Dragon Empress

Chapter 27

He opened his beak—which was half the length of Viran’s body—and plunged it into the black jelly. Viran’s heart leapt into his throat, but the god was precise and gentle as he wrested first G’shídrian, then Roxanne, then Effrax from their imprisonments.

They stirred feebly as Valaan withdrew, busying himself with clawing open a portal to the Fironem. Roxanne sat up first, holding her head and groaning. When she regained enough of her senses to realize where she was, what was happening, her eyes went wide.

“Viran . . . ?” she began in a shaky voice.

“I’ll explain when we’re back in Allentria,” he said, helping her rise. Beside her, G’shídrian ruffled his feathers, fluttering his wings. He shrilled a cry, which Valaan echoed.

“b****y bones of a bastard,” said Effrax, gaping in awe at the last Allentrian guardian.

Roxanne slipped a hand under his arm and hefted him upright. Together, the three small humans watched, entranced, as Valaan finished ripping open his portal.

“We will not forget what you’ve done for us,” he said gravely, his gaze landing on each of them in turn. “Binding laws or no, I will find a way to repay this debt. For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction—and your actions today will be remembered for ages.”

Viran couldn’t have replied, even if he’d known what to sat to that. With a mighty flap of his fiery wings, Valaan left the Etherworld and vanished.

“Well,” Effrax said into the sudden silence. “We better get out of this blood-burned hellhole while we can.”

“An excellent suggestion,” said Viran. His bout with the chains had drained him, and he was starting to feel faint.

Together, he and his friends hurried after the phoenix-god. He dove through the Fironian portal, eager to be free. There was an eerie moment in which he had the sensation of not having a body, of floating weightless . . .

Then his feet landed on solid ground. He was in an unfamiliar place, a sandy valley between low mountains. It was deserted, peaceful, and mercifully quiet.

Suddenly, the surrounding mountains burst forth with flame. Lava spewed from their summits, jettisoning into the air like the fireworks display at the New Year’s Gala.

Viran didn’t shy away from the fiery display. In fact, his blood sang with exuberance as he watched. Some deep-rooted instinct in his soul told him these volcanic eruptions were a sign of celebration, not danger. The guardian of the Fironem had returned to his domain. They’d won a huge victory for Allentria.

“Fletcher? Do you copy?” asked Roxanne. Viran turned to see her grinning at her long-distance communication ring. “We’re alright,” she continued. “We did it . . .”

But she trailed off, and a look of dawning horror crept across her lovely features.

“What’s wrong?” asked Effrax, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Fletcher needs us in the Erastate,” she whispered. “The World Alliance is still fighting. And they’re losing.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEENKeriya had died.

She was in a horrible, dark, endless void. Nothing existed here except pain.

She was dead.

Yet she wasn’t. Not really.

If she could feel pain, if she had her memories, that meant she was alive. She had died once, and that experience had not been like this. That had been peaceful, pain-free. Death would be a welcome alternative to wherever she was now.

And where was she, exactly? She couldn’t have said. A universe of torment. An existence of agony.

Shivnath had betrayed her. She’d hurt Keriya irreparably. Now she didn’t even have the decency to end Keriya’s suffering.

Keriya lay alone and waited for death.

Death did not come for Keriya.

This was something of a miracle, because after the firemagic she’d had to face lightmagic. She had never realized how hard and unforgiving light could be. It had destructive capabilities beyond reckoning.

Then there had been forcemagic, which had compacted her until she’d broken, and voltmagic, which had been unspeakably wretched. Darkmagic had surprised her by being less painful than its fellows, though it had been the most frightening. When it had wrapped her in its blind embrace, Keriya felt as she had when she’d drowned off the Aerian coast, when she’d begun her journey.

But she hadn’t died this time, no. She hadn’t gotten off the hook so easily. After darkmagic had come lifemagic, changemagic, and timemagic.

She’d lost track of how many times she had begged Shivnath for mercy and begged Shivnath to stop. Now she lay in the canyon with her throat screamed raw, staring at the wide, empty sky. She was n***d, numb, and alone.

Except for Shivnath, who perched on an overhang, watching.

“Are you ready for the next step?”

Keriya said nothing. She was too weak to force words out of her mouth, too sore to manage a simple no. Besides, she wasn’t talking to Shivnath. She hated Shivnath.

Shivnath did not press the point. She let Keriya lie in silence.

After eons of pain, Keriya gathered the strength to move. A shiver wracked her frame—her clothes had burned in the firemagic ordeal. All that remained was Aurelas, buckled around her waist, its scabbard digging into her flesh.

“You know what’s coming,” said Shivnath, who stood in front of her.

Keriya’s cracked lips parted. “Valemagic.”

“Creation and destruction, light and dark, the beginning and the end of all things.” A flock of rainbow-feathered birds materialized around Shivnath, bursting into the sky. They spread their wings, thankful for the gift of life.

Keriya’s heart fluttered in a feeble echo, as if trying to remember what happiness felt like.

Shivnath’s pupils drifted, tracking the birds’ progress. She blinked, and the whole flock unraveled. Snuffed out as quickly as they’d come, they dissipated in a mass of shining threads.

Oddly, this didn’t upset Keriya. She was surprised to discover their destruction had much the same effect on her as their creation had.

