You can find playlists and previous chapters here - I highly recommend listening to the pieces for this and the coming chapter while you read, specifically the “Dragon King of the North” and “Dragon King of the South.”
Where does your focus and horizon go when you’re trapped between a traitor, a sinking heart that knew better, and an unholy terror?
Alandis didn’t know, either.
Wide eyes willing to be confused, she jerked her head to the vampire that threatened, clawing its way closer, beginning to shrink the sky as green lights began to flash, the beauty of the aurora out of place, for once.
Why hadn’t the other dragons sent out a distress signal, their location, if they were all interconnected?
Her heart skipped a troubled beat.
There had been no time.
Her head jerked backwards.
There was no time for her, either.
Her presence of mind snapped back. She could try speaking to it, futile as it might be.
Dragon! Hear me out, let me speak to you!
The amber’s voice shook and shrank into the shadow and no answer came. Alandis shuddered, praying. She didn’t want her family to find out about her role as Dragandrea, not by tale of her body being drained as the fallen dragons had been!
“U’Dell! What do I have to do with the amber?”
“If it doesn’t waste its time on us, it goes out to hunt the dragons it couldn’t lure – and maybe your people, and the world after. Apocalypse. Choose wisely.”
He was maddeningly passive and measured, eyes fixed on her, not their predicament.
“That didn’t answer my question!”
“Give it to me.”
Alandis threw him a despairing look, increasingly aware of the tick-tocking seconds, that at the next moment they would probably be dead.
“I can’t. Just tell me what to do! The amber needs to be alive -”
She froze. His eyes were still glowing with the smoke of the vampire, and the green bands of light that wove overhead.
“Does it. The dragon needs to die. Give me the amber.”
“U’Dell! Stop wasting time! What on earth are you doing?!”
Dlam was watching the dragon, or the visible shred of it.
“You have. . . ten seconds.”
Alandis stared at him.
“This is a trap, isn’t it. You are what we thought you were!”
“Oh, I was right about the dragon, as you can see. But, I also want you dead. Unfortunately for you, your guilt makes you gullible.”
He moved towards her, languidly tracing the edge of a sickle, blackened steel with an inset of jade and jet.
“You see, there is more at work here than saving your people, Adrastėja. We of Marén intended to turn the dragons into the greatest war machines that none but our ancestors have seen, and it can only be done via living amber. I needed you because amber is not available in Marén, only in Lharmeval! Our predecessors used the amber to enslave the first dragons, to wipe them out when they broke free, but the ancient relics have been drained from overuse. It was ill fortune, particularly for you, when the Doctor’s techniques could not speed up assimilation quickly enough for all of our Black Knights. You see why I need your amber, and your dear eskalak out of the way. But I also want your title, so I don’t mind if it kills you.”
“U’Dell! Now is not the time for monologuing! It’s going to kill both of us!”
“Oh, but it is; and it will be you first, ‘human dragon,’ unless you give me the amber. You’ll still be saving your people, Dragandrea.”
Alandis was backing away, shaking her head. How could she survive this time? What had possessed her – but she didn’t need to ask. She grit her teeth and turned her eyes to the passage in the rock. She would take her chance- but U’Dell’s smirk said that he wouldn’t give it to her.
“No, I can’t – U’Dell, just tell me what to do – Dlam, no!”
But he threw his shoulder into her, hurling her to the ground – her wrist snapped against a shard of scale as she tried to break her fall, and Dlam crushed her back into the stone, pressing the wind out of her lungs.
“How does it feel to be trapped in a cage with your wings clipped? If only you hadn’t taken me seriously.”
“Dlam – no – time! It’ll – kill – both of us,” she choked, trying to kick him away as he strove to force the seica out of her hands and reach the amber, still hidden by the dove clasp.
The dragon was looming over them, watching as a goading spectator.
“Actually, just you, Princess. He knows I’ve lured some of the dragons here for him. Now, he just wants you, before he finishes off the hunt.”
Alandis, frustrated by his insanity, finally got a knee free and into his ribs, using the seica to twist him off of her as she jumped back and ran for the passage. She heard a clamor, clearly that of the knights, as they came running down.
The vampire had other thoughts. Its wing lashed out, claws digging up and throwing down the boulders that were the height of ten men. They clattered and crashed, drowned by the dragon’s eerie silence. The sloping alley disappeared, every breath of air stifled in stone, leaving only the shattered arena that tipped back anyone who strove to mount it.
If the knights had any intention of helping, which was doubtful, despite hearing a metallic voice calling her name, they were blocked. The ampitheatre rim rose high and jaggedly steep, even on the other side, insurmountable without a roundabout hike.
What Alandis didn’t see, as U’Dell’s arm wrenched around her neck with daggered-sickle in hand, was a growing ice-blue glow in the south, ringed by fire.
“Are you insane?” Alandis gasped, trying for any method of freeing herself, desperately leveraging her seica, pushing the sickle away from her neck.
U’Dell struck a nerve on her right arm, pressing it deftly, and the seica dropped, clattering on the stones.
“Clearly.”
“Well, thanks! Now that you’ve admitted that, quit choking me, because despite what you think you’re not safe, and you don’t have a way with dragons!”
“Actually, I do, with this one. You see, dear lady, it was when the other knights began disappearing that I discovered the Shade feeds on other dragons. I lured its prey here to earn the title of my ancestor – yes, the only true Dragandré, your legendary predecessor in title, came from Marén! I would do him and my people proud! I would have left only the best, the ones not weak enough to cooperate with you. . . which is only the Shade and the Vanaile. You don’t know how to control them.”
The tip of the sickle pricked her throat.
“I could have told you this was a man’s job, not a maiden’s. At any rate, the Shade tolerates my presence, though I was forced to stop my baiting when I realized the Shade is the last of the primordial vampyyri, that it drains the precious amber into itself, save that which bleeds into the ground.”
“If I’m to enslave it, I need you,” U’Dell continued, voice low. “I need living amber that’s already within human veins; even if you remove it, it will hold its power long enough for me to use it. I’m afraid you wouldn’t have the strength to do so, but I do. Yes, I wrecked your confidence to guilt you into action. Yes, you’re a gullible one, Dragandrea, a scarred one. . . about to be beyond repair. But you can still save your people, if you give me the amber. Your life for many, Dragandrea.”
Alandis was staring past the blade as the shadows reassembled, and a chilling breath was on her face. The dragon was, in fact, waiting for U’Dell’s cue. It didn’t know what he wanted.
Scier, help me! Can this be what You want?
“Until Marén crushes them?”
“They may not be dead, Dragandrea.”
A scream cut the air, a fire-winged roar that was braided by ice. For a single instant the entire landscape burned in daylight that was fire and ice crashing into opal, and the shadow shrieked in challenge only for a meteor to crash into the ampitheatre’s heart. Ice cracked upwards, shattering into the neon sky as fire ripped across the ground.
The dust smashed upwards, filtering the blinding glow as the shockwave sent U’Dell and Alandis reeling backwards.
Betrayer of our race, how long did you think you could hide in your shadows and pin the blame elsewhere? Your blood-price will pay for the screams that have shattered my kin!
Alandis’ jaw dropped, for that meteor was the Vanaile, and Mother, and Draco!
Scales rattled upwards, baring moonlit veins, and fire and steam choked the air.
The Vampyre turned its eye to them full on and threw its jaws open in a silent roar that shook the ground a second time.
The dragons were dwarfed, but not deterred.
Hardly had the Vanaile challenged than all four beasts lunged for throat and tail, as the shade flitted in and out of physicality, infuriated, yet gloating at so many fish in a single catch. . .the remaining dragons that could not be lured had come.
All four.
Relief sent adrenaline out of Alandis in a bubbling flood, leaving her shaking, hoping that her dragon friends could hold their own against this monster -
Wait
She had forgotten U’Dell.
The dove clasp that shielded the amber cracked in two.
The sickle pared the amber implant as if it were frozen gelatin.
Her scream cut the air and hung there, alien, foreign to her, never drawn by fire or fear, drowned out by the thunder of dragons.
“ALANDIS!”
She didn’t hear that call, didn’t see the knights that had forced their way impossibly over the rim, didn’t notice as one covered that ground at inhuman speed and ripped U’Dell off her before the sickle could pry out the amber’s roots.
Half of the amber came out in U’Dell’s hand as the pair tumbled, one up on his feet again at once, but Alandis didn’t see him tear off the Marén helm, didn’t see the blue eyes that blazed and the hair that burnt gold and bronze in the firelight, didn’t feel the stone and scale that rushed up to meet her, crushing into her shoulders as she hit the ground.
Rivulets of fire
Amber, solid, molten, bleeding
Ice creeping, reverberating in every nerve
Her heart shuddered, screaming, crashing inward
Her vision blurred orange
She didn’t feel someone cradling her, the soft, broken words of the voice that had let her leave home, telling her to stay.
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