Pillars of Dragonfire (22 page)

Lying in the sand
beneath her, burnt and bleeding, the lance against his neck, the Overlord
laughed.

"You are like I
am," the seraph said, sputtering out saliva. "You call me a murderer,
yet now you threaten to murder me. You call me a monster, yet you and your
brother delight in death. Look at him, Til! Only a boy and already
bloodthirsty. We are the same, whore of Requiem. Just killers. Just like your
father was. Just like—"

She drove the lance
into his neck.

He gave a last sputter,
and his breath died. His body loosened, and his eyes saw no more.

"Maybe we are monsters,"
Til whispered. "But you made us so. We will find redemption in the halls
of a rebuilt Requiem."

She turned away from
the corpse and faced Bim.

He stared back at her,
and she expected to see another blank gaze, a lifeless face, a haunted boy with
a heart of stone.

But instead Bim wept.

"Til," he
whispered.

She fell to her knees,
pulled him into her embrace, and clung to him, smoothing his hair, nearly
crushing him, weeping too.

"We did it,
Bim," she whispered, shaking, her arms wrapped around him as he wept
against her shoulder. "We did it. It's over now. It's over."

 
 
MELIORA

"Requiem," she
whispered, staring around her. Her body trembled and her eyes stung. "I'm
in Requiem."

Dawn rose across the
land, illuminating ruin and death. The city on the coast—the fabled Lynport,
the ancient jewel of Requiem's south—lay fallen, its halls collapsed under the
rain of chariots. Thousands of corpses lay everywhere, both of seraphim and Vir
Requis. The battle had ended, leaving the land bleeding and ravaged, blood and
death upon the beach, in the water, and on the forests and hills beyond.

And here it was. Even
in ruin. Even bloodied and burnt. Here was holy ground.

Requiem.

Meliora knelt on the
beach. She lowered her hands. And she felt it. The sand of her homeland. Each
grain a miracle.

They gathered around
her on the beach. Her family. Her friends. The people Meliora had once
oppressed, living as a princess in their tyrant's palace. The people she would
now die for, the people who had chosen her to lead them, the people she would
always love. Along the coast, the plains, the hills they gathered, the children
of Requiem.

Meliora shifted into a
dragon and soared.

She rose high, circling
her people. They crowded below in human form, as plentiful as the grains of
sand on the beach, spreading out for miles. They wore tattered burlap. They
were thin, weary, wounded, but their eyes shone, and they prayed and wept and
sang with joy.

"Hear me, children
of Requiem!" Meliora said, flying above as a white dragon. "For five
hundred years, we cried out to the stars. Chained. Beaten. Collared. For five
hundred years, we dreamed of our homeland. Through fire and rain, through death
and despair, we have traveled here, defeating many enemies. And we have reached
holy ground. We have reached Requiem."

Their voices rose
together, chanting for their land.

Meliora glided on the
wind, staring south. She rose higher, so high the people below faded to but
distant specks, then just a blur along the coast. She flew so high the air grew
cold and thin, and she could barely breathe. She stared south, and there she
saw them, a gray haze on the horizon, still a hundred leagues away.

A cloud of harpies.

Ishtafel.

She glided down until
she flew close enough to call to her people again.

"We have traveled
for many days, through much danger, and we found our homeland. But our fight is
not over, Requiem! An enemy approaches from the south, an enemy greater than
any we have yet faced. Ishtafel flies toward us, leading a host of harpies, and
he seeks to steal our homeland from us, so soon after we've reclaimed it."

The people below cried
out, some in dismay, others in rage.

"We will fight
him!" Meliora cried. "Not because we crave war. Not because we crave
victory or glory. We will fight him because we have no choice. Because he seeks
to destroy us, to slay us all. No longer will he offer us the collar, only the
lance. And so we will fight him, Requiem. But not here. Not upon this coast. We
fly north! We fly to the heartland of our realm. To Old Requiem, the place
where our nation was born. If we must make a final stand, it will be in the
light of King's Column. Arise, children of Requiem! Arise and fill your hearts
with song. We fly north! We fly to our column! There we will fight this war.
Not as slaves. Not as exiles. We will fight as proud Vir Requis defending our
home."

