Chapter 43 #2
“Keep that dragon off of me so I can kill it,” she told him.
He nodded, following her, Izaak, and Lia back down toward the surface, where Carter abandoned the fight outside the courtyard and met them on Kip’s back. Carolina searched the city streets just long enough to see that Ophelia was still fighting Simon, and then led the charge as she flew straight at the dragon.
She swept down in front of its eyeline, pulling its focus away from the troops and rebels and evacuating civilians on the ground as all five of them began to buzz around its head. It snapped at her, its massive jaws narrowly missing her as Wyatt and Carter both fired a pistol shot at the side of its head. Its thick tail nearly swiped Izaak out of the air as it wheeled on Wyatt and Carter, its footsteps thundering as it pounded after them.
It lowered its snout and tried to ram Wyatt out of the air, but he rushed upward and it missed, slamming its horns through the top of a building instead. The dragon hardly noticed as it roared, jaws wide as its head pitched sideways to try and catch Carter while he swooped past its nose. It missed him too, and Lia dove beneath its belly and sprang up from under its chin, slashing her sword across the edge of its jaw as she careened out of the way.
The dragon was more annoyed than hurt, and while it was distracted by the others, Carolina searched for the best way to penetrate its thick, charcoal flesh. Its chest was far too deep to blow a hole in and be able to reach the heart, but its sides weren’t. And its glowing heart was tucked directly behind its front flank, beneath a smoky layer of soot that two laibralt explosives might just be able to penetrate. All she had to do was position herself long enough to throw them.
She dropped down behind its front elbow and began to dig through the satchel for one of the explosives, but she barely got one hand in the bag before her mistling canted sideways to avoid being rammed by the dragon’s shoulder. It kept coming, leaning all its weight over to try and smash her into the next nearest building, but they dropped just as the dragon crashed into the structure .
Still unfazed by the impact, the dragon lifted one foot, bringing it smashing down behind her as she swept back up. Izaak circled around behind the dragon to shoot at its back, and when the bullet pierced the scales along its spine, it roared and spun. Its heavy tail lashed through the air, cracking into the side of Izaak’s mount and knocking them into the side of a two-story home.
“Help him!” Carolina screamed to Lia as Izaak and his mount tumbled to the ground.
And as the dragon lifted its foot to crush them underneath, Carter raced in, perching Kip on its raised foot just long enough for Kip’s claws to dig in and distract it. The dragon’s focus followed as Carter took off, leaving Lia free to land and make sure Izaak was still breathing.
But Carolina had another opening. The dragon was turning away from her to chase after Carter, leaving its forward flank wide open. She dove in, hovering at its side as she made another reach for the explosives. Her fingers closed around one. She pulled it from the bag and set her other hand on top to twist, only to be thrown sideways as the dragon jolted and knocked into them.
The explosive flew out of her hand as she wrapped her arms around the mistling’s neck to keep from being thrown off, and she panicked as it sailed toward the ground too fast for her to react and catch it. But Wyatt swooped in, snatching it out of the air a mere moment before it smashed to the ground, and she breathed her relief as he ascended to her side with the outstretched orb.
“Hold onto it!” she told him, retrieving the second one from the satchel. “We’ll do it together.”
He nodded right as the dragon turned on the sound of her voice, leading with its teeth as it whipped its head down at them. They parted to dodge the snap of its jaws, its menacing growl of frustration vibrating through the air. It stormed after Wyatt next, charging at him in its fury and launching itself off the ground as he swooped upward. It missed him and went crashing down onto the first building it had collided into, toppling onto its side.
Both she and Wyatt saw the opportunity at the same time, and went careening downward as the dragon floundered out of the wreckage, but they got there too late. The dragon’s flank was no longer exposed as it wriggled onto its feet, immediately throwing itself back into the air to snap at Carolina. She pitched sideways, so close to being clamped in its jaws that the snapping of its teeth echoed in her ears .
“Carter!” she yelled. “Distract it one more time!”
