99. HOW TO KILL AN IMMORTAL

Talea’s story

Raenora Valley

Just before Gorokai’s death

Talea had been firing haphazard but effective shots at Drehemia. She knew she was weakening the dragon. It was just a matter of time. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see Drehemia, and that meant she couldn’t track her.

She didn’t notice that Drehemia had switched targets until it was too late.

Even then, she could only watch in horror as one event triggered another and then another. A horrible sequence of events, toppling down a hill. She tried to pull the odds, but she knew from the moment that Xivan rushed forward that Talea had failed to tilt the probabilities enough to matter.

“No!” Talea screamed.

Even the dragons paused for a moment, as if expecting another of their kind to show up or some further event to happen.

Gorokai’s form turned black and skeletal, the flesh decomposing right in front of Talea’s eyes, but she could see … she couldn’t see …

Gorokai had breathed right on top of Xivan, and in the wake of that attack, Xivan was gone. Just gone. No, she must have escaped …

A twisted mass of dead roses lay on the ground that hadn’t existed just seconds before. A mass that suspiciously resembled a human form. It was already breaking apart, disintegrating, dried petals blowing away in the wind.

Talea’s voice choked off as she felt the tug.

She knew exactly what it was. Talea had felt it before. The ugly, stomach-clenching pull of the ritual designed to strip her powers.

But from a different location. From Marakor. And the one that had been ongoing in Raenena stopped.

“What just happened?” Teraeth screamed.

What just happened was that they’d lost.

Part of her didn’t care. She really didn’t. Whatever happened to her wasn’t going to happen to Xivan.

Xivan wasn’t coming back. She was the only one of them who couldn’t come back. She was dead for good.

“What’s wrong?” Janel shouted.

Talea opened her eyes and started yelling, because wasn’t it perfectly obvious what was wrong? Then she realized Janel wasn’t talking to her. The woman was speaking to Senera, who’d begun laughing hysterically.

“That bastard! That fucking bastard!” Senera shouted. “He copied my idea!”

“What?” Janel screamed back.

Senera was close to tears. “What I did to Shadrag Gor and Kharas Gulgoth! He linked two locations so they’re sympathetically the same place. The ritual isn’t happening here anymore. He’s moved it!”1

Teraeth cursed. “We need a gate—” The request sputtered and died.

Numbly, Talea recalled that portals into Marakor were blocked. Even assuming they escaped these dragons, they’d have to fight their way through miles of enemy territory and who knew how many god-kings to get to where the new ritual was happening.

She calculated the odds.

“We’re not going to make it,” Talea murmured.

Fury rose over her in a wave. Without thinking, Talea pulled an arrow from her quiver and fired a shot randomly into the air. A moment later, she heard a draconic scream.

It didn’t make anything better. Nothing could.

Xivan had always known this might be the price. She hadn’t flinched. And knowing that didn’t help either. Xivan had died while still Thaena. She’d died without leaving behind a viable body. That meant that either Galava brought her back to life or nothing could.

And Galava—Dorna—was dead. She’d stay that way until she wasn’t Galava anymore. All of which turned a million probabilities and possibilities into one single inarguable result.

She’d lost Xivan.