Chapter 42 Nyssa
Nyssa
It had only been an hour since bidding farewell to my two favourite fire-wielders, and yet I now found myself in a foreign land, on the back of a dragon, with the midday sun beating down upon what little pale skin was left exposed beneath my armour.
Velira sent a continuous stream of mental imagery so that I could have some idea of the landscape and how to best use it to our advantage — although, those were decisions I was more inclined to leave in the hands of our military strategists led by Athena.
Our job was to lead the aerial assault. Kronos had a flying beasty all of his own, described by Caelus as the product of a dragon fucking a bull at in the midnight hours.
Velira sniffed. A dragon would never.
I grinned and rubbed a palm over her sun-warmed scales — smooth, harder than diamond, and a flickering blue-tinged hue through the lens of a dragon.
Velira, you don’t even know how beautiful you are, I lamented.
She made a snorting, rasping sound, accompanied by a flicker of sapphire flames exiting her nostrils. I do so, thank you very much.
I responded by sending her a memory. A single snippet of her soaring over Aetherion, her violet scales catching the Olympian sun, sending scattered shards of amethyst light over various sections of the city beneath her.
She audibly preened — softly trilling as her shoulders wiggled in delight. You’re right. I am spectacular.
I snorted, latching the final plate of armour around her thick neck, latching the buckle beneath the lowest spine with practised ease.
How long do you think we have? she asked, radiating hostility.
Not long, if I’m correct.
Why didn’t you tell anyone what you suspected?
My brows twitched. I guess I didn’t want to be proven right. I didn’t want him to have to face this yet.
Mmm, she rumbled, her sentence cut off by the quick snapping of her head to our right.
She sent me the foreboding image of darkness on the horizon.
Darkness that seemed to ooze from the ground itself.
In one giant leap and a few cracking snaps of her wings, we were airborne, soaring over our patchwork army.
They had come. Every single one of the pledged kingdoms had sent warriors, if not members of their ruling families.
Legions from Lunaris, Caldris, Cytheros, Meloidia, and a handful from Kardia led by the young Queen Isadora, smattered the ground in various hues, distorted by the colours Velira was able to see.
They cheered as she flew over them — a symbol of freedom high in the skies, unrestrained by the burdens of gravity — and the only challenge posed to Kronos’ nightmarish mount.
They cheered until she roared across the sky, alerting them of our incoming foes — our incoming fates.
Caelus? They’re here.
We’re ready. I’ll see you after?
A panic-filled breath seized in my throat. After. Here, in Theris… or on the Isle. It should have calmed me, filled me with some small measure of peace, that whatever fate either one of us faced today, the other was assured to follow.
But it didn’t.
Because Hyperion had already bested me once before.
Kronos had taken Charon without breaking a sweat.
And both of them together? Likely with the aid of other escapists from the abyss?
I feared we were doomed before the battle could even begin — but to step aside and let him claim each realm for his own, let him destroy each of them because they didn’t fit with his oppressive narrative, was a coward’s game.
And I was no coward.
So, I tied Evadne’s symbol, her promise of future peace, across my haunting eyes, and joined Velira in a war-cry. I raised Nightbreaker high in the air, summoned her dual powers of shadow and electricity, and roared.
I raged against oppression.
I screamed against murder.
I cried for all the innocents lost and those still yet to die.
And then, I fell silent. I listened to the chorus of those on the ground — those preparing to wage war against true tyranny — and I let their song fuel me.
Over our dead bodies, we seemed to sing.
For that is what it would cost: the death of every moral man, woman, and child.
But I knew that Kronos would have no qualms about our price.
He would gladly pay it.
I just had to rob him of the means to do so first.