Carter plunged down again, landing Kip directly on the short osteoderms along the dragon’s nose. The dragon roared, heaving its head side to side to try and shake Carter off, but Kip’s claws dug deep as they clung on. When that didn’t work, the dragon charged. It took off running with its head down as it aimed for another standing building.
That was their chance. It was completely distracted, and they both raced to its side to fly along as it ran.
“Twist!” Carolina hollered, twisting the top of her explosive. They had ten seconds, and they kept pace as she counted down in her head. Nine. Eight. The dragon’s raging snarl rumbled through her chest. Seven. Six.
“ Hurry! ” Carter bellowed from his perch on the dragon’s snout.
“Now!” Carolina screamed.
She and Wyatt hurled their explosives at the dragon’s flank at the same time as it crashed headfirst into the building, smashing Carter into the rubble before he managed to make his escape. The armed spheres sailed through the air, striking the dragon’s flesh just as they detonated.
It brayed as it wheeled on them, the gust of its turn clearing the smoke from the explosion to reveal the massive hole in its charcoal flesh.
They’d done it. Its heart was exposed.
“Shoot it!” Wyatt told her as he dove toward the rubble after Carter, pulling the dragon’s attention with him.
He landed in the debris as the dragon’s jaws widened, and Carolina pulled her pistol as the hole they’d blown already started to heal. It was closing fast as the dragon reared its head, preparing to slam its teeth through stone and crush Wyatt in its mouth. She raised her arm and pointed the barrel of her pistol directly at the closing center of the crater. She inhaled a deep breath to steady her aim as the dragon began to drive its teeth downward. And she squeezed the trigger.
Simon followed Ophelia’s gaze as she smiled up at him, turning with the stone held above his head right as two solid explosions blasted through the flank of his dragon. He dropped the stone to the side as he realized what was happening, and this was what Ophelia had been saving the last of her energy for. Because he raised his hand to begin dispelling his dragon before Carolina had a chance to shoot its heart, but Ophelia was already on her feet.
She hurled herself at him, taking him down before he finished the gesture. He landed on his stomach with her on his back, and she instantly began raining blows against the back of his head. She landed seven before he whirled over underneath her, and then he reached up to grab her shoulders and rolled again to switch their positions.
She didn’t give him a chance to rise. She launched upward and wrapped her arms around his head to pull him back down, and withstood several swift jabs to her ribs before he managed to break free. He immediately reached sideways to grab the sword within arm’s reach. His fingers closed around the grip, he lifted it into the air and aimed the point directly at her heart, and then he choked on the half-gasped breath he let out before he could drive it down.
The sword clattered out of his hand so he could clutch at his chest instead, and he struggled to draw in breath as the veins in his forehead and neck strained against his inanimate heart. The dragon crumbled into a cloud of smoke, and he fell backward off her and dropped to the ground as a warm glow lit between his palm and his heart. He tried to heal himself. Tried with what little breath he had left to force his heart to beat again.
“It won’t work,” Ophelia panted as she climbed to her feet. And despite it all, despite how cruel and ruthless he’d been, despite how much he’d hurt her, and the people she cared about, she pitied the terrified look on his face as the light faded from his eyes. “It didn’t have to be this way,” she murmured.
His head went slack, his struggling ceased, and his chest deflated as he exhaled his last breath .
Ophelia sighed as she dropped to her knees. Her head and shoulders fell, and then her body followed as she collapsed perpendicular to Simon in her exhaustion. She lay there for almost a minute as tears flooded her eyes. It was over, and she didn’t know the right way to experience all the emotions she was feeling. The pain, the grief, the joy, the relief. It was overwhelming, and she was grateful when Carolina landed nearby and rushed to her side.
“How bad is it?” Carolina asked, hands running over her body to take count of the injuries.
Ophelia didn’t care about any of them. She pushed herself up and flung her arms around Carolina’s neck, squeezing her tight as she cried into her shoulder. And she stayed like that for several minutes, soaking Carolina’s shirt. Breathing in the comfort of her sweaty and blood-soaked scent as Carolina held her tightly. Basking in the pure relief that they’d made it. They were alive.