“Why?” she mumbled. “Why do I feel this way?”

“Because you are close to the power of valemagic. Death nourishes life, and life becomes death. You have assimilated to the eleven magics, your soul is balanced—and the balance makes you strong.”

A wheezy breath scratched Keriya’s windpipe. She’d never felt weaker in her life.

“I can create living souls, drawing energy from the dead; and if the balance dictates such action be taken, I can destroy them, as you just saw.” Shivnath’s expression darkened. “Tell me, is that your plan for Necrovar?”

“What?”

“What will you do with my power? Will you summon the Shadow Lord from the Etherworld and unravel his very soul?”

Keriya swallowed—or tried to, because there was no moisture in her mouth—and nodded. That had been the mission from day one: find Necrovar. Defeat him.

“And defeat must, by definition, come in the form of destruction,” said Shivnath.

“What other choice is there?”

“There is always a choice.”

The classic Shivnath non-answer tempted a creaky laugh from Keriya. She rolled onto her side, her n***d flesh screaming as pebbles bit into it.

“I didn’t understand the world when I was young,” she began. “I once thought that maybe good and evil, as absolutes, didn’t exist. But I’ve since decided what I believe in.”

Shivnath tilted her noble head. “Indeed?”

“I’ve seen enough to know that true evil does exist. Darkness lives in all of us, and some of us succumb to it.” Her eyes stung as she thought of Thorion crashing against the rocks.

“There is darkness in me,” she whispered. Her chest, skeletal after her lengthy t*****e session in the Broken Vale, swelled with determination. “But I can rise above it. I vow to fight against evil when I see it. When bad men fight, good men die, and I’m tired of that. That’s why I want to end the war. That’s why I must kill Necrovar.”

She gazed at Shivnath, waiting for a response, but Shivnath was impassive.

“Was that . . . the right answer?” She felt like her fourteen-year-old self again, seeking validation from the emerald goddess.

“You tell me,” said Shivnath. “You are the one who must face the Darkness. I am unable to join this fight, but you are free. And your plan, as I understand it, is to fight to the death.”

Keriya cringed. It didn’t sound like much of a plan when Shivnath put it that way.

“Why are you so fixated on destroying him? What are you really after?”

That question again. It sent chills down Keriya’s aching spine. She’d always yearned for magic, acceptance, love—but she had found these things on her journey. What did she want now?

Power, whispered a voice in her head.

Peace, whispered another.

There would be no peace until Necrovar was dead. And in order to kill Necrovar, Keriya needed power.

“You want it,” breathed Shivnath. “You want more.”

“So what if I do? Why does it matter what I want, so long as I save the world in the process?”

“You would not accept the answer if I told you; it is one of those things you must discover for yourself.”

“Fantastic,” grumbled Keriya. “If you already know everything, why the questions?”

“Though you are more than human, it is undeniable that you are only human. When humans are put to the test, time and again they fail. Their idealistic principles shatter at the first hint of pressure. I know what you think you believe, but I can never know what choices you will make.”

“Why don’t you look in your scrying spring?” Keriya’s voice had regained enough strength to bear an edge of sharpness.

“I have, and it has shown me many possibilities of how the Shadow War may end. You saw one possibility four years ago, do you recall?”

She did. Shivnath had invited her to ask one question of the scrying spring. Keriya’s inquiry had yielded a vision of her past and future. She’d seen herself on a dusty battlefield with Necrovar. She’d offered him her hand, and the two of them had vanished.

A bad ending, Keriya decided. She wouldn’t fall to the Shadow again. This time, she would win.

“How do you feel?” the god asked eventually.

Keriya attempted to shrug. The movement sent pain down her ribs and across her abdomen. It was a slow, aching pain that lingered long after it ought to have gone.

“You’ll feel better if you get up.”

A breathless laugh fluttered in Keriya’s parched throat. She could barely move, and Shivnath wanted her to stand?

“Let me rephrase that: you’ll feel better if you wield. Your pain is not physical. It is due to a buildup of excess magicthreads in your source. All you’ve ever wanted was power, and you have all the power in the universe, Keriya. So wield it.”

“How?”

“You already know.”

Keriya turned her head to stare at her limp left hand. Forcing herself to move her fingers, she pointed vaguely at a pebble, not expecting any fantastic results.

Lo and behold, no fantastic results came. The pebble twitched.

Wait. Had she done that? No . . . she hadn’t done anything, not that she’d been aware of. She lifted her head to get a better look at the pebble and pointed again, willing it to roll over.

The pebble obediently flipped onto its back and bounced away.

Keriya blinked, because tears had sprung to her eyes.

Earthmagic.

She sat up, her aches and pains forgotten. Suddenly she felt like a small Aerian child again, the child who’d wanted nothing more than to fit in. To have earthmagic like everyone else.

At long last, her wish had come true.

Keriya stared at the barren ground and decided it would look better with some greenery. She raised her hand, and a sprout poked out of the rock, blooming into a delicate purple flower.

Something odd bubbled in her chest and worked its way out her mouth: laughter. The laughter irritated her dry throat and she doubled over, coughing. She cupped her palms together, willing them to be filled with sweet, refreshing water. And thus, they were.