Page 47 of Of Empires and Dust
There was no greater existence. They were one. Soul, heart, blood, eyes, scales, limbs. Eltoar was nothing more than an extension of his soulkin, and Helios the same. Thunder rolled across the skies, a flash of lightning igniting behind a bank of dark clouds to Eltoar’s left. To his right, Voranur sat at the nape of Seleraine’s neck, white plate armour pressed against scales of deep blue.
It wasn’t long before the ruins of the old temple came into view a few miles ahead. But it wasn’t the ruins Helios focused on. It was the gargantuan shape beside them. The dragon stood twice as tall as the destroyed temple, easily larger than Karakes, with a thick neck and powerful wings.
Even from that distance Helios’s keen eyes could pick out the stunning red of the scales that covered the creature’s back and wings, along with the deep gold across his chest and speckled along his snout. Both Eltoar and Helios would have known that dragon anywhere, though he was far larger than when Eltoar had last laid eyes on him.
Vyrmír.
An elf stood at the dragon’s feet, golden armour and red cloth matching Vyrmír’s colouring.
Without a word, both Helios and Seleraine angled their wings and swept downwards, riding a gust of wind.
Screeches and roars rippled through the night, breaking the monotony of the wingbeats and rainfall. Through Helios’s eyes, dark shapes moved in the clouds, flashes of lightning illuminating winged shadows.
How many dragons had survived and stayed hidden within the bounds of Lynalion? Eltoar had pondered this in the years following the elves’ retreat into the woodland. But when decades passed and turned to centuries, he’d all but dismissed the thought. The fighting had been so thick in those last years, so many dragons and Draleid cut from the world. For so long he’d believed the Dragonguard were the last of The Bound.
Helios folded his enormous wings and plummeted towards the earth, wind crashing over his scales with the force of a broken dam. Had Eltoar not been pressed against the dragon’s neck, scales moulded to his body, he would have been ripped from dragonback. As it was, he drew a deep breath through his nostrils, filling them with the scents of turned mud and fresh rain as Helios alighted on the ground, his talons sinking into the earth beneath his weight.
It was in that moment, as Eltoar opened his eyes and lifted himself upright, that the eerie silence of the rainfall settled into him. Heavy rain had a strangeness about it, a way of evoking a sense of calm and stillness that pure silence could not emulate.
He took a moment, staring up at the cloud-blanketed sky, the rain cold against his face. Whatever happened next, he would be glad of that moment.
With one last long breath, Eltoar wove threads of Air around himself and slid from Helios’s back, boots sinking into the sodden grass.
Seleraine alighted beside Helios, a crack of her great wings sending the rain swirling in spirals.
Voranur dismounted. “You saw the skies?”
Eltoar nodded.
“I counted seven.” Voranur looked to the clouds, then over towards the waiting Vyrmír and Salara. The dragon loomed over his Draleid, head lowered, eyes fixed on the new arrivals. “Eight. Are you ready for this?”
“No.”
“If it goes sideways?”
“Then we kill them.”
Eltoar turned and made his way across the grass towards Salara and Vyrmír, Helios following, Voranur and Seleraine at their side.
“It’s been a long time, Master.” Salara’s voice rang out, piercing the rainfall. She stepped forwards, her left hand resting on the pommel of the sword at her hip. She wore no helmet, her long black hair flattened against her head by the rain.
It was beyond strange to see her in the red and gold of Lunithír. When she had first come to Dracaldryr and held Vyrmír’s egg in the Cradle of Fire, she had been a fisherman’s daughter of no more than fourteen summers. From then on, the only armour she’d worn had been the white plate of the Draleid.
“It’s been even longer since you’ve called me by that title.”
“I’ve called you many things since then.”
The drum of rainfall filled the emptiness between them as Salara stared at Eltoar, the rise and fall of her chest slow and steady. She advanced until she stood only ten feet away, her hand never leaving her sword’s pommel. Vyrmír tensed, lowering his head, the red and gold frills on his neck standing on end, his monstrous teeth showing.
The dragon’s eyes were like those of a wolf, ever shifting molten gold. When he had first hatched for Salara, talk had spread through the entire Order that the most beautiful dragon the world had ever seen had just been given life. Now, seeing him fully grown, Eltoar knew that statement to be true.
“I would have thought you’d have more to say, Master.” She lingered on the word ‘master’. Salara tilted her head, her stare never leaving Eltoar’s. “It’s been a very long time, and when last we spoke, you tried to convince me to turn on my kin. You had a lot to say then.”
“I thought you were dead, Salara. If I’d known?—”
“You’d have come to kill me yourself?”
“No, I…”