“You’re safe,” Carolina whispered, finally pulling away and brushing her thumbs over the tears on her cheeks. “We did it.”
Ophelia nodded, saying through a tearful laugh, “I never want to do any of this ever again.”
Carolina laughed too, pulling her into another tight hug and then releasing her to press a kiss to her forehead. “Come on, let’s get you back to Omen so your mother can look after you.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean?” Carolina asked.
Before answering, Ophelia healed the broken fracture in her hand, the only wound that was hindering her and that she had the energy to, and then she held that hand out. “Take me to the courtyard,” she said as Carolina stood and took her hand to help her up. “I need to see…”
Carolina nodded, and they both climbed onto the back of her mistling and flew to the courtyard amidst victorious shouts ringing from the rebel ships above. They swooped down into the center of the terrace and dismounted amidst all of their allies who’d followed them there.
Izaak was sitting and leaning back against what remained of a wall as Lia fretted over him, and though he was injured, he was alive. Wyatt stood near the entrance with one of Carter’s arms over his shoulders, helping Carter to stand as Kip limped up the stairs behind them. The bounty hunters landed on the back of two drakens they’d recovered from the skies, and Rue, Berkeley, Peter, and her parents all touched down beside the bounty hunters the same way .
Every one of them had their eyes trained on Ophelia as she dispelled her mistling, and she couldn’t bring herself to meet a single gaze as she left Carolina’s side and trudged across the courtyard to the hole in the earth. She leaned over the edge to peer down into the darkness, and she stood quietly, staring for half a minute as she thought to herself.
Her allies were hurt. There were likely countless injured on ships who needed her at her best. Who needed her with the immeasurable energy for magic that Ascension gave her. But if she was going to succeed at what she’d try next, she needed every bit of what she had left.
So she turned and met Carolina’s eyes from across the courtyard, and Carolina held her gaze for several moments before giving her the slightest of nods. Ophelia smiled, nodded in return, and stepped backward over the edge.
As she plummeted into darkness, she twisted in the air to aim herself downward and dive toward the core of the planet. But it wasn’t like before. The farther she fell, the emptier the air felt. The wind echoed in her ears. The icy breeze felt somehow colder than it did before. And there was no light at the end of her drop.
It was so dark that she couldn’t tell at all when her fall would stop, and she certainly couldn’t see the debris and broken rock floating around her as she neared the end. Not until she crashed shoulder first into a piece of earth, and it spun her around in the air so that she collided with another. She curled into herself, wrapping her arms over her head as she nicked one more piece and then tumbled out of the long tunnel.
She stopped falling and suspended in a deep void of lifeless nothing instead. The heart’s light was gone, and as she lit a bright flame in her palm and sent it outward ahead of her, she found that it wasn’t just the heart’s light that had been destroyed. The entire core had been blown to pieces, and she was surrounded by floating bits of stone and metal. And it wasn’t just the leftover pieces of earth from the Great Rise. She was swimming in a grisly battlefield amongst the remnants of laibralt shrapnel and a mangled god.
It was far worse than she thought, and she reached out to take a tiny piece of broken heart into her palm. The white stone was misshapen and rigid and rough, some inner part of the heart that never should’ve been exposed to begin with, and she clutched it to her aching chest as tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t leave it like this. Couldn’t go back to the surface with the world’s heart in shambles, and even if she didn’t think it would work, she had to try .
She released that piece of heart back to the abyss, and then closed her misty eyes and drew in a deep, slow breath. As she let it out again, she focused on the earth. On the mineral around her. On the energy flowing through her that wasn’t hers. She outstretched her arms to bridge herself to every shattered piece of heart she could sense in that endless cavern, and she altered it.
Piece by piece she gathered the broken heart before her, fitting each fragment together as best she could. And the heart grew little by little. From the first bit she collected the size of an apple, she added, and mended, and secured, until every segment she felt a connection to was arranged within the moon-sized sphere.
