Everyone returns to the mirror-stone library as Baldur passes out. I lower him to the chaise; Bjorn is there, helping me get him into a reclining position so Baldur can rest.
As a dark sensation devours me from everything we talked about, I see Baldur’s curses spread upon his chest, between the edges of his shirt. As if his foray into his own inner darkness and his spontaneous journey into the Void of Ancestors has weakened him further, those vicious, searing red oilslick curses slash in from his collarbones.
Aiming for his heart.
“So much for progress.” Ström sighs as he takes Baldur’s pulse at his wrist. “He’s stable, at least. The curses aren’t in his heart yet.”
“We need to get these remaining curses out of him, fast,” I say now as I stroke Baldur’s white-blond hair back from his brow. He’s drenched in sweat, acrid as the curses resurge upon him; the fever that radiates off him roasts me now.
Even as it chills me bone-deep, deadly.
“It’s like they’re draining him, and us, faster now.” Bjorn shivers as he and I rise from the chaise. He pulls the high collar of his leather jerkin inaround his neck, as if chilly. “You made progress with Baldur’s trust, Rikyava, with the discussion you two had just now. But it’s like two steps forward, six steps back.”
“He has to dive into his deepest darkness before he can find his actual light,” Mikkel says as he watches Baldur from the bedside, pensive. “He’s been running from it for centuries, not truly looking at it. Now, he’s looking. There’s bound to be some soul-level struggle from that. And such struggles don’t come cheap—to the body, or the mind.”
I know Mikkel’s speaking from experience with everything that happened to him in Copenhagen. I reach out, taking his hand; he startles, then gives me a sad smile as copper sparks in his dark eyes.
Beautiful.
“Baldur said we’d need some kind of ceremony to imbue these Soulstones he wants to create with his runic magic.” I shake my head. “He said we’d need a Bloodwalking, but I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen with him in this situation and still cursed, still draining everything out of us so hard, we can’t even shift.”
“Sex feeds all your powers and makes his curses subside, at least somewhat. Better than any healing Mikkel and I can do, at least.” Lærke eyeballs me now as she says it. “Perhaps you should revisit Mikkel’s thought about trying group sex with your drakes and see how that goes.”
I glance at Lærke and know she wouldn’t suggest such a thing unless we were at the very end of our rope. Because Lærke is exceedingly prudish for a dragon, although with good reason. I know she’s had threesomes before, but I very much doubt she’s had group sex. Being gang-raped, as I know she’s gone through at least once, really doesn’t count.
“You need to try it, Hög Skjaldmær,” she says, quiet now as she pins me with her intense, lavender gaze. “Because your Bloodbond is nowhere near even shifting to fly yourselves out of here, much less take on an intensely high-level Bloodwalking ceremony to make these Soulstones Baldur’s suggesting. You know it as well as I do.”
“We’ll never be able to fight the Black Dragon unless we do something,” Ström looks at me. “Rikyava… are you in?”
I know I’m not the one who needs convincing of the group sex thing, however. “Bjorn?” I glance at him. “What do you think?”
Bjorn sets his jaw, glaring daggers at no one in particular as he sets a palm to Baldur’s forehead, checking his fever. I know my big drake is stalling as he takes a moment to consider our options.
I feel his inner drake churn, furious and possessive, not wanting to share me. It puts Bjorn in an impossible situation now, as I feel his head understand that this very well might be our best option for saving us all.
As his heart decides the opposite.
“If you truly think it’s our best course of action, so we can actually be able to fight the Black Dragon,” Bjorn sighs now, glancing at me, “then we have to try it.”
Even I can see how much his dragon is not in his eyes as he gazes at me with reticence, however, not wanting to do it. It puts me in a terrible position, as I have to choose between supporting the power and survival of our entire group.
Versus my First Drake’s tender heart.
I already know which way I have to choose, when the silver mirror-stone suddenly flares. Because as Bjorn mentioned the Black Dragon, it got us all thinking about it—making the stone swirl into a different view than the scroll that Baldur was holding open upon it.
As the image on the gargantuan mirror stabilizes, we see carnage. A battle upon a low coastline, an elite brigade of dragons wearing the crimson armbands of our King’s finest are engaging a behemoth in the skies, as a village upon that coastline burns.
That behemoth is the Dragon of All Souls, as our King’s most elite military brigades engage it. They roll, dodge, and slash; they hammer insane volleys of Bloodspears at it and Bloodwinds, trying to at least ground it.
The Black Dragon only roars its insane curses everywhere, however, asit spews caustic oilslick-cursed death in diseased, bitter ropes. Worse, it’s roaring fire again now, something it did at Jurggadden but didn’t do at the battle in Copenhagen.
Razing the King’s forces, plus the entire countryside, in burning, oilslick death.
“That’s Fielholm, on the southern coast of Sweden,” Ström says, as we all stare at the mirror-stone in shock. “Litha and Emil have already directed the beast back to Sweden.”
“Next stop is attacking our King at Stockholm.” Bjorn growls as a terrible energy roars from him now, despite all our exhaustion and Baldur’s curses still draining us.
“I don’t see the King’s vanguard in this fight.” I scan the battle quickly. “Just the Friggsbrigade, the Tolfiers, and the First Lance. Not Huttr or Halfdir.”
