Chapter 20
Azh was prepared as the ground crumbled beneath his feet. He’d assumed that there would be snares and traps waiting for them. The corruption—or whatever malignant force was currently tormenting Wynn—had been luring them to this particular spot for days. Maybe even months.
He’d be a fool not to suspect it had planned for their eventual arrival.
But falling through the darkness to land in the deep pit, Azh was still struggling to regain his balance when a shimmering portal opened directly in front of him.
“Come through,” a harsh voice commanded. “I can’t hold it forever.”
Azh hissed, releasing his powerful magic at the same time shimmering strands whipped out of the portal to wrap around him. The next thing he knew, he was being jerked through the opening and tossed onto a stone floor that was hot beneath his body.
“What took you so long?” that same male voice demanded.
Azh surged to his feet, the beast inside him roaring with outrage. Never in his very long life had he been tossed around like he was a sack of potatoes. Not even when he was a newly hatched dragon.
Prepared to strike, he ran a furious gaze over the male wearing a long robe who was currently regarding him with a grim expression.
The stranger was obviously a dragon although he was in human form with a slender body and bald head.
The aura around him flared with a golden hue that was beginning to fade around the edges, as if he were ancient.
Or maybe sick. But it was the thin face disfigured by four claw marks angling from his left temple to his ear that captured and held Azh’s attention.
There was something about those scars that stirred a distant memory. He hadn’t seen this male before, but he sensed he should recognize him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Zion, Royal Councilor.”
Azh hissed. He recognized the name. Zion had been a renowned general during the dragon civil war and later the most trusted councilor to Gabriela.
His name had been spoken in reverent whispers by the ancient dragons who’d told stories of the homeland.
But Zion was supposed to be a legend. Not a living creature who was glaring at him with blatant impatience.
“Are you here to protect Gabriela...wait. It doesn’t matter.
” Azh’s confusion was quickly replaced by a sharp-edged urgency.
He glanced toward the spot where he’d been hauled through the portal.
His connection to Wynn was muffled, as if his trip through the opening had placed a barrier between them, but he could sense she was in danger.
He had to get to her. “Take me back to where I came from.”
The older male shook his head. “Impossible.”
Azh instinctively lashed out, his flames sweeping over Zion. Not hot enough to kill, but an unspoken warning.
“Take me back.”
The man lifted one slender finger, easily smothering the fire. He might have looked emaciated, as if he’d been worn to the bone, but he maintained a shocking amount of strength.
“The door is one-way,” Zion said.
Azh released a low growl. “I don’t believe you.”
“Try for yourself.” Zion stepped to the side, nodding toward the closed portal.
Azh didn’t hesitate. Calling on his magic, he smashed it against the spot he’d entered the...well, actually he didn’t know where he was. All he could see was smooth stone. As if he were in a pit. Or a dungeon. The magic hit the wall and exploded, sending him flying backward.
He cursed as he skidded across the smooth floor, his back at last slamming into a hard shelf that brought him to a painful halt. Glancing over his shoulder he realized it wasn’t a shelf he’d hit. It was the edge of a marble dais with a gem-encrusted throne perched in the center.
“What is this place?” he asked, forcing himself to his feet.
“Kazak.” Zion snapped his fingers and light cascaded from an unseen source to reveal a pyramid-shaped room with shimmering hieroglyphs carved into the soaring ceiling. Oddly, there was a deep crack in the floor, as if something had caused damage that couldn’t be repaired.
Azh shuddered. There was something about that crack that warned he didn’t want to get near it. He turned back to face his companion.
“This has to be an illusion,” he accused.
“It’s real enough.” Zion snapped his fingers again and a series of heavy copper doors slid open to reveal a brilliant blue sky with two red-tinted suns and tiny puffs of clouds. “Abandoned, but real.”
There was a hint of aching sadness in the male’s voice, but Azh was less concerned with the fact that the skies were empty, and more concerned with the realization that it was still there. Had any of the stories he’d read been true?
“I’ve studied hundreds of history books. They all claim this place was destroyed by the corruption,” he said, his feet carrying him to the opening to peer down at the lush green landscape and the distant ocean that sparkled in the sunlight.
