As he roars, his sublimated wave of hottest fire seethes down my throat, blistering me with love, even as it burns me with rage. It wakes methe fuck up, as Bjorn roars my drakes’ united fire down my throat, filling me up with genuine goodness deep inside, where I am only black.
As that incredible fire scorches right to my heart, lighting me up from the inside out now, every scale upon me blazes as bright as the dawn. I feel how Aesa’s silver rings on all our fingers come alive then; the rings of Aesa sear with a massive power and a tremendous goodness, as they bind us all together, as one.
That oneness burns all the way through me with the brightest rage, the darkest wrath, and the most beautiful love as I suddenly know who I am—to my very blood and bones. An indomitable roar hammers from me—plus all my drakes and Lærke, where we’ve tightened into a protective knot on the bed—as a towering wave of auric fire blazes from us.
As that magnificent blast wave leaves us, concussing the cavern in a mighty sonic boom, it clears all the evil taint from the air. It hammers Hedda’s black energy to the sky, her four dead drakes smacking into the walls of the cavern and the pillars as our auric fire blazes every sigil throughout the cavern, making them come alive.
White-hot energy seethes from all those millions of sigil-phrases, searing bright as the cosmos itself, as the ancient protector dragons all around the space suddenly awaken.
They push up from their guardian postures before the pillars, opening their dead maws and roaring to shake the midnight air. The blazing sigils upon every one of them shine as bright as those all throughout the cavern.
Brighter, as they take to the skies.
The protector dragons battle Hedda’s drakes now, seething with tremendous auric fire as they wing hard throughout the cavern and up into the midnight sky. Their auric fire is so vast, it even keeps Hedda’s black energy at bay now as the wights burn again, writhing with blistering white sigils devouring their bodies.
That process is far faster now, though, as the protector dragons hammer them with volley after volley of the most terrible burning Bloodnets and Bloodspears, slamming into them and knocking them out of thesky. We’re there, upon the ground, as my drakes and I fight with renewed purpose.
Spewing our own auric fire right into the faces of those undead wights—blistering them away.
As the wights’ heads sever from their bodies now, unable to be regenerated, I feel their souls depart from their flesh. As a surging black energy from the four wights, nearly as terrible as Hedda’s, goes seething around the bright rune-field, the four long-dead Bloodmates of Hedda find nothing to infect.
The only thing they feel their soul-essences in, calling to them, is Baldur’s Soulstone. As they all rush down into it, in unison, I feel how the small glowing sphere fills up with their might.
But Baldur worked his creation well; as the souls of the wights seethe inside, roaring and tricked, they’re wrathful from our deceit. But they’re trapped by the synergy of their very own selves, from memories others held of their diabolical ways from way back when, and cannot get out.
As we trap the souls of her four drakes, Hedda’s diabolical energy screeches. I feel her roar at us in a thousand voices of malevolent hate.
Then wheel away hard, in escape.
I don’t know if any of this was in her plan, but jubilation fills me now as I roar to the skies, victorious. My drakes and Lærke roar with me now, as a towering elation fills us.
Even as the protector dragons thump hard to the ground all around us.
Their ancient runes burnt out.
31
IGNITE
My drakes and I shift down, spent after battling Hedda’s wights, but victorious. Even though we didn’t get Hedda’s soul trapped inside Baldur’s Soulstone, I feel the elation that heaves through us all now as we laugh in a naked, injured tumble on the bed.
Because we fucked some shit up today, raising some impossibly high-level magic to do it. Even if Hedda has some overarching, diabolical plan for my life, I know I won’t give in to it now.
I’m going to give my all to fuck it up.
Or die trying.
“Jesus, what a rush!” Mikkel coughs now, even as he laughs. He cradles three injured ribs as he does some healing magic on them, though his black eyes spark a vivid copper, ferocious and elated.
“You would do something like that every day just to get a high, wouldn’t you?” Baldur chuckles at him, as he does a similar healing on a ripped-up leg, though everything imperative is hale. As Mikkel finishes healing himself, he moves over to Baldur, helping.
“Not every day.” Mikkel chuckles as he helps Baldur heal, though I’m not entirely sure the black drake inside him wouldn’t.
As Lærke rushes to the bed now, helping heal Ström, who has a deep gash lancing through his shoulder, it’s only then that I notice the black ooze from the rift in the floor is gone.
Somehow, we banished it, along with Hedda’s evil soul. I also notice the cavern seems to sparkle now beneath the high midnight stars, as if we cleared out the shimmering black taint that had been here for ages, though the crack in the floor is not gone.
The glowing sigils fade from the walls now, however, as our auric fire blisters out, spent. The protector dragons are no more either, as we watch a sigil deep inside them suddenly combust, lighting them up.
