Chapter 7 #3
"Hold him!" Davoren roared, already preparing another attack. This time he didn't just breathe fire—he became it, his entire form shifting to pure magma that flowed toward Sereis with the inevitability of a pyroclastic flow.
Sereis countered with an explosion of ice that went in all directions, a sphere of absolute zero that forced them all back momentarily.
The eternal ice pillars throughout the room resonated with the power, singing in harmonics that made my teeth ache.
For a moment, I thought he might actually fight them off, might manage to defend his domain against impossible odds.
Then Morgrith struck from shadow itself. He didn't attack Sereis's body but his shadow, somehow grasping it and pulling in directions shadows shouldn't go. Sereis stumbled, his concentration breaking for just a moment, and that was all the opening they needed.
Zephyron's winds held him in place. Garruk's stone trapped his claws completely.
Davoren's heat began to overwhelm even Sereis's infinite cold.
Caelus darted in and out, each pass leaving frozen wounds from paradoxical ice-lightning.
They were coordinating now, five Dragon Lords working in concert for the first time in centuries, and Sereis—powerful as he was—couldn't match their combined fury.
That's when Kara moved.
I'd almost forgotten her in the chaos, this small human figure somehow balanced on Davoren's shoulder throughout the aerial combat.
She'd been waiting, that spear of condensed flame held with the patience of a hunter.
When she finally threw it, the motion was beautiful and terrible—a perfect arc that my merchant-trained mind recognized as mathematically flawless.
The spear moved through magical defenses like they didn't exist. Dragon magic, human will, and something else—something new that came from the combination—gave it properties that bypassed natural protections.
It pierced Sereis's shoulder with a sound like reality tearing, driving deep into aurora scales that should have been impervious.
Sereis's roar of pain made the entire palace shudder.
Windows throughout the structure exploded outward, unable to contain that frequency of anguish.
The black ice barrier protecting me cracked but held, though I felt the sympathetic agony through our partial bond like my own shoulder had been pierced.
He thrashed, his tail taking out what remained of the Amber Parlor's walls, his wings beating with desperate fury.
Ice exploded outward from him in a final desperate defense—not an attack but a barrier, a sphere of compressed winter that forced all five Dragon Lords back.
They could have pressed through it, but something in that roar had changed the situation.
This wasn't the sound of an enemy being defeated—this was the sound of someone who might have been innocent being tortured.
In the sudden stillness that followed, Sereis hung in the air for a moment, Kara's spear still burning through his shoulder, before crashing to what remained of the floor.
The impact sent cracks running through the ice for hundreds of feet in all directions, and I felt something fundamental in the palace's structure shift, as if the building itself was wounded by its master's pain.
Aurora blood—if that's what it could be called—pooled beneath him, freezing and refreezing in patterns that looked like stellar maps. Each drop that fell seemed to carry a memory of winter, a moment of perfect cold that would never come again.
The five Dragon Lords surrounded him, their forms still combat-ready but no longer actively attacking. They were waiting, watching, perhaps finally questioning what they'd come here to do.
The shift back to human form shouldn't have been possible with that spear still burning through his shoulder, but Sereis managed it with the kind of control that made me realize how much power he kept leashed even in combat.
His dragon shape collapsed inward like winter retreating, scales becoming skin, wings folding into nothing, until he knelt on the shattered floor in human form with Kara's spear still piercing him.
The weapon looked even more wrong now—a bar of condensed flame running through flesh that had gone pale as fresh snow, his white robes already soaking crimson where the wound wept.
He didn't cry out. Didn't even wince. Just reached into his robes with his good arm and withdrew the contract the young trader had produced, holding it up like a talisman against the five Dragon Lords who still surrounded him in their true forms. Solmar's seal caught what light remained in the ruined parlor, the wax gleaming with an oily sheen that suggested corruption.
"Varek Solmar," he said, and his voice carried despite the blood I could see on his lips.
Each word came with visible effort, but also with the kind of precision that turned accusation into proof.