“It was,” Zion assured him as he moved to stand at Azh’s side.
Azh snorted, pointing toward the rolling hills dotted with herds of antelope.
“This is destroyed?”
“Once the evil was removed, the land slowly began to heal. It took eons, but it’s at last returned to the paradise it was meant to be.”
Was this male saying that the corruption was gone? Azh struggled to comprehend what that would mean for his people. The consequences of having his homeland free of evil was so vast he could barely allow himself to hope.
“You did this?” he rasped. “You cleansed the magic?”
“No.” Zion scowled, his scars twisting as if he were struggling against a powerful emotion. “That was the mistake I made for too long.”
“What mistake?”
“Believing the magic could be cleansed.”
Azh continued to stare at his homeland with a strange sense of bemusement. Of all the possible futures he’d considered for his people, he’d never once dreamed they would return to Kazak.
“Obviously you did something to repair the damage,” Azh insisted.
“There was no repair.” Zion pointed toward a cloud in the sky. He released a burst of magic to send the cloud scampering out of the way, revealing a jagged hole patched over by a shimmering magic. “I’ve imprisoned the source of the evil.”
Azh knew instinctively what he was staring at. “That’s the rift to the human world. The one created by Gabriela.”
“It is. Once the evil followed Gabriela through the rift, I built a barrier to keep it trapped between the two worlds.”
Azh glanced back at Zion. “You were the one who trapped the corruption?”
“Yes.”
“Then the histories are wrong again. The ancestors were convinced that Gabriela sacrificed herself to close the rift and keep the corruption from following us.”
“We were all wrong about a lot of things.” Without warning, Zion closed the panel, sealing them in the pyramid. “You need to understand.”
Azh blinked, jerked out of his weird stupor. Later he’d deal with the shocking revelation that his homeland was still here and gloriously healed. Right now, nothing mattered more than returning to Wynn.
“I don’t have time for this now. I have to go back.”
Zion moved, as if intending to physically hold him in place if necessary. “This is important, Azh. The survival of the dragons, along with your female, depend on you.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything,” the male announced without arrogance.
It was a simple statement of fact. “I’ve witnessed the early battles between dragons and vampires and the treaty that forced our people into hibernation.
I witnessed your mother’s betrayal and your own transformation from hatchling to unquestioned ruler of the dragons.
That’s why it has to be you that finishes this. Only you.”
Azh’s excruciating need to rush back to Wynn didn’t lessen, but he grudgingly accepted he couldn’t ignore the elder dragon’s fierce warning.
A part of him had known his entire life that he was ordained for this precise moment.
That at some point he’d be called on to shoulder the fate of the dragons.
“What do I need to understand?” he snapped, vibrating with the urgency to get his duty done so he could be with Wynn.
Zion turned to nod toward the empty crack next to the glittering throne.
“When the evil first contaminated the magic, we all assumed it was the after-effects of the civil war that ripped apart the dragons. It’s not unusual for strong emotions to create a toxic brew that eventually takes on a power of its own. ”
Azh nodded. “In the world I come from it’s known as a miasma.”
Zion managed to look even more grim, his fingers trailing along the scars that marred his face.
“After all the death and suffering we endured it would have been shocking if our homeland wasn’t tainted by the destruction we’d caused. It was an unbearable tragedy.”
Azh had read the histories written about the civil war, but he no longer trusted what they claimed as truth. As Wynn had pointed out, those books were written by the victors and those in power. It was to their benefit to offer a distorted view of the causes and victims of any conflict.
Unfortunately, delving into the truth of the past was yet another thing that would have to wait.
“Why are you convinced that the war wasn’t the cause of the corruption?”
“We did everything to purge the evil. Including the combination of magic by our most powerful dragons to destroy it. The best we could do was contain it within this royal temple.”
Azh glanced around, belatedly realizing that this was more than a throne room perched in the sky.
It had become a prison.
His attention returned to the elder dragon. “Once the evil tainted the magic, your efforts might have made things worse, not better. It could have been feeding on whatever power you were using to destroy it.”
Zion sent him an approving nod. “That was my thought as well. But first I wanted to test the theory.”
“How?”
