Chapter 6 Darkness
Darkness
“He’s here! He’s gone! Though what an exit!” Illarion offered Valerius a hand up from the ground. “Did you see what Caden did to that bastard’s tail? Ice! Pure ice.”
Valerius grasped Illarion's hand and scrambled to his feet. He slung the rifle over his back, the strap laying across his bare chest. He might still need it. He’d keep it until Raziel returned.
“Caden and Iolaire kicked the Behemoth’s butt! Literally!” Illarion chortled.
The Green Dragon King kicked part of the tail, which was, as he said, a block of ice out of the room and into the courtyard.
It hit and ricocheted against other chunks before being stopped by the largest piece.
That was the base of the tail where it had sheared off from the Behemoth’s main body.
Blood smeared half of it and it was starting to melt, leaving a pool of smelly, biological fluid.
Jahara picked up one of the chunks of “ice”.
“You can see the veins and arteries inside it. Even the scales! But this isn’t frozen flesh at all. It’s just ice. Like an ice sculpture,” Jahara said with awe in her voice and eyes.
“Like no ice sculpture I’ve ever seen,” Anwar murmured as he fished around the ice, picking up a scaled piece before tossing it away.
“And we thought Caden and Iolaire were the weakest of us!” Mei remarked with a bark of laughter. She shook her head. “I’m glad we were wrong.”
“He’s just learning,” Esme said as she rearranged her hair back into its careful coif. Her dress was torn and ripped, but she still looked regal nonetheless. “Who knows how powerful he’ll be in time.”
“Indeed. And he is learning at record speed also thankfully,” Jahara mused as she twisted and turned the ice in the light.
There was blood running down Jahara’s right temple, bruises on her knees and left thigh, and raw scrapes on her bare shoulders, but she appeared not to notice them at all even as her Wise Women fanned out into the group and began to clean wounds.
Valerius felt the sting of cuts all over the bottom of his bare feet and shoulders from the broken glass, but he waved away help.
Once Raziel returned, everything would heal.
Now that he’d seen Caden he knew that was going to happen soon.
He ached and was tired, but the bone deep exhaustion was gone.
He had a feeling that this meant that Raziel was doing better, too.
He wished he’d had the time to ask Caden.
He was certain there was a story to be told there.
“Caden can cause us to shift. I suppose he went after the Behemoth now to do that. Send the blasted thing back to the Spirit Realm and solve our problem of it blowing up a huge chunk of Valerius’ territory,” Tez said as he dusted dirt and rubble off of him and Kaila.
“Yes, that’s what Caden said. Or I think he did. My ears were ringing,” Valerius said and grimaced as he strode outside onto the courtyard.
He wanted to see Caden and Iolaire. He wasn’t afraid for them, strangely.
He had a sense that Caden was different.
More confident. More composed. More accepting fully of what he was.
Caden had always been capable, but there had been this sense of completeness and comfort in what he was that had not been there before.
The others followed his bloody footprints outside.
“Valerius, you’re bleeding quite a bit,” Tez remarked. “You really should get that seen to.”
“It will be fine. We’ll all be fine. Soon,” Valerius said as his eyes scanned the sky for a white glowing draconid form. Bleeding or no, healing or no, he would not have gone in and been tended to with Caden out there. He needed to see his lover.
“There!” Illarion’s left hand shot out towards the Mid. “Caden and Iolaire have that ugly bastard down already!”
The beautiful White Dragon hovered above Dragon Strike Square.
Caden. Iolaire. Thank the gods.
His heart swelled in relief and joy. They were all right.
They were more than all right. They seemed in charge.
But then he looked farther down. In the center of the square was a large furrow where the Behemoth had crash landed.
Even from here, he could tell that it wasn’t just rock and dirt piled up on either side of the hideous hydra.
Is it still a Hydra with one head? Valerius thought. It is a particularly hideous Dragon… no, not a Dragon. I do not know what that is.
“In the Square… all those people,”Jahara whispered. She dropped the chunk of ice and held onto the railing. “Death.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Esme said softly. “We knew we weren’t going to get out of this night without casualties.”
“I thought the casualties would be us,” Tez admitted and Kaila put a comforting arm around his waist.
“It’s not over yet,” Mei remarked darkly.