"The same merchant who tried to claim Lady Kara before her bonding.
The same one who lost a fortune when that claim was denied. "
The silence that followed felt like the space between lightning and thunder—charged, waiting, inevitable. I saw Davoren's massive head tilt, those molten eyes focusing on the contract with an intensity that made the air around him shimmer.
"The Ghost Monks of the Eastern Wastes," Sereis continued, his free hand pressing against the wound to slow the bleeding.
The gesture was futile—dragon weapons weren't meant to be survivable—but he needed time to speak his truth.
"They taught him to replicate dragon signatures.
Three years he spent in those ruins, learning the old magics that let humans forge our marks.
The traders were quite detailed in their admiration once the wine loosened their tongues. "
He gestured weakly toward where the traders still cowered, though two had fainted entirely and the third was curled in a ball, rocking and whimpering.
They looked pathetic now, these men who'd been so proud of their employer's cleverness, reduced to quivering flesh by the proximity to dragon warfare.
Davoren's reaction was volcanic—literal steam rising from his scales as his rage shifted targets. The magma that composed his form brightened from red to white-hot, and when he spoke, his voice made the ruined palace shudder.
"Solmar." The name came out like a curse, like a promise of destruction.
"He was contracted to marry Kara. I took her from him, broke his claim with the Caretaker Pact.
" His massive head swung toward Kara, still perched on his shoulder despite his dragon form.
"This is revenge. He's using dragon magic against us because he lost his human prize. "
The recognition rippled through the other Dragon Lords.
Zephyron's lightning dimmed to thoughtful sparks.
Garruk's stone form settled, no longer poised to attack.
Morgrith emerged more fully from shadow, his attention fixed on the testimonial crystals that continued their playback.
Even Caelus had stopped his restless circling, his silver form solidifying as he processed this new information.
One by one, they began to shift back to human form.
Davoren first, his magma scales cooling to copper skin, his massive form condensing to merely imposing height.
Kara slid from his shoulder to land beside him with practiced grace, that spear still burning in her hand like a piece of captive sun.
The others followed—Zephyron becoming a tall figure in storm-gray robes, Garruk's mountain mass transforming to broad shoulders and hands that looked like they could shape stone, Morgrith stepping out of shadow as if he'd always been standing there, Caelus's wind becoming flesh with an almost disappointed sigh.
They stood in a rough circle around Sereis, no longer attackers but witnesses to his truth. The shift in atmosphere was palpable—from violence to recognition, from rage to something more dangerous: cold, calculated fury directed at someone who wasn't here to face it.
Kara moved forward, and I wanted to scream at her to stop, to leave that spear where it was because removing it might be what killed him. But she knew what she was doing. Her hand wrapped around the burning shaft, and with one smooth motion, she pulled it free.
Sereis didn't scream, but his entire body convulsed.
More blood—that aurora blood that looked like liquid starlight—poured from the wound.
He swayed but remained kneeling, his pride too strong to let him collapse entirely.
The spear dissolved in Kara's hand, its purpose served, returning to whatever realm such weapons came from when their work was done.
"Forgiven," Sereis said, though nobody had asked for forgiveness.
He was offering it anyway—absolving them for their attack, for their assumptions, for the violence they'd brought to his domain.
His eyes found each Dragon Lord in turn, then settled on me where I still pressed against the cracked black ice barrier.
"We have all been deceived. The question now is what we do about it. "
The blood pooling beneath him had spread far enough to touch my barrier, freezing instantly into patterns that looked like winter flowers.
Each drop that fell seemed to take something from him, dimming the perpetual winter that lived behind his eyes.
He was dying, or would be if he were purely human.
But the dragon in him was too strong for that, would keep him alive through sheer will even as his body tried to quit.
"Heal him," Kara said to Davoren, her voice carrying command despite their obvious bond. "You burned him, Daddy, so you must heal him. Then we discuss how to make Solmar pay for playing us against each other."