As the Black Dragon roars, I feel the last of the Jarl’s resistance snap out. He’s the target of the Black Dragon’s wrath, as I hear his bones crunch and crack now from its massive, thunderous roar, cursing him all through his lean, mean body.
Though Jarl Alexander Christensen had finally found his feet, despite the raining hell of debris and power seething all around, I watch helplessly now as the living blood gets pulled right out of him.
He doesn’t have a moment to shift up and heal it as he crashes to the ruined floor, every fucking bone in his body broken and jets of bright crimson blood fountaining out of him.
Diabolical black scorch curses are riddled all through him, just as happened to my mentor Maryse; but Jarl Alexander Christensen is a black-hearted mercenary, and such drakes die hard. Even broken and fountaining blood, I hear the Jarl snarl, fighting with every ounce of power left in him, as he roars a great bigfuck youto death.
His defiance only makes the Black Dragon redouble its efforts, however, roaring again as its gargantuan head descends in a menacing arc towards the Jarl. Still half-skull, that head is not yet returned to its fullest flesh.
As it fixes on killing Jarl Alexander Christensen, I see how the rest of the Black Dragon is not yet regenerated, making its unstable body thrash as it crashes out one entire wall of the palace’s main hall.
It’s grotesque; like a Frankenstein of dragons, it has bone, flesh, bare sinew, and sagging scales everywhere. Without its entire mind yet, either, it acts less like a dragon and more like a wild animal, snarling at the broken, dying Jarl.
Even as I scream now, roaring at it with all the overtones in my voice tostop, it does its worst. As it roars one last time with its massive, bone-dead maw right above the Jarl’s broken body and filling the entire ruined hall, I feel its blast. Like a fell wind straight from the Void itself, that roar thrusts right into Jarl Alexander Christensen.
Cursing his heart, as burned, oilslick-crimson sigils spiral all through his flesh.
I watch as Jarl Alexander Christensen’s formidable black heart beats its last. I see it as his frightful bloody crimson eyes die—as his broken body collapses upon the floor of the ruined hall, limp.
I have only a moment to realize that this was how the black behemoth killed Maryse, sigil-cursing her heart like this, when that massive, dead head swings around towards me. Utterly black and diseased, but also somehow frightfully bone-white, it looks right at me.
And I know it heard my command.
Still huddled behind our Bloodshield, my drakes and I are human, and fucking beat to shit, as that terrible demon looksright at me. As its ancient, dead stare sinks into my very blood and bones now, right into my undying soul, I know I’m damned.
Because something about that ancient gaze is inside me, as I stare right back at it, electrified by its deathly presence. A fell wind of the ancients rises in me, as I feel my inner Bone Magic take command now.
A terrible sensation of midnight-black clarity takes me as I rise from my huddle of drakes—facing off with the Black Dragon. It watches me intently, even though we’re still within our small Bloodshield.
I feel our powers resonate as a terrible roar devours my very soul, the same as its own. Light is nowhere in that power, as I feel my bright inner drakaina suddenly snuffed out.
She’s absorbed entirely into my black Bone Magic as my inner drake towers up impossibly high now inside me, like a night full of endless stars, taking me. I know I am endless like that, as I wave my hand and dissolve our Bloodshield, despite the alarmed cries of my drakes. Stepping from their protection, I face the creature.
Staring deep into its bone-dead eyes.
Maker?I hear its ancient whisper through my mind like a snarl and a sonic boom, and a thunder of ten thousand spring rains concussing the earth, as it speaks with me mind-to-mind now.
Yes,I say, as some ancient instinct devours me, dead but not quite gone, to take it, to claim it, and wield it once more like I did in ages past.
But before I can speak to it, before I can command the Black Dragon to do my will the way that fell darkness tells me I can, another presence thrusts into its mind.
I feel it as a small drakaina shows up on the scene, lithe like a barbed dart, piercing the Black Dragon’s mind as she shrieks like a harpy, barreling in from nowhere.
I barely have time to see a portal close in the ruined sky—before our enemy Litha is upon us. Shrieking with a series of sonic booms concussing from her dragon-voice, she dives right at the Black Dragon as she levels a volley of dragon-curses at it.
Commanding it to attack us, rather than listen to me.
The Black Dragon halts, shaking its head now, as if confused about whom to obey. Litha’s continued rapid-fire dragon-speak suddenly makes it change its mind about whom it’s attacking. As it looks back at us now with death in its bone-white eyes, I know we’re goners.
Bjorn and the rest of my drakes and Lærke barely get our Bloodshield back up in time.
Before the Black Dragon opens its great maw.
And roars its black death right at us.
27
DEATH