But there were still cracks. Still fractures and wounds where pieces were missing, and despite her best efforts, the heart was still broken. Still gone.
Ophelia dropped her arms as one helpless tear slid down her cheek, but as she sniffled, she realized something else. Something unfamiliar. Something different. Something strong.
It was the laibralt. That conductive, catalytic shrapnel all around her that she’d never been able to feel before, but she could then. And it was everywhere , and she pulled scraps of it out of the remaining wreckage of the explosives until she’d collected every last bit of it that she could sense. Until she had such a large orb of it between her hands that she couldn’t even stretch her arms all the way around it.
She sent it forward as she altered it, and she tempered it into its molten state so that it flooded every remaining fracture in the heart. It seeped through, filling the outer cracks and binding to the blemishes. It sealed every broken piece back together, so that by the time Ophelia was done and returned the laibralt to its cooled, solid state, she didn’t have to keep holding on. She let go, the fractures in the blue and white swirl of the heart pieced back together by the bright golden brass of the laibralt.
Ophelia drifted forward until her palm set against the cool stone, and she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against it too. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she cried her hopefulness and did the very last thing she could. She poured all the energy she had left into the stone. All the life the heart had given her with Ascension. All the power. She used the laibralt as a catalyst to amplify it, and she flooded the lifeless stone beneath her palm with every last bit of love and strength she had, until it had sapped so much out of her that she couldn’t give any more.
She stopped, gasping for breath from the exertion and too afraid to open her eyes to see that she’d failed. But she hadn’t failed. Because light reached past her closed eyes and prompted them open, and it was blinding. It seeped from between the laibralt veins and the stone, and it grew with every moment that passed by until Ophelia had to shield her eyes from its brilliance. It peaked as it filled the massive chasm around them, and then faded until it was just a soft, warm glow, so dim that it barely lit Ophelia’s hands as she held them out.
“Hello?” she whispered.
There was no response, and though Ophelia was tired and drained, she lit a small flame in her palm. It was to test if she still had any of her magic, but also to provide more light than the small glimmer emanating from the heart.
“Are you there?” she asked.
Another handful of seconds went by before a voice finally responded, “Hello.”
It was as soft and quiet as her light, and it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t how the heart used to be, or as strong. But she was alive, and Ophelia let out a teary and overjoyed laugh.
“It worked,” she sniffled happily, wiping the back of her hand across her cheek. She couldn’t help herself, she pitched forward with outstretched arms, pressing herself against the warm heart.
“Thank you,” the heart said. Ophelia nodded, more tears streaming down her cheeks as she released the hug to wipe them away. “I’m sorry. I can’t give your gift back or heal you.”
Ophelia shook her head and inhaled a deep breath to calm the emotion bubbling up in her chest. “Will you be alright?”
There was another long pause before she answered, “Slowly. Yes.”
“That’s all that matters,” Ophelia told her, but then gestured toward the surface. “My friends still need me.”
“Yes,” she agreed. And even though her voice was quiet and low, there was an almost unmistakable sadness in it as she said, “Goodbye, Ophelia.”
Ophelia reached out and set her palm on the heart, leaving it there for several long, tender moments before she said, “Goodbye.”
She withdrew her hand and breathed into her palms, summoning a mistling that flew her out of the chasm and all the way back to the surface. Carolina’s face filled with relief as she breached, and she landed and dismounted as Carolina hurried over to pull her into a hug .
“You did it,” Carolina said, letting her go to gesture over at Lia, who had a warm glow beneath her palms as she healed Izaak.
Ophelia smiled and nodded, turning as Wyatt limped over with Carter still supported on his shoulders.
“It’s just a few broken ribs,” Carter was protesting in a whisper, “and you’re the one who’s shot, I can wait till she’s rested.”
Ophelia laughed and shook her head. “Come here,” she told him, and he removed his arm from Wyatt’s shoulders to stagger closer.
