Dragon's Last Hope

Chapter 13

She turned her attention back to the ancient system beneath Pioneer Square, her consciousness diving deeper into its crystalline matrix. The magic recognised her, not just as a dragon, but as royalty. Locks that had remained sealed for centuries began to open, responding to the High Dragon's resonance pulsing from her core.

"It's like a city-wide defence grid," she murmured, golden light now streaming from her eyes as she interfaced with the system. "The original dragons built it to protect their human allies from rival clans."

Through her bond with Leon, she felt his tactical mind analysing the implications. "Can you reconfigure it to target the Order specifically?"

"Better," Maya replied, her voice carrying harmonics that made the chamber crystals sing in response. "I can reverse their own suppression field technology against them."

Above them, the sound of the Order's advance grew louder, boots on marble, the hum of suppression generators powering up, the metallic click of silver-core weapons being primed. They were methodically sweeping each floor, establishing control points as they moved deeper into the museum.

Maya reached out to the approaching dragons again, her consciousness touching each one with precise instructions. *Circle formation. Fire and storm dragons at cardinal points. Earth and ice provide coverage below. Shadow and void create stealth corridors for approach.*

Through the network, she felt their acknowledgment, their formations shifting in the cloud cover above Seattle. Nineteen dragons who had spent lifetimes in hiding were now coordinating like a military unit, their ancient instincts for pack hunting reawakening under her guidance.

"Now," Maya said, her golden light intensifying as she activated the Pioneer Square defence grid.

The effect was immediate and spectacular. Throughout the district, glass art installations that had seemed merely decorative suddenly blazed with inner light. Steam vents erupted with precisely controlled force, creating a lattice of superheated air currents that would support dragon flight patterns. Most dramatically, the underground passages beneath the streets began to glow with crystalline illumination, revealing their true nature as dragon runways.

Through her enhanced senses, Maya heard the Order's communications dissolve into chaos as their equipment began to malfunction. The suppression fields they had established around the museum wavered, then inverted, their anti-magic technology suddenly amplifying draconic energy instead of containing it.

"What did you do?" Cassius asked, electricity crackling along his arms as he felt the surge of power.

"Reminded the city what it was built for," Maya replied, her voice carrying the authority of millennia. "Seattle was dragon territory long before humans named it."

Through the global network, she gave the signal. Descend. My children, the humans, can’t hurt us anymore; if anything, their weapons are big, scary toys that are more likely to scare their own people than hurt us.

Nineteen dragons broke through the cloud cover simultaneously, their massive forms silhouetted against the Seattle skyline in a display that would forever change human understanding of their world. Fire dragons with scales like burnished copper, trailing smoke and flame. Storm dragons crackling with lightning that connected sky to earth in brilliant arcs. Ice dragons whose crystalline bodies refracted the city lights in prismatic displays. Earth dragons whose granite hides seemed to blend with the very architecture of the urban landscape. Shadow dragons moving like living darkness between realities. And a single void dragon whose presence created a hole in existence that made observers' eyes water and minds reel.

The Order's operatives on the museum roof were the first to witness the aerial formation. Maya felt their terror through the ley line network, their communications dissolving into panicked shouts as training and protocols collapsed in the face of primal fear.

"Dragon flight! Multiple hostiles, I repeat, multiple..."

The transmission cut off as Kai's fire-touched consciousness reached through their bond, allowing Maya to project a precisely targeted burst of heat that melted the communication equipment without harming the humans.

"The Nullifier is moving," Leon observed through their shadow connection, his awareness tracking the specialised operative as he repositioned on the museum's eastern corner. "He's trying to establish a clean line of sight to the approaching dragons."

Maya reached deeper into the Pioneer Square defence grid, accessing systems that had lain dormant since the city's founding. Throughout the district, ancient wards activated, not to attack, but to reveal. Glamours that had hidden draconic elements in the architecture for centuries suddenly dissolved, showing the truth that had always been in plain sight.

The Smith Tower's spire was not merely decorative but a dragon perch, its metal framework designed to channel and amplify resonance patterns. The famous glass art installations throughout the district were not random designs but spell matrices, their colours and patterns encoding protection runes visible only to those with draconic sight. Even the street layout itself formed a massive ward when viewed from above—a fact that the descending dragons now recognised with collective awe.

"They're seeing it," Maya said softly, feeling their wonder through the network. "For the first time in centuries, they're seeing what our ancestors built."

The Nullifier on the roof raised his specialised weapon, a silver-core cannon designed to disrupt dragon resonance patterns at the genetic level. Through her connection with Xander, Maya sensed the void-like emptiness at the weapon's core, the anti-magic engineered specifically to unravel dragon essence.

"Now," she projected through the bonds, and her seven mates moved as one.

Leon's shadows enveloped the crystallised chamber, transporting all eight of them instantaneously to the museum's roof in a display of shadow-walking that even the most ancient texts had described as theoretical rather than practical. They materialised in a perfect circle around the Nullifier, seven elemental dragons and their High Dragon queen.

The human operative, a pale man with surgical scars visible at his temples, showed remarkable composure as the eight of them appeared.

Maya stepped forward, her mates ready to defend her if anything went wrong. “I believe you are looking for little old me?” Maya asked, acting innocent, “There is one little problem with that, I’m not just any old freshly shifted dragon, and I don’t just have one or two mates, the gentlemen that you see with me are all my mates, all seven, and I am a High Dragon.”