she whirled toward the source of that attack. Xivan allowed herself a second of concern for Talea, but it was brief and quickly overwhelmed by a more pressing problem.

Gorokai had broken free.

The dragon expanded to full size—although even then, he didn’t look like whatever Gorokai’s natural form was. Instead, he was turning into an iridescent white dragon that Xivan knew only too well: Relos Var.

Relos Var’s dragon form was a damn problem. Even worse, Gorokai clearly intended to vent his frustration in the general direction of the woman who’d been keeping him in literal pieces. Who would need a recoverable body if she was to have any hope of resurrection.

The whole battlefield spread itself out in front of Xivan for a moment. That awareness of who was doing what, who was nearby, who was available to help.

No one.

If she didn’t do something fast—take Gorokai down so quickly that he had no chance to breathe—the dragon would destroy Dorna’s body and Xivan wouldn’t have anything to stuff the cranky old woman’s souls back into.4

She slammed both hands on the dragon’s writhing tail, concentrating with all her might on one singular act: death.

Xivan hadn’t forgotten how fast Gorokai could move. It just didn’t matter.

Black rot spread out from her fingertips, racing up over the rainbow-white scales, the cell death spreading viruslike through the dragon’s body.

A wing spread up, curled around, transformed into a dragon head, staring straight at Xivan.

Gorokai breathed.