Chapter 29
The Beast’s scales are the red of all the blood that has brought them here. The ground shakes as she stands on her gargantuan, clawed feet. Putrid slime drips from each of her talons. As she stands, her head rises on a thick, swanlike neck.
She’s just as he’d always dreamed she would be.
Bassen screams and drags Winander’s limp body away.
Away from the pounding feet, the thrashing wings that fan the air like a wild storm.
Torver has to crane his head back to see the top of her muscled, red haunches.
Her back is lined with sharp spines, secondary talons protrude from her elbows, and the creature shakes herself for the first time in a thousand years.
The noise is deafening—her myriad scales clink and crash like the chainmail of an army.
Torver should be terrified, should be ice-cold with fear.
The dragon’s amber eyes search the cavern, as if seeking something out, then she tilts her colossal head to the tiny man stood at her feet.
She lowers her head once more, pressing her jawbone into the earth so that her eye is as level with Torver as possible.
The black slits in the centre of her golden eyes narrow and widen in turn, taking him in.
Torver hears a voice—not with his ears. But in every part of his mind, the words entering him like the air he breathes. Until he’s so full with it that there is nothing else.
There you are, Master.
Something inside of Torver slots into place.
He feels everything about her—her essence, her feelings. Her rotted body reborn, her confusion, her pressing urge to be near him, to do as he commands. And he knows that she can feel him too.
He reaches out and places his hand beneath the creature’s eye, and as soon as his skin makes contact with the hot scales, he feels a powerful burst of energy radiate through them both.
The force of it takes his breath away, makes his skin crackle with power.
The magic races through him like a bolt of lightning, through the Beast, and back into him.
Circling around them both like the rains, like a falling seed.
He sends his first words down the bond.
Here I am.
The dragon blinks slowly with an eye so large that Torver can see himself reflected in it. They bask in the bond, the invisible tether that binds them.
Torver is so beside himself with the feeling, with the stroking of her scales, the examination of her horns and her wings, that a time has passed before he remembers where he is, why he’s there.
Lavellin. The thought is a dagger through his heart.
He jolts, turns with a heavy breath to the edge of the chamber, to the other dagger there.
Winander—an old, old man.
Alive.
But barely.
Stick thin and weeping on the floor. His skin is papery, his joints swollen, his hair wispy and white. Now that Torver listens, he can hear Winander whimpering to Bassen about the pain in his body, every part of it. How it hurts so intensely.
He begs her quietly to kill him.
Bassen shakes her head, glistening teardrops on her cheeks. She holds him, rocking him back and forth, kissing his dim eyes, holding his varicosed hands, bulging with arthritis.
Torver is distracted when Beast flaps her mighty wings, flexes her poisonous claws in the dirt. Torver knows she yearns to fly, to kill. She yearns for his instruction.
Steady, Beast.
Beast blinks wetly, and Torver feels her disappointment through the bond.
A pang of guilt goes through him and he pats her scaly face.
It’s impossible for Torver not to dwell, if even for a moment, on the implausibility of the situation.
The madness of it. This creature has been the background noise of his entire life.
The life of a nation. Obedience keeps the Beast asleep.
Now, the Beast does Torver’s bidding.
Wait here.
He tears himself away from her, and goes to Bassen and Winander. He crouches down in front of the old man, weak on the floor. He kneels down and kisses his hands. He thanks him and thanks him and thanks him.
Winander groans, his breaths shallow but becoming more steady. Bassen strokes his forehead.
“So this is what you really look like, is it?” Torver doesn’t know if now is the time for jibes, but he doesn’t know what else to say. Winander’s wrinkled face, skin slack and loose with age, shifts into a small smile.
“You’ll be okay,” Bassen kisses his temple. “You just need to never use your magic again, okay? We just need to keep you going until your consequence kicks back in, don’t we? It will all be okay. I’m just so glad you’re alive.”
Between her words she plants kisses on his hands, his face, and Torver suspects the supplications may mainly be for her own benefit. What must it feel like to have a bond severed? To have that dangled in front of you and then ripped away?
This is the man who gave my life back.
Beast’s voice is all-encompassing. It rattles down his spine, makes his head pulse like a heart.
Yes, he is, he replies.
I hope that he lives. The narrow slits of her eyes quiver as they focus on Winander.
Bassen notices his distraction, the way he turns his head to look at his Beast as they commune.
“How is it?” Bassen asks him. “The bond?”
“It’s incredible,” Torver breathes.
Bassen’s mouth forms a smile but her eyes are still tense, her jaw tight.
“We just have one more thing to do.” He looks to Winander. “Then we can get you into the softest bed that gold can buy.”