They roared. They rose
as dragons.

They flew over the
ruins, over the corpses of seraphim, leaving the coast behind . . . flying
north, flying over Requiem.

 
 
ISHTAFEL

They landed on the coast of
Requiem under clouds of smoke, so weary they barely mustered the energy to feed
upon the corpses of seraphim.

Ishtafel walked across
the coast, grinning savagely. His body blazed with an inferno of agony. Every
step, every twitch of his muscles, every breath bathed him with the fury of
collapsing suns. His muscles ached from the long flight across the sea. His
throat was parched and bleeding, his belly roiling with hunger, his limbs
shaking with weakness. And yet those pains vanished under the all-consuming
flood of pain from his burnt flesh—the burns of dragonfire, the fire of Tash,
the reptilian whore.

But still Ishtafel
walked across the coast. As around him myriads of harpies collapsed onto the
sand, breathing raggedly, gasping for breath, crawling to find food, Ishtafel
held his back straight. He crossed the sand onto the solid earth of Requiem. He
stood in the shadow of a ruined city under a sky of raining ash.

"Here it
was," he whispered, tasting his blood as his face tore within his mask of
metal. "Here we landed so long ago."

Ahead, Ishtafel could
see it again—Requiem five hundred years ago, on the first day of his invasion.
In his mind, these ruins stood again as the great city the weredragons had
called Lynport, their southernmost outpost. In his memories, those weredragons
still filled the sky, thousands of them, clad in armor and roaring fire—not
ragged refugees but soldiers in a reptilian army.

"And we slew them,
Reehan," Ishtafel whispered. "We slew them together."

He remembered the glory
of that day. He had flown with his lover in one great chariot, its flames red
and gold, their eight firehorses pulling them into their first battle. Ishtafel
and Reehan had fired their arrows together, felling the beasts. They had raised
shields together, blocking the dragonfire, had thrust their lances as one,
cracking scales. Together they had led the charge. Together they had conquered this
land.

Yet we did not fall
together.

He winced to remember
her lifeless body in his arms. To remember the light, fury, and love in her
eyes go dark. He had slain many weredragons then. He had captured the rest,
tormenting them for centuries. And now, here in this land, his revenge could be
complete. Here he would grind their bones to dust in the light of their column,
and he would send that column crashing down.

He looked across the
coast, the city, and the hills. Thousands of seraphim lay dead here, burnt with
dragonfire. The harpies were gorging themselves on the dead, gaining strength
from the flesh and ichor. Their claws tore into the corpses' torsos, and their
mouths dug deep into the cavities, tugging out organs. The snakes upon the
harpies' heads feasted too, growing fat on the meat.

Ishtafel beat his
aching, featherless wings. He rose higher above the ruins, and he stared north
across the land he had conquered, the land he would now crush. There in the
distance, many leagues away, they flew.

"The
weredragons," he whispered in the hot, smoky wind. "And you, Meliora,
future mother of my children. You will live. And you will envy the dead."

He brought Meliora into
his mind. Her tall, slender frame. Her terrified eyes. Her
waiting womb. He would soon fill that womb, and her children would rule over
this land of bones.

He flew toward the
feasting harpies. He dined with them, staining his lips, and he slept. In
darkness they would fly again. For now he dreamed of burning dragons, of
twisting tunnels, and in his dreams it was Meliora traveling the underground
with him, not Reehan, and it was Meliora who died in his arms, and it was her
corpse that he seeded, and her lifeless flesh from which emerged the glory of
his dynasty.

 
 
MELIORA

For seven days and nights,
they flew over the wilderness of Requiem, cleansing the land.

Hundreds of thousands
of dragons, they flew over the southern forests, burning the seraphim who flew
toward them, casting their bodies down upon the land.

They dived toward
Castellum Luna, the fabled fortress of the south, where Princess Mori Aeternum herself
had faced the phoenixes many centuries ago. Here too seraphim lurked, but the
new Royal Army of Requiem slew them and burned their corpses, scouring the land
of their light.

