Pillars of Dragonfire (16 page)

"Burn them
down!" Vale was shouting in the distance. "Burn them down!"

"Burn them!"
Elory roared, flying above, streaming down with a flash of lavender scales.

Hundreds of other
dragons joined the charge, blasting their flames. The streams of dragonfire
crackled through the air, slammed into the archangels, and showered in
fountains.

The godly beings seemed
unfazed. They kept lashing their massive whips. One thong tore through three
dragons with a single swing, cutting them all down, scattering limbs. Another
archangel rose high upon his mighty wings, then swooped, blade plunging,
cutting through dragon after dragon. The corpses thumped onto the city below.

Lucem flew closer to
one of the archangels. It loomed above him, larger than he had thought,
dwarfing him. It turned its terrible golden eyes upon Lucem. Those eyes swirled
like smelters of molten metal, gold touched with white, seeing all, digging
into him, burning him like shards of hot metal.

The whip crackled the
air, casting out bolts of lightning, and swung toward him.

Lucem blasted his fire
and dived.

The whip swung over his
head with a shriek that nearly shattered Lucem's eardrums. The air boomed like
thunder. The blade swung, and Lucem swerved, soared, blasted more flames. His
dragonfire crashed into the archangel and showered back onto Lucem, burning his
scales.

The whip lashed again,
and Lucem ducked his head.

Pain.

White, searing light.

Lucem screamed.

The agony raced across
his head, and he lost his magic.

Lucem fell, a man again.

He cut me. He cut
open my skull. I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm sorry, Requiem.

The city rushed up
below to meet him, walls and towers and courtyards, and everywhere the dragons
flew. More corpses fell all around Lucem. Maybe he was dead already. He could
barely see the battle above, just flashes of light and spurts of fire and the
roar and hum.

"Lucem!" rose
a voice.

Violet scales streaked.
A dragon plunged down, wreathed in smoke. Claws reached out and grabbed Lucem
mere feet above the city roofs.

They soared.

"Lucem, can you
hear me?" Elory cried.

Clutched in her claws,
he blinked and touched his head. He felt nothing. No pain. No blood. He was
unhurt.

"I . . . I'm fine."
Lucem pulled himself free from her claws, fell a few feet, then shifted back
into a dragon.

At once the pain flared
again, and he screamed. Flying before him, Elory gasped.

"Your horns . .
." she whispered.

Lucem reached up with
his claws, seeking his horns.

He touched pure fire and
agony.

He screamed and nearly
lost his magic again.

And he knew—the whip
had severed the tips of his horns. Just a few inches. Enough to sear him with
pain.

"Your ear, my
horns," he muttered. "What will they take next? Better not be
anything . . . special. I need my special parts! And I haven't even shown them
off to you yet, Elory."

She rolled her eyes.
"Focus on killing those archangels, O great hero of Requiem."

Kill them? Lucem looked
up at the battle raging in the sky. The dead were still falling. Lucem winced
as a disemboweled corpse plunged down only a foot away; he had to swerve aside
to dodge it. No. You could not kill these beasts. At least not with fire or
claw. As he watched, several dragons slammed into an archangel, lashing claws,
biting into the flesh of molten light, only to scream and burn.

"We might as well
try to cut fire," he muttered.

Elory winced. "So
it's impossible. We cannot win this."

Lucem grunted.
Impossible. Impossible! Yet they had also said it was impossible to scale the
walls of Tofet. They had said that nobody could escape that land of pain.

Yet Lucem had scaled
the wall. He had escaped. He had done the impossible.

He would do it again.

"Not with
dragonfire," he said. "Not with claws or fangs. Fly with me, Elory!
Follow my lead."

The lavender dragon
nodded.

Leaving the dragons and
archangels to battle above, Lucem and Elory swooped.

Every heartbeat, Lucem
knew, Ishtafel was drawing closer. They would do this quickly. He dived across
the coastal city, traveling over the roofs of homes, workshops, manors,
courtyards, seeking, eyes narrowed.

There!

A portico of columns
rose along the coast, supporting a roof over a limestone veranda that faced the
sea. Lucem dived low, skimming the ground. He roared, narrowed his eyes, and
slammed himself against a column.