Winander finds the energy to chuckle, the noise like a rasp.
Beast, do you remember the man who killed you?
Torver’s body jolts with the roiling waves of anger rippling down the bond. Images and feelings flash through his mind—flight, fire, enchanted weaponry piercing the unpierceable. Blood, terror, and the endless dark.
I know where to find him, he tells her. How would you like to avenge yourself and help me rescue the one I love?
Plumes of black smoke coil from Beast’s nostrils as she snorts in anticipation. The muscles of her mighty shoulders ripple beneath her scales. Torver can feel her power between them, like a storm passing back and forth.
Can you fly on those wings? he asks.
Torver’s never seen a dragon roll its eyes before, had never even thought to picture the motion, so when it happens in front of him, he nearly bursts into a laugh.
Climb onto my neck, Master. We will see who can fly on these wings.
Beast kneels down, tucking her front legs in like a loafing cat might tuck in her paws. The movement is colossal, the ground shaking. Bassen jerks in alarm, stands protectively over Winander.
“What’s it doing?” Her eyes are wide, hands flared open.
“She is lowering herself so we can climb aboard,” Torver grins, patting Beast on her scaly elbow. “We’re going to fly to the Wen and save Lavellin!”
She isn’t nearly as thrilled as he feels that revelation warrants. Instead, she pales, reaching down for Winander.
“Can… Can Winander stand dragonflight?” Her voice drops to a whisper. “What if his old man heart…explodes, or something?”
A chuckle down the bond.
No harm shall befall the life-giver while he is in my care, Master.
After some persuasion and the realisation that Winander would likely fare worse if left alone in an underground cave, they mount up.
Even with Beast pressing herself into the ground, it’s still a difficult climb to reach the top of her.
Both Torver and Bassen help Winander, pulling him up until they’re all seated just behind Beast’s head.
Her horned cheekbones splay out like a crown of bone and they nestle there, between the protruding spines, where they will be shielded from the wind.
“Are we ready?” Torver calls. Excitement and terror vie for supremacy in his burning blood.
Before Bassen and Winander can answer, Beast replies in his head.
Hold on tight, Master!
The ruby dragon rises onto her four mighty legs, and her passengers sway with a force greater than any wagon.
With a triumphant and deafening roar, she spreads her wings, leaning onto her haunches in order to use her front legs and powerful claws to dig through the walls of the chamber.
Bringing her wings forward to deflect debris from her precious cargo, she rips and claws through the ancient stone structure as if it’s nothing more than cloth.
She feeds Torver her excitement, the satisfaction of earth between her talons once more—her emotions fill him until he feels like roaring himself.
Stones and mud fall around them, the noise is overwhelming as they push through and then all at once—
Cold air, bright light, a lurching, weightless sensation.
“Yes! Yes!” Torver slaps his hands against Beast’s scales in eagerness, her wings stretching above them, beating down with a powerful force that lifts them into the air as they burst from the ground. The wind streaks past his face, through his hair, into his open mouth.
Bassen screams in terror behind him, clinging to Winander, who has his eyes shut.
They swoop and fly through the air that Beast wields beneath her wings.
Gaining height with each second, Torver whoops and hollers, holding his arms open, feeling the wind flow through his splayed fingers as Beast mances air currents around them to hold them to their seats.
He feels his dragon beneath him, feels the ecstasy of flight, of the bond filling his soul until it’s bursting over.
He sends her the image of the Wen, of the Citadel with his mind.
But she knows it already, remembers every part of the People’s Kingdom from when she was alive the first time.
Now, Master, she warns down the bond. I haven’t flown in a thousand years…
You can take it easy, if it’s painful, he sends back almost reluctantly, mind straying back once more to Lavellin’s torture. How it needs him.
Quite the opposite. He can feel her chuckling inside his head and he bursts with relief. I was going to advise you hold onto something.
The air holding them in place tightens as Beast’s wingbeats shift into a new rhythm. Torver screams in delight as they shoot through the air like an arrow propelled from a longbow.
The speed is unlike anything Torver has ever felt and he screeches in excitement.
He reaches behind him for Bassen’s hand, looks back to check on Winander.
The ancient man is not dead yet and has dared to open his eyes.
He grips one of Beast’s spines and is shielded from the slipstream by the shape of the dragon’s skull.
He even gives Torver a small whoop of his own as they’re propelled southwards by Beast’s almighty wings.
It takes them only an hour to reach the Wen, to descend on its people who scatter like ants at the streak of red hurtling through the sky.
Evidently, obedience did not keep the Beast asleep.