Chapter 30
Screams resound throughout the Wen as Beast lands heavily on the walls of the Citadel.
She climbs its turrets, her enormous claws puncturing stone and shattering windows.
Torver has to cling to her horn to stay steady, reaching behind him to make sure Bassen and Winander are still secure.
Bassen clings to Winander for dear life, as if scared he might somehow outmanoeuvre Beast’s airmanced protections.
The dragon roars and the sound shakes the castle beneath her. Masonry crumbles like shortbread when she tears through the side of a tower.
Squads of bronze Enforcers rally in the square, ordered by nearby silver Enforcers to shoot useless arrows that glance off Beast’s scales. She bats the arrows with her claws as if swatting at harmless flies. Torver feels her irritation, her burning desire for rampage.
Master, Beast squeals down the bond. Am I allowed? Can I kill, Master?
Torver inhales, breathing through the rushing thoughts that flood his mind.
He shares them with Beast, pushing the images down the threads of power that connect them.
The poverty of the cider slums, the countless innocents strung up on nooses, the authoritarian control of the scrolls and registrations.
Then, before he can stop them—other images.
Lavellin’s hands in his hair. Him offering it permission to brutalise him, and it choosing to kiss him softly. The feel of its mouth on his. And—
Dunmail’s iron shackles that burn. The sound of its screams.
Kill anyone you have to, Beast, he insists. Then adds, But don’t destroy the whole building. Lavellin’s inside—you have to be careful not to hurt it.
But I can kill?
Torver exhales. Yes.
She’d been hoping he would say that.
His hands tremble, unsure if the bloodlust he feels is his own, or if Beast’s feelings are colouring him. Perhaps they’re a circle, feeding each other. He feels a savage flare down the bond; a rushing excitement.
With a triumphant roar, Beast climbs through the hole she’s torn in the ancient castle.
The hall inside is enormous, bigger than the chamber under Dunmail Raise and Torver realises just how gargantuan the Citadel is, how endless its rooms and corridors.
He swallows the fear that he won’t be able to find Lavellin—helped by the sudden appearance of guards.
Enforcers pour into the hall through carved hardwood doors.
They mance useless waves of water, rushes of cold air.
The strong among them fling spears and swords that simply glance off Beast’s scales.
Torver feels her internally cackle with delight as she opens her dripping maw, calling fire from within herself.
When the wave of bronze and chainmