Dragon Empress

Chapter 38

“You know the reasons they don’t want you in battle,” said Valerion. Though his voice was calm, his eye betrayed his turmoil. It danced in its socket, pupil narrowed to a dark line.

“Then I’ll evacuate the city!”

“We received orders to stay put,” he reminded her.

“Since when have either one of you listened to orders?” said Seba.

The two of them stopped arguing and stared at her. Keriya’s expression hardened with resolve. She strode to Valerion, whose mouth slowly widened into a grin.

“Well?” Keriya said gruffly, climbing the dragon’s proffered leg to settle on his back. “Are you coming?”

It took Seba several fuddled moments before she realized Keriya was talking to her. She stared into those red-violet eyes. Tension gripped her chest. It had nothing to do with her respiratory issues.

“Yes,” she croaked, limping forward. Caelburn, Stormleaf, even Khyvette in all her draconic wisdom—they knew nothing of darksalm. They had never seen its horrors firsthand.

This was not a battle Seba could sit out.

Valerion crouched in invitation, but she hesitated before touching him. She’d rarely had occasion to be in such close proximity to the legendary hero. In fact, this was the closest she’d been to him since their ill-fated encounter in the Galantrian Rainforest.

“I remember you,” he murmured, his eye fixed unwaveringly on hers. “The fearless one. The fighter.”

Seba had little recollection of the brief time she’d spent under the bogspectre’s influence, but hearing Valerion speak of it bolstered her spirits.

No one had ever called her fearless before.

She stepped on Valerion’s proffered paw, and Keriya leaned over to grip her arm. Seba’s aching body screamed in protest as Keriya hauled her past the dragon’s wing joint.

Plenty of guards swarmed in the courtyard—preparing for reinforcements—but none of them outranked Seba. None of them knew the truth about Keriya’s blocked powers, either, so no one stopped Valerion as he charged through the portal and launched into the snowstorm.

Seba wrapped her arms around Keriya’s waist. The dragon’s sharp movements battered her, but she held fast.

“Aim for the western edge of town,” she called over the rush of bitter wind. “People will head to the Imperial Highway. We should be safe to help the evacuation there.”

Keriya nodded. Valerion banked left, aiming for the long, low gatehouse that marked the main entrance to Oravel.

CRACK!

Black lightning bisected the horizon. A pillar of necromagic connected sea and sky for one awful moment. And there, stark against the darkness, caught in the middle of the attack, was—

“Fletcher!” Time distorted around Seba, slowing to a crawl. Her heart stopped as she watched Khyvette and her lone passenger plummet through the sky.

The breath rushed out of Seba’s lungs. She was drowning on land. Without being consciously aware of what she was doing, she opened the floodgates to her soul and let her magic spill out.

She wasn’t worried about entropy. Her land sickness had made it difficult, even dangerous to wield once it had infected her soul. Her peers might be struggling beneath the crushing weight of entropy, but she’d spent months adjusting to adverse wielding side effects.

Energy that had once given her the most delicious taste of life and freedom now burned her veins as she channeled it through her body. She forced water-threads forth, commanding them to do her bidding. In response, an arm of seawater rose, wrapping around Khyvette.

“No,” Keriya shrieked as Seba’s water cushioned the fall of dragon and rider. “The Red Tide—”

“The algae can’t survive in water this cold.” Seba pointed past Keriya’s shoulder. The ocean was a tempestuous swirl of blue, ranging from the palest shade of ice to the darkest midnight of furious waves. No hint of red could be seen.

“They may be safe from toxic algae,” growled Valerion, “but a necromagical hit of that magnitude could be lethal.”

He put on a burst of speed, dodging a necrocrelai as he went. Seba nearly slipped from Valerion’s snow-slick scales as he angled into a dive over the cliffs, aiming for the green dragon held aloft by the force of Seba’s spell.

“I can save them,” Seba screamed to Keriya over the rush of wind. “Just get me close.”

Keriya nodded and drew her sword, deflecting an incoming necromagical attack. The world spun as Valerion banked toward the Seba’s towering arm of seawater. Fletcher and Khyvette were just visible, suspended within.

“I’ll keep the shadowbeasts occupied,” Valerion roared, “but you won’t have long.”

Helkryvt’s blood, what have I gotten myself into? Seba thought.

Valerion careened past the tower. Without the strength to leap from his back, Seba went limp, allowing her body to slip sideways. She toppled off Valerion, hurtling past his wing.

Her stomach flew into her throat, but her magic surged, reacting to her desires. Another arm of water spouted from the ocean. It whipped around Seba, cushioning her fall.

Her threads writhed, longing to break free of her mental grasp, but she forbade it. Entropy was nothing to her. By now, she had mastered the art of wielding through soul-induced pain.

Physical pain was a different story. The water sucked warmth from her body. Frigid shock stole her breath. Gasping and shivering, she willed herself closer to her friends.

“Fletcher!” She tried to call out, but her voice was swallowed by the sounds of war. He clung to the base of Khyvette’s neck, trying to claw his way to the edge of Seba’s wielded watery tower.

Panting with effort, she focused on Fletcher, wielding to repel the ocean and widen a pocket of air around his head. He emerged from the freezing liquid with an almighty gasp.

“S-Seba,” he choked, stretching a hand toward her. She was close enough to grasp his fingertips. Redirecting the water-threads around them, she commanded both arms of liquid to sink to sea level.

“Is she alive?” Seba asked, nodding at the inert dragon. She sent a gentle current of water toward Khyvette, keeping the scaly green head safely afloat.

Fletcher nodded. His lips were blue with cold. “Yes, b-but . . . the attack, I t-think—”

He couldn’t get the words out. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. Seba’s body had acclimated to the cold by now, but she needed to get the two of them out of the water before they went into hypothermic shock.

“N-necromagical attack . . . came from w-water,” Fletcher managed at last.

Seba’s mind reeled. If her enemies were in the sea as well as the sky, then she, Fletcher, and Khyvette were sitting ducks. She was no match for any of the Severed Six—and an attack like that must have come from one of Necrovar’s most powerful servants.

“Danisan,” she said, concentrating on the elf so her comms ring would transmit her words to him, “I need help. Fletcher and Khyvette fell. We’re half a league off the coast, due north of the darksalm fire.”

There was no response.

Seba shivered. She hoped some ill fate hadn’t befallen Danisan, prayed he hadn’t been touched by darksalm. She’d never admit it aloud, but she’d grown rather fond of his sullen, dour ways.

There was no time to waste on worrying. The skies overhead were clear—Valerion had pulled the airborne necrocrelai hordes after him, luring the monsters south—but another attack from the water might be imminent.

Seba had just resigned herself to wielding the three of them back to the teleportal when the ocean stirred. A shadowy figure materialized before her, solidifying between the waves.

“Danisan!” Relief flooded her chest. “Can you take them both back to Noryk?”

The elf’s face, usually so impassive, twisted with horror. He gathered Fletcher in a muscled arm and gripped one of Khyvette’s horns with his free hand. “I should be able to manage. What of you?”

“I’m staying. Make sure they get home safe.”

“S-Seba,” Fletcher began, “you c-can’t—”

Before he could tell her what she couldn’t do, Seba sank beneath the waves. Clamping her mouth shut and inhaling through her nose, she filtered ocean water through her gills. Her nereid respiratory system allowed her to breathe with an ease her human lungs could no longer provide.

She watched from the depths as Danisan wielded, dissolving himself, Fletcher, and Khyvette into shadow. Those shadows dissipated as the elf bore them away, and then Seba was alone.

Now she could work.

Any nereids within range, this is Queen Sebaris. She broadcast the telepathic thought, letting the water carry it out of the harbor and into the wide ocean beyond. We need help at Oravel.

Again there was no immediate response, but with nereids, there might not be. They voted on everything, from joining wars to deciding which seaweeds to harvest. It could take them minutes or days to mobilize.

At least the summons was sent, Seba thought to herself. If extra help arrived from their water-dwelling allies, it would be a blessing.

Wielding to propel herself on deep currents, Seba swam south. This was her moment to shine. She would extinguish the darksalm fire. She refused to fail in Oravel as she’d failed in the Galantrian Village.

When she reached the fishing port and surfaced, she found it abandoned. The shadowtroops had moved up the cliffs. All the city soldiers had retreated—the lucky ones, at any rate. The unlucky ones lay strewn across the stone wharves and walkways.

Bile rising in her throat, Seba wielded a whip of water and lashed it against the black flames. The fire didn’t react. It didn’t even flicker. Frowning, she tried again, pouring more energy from her soul than was prudent. Again, nothing.

An illusion, Seba realized. But what purpose the illusion served, her exhausted mind couldn’t begin to guess.

CRACK!

The sky darkened with another necromagical thunderbolt. It struck the snowy cliffs at the end of the port, catapulting debris five heights in the air. A white shape, barely visible through the blizzard, darted away from the forking black magic.

Seba’s uneven breath hitched. Keriya and Valerion.

Valerion was trying to flee toward the portal. The magical sword that housed half of his soul did an excellent job at deflecting spells, but deflecting wasn’t enough. A storm of necrocrelai had gathered around the dragon, hemming him in.

Seba tore herself away from the fire—which wasn’t a fire—and wielded herself south, borne on whitecaps and willpower. Magic shredded her veins as she wielded icicles out of the sea. With a ragged cry, she launched her attack.

Javelins of ice speared three necrocrelai high above. They burst into dust, yet the attack did nothing to thin the enemy ranks. More monsters swarmed in, abandoning the city to focus on Valerion.

A cruel laugh reached Seba, freezing her heart with fear. She glanced over her shoulder to see Ashétyn rising from the waves some ten heights away, wielding herself skyward on a nebulous cloud of necromagic.

Seba’s instinct upon seeing one of the Severed Six was to panic, but Ashétyn paid her no mind. The demon queen had eyes only for Keriya. And even from this distance, Seba could see a cruel glint of realization in her empty black gaze.

“Whoever’s on comms, send backup to the coast,” Seba cried to her ring. “Keriya and Valerion need an immediate extraction from Oravel!”

That triggered a furious storm on the communication channel.

“She was not to engage,” came Caelburn’s voice.

“Khyvette is unconscious and cannot provide extraction,” came Danisan’s.

“Our unit is hemmed in by shadowtroops,” said Stormleaf.

“I’m on my way,” said Viran. “Protect them until I arrive.”

Communication had rarely been this muddied, not even during the calamitous Three-Battle Campaign. Disembodied shouts clashed in Seba’s skull. Caelburn screamed for order. The thunder of his voice set her teeth on edge.

She tuned out the voices and focused on Viran’s request: she must protect Keriya and Valerion until he arrived with backup.

CRACK!

Another bolt of black lightning came hurtling in from the north. Seba looked up in time to see it strike Valerion. He fell, cartwheeling through the sky toward the port.