The pain bloomed inside
him. He yowled. An instant later, Elory slammed into the column too.

The limestone cracked.

Ignoring the pain,
Lucem backed up, then slammed himself into the column again.

The column shattered
and fell.

Panting, Lucem grabbed
one end of the heavy limestone pillar. "Elory, help!"

She nodded. She
understood. She grabbed the second edge of the column.

They flapped their
wings mightily, scattering sand across the beach. They grunted, jaws clenched,
barely able to rise. Yet slowly, foot by foot, they flew higher, carrying the
column in their claws.

They rose higher. The
battle swirled around them, a symphony of sound and light. A corpse fell,
slammed into Lucem's back, and rolled down toward the city. He grimaced but
kept rising with Elory, carrying the column.

An archangel loomed
above, its hum deafening, its light blinding. Its whip swung forward, ripping
through five dragons. Its blade lashed, tearing through other dragons that
charged toward it. Behind this giant of liquid light, its comrades were slaying
other dragons, plowing through the lines. Several dragons were trying to escape
but wailed in fear, for in the south, clearly visible now, the host of harpies
was charging forth, their shrieks and stench carrying in the wind. Some dragons
tried to fly north, to cross the sea, only for the whips and blades of light to
cut them down. The bodies fell into the water and washed ashore.

"Ready?"
Lucem shouted.

Elory nodded.
"Together—now!"

The archangel ahead
noticed them, turned its golden eyes toward them, and advanced through the sky,
wings blasting out beams.

Lucem and Elory roared
with effort, pulling the column backward . . . then drove it forth with all
their might.

The limestone capital
slammed into the archangel's head.

The giant being
shrieked.

It was the sound of ten
thousand bones shattering, of oceans boiling and steaming away, of the sky
itself cracking. The column kept driving forward, plowing through the head,
shattering it. The sun seemed to burst. Luminous chunks of skull scattered
through the sky. The innards of the head leaked, molten metal, purest white
rimmed with gold.

The archangel's colossal
corpse fell through the sky, almost graceful, silent, like a great feather.

It hit the city and
blasted out, exploding with fury, knocking down buildings for several blocks,
casting shockwaves that roiled the dragons in the sky.

Those dragons cried out
in victory.

At once, hundreds
dipped in the sky, gathering columns that had fallen in the explosion. They
rose, three or four dragons carrying each pillar.

The archangels
shrieked, fighting back. A whip tore through one column, halving the stone.
Another archangel swung its blade, shattering another column. But it was too
late to stop the dragons of Requiem. Six archangels remained, and thousands of
dragons were now dipping to grab stones—some lifted columns, and some dragons
merely grabbed chunks of the buildings.

A pillar drove into
another archangel, cleaving through the effulgent torso. The beast screamed and
fell and blasted apart. A roaring red dragon swung an entire stone balcony,
ripped off a manor below, cleaving through the wing of another archangel. A
second dragon cast forth a stone statue of a goddess, driving it into the
archangel's head, shattering the skull. All across the sky, the dragons were
fighting, using the city as their weapons.

We do not defeat the
hosts of Saraph with our dragonfire,
Lucem thought wryly,
but with the monuments
we built for them as slaves.

"Requiem rises,
Requiem rises!" the dragons chanted as the last archangel fell, shattering
against the city, then going dark.

Yet the cheers died
quickly.

In the south they flew,
only several miles away now—a host of harpies, hiding the sky. Their voices
cried out, shrill, thirsty, promising death.

Lucem's heart sank.

"Fly, dragons of
Requiem!" cried Meliora, streaming above, and blew her white pillar
skyward. "Fly with me—over the sea! Fly after my light."

Leaving the city,
leaving their dead, leaving the continent of Terra, the dragons of Requiem flew
across the water—a nation escaping their centuries of captivity, a nation
heading home. Behind them, the hosts of darkness cried out and laughed and
buzzed and hid the sun behind their wings.

 
 
ISHTAFEL

He stood on the coast,
licked his lips, and watched them flee across the sea into the northern
distance.

"Good, Meliora,
good," Ishtafel whispered. "Let your hope build. Fly toward your
home. Dream of Requiem. Very soon now, just as you think you've grasped your
dream in your claws . . . I'll be there to snatch it away." He clenched
his fists. "Just as you snatched her away from me."