She set one of her hands over his torso and spent the next minute mending his broken bones and bruised organs, until he stood straight and mostly pain free again. Then she fixed the bullet wound in Wyatt’s hip, and they both told her thank you and then retreated to stand with Rue as Ophelia’s parents hurried forward.
Her mother pulled her into a tight hug, and said in an almost scolding voice, “I see those wounds and I’m fixing you up as soon as we get back to the ship.”
“I know you will,” Ophelia laughed.
Her mother let her go, and her father immediately wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you,” he said into the crown of her head, and then pressed a kiss there as she squeezed her arms tighter around his waist. “So proud.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she told him, squeezing him one more time before letting him go. She turned toward Carolina as Izaak strode over to them, stopping with Lia at his side. “Did you think we’d win that?” she asked.
“Honestly?” Izaak said, and laughed, “Not a chance.”
“What will you do now?” she asked him, adding with a grin, “Your Majesty.”
He grinned and gave an exaggerated bow. “We’ll fix this courtyard first,” he answered. “But I have a lot of work to do, and a lot of contracts to end.” She nodded her understanding, and he asked, “And you?”
Carolina slid her arm around Ophelia’s waist and smiled at her as she told Izaak, “I promised a certain someone an extended stay at the salt lakes on Keterre.”
“It’s well-earned, I’d say,” Izaak smiled. “And, as I promised,” he extended his hand to Carolina, “Omen is all yours.”
Carolina grinned and shook with him. “Thank you,” she told him. “You’ll be a good emperor. And if not, just remember I’ve got an incredible ship and won’t hesitate to go back to pirating. ”
“Understood,” Izaak laughed. “Take care, and if you ever need anything, you know where to find me.” They all nodded, but before leaving, he turned toward Ophelia’s father. “Commander, there’s still a place for you in the castle, if you’d give me a chance. I really could use a man of your prestige.”
Her father held out his hand and shook with Izaak, saying, “Thank you. I’ll take it into consideration.”
Izaak nodded, passed a parting wave around at the rest of them, and then mounted with Lia and the rest of his remaining rebels to return to their ships in the sky.
“So!” Berkeley announced, jaunting forward to throw an arm over her and Carolina’s shoulders. “The salt lakes, huh? I could use a holiday.” He turned them around to face everyone else. “What do you say?”
Rue looked over at Wyatt and asked, “You coming?”
His eyebrows lifted. “If I’m invited, then I wouldn’t miss it.”
Carolina trudged to them and stood in front of Wyatt for several quiet moments before she stuck out her hand and said, “Welcome aboard,” and Wyatt grinned and shook with her.
“Count me in,” Carter volunteered.
“I second that,” Peter added.
“I adore the salt lakes,” her mother said, and her father nodded his agreement.
Carter tossed his chin toward the bounty hunters and asked, “Piers?”
Piers looked at his fathers, and Ophelia ducked out from under Berkeley’s arm to make her way to them.
“Your work for Sovereign is done,” she told Gerald. “And if the start of your free life begins with the rest of us, at Keterre, then I think I could tolerate you.”
Gerald barked out a laugh as he set an amused hand on her shoulder, and they snickered at each other for a few moments before he patted that shoulder and then grabbed one of Piers and Abner’s hands. “Sure. Why not?” he said.
“ Yes! ” Piers hollered, pulling away from Gerald’s hand to run to Carter and Wyatt, and he and Carter jumped together excitedly.
And while the rest of them began to chat excitedly about all the things they wanted to do or not do at the salt lakes, Carolina wandered back over and slid her arms around Ophelia’s waist.
“So,” Carolina murmured. “Ascension? ”
“Gone,” Ophelia answered, slipping her own arms around Carolina’s neck. “I’m just a regular old Caster again.”
“And we feel good about that?” Carolina asked.
“We feel great about that,” she answered.
“Well then,” Carolina said, and Ophelia hummed, “off to our future?”
Ophelia pulled her into a long, deep kiss that filled her with so much warmth and joy that she was grinning by the end of it, and she set her forehead against Carolina’s and nodded. “To the rest of our lives.”