Chapter 43
The stairs went on forever.
Xiir pulled himself up another step. His claws scraped the stone, the sound thin and pathetic in the silence. His hind legs dragged behind him, dead from the thigh down, leaving twin smears of blood on the steps like the trail of a gutted animal.
Which he mostly was.
He hooked his front claws into the next step’s edge, pulled, and his body moved up one more. His tail helped, pressing flat against the step below and pushing, the muscles there still functional, somewhat.
One more step.
The dirt of the corridor had already killed his sense of smell. All he could taste was blood, and the foul feeling of his brother’s blood.
It wouldn’t leave.
Vress’s blood had been warm when Xiir drank it. Still warm, because the body hadn’t cooled yet, because the blades had only just killed him.
He never wanted to drink his brother’s blood. But he was dying, and Vress was already dead.
Only thanks to Vress did Xiir avoid bleeding out.
He pushed himself up another step. The exit to the open air loomed up ahead.
Almost there.
Vress would have understood. Had it been reversed, had Xiir been killed by the trap, he would have wanted Vress to save himself by drinking his blood.
But it didn’t make it taste any less foul.
He hated the aftertaste.
Another step.
He didn’t know how long he’d been crawling. Time had stopped making sense somewhere around the first long corridor. The temple was built to be ascended on foot, not by a drake dragging himself upstairs with two dead legs and a body held together by grief and stolen blood.
His wing caught the wall. He hissed, folding it tighter. The corridor was too narrow for him to spread them even halfway, which meant every few steps, a wing tip scraped stone and sent a jolt of pain through his shoulder.
He pulled himself up another step.
He was not going to die in this stairwell.
A crack of scales and a drake grunt of pain echoed from above.
Xiir froze, every muscle locking.
A roar echoed from above, followed by an unmistakable torrent of flame crossing over the opening. Another crack of scales, another grunt of pain. Claws scraping on stone, a thud, whining in pain, another thud, gurgling, and silence.
Xiir’s claws tightened on the stone. He pressed himself flat.
Luna walked into the hallway, heading toward him.
Covered in soot and dried blood, she walked in a casual, unhurried manner.
No visible weapons, though a streak of fresh blood marred her pants.
She had neither the backpack nor the spear, only a large waterskin hung by her belt. She waved with her hand. “Hey.”
Casual and carefree, like everything she always said. Xiir knew he was looking his own death in the face. He gathered what remained of his fire.
She would dodge. He knew.
He always knew.
But he wasn’t going to just roll over and die. He was going to make her dodge that fire torrent.
Luna tilted her head as she kept walking toward him. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
He kept the heat gathered. A faint wisp of smoke curled from his nostrils. “I’m listening.” The words scraped out of him like stone on stone. He hated how small his voice sounded.
Luna walked closer, slipped past his mouth, and leaned on his side, casually placing her arm over his neck.
“So, here’s the deal. I’ve got something that’ll help you recover.
And I’ll even let you live.” She paused, just long enough for the weight of the alternative to settle. “But you’ll do a few things for me.”
He let the heat disperse back into him. She had already reached an angle where he couldn’t get her. She knew his blind angles better than he did. She always did. “What things?”
“Right, so we’ve killed Verathras.”
His eyes shot wide. Impossible. He felt a disturbance in his soul, but he couldn’t ever imagine it meant that.
“But that’s not the story that needs to be told.
Mostly. What I need you to do is to fly to Vellhorn and tell everyone that the harbinger of the gods killed Verathras.
But, straight after that, Garrett, the last hero of Vellhorn, vanquished the harbinger.
The city is safe, the threat is gone, and with his last words, Verathras named Garrett the governor of Vellhorn. ”
Xiir blinked. He faintly remembered Garrett as one of the not-terrible adventurers. They never exactly crossed paths, though. “No one will believe that. Everyone knows that couldn’t have happened.”
“Everyone in the know is dead. With you being the last member of the dragonkin in the region, and the adventurers’ guild being wiped out, leaving Garrett as the last adventurer, the last hero of Vellhorn, there’s no one to claim otherwise.
Especially since you’ll pick Garrett up at Yellowrest and fly him to Vellhorn on your back.
Oh, and tell him to abolish the child quota. ”
The audacity of it sat in the air between them. “How awfully convenient.” He grunted.
“It’s how it usually goes with me around. I bring bad luck.” She sighed. “No matter where I go and what I do, it somehow always ends up in an absolute massacre.”
And if he didn’t play along, he would end up as a part of that massacre.
But it was going to work. Xiir knew. The last adventurer and the last dragon were going to claim the city as theirs. No one was going to stand up. Damn it, everyone was going to be happy things were going to remain in some order.
And while he may have been temporarily indisposed, Xiir was still a dragon. He could incinerate whoever did stand up. If he could move, that was. “A cute plan, but I can’t even make it up the stairs.”
She released the waterskin from her belt. “Drink up.”
He opened his mouth, tilting his head. She uncorked the waterskin, releasing blood into his mouth. All his senses ignited to life as it reached his throat. Verathras’s blood, he realized.
“I’m not sure anyone told you this,” Luna said as she kept pouring. “But your kind gets stronger by drinking the blood of other recently deceased dragons. You should totally have a drink from the two drakes I killed outside.”
Xiir drank to the last drop. “What about you two?”
“Alsen and I will vanish. We’ll never return to the region, so you really don’t have to worry about us. After all, we’ve been vanquished by the last hero of Vellhorn.” She patted him on the side and headed up the stairs.
She left.
THE END