He cringed in sudden
pain, the memories of Reehan filling him. His strong, noble, vicious Reehan—a
great light among the immortals. Ishtafel had been fighting for five hundred
years, and he had never met a warrior as deadly and proud as his Reehan.

I would have married
you,
he thought.
I would have made you my queen, the mother of my
children, and damn the royal blood of my line.
He shut his eyes.
But
they murdered you. The weredragons. They took you from me, my most precious
prize.

Ishtafel looked around
him at this city on the northern coast of Terra, the hot continent where Saraph
had first risen. The city, once a jewel of the empire, lay in ruins around him.
Palaces, silos, temples, manors—all lay shattered. Palm trees, vineyards,
gardens—all had burned. The slaves of this city had escaped with the reptilian
horde, leaving the corpses of seraphim—corpses the harpies were now consuming.
The rancid creatures bustled about the ruins like carrion crows, guzzling the
dead. Ishtafel had allowed them this meal, a feast before the slaughter. The
ichor would strengthen them before the great war to end all wars, the
extermination of Requiem.

"I've never loved
another soul, Reehan, and I've never met any stronger woman . . . until my
sister was born. Until Meliora."

Reehan had fought with
him against the weredragons—and fallen. He had thought her strong. Perhaps he
had been wrong. Bloodthirsty, rabid, and beautiful, yes—but ultimately not
strong enough.

But Meliora . . . his
sweet Meliora . . .

Once Ishtafel had
thought his sister not even capable of strength—like expecting a kitten to
hunt as a tigress. Meliora had always been like a pet to him, a sweet little
princess to laugh with, play with in the gardens, to listen to her silly songs
and chatterings about butterflies, cupcakes, and fairy tales. He had at first
recoiled from Mother's request that he should marry his sister, had agreed only
to preserve the royal blood of their dynasty.

"And then . . .
then the kitten roared," he whispered.

When Meliora had first
defied him, it had surprised Ishtafel, then enchanted him. Suddenly the naive
girl had shown her bite, and he had begun to see her not as a mere womb but as
a prize to conquer. And when she had revealed herself to be half weredragon,
tainted with the very blood of the beasts who had slain Reehan . . .

"I can think of no
sweeter prize than you, sweet sister. I can think of no greater joy than
fighting you, breaking you, making you pay for all the sins of your people. The
more you defy me, the more of my hosts that you slay, you prove your womb even
worthier for my seed."

Finally, here on the
coast, his archangels slain around him, Ishtafel saw Meliora for what she truly
was—a conqueror, a killer, his sister.

You and I,
Meliora—the two greatest killers this new Edinnu has ever known. How I will
enjoy breaking you!

Creaks sounded behind
him, and Ishtafel turned to see Kelaksha, Queen of the Harpies, approaching.
The creature was massive, as big as the mightiest dragon, walking on talons
that cracked the cobblestones. The harpy, oldest among them, lowered her withered
head toward Ishtafel. That head was as large as a curled-up man, wrinkled and
covered in boils and hairs. Cruel eyes, no larger than his, stared from folds
of flesh. Serpents coiled on her head instead of hair, and she opened her
mouth, revealing a white tongue and dagger-like fangs. The stench of her breath
assailed Ishtafel—the stench of the rotten bodies Kelaksha had been consuming.

"The sea is wide,
Master," the harpy hissed. Rot dripped from her mouth with every word.
"It is too far to cross."

Ishtafel stood facing
the massive beast. He was barely taller than her talons. He reached out a
metal-encased hand and caressed the withered cheek of the harpy.

"You were the
first, were you not?" Ishtafel asked. "The first creature the Eight
Gods created, their failed attempt at life?"

Kelaksha stared at him
with those small, pale eyes. Upon her head, the hair of serpents hissed and
stared too.

"I was the
first," she hissed, saliva dripping down to burn holes into the
cobblestones of the city.

"How must it
feel," Ishtafel said, "to be considered a shame, a failure, a
deformity? To spend thousands of years imprisoned because you are ugly?"
He stroked her bristly cheek. "To be without pride, without a home?"