“Oh, I think it rather is,” Illarion chuckled. “Can’t you feel it? Caden and Iolaire’s gift. It’s in the rising of the storm. Look!”
Lightning cracked open the sky. The Helix with the red and white was still slowly spinning. The lightning seemed to come from it. There was a terrible, bone-shaking roar from the Behemoth and then there was a light. A burst of white light that left Iolaire and pulsed outwards.
The light spread over the Behemoth’s body. The Behemoth’s head reared back as if denying the call--the command--and then there was another pulse. The Behemoth’s body quivered. A shudder went all the way through it. The flesh began to blur. And then… then the Behemoth was gone.
The White Dragon darted in and caught people that were falling. The Behemoth must have grabbed hold of some before it simply winked out of existence. But no, it still existed. It had just shifted back to the Horde.
“He caught them!” Jahara clasped her hands under her chin as if in prayer.
“But not all of them.” Kaila squinted. “There are others, naked, running into the crowd--”
“The Horde,” Anwar breathed. “Of course, they’re still here and still under the Behemoth’s control until our Dragons destroy the creature!”
“It doesn’t look like all of them though. Just a few,” Kaila said as she squinted. “Unless the others are dead already.”
“Is that good that there are so few then?” Tez asked. “Well, probably good, because Caden and Iolaire can handle them alone, but that means a lot of those souls won’t have bodies to go back to.”
“Caden and Iolaire shouldn’t be alone though. Where are Chione and the others?” Esme asked. “My night vision is terrible! Getting old truly is for the birds!”
“Age has written the wisdom of your life on your body, old friend. There is no shame in that,” Jahara said, patting Esme’s shoulder.
Valerius’ eyes went from Caden and the square to something nearer.
The bridge. Like the others, he was wondering where Chione, Rose, Wally and Marban were, not to mention Simi, Nygoye and the rest of the Claw.
Why had they not come up to try and fight the Behemoth when it was outside the throne room?
He was glad they hadn’t. They would have been desperately hurt, but still. Where were they?
And then he saw.
“Chione,” Valerius breathed and he was moving before he consciously thought about it.
The others called out after him, but he didn’t stop and he had no thought or breath to tell them what he’d seen.
They would see it soon enough themselves.
The Wise Women cried out in concern as he flew past them and down the hallway and then out of High Reach.
He was out in the entrance courtyard, stones cutting into his already bleeding and bruised feet. The gate was still closed.
“Open it! Open it!” Valerius shouted at the Claw who stared down at him from the two guard towers flanking the gate with open mouths.
“Here, King Valerius, come through this door.” It was Ngoye who spoke.
There was a door cut into the gate that could be opened even if the main gate remained shut.
She opened it and gestured for him to join her.
She was naked and her dark brown skin was covered in splatters of blood, but it did not appear to be her own.
Or she had already healed as her Lion Spirit had protected her.
But there was exhaustion written in her handsome, dark face and eyes.
“Chione,” he said in explanation.
“I know,” she said and stepped aside as he ducked through the gate. “She kept the Horde from getting to the gate.”
And he could see that. She was lying prone in the mid-point of the bridge.
There was none of the Horde between her and the gate.
But on the other side were scores of moaning and writhing people.
The Claw were trussing up each of the Horde at the feet and ankles, making sure they couldn’t get away.
Even when the human souls were returned to the Horde bodies they would have to separate the innocent from the truly guilty.
With relief, he caught sight of Simi leading the round up of the prisoners. There was blood splashed on his face and bare chest, but the lean, tawny body appeared unharmed.
Ngoye continued, “At first, Chione was flying down and grabbing those who we sent off the sides of the bridge. Stopping them from being killed.” Ngoye shook her head as if she thought that foolish and he understood why.
The Horde was still possessed by the Behemoth’s evil soul.
A monster’s soul. “But then we were overwhelmed and she landed in the middle of them.”
He saw what looked like blast marks etched into the stone as he hobbled towards his Councillor and his best friend. Tears were running down his face and he hadn’t even noticed. She had to be all right. She had to be!
“Wave after wave kept coming, but she held them back. I don’t know how,” Ngoye’s voice held wonder and deep respect from one warrior to another. “And she didn’t kill one of them. It was more than they deserved.”