1. The Breaking of Things and Beginning of Others #2
Behind the man, his soulkin, Shinyara, lifted herself to her full height and shook her body as though loosing a layer of snow.
The dragon was slender but dense, not a single piece of wasted energy in her movements.
Her scales were the colour of beaten gold, her horns flowing across her skull like streams of water.
She lowered a winged forelimb, and Farda climbed astride her back.
“I would rather face the consequences of disobedience than those of inaction.” Farda looked to Alvira and nodded. “I’m with you sister. Draleid n’aldryr.”
Dragonbound by fire.
“Rakina nai dauva,” she replied. Broken by death. A flicker of fear ignited deep within her as the words touched her lips. But the fire in Vyldrar’s heart set that fear aflame.
“M? vaera tié.” Let it be so. Eltoar pulled a long breath inwards, then exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “Uthikar. Altinua uthikar.”
Together. Always together.
Eltoar turned and strode towards Helios, calling to his apprentice. “Maquil. V’iralíse.”
Maquil. We fly.
Like a shifting mountain, Helios rose, Eltoar seeming to shrink in his shadow.
A series of deep, guttural booms reverberated in the great dragon’s throat as he spread his crimson wings and lifted his head.
Alvira could almost feel the air being pulled from around her as the dragon’s chest swelled before he unleashed a roar that shook through her and Vyldrar’s bones.
That primal sound surged through them like lightning. A call to the fires of battle, a warning to those who would stand in their way.
The traitors had not known of their presence.
But there could never be a sense of surprise with a dragon as large as Helios.
The moment he took flight, the world stopped to witness.
And as he charged forwards, spreading those bloody wings wide, the earth cracking beneath him, Alvira thanked Varyn that she and Vyldrar flew at Helios’s back and not beneath his rage.
With a breath, she leaned forwards and rested her hands on Vyldrar’s scales. “I’ldryr viel asatar. I sanv?r viel baralun, myia’n?ra. Anat’aier aldryr ar orimyn, anat’aier syrna ar galbarak.”
In fire we are forged. In blood we are tempered, my light. Give them fire and fury, give them wrath and vengeance.
With that, Vyldrar spread his wings, surged forwards, and leapt from the cliff.
The rush of air, that surge of elation, gave Alvira a momentary reprieve from what was to come.
There was nothing akin to the lightness in her shared soul when Vyldrar took to the sky, his mighty wings churning the air, the sheer power of his heart thumping in their veins.
They were one. A single force of scale and flesh bound by the will of the gods themselves.
Her father had dreamt of the skies since he was a little boy, dreamt of becoming a Draleid. She only wished he had lived long enough to see her flit between the clouds, to see her find her purpose. Their souls would meet again one day, and she would have many stories to tell him.
Vyldrar angled his wings, and they ripped forwards through the sky, the wind lashing at Alvira’s face. The thoughts of pride and family burned themselves from her mind, replaced with the sight of Vastillion aflame, the traitors pouring dragonfire over the innocent souls below.
All eight of the traitors had already pulled away from the city and were moving to meet them in the open skies. Most were larger than Vyldrar, with the exception of a small cream-scaled dragon with dark horns and deep red wings.
“We’ll take the largest,” Eltoar called out, his voice carried on threads of Air.
“Maquil and Alvira, stay at Shinyara’s side.
Do not separate. Above all, do not hesitate.
When dragons collide, death is all the world knows.
Seconds alone will separate us from them.
Life from death. This will be like nothing you have ever known. Hold fast.”
Eltoar’s words were like a ball of stone in Alvira’s stomach, her heart beating with Vyldrar’s as his wings bore them across the sky.
She opened herself to the Spark, feeling its warmth flood her veins, feeling the threads of Fire kiss her skin as the threads of Air swirled about her. Spirit and Earth filled the hollows of her bones.
With a roar and a crack of his mighty wings, Helios careened forwards at a speed Alvira had not thought possible.
He surged ahead of the others and closed the distance between them and the traitors in but a few heartbeats.
A slight shift in the air and Alvira watched in awe as the great black dragon strafed sideways and crashed into the largest of the traitors like a mountain thrown by Hafaesír himself.
Helios’s jaws closed about the other dragon’s throat, scales cracking.
In the same motion, he lifted his legs and raked his enormous talons across the blue-scaled creature’s chest. The sky rained crimson, blood spewing from deep wounds as the two tangled dragons barrelled towards the city.
Three of the traitors broke off and plummeted after Helios.
Alvira had but a moment to watch in horror before the dance of claw and fang descended upon her. Farda flew to her left, Maquil on his other side. Ahead, the four remaining traitors hurtled towards them, scales rippling, thunderous roars spewing forth.
In that moment the world seemed darker than before, the light of day blocked out by the canopy of wing and scale.
“Centre!” Farda roared, a stillness snatching at the world for just a moment. “Red scales. Neck, heart, belly. Endryía!”
Engage.
In a single crushing moment, the dragons collided.