“I captured a portion of the magic in a lead container that had been wrapped in a binding spell and took it to an isolated spot in the mountains.”
Azh arched a brow. He liked to think he was courageous, but the thought of gathering the green sludge and hauling it around sent shudders of horror through him.
“You went alone?”
“I had no choice. I wanted to eliminate any possibility it was capable of feeding from a dragon without them being aware of what was happening. And of course, there was the risk the corruption might infect any companion I brought with me. I’d taken precautions to ensure that if I was tainted I would be unable to leave the cavern I’d chosen.
” The male didn’t have to explain that he’d triggered a doomsday countdown.
Every dragon possessed the ability to destroy themselves in a worst-case scenario.
It meant they couldn’t be taken captive and imprisoned by their enemies or forced to use their enormous powers against their will.
It was also used when they were too grievously injured to heal themselves.
Zion shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t truly expect anything to happen.
It was more a desperate attempt to feel as if I was still trying to rid us of the evil than a truly scientific experiment. ”
Azh could sympathize. That’s what he’d been doing the past weeks. Simply running around trying to stumble across the truth.
“But something did happen?” he asked.
Zion’s expression remained calm, but he pressed his hands together, as if battling against a wave of emotions.
“Once I created a barrier to keep the corruption trapped and any outside magic from getting in, I settled in and prepared to wait.”
“And?”
“And there was no need to wait. As soon as the barrier was fully in place, the magic was cleansed. I couldn’t believe it had been that simple.”
Azh was confused. He’d seen the evil with his own eyes. “The corruption was gone?”
“Completely.”
“Wait. So does that mean the corruption feeds on magic?”
Zion held up his hand, as if urging Azh to remain patient. A task that was painfully difficult when every instinct screamed that Wynn was in trouble.
“I had to test the theory. First I removed the protective spells around the container. When nothing happened, I walked back down the mountain toward a small village. I remained a safe distance away, but there was enough power in the area to stir the corruption back to existence.”
Azh’s confusion deepened. “Still nothing?”
“Nothing. I was convinced I now had the answer to destroying the corruption. I rushed back to this temple to reveal what I had discovered to the queen.” Zion glanced toward the empty throne, a hint of wistful regret in his voice. “I was about to become the savior of our people.”
“That didn’t happen?”
“No.” Zion’s jaw tightened, as if he were clenching his teeth. “As soon as I entered this room the corruption returned to the magic and I barely managed to dump it behind the original barriers before it could consume me.”
Azh slowly glanced around the pyramid-shaped space. There was a mystic quality to the temple. As if it’d been created by an ancient, unknown magic. But there was no sense of impending doom.
“You think the evil is connected to this temple?”
“I couldn’t be sure. It didn’t make any sense at the time,” the male admitted. “All I knew for certain was that I needed to do more research. But as the years passed Gabriela became more and more convinced that the younger dragons were plotting against her.”
Azh arched a brow. “Were they?”
Zion brushed aside the question. “We’re dragons. There is always some sort of plotting. But Gabriela was obsessed with the belief that she could leash the magic and use it as a weapon against her enemies.”
Azh made a sound of shock. “She wanted to use the corruption as a weapon?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy.”
“My thought exactly.” Zion visibly shuddered. “I feared our entire world would be destroyed when she released the evil.”
“And you were right,” Azh said, not entirely surprised that Gabriela wasn’t the hero from his legends. There’d already been clues the histories had been more myths than factual accounts of the past.
“No,” Zion’s tone was sharp. “I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Everything.” A surge of anger destroyed Zion’s pretense of calm.
“As always, Gabriela did exactly as she wanted and touched her fire to the corruption contained in the crevice in the floor.” He pointed to a spot behind the throne.
“I was standing in the shadows over there and I could see the magic absorbing her fire. It swirled around her, as if it was becoming one with her magic, then it was spreading through the temple and out the open doors. Before I could stop it, the corruption had spilled across the land, destroying everything in its path. I can still remember the screams of our people.” Zion was forced to pause and clear a lump from his throat. “That’s when I finally saw the truth.”
“What truth?” Azh braced himself, already prepared for the answer.
“The magic wasn’t corrupted. Gabriela was.”