They kept flying,
traveling northward, until the great Amerath Mountains soared to their left,
the ancient range where many great battles had been waged. Chariots of fire
rose from those rocky crests, and many dragons fell here, but here too the
seraphim crashed and burned upon the mountainsides. The host of Requiem flew
onward, leaving a trail of death, of ichor, and of a purified home.

Jaren flew with her,
leading the camp, a green dragon, a priest and healer, his prayers soothing the
wounded. Vale stormed ahead at every enemy that rose, a vicious blue dragon
stained with blood, leading the Royal Army in battle, slaying the enemies. Elory
and Lucem flew here too, never far apart, the princess and the hero of Requiem,
inspiring their people.

And I lead them all,
Meliora thought. A woman torn in two. A woman in pain. A woman returning to a
home she had never known was hers.

Countless times,
Meliora had imagined this day, imagined flying over Requiem, scouring the land
from the stain of Saraph, rebuilding a homeland for dragons. Yet now as she
flew here, she did not feel the glow of holiness, and the stars had never felt
more distant. Requiem was beautiful, a northern land of great forests,
mountains, and rivers, and yet as they flew across their land, they stained it
with blood.

With the blood of
seraphim,
Meliora thought.
The blood of my second half.

"Daughter," Jaren
said to her, gliding to fly at her side. "You do not sing with the others.
You do not seem to rejoice in our victories, in our return to our land. Are you
all right, daughter? There is sadness in your eyes"

Meliora looked at her
father—her true father, the father she had only met this year. The green
dragon was a great priest, a holy leader of Requiem, a healer. And yet blood
stained his claws, and scratches, dents, and burns marred his body. Flecks of
dried ichor still stained Meliora's own claws, and she could still taste the
flesh of her enemies in her mouth.

"In my
dreams," Meliora said, "I envisioned a pure Requiem. A Requiem like
the celestial one beyond the stars, untouched by war, by death. Yet we found a
bloodstained Requiem. Perhaps I was an innocent girl. As I had imagined Tofet
to be a land of plenty, I imagined Requiem to be a land of beauty. Yet here too
I found only agony, only destruction, only bloodshed."

Jaren looked at her
with soft eyes. "Requiem has never been a land of peaceful beauty,
daughter. For thousands of years, since our ancestor Aeternum raised his
column, it has been a land of bloodshed. A land we had to constantly defend,
constantly fight for. A land that burned over and over, fell again and again.
We did not come to Requiem to find peace. We came to find our home of
old."

"And we came as
killers." Meliora lowered her head. "We—her sons and daughters—came
here not as priests, not as holy pilgrims, but as warriors. We do not cleanse
Requiem with light but with blood."

Jaren nodded, his eyes
damp, and his voice was soft. "Thus has been our lot. In all our history,
men of peace—from King Aeternum to King Benedictus to Queen Fidelity—were forced to blow dragonfire. To raise swords. To become warriors. Killers. Our
enemies not only slew our children, but they forced us to slay theirs. That has
ever been our greatest curse."

Meliora stared at her
father, eyes burning with tears. "But they did not slay their own
people!" Her voice rose louder, hoarse. "Vale slays the seraphim with
pride, perhaps even with a sort of painful joy. But . . . . oh, Father. The
seraphim are my people, just as much as the Vir Requis are. As our ancestors
beheld the destruction of Requiem, here do I behold the destruction of Saraph.
How are we different from Ishtafel who slew so many in Tofet? Here we too kill.
How can we rebuild a holy, pure kingdom when so much blood stains our hands?"

Jaren stared ahead into
the distance. The forests rolled for many leagues, fading into hazy mist, and
the mountains soared to their left. Even as they flew here, the warriors of
Requiem were battling several last seraphim who flew above the mountains.

"We will not be those who rebuild Requiem," Jaren finally said, speaking softly. "Not my
generation, nor yours. We have bled too much. We have spilled too much blood.
Our souls are forever scarred, our hands forever bloodstained. Our task will
not be to rebuild Requiem, daughter. That has never been our task. We—the
generation of the whip, of the desert, of the collar—are those tasked with
staining our hands, our souls, our homeland. Only those born here, in a land we
kill for, can rebuild the marble halls of our forebears with clean hands and
clean souls."