Though Mikkel’s and Lærke’s Bone Magic seethes with poison like a caustic chartreuse green acid, I’ve also learned recently that the counterpoint to all that poison is they have a copious talent at healing. They saved Baldur’s life with me after I banished the heart-stopping curse the Black Dragon put on him.
And pushed back all his other curses from that most vital organ, to give him a fighting chance.
“I thought so, as well.” Baldur is quiet now as he watches her work, pale and exhausted, as if all the fight was just taken out of him. His rage has gone as quickly as it came; as if it was never even there in the first place, that furious, terrible explosion has disappeared, returning him to his regular daily persona.
I know what I felt and saw, however, as his magic seethed from him just now—raw, ugly, and blistered with fire. Because as Ström, Bjorn, and I all watch him now, shocked, I realize that for the very first time, we’ve seen the unhinged rage of the Berserker inside Baldur.
The true wild man that lives within him—riddled with the Black Dragon’s cursed energy.
“Your curses weren’t flaring while you were in stasis.” Mikkel’s observation is astute as he comes to my side now, rather than Baldur’s. Mikkel doesn’t embrace me or kiss me in front of my other drakes. He settles ahand on my shoulder, however, his restless fingers toying with my braid as if he can’t stop himself from touching me.
As his mamba-black drake slithers through me—deliciously.
“Neither was that black-edged auric fire you manifested just now.” Lærke is all business as she looks hard at Baldur while she heals him.
But it’s Mikkel who fixes his mamba-dark power upon my Fourth Drake, intent, as he susses something out. “Feeling intense emotions, are we, Baldur, ever since the Black Dragon got to you? Finally showing us all that rage you’ve got bottled up inside… which gives your Blood Magic such bestial power—like the birthing of the very stars themselves?”
As Mikkel goads Baldur with his fierce, sharp questions, I feel his inner black dragon rake ruthless talons through the air. As he stares intensely at Baldur, ferreting out truth from lies, however, I know he’s not wrong.
My Third Drake is co-owner of an elite chain of Twilight Realm nightclubs; he’s a shark, and has killed countless enemies, anyone who fed him lies.
I see him evaluate Baldur now with his uncanny instincts—and know my Fourth Drake is lying to us with everything he hides from our Bloodbond.
Because, unlike the rest of my drakes, Baldur can hide his power and his mind from me, and from all of us. He can withhold critical information that has already affected us, deeply, and not in a good way.
Mikkel and Baldur have history from their association at the Thorsen’s nightclubs; even though it was more casual than their relationship right now, I feel that long association come into play, as Mikkel stares Baldur down.
Because Mikkel knows what my Fourth Drake is hiding. Maybe he’s always known, as the twins invited Baldur back to their clubs over and over to paint his magnificent auric magic through the air.
It’s darkness, as I see Baldur suddenly rise to Mikkel’s intense, unblinking stare. It’s then that Baldur really shows us what he keeps fromour bond; as he jolts, something utterly ferocious roars up inside him—making him heave up from his chair, no trembling anywhere in him now.
I feel the tremendous roar his inner drake gives Mikkel, as Mikkel challenges him and Baldur rises to that challenge, despite his near-death exhaustion. Surprise takes Mikkel’s features; very few things surprise my deadly Third Drake, but this does, as Baldur suddenly shows Mikkel exactly what he’s made of.
As a towering blaze of star-fire crimson and furiously gold-white magic rushes all around Baldur in the mirror-stone hall, I see it in the Void. As if Baldur’s true power rising has thrust me into a spontaneous Bloodwalking, I see his inner Blood Magic drake seethe in the cosmos now, vicious for a fight.
As that massive dragon surges up in the Void, its calming blue power is nowhere in it. It’s fiery and vengeful, as it towers up like a galaxy being born in the stars, snarling with pure fury at my Third Drake, Berserk with rage.
Mikkel backs off, because even at one-hundredth of his usual might, Baldur is a force of the ages, as we all see his true power come out, unhindered.
As that massive surge of Bloodwind ignites in the hall again, roaring into a scorched black cyclone all around Baldur now, I feel my Fourth Drake blaze. At last, I see the pure fury that lives inside him, which he’s only hinted at before, as something he had in his youth.
Undiminished, for the millennia he’s tried to calm it.
“There he is… there is therealBaldur,” Mikkel says, as he narrows his black eyes on Baldur. As bright copper blazes in Mikkel’s eyes, he doesn’t back down, and he doesn’t raise his own power.
The slightest smile lifting his lips, cunning.
“When we met, decades ago, I thought perhaps you were just a monk on a mountaintop, with your cagey aloofness, beautiful artwork, and unwavering, glacial calm,” Mikkel says as he watches Baldur now, fierce. “After a while, though, I began to sense something deeper in you, wilder,more untamed—in a way you didn’t want, and had suppressed. Because you’re really this. A beast of magic—cosmic in your power and diabolical rage. And now we’re finally getting to see it. Berserker.”
Though Mikkel’s backed off from physically contesting with Baldur, since none of us have enough energy right now to shift into our dragons and fight this shit out, he can’t stop his tongue from flinging truth-barbs.
As the two drakes face off in the vaulted library, I watch in shock as Baldur actuallysnarlsat Mikkel. Both of Baldur’s hands, with his Black Dragon curse-work, half-shift now into massive gold-crimson talons like a Manchurian emperor.
As Baldur slashes through the air, Mikkel’s down on his ass, sliding across the hall from the furious force of that blow. Because even with his power nearly spent right now, Baldur is just that formidable an opponent, as we finally see and feel the real rage that drives him.
It’s furious, roaring, as Baldur strides forward, intent now, as he comes for Mikkel. Because this part of him, this vast inner rage, gives him his insane, cosmic power—and it’s not a nice, calm power anymore, as I finally feel all the darkness that’s so deeply buried inside him.
Not one to back down from any kind of fight, however, Mikkel surges up, snarling with Lærke at his side now, backing him up. We’re suddenly two scales from a dragon-fight—and it’s not one I ever saw coming, as I search my mind frantically for how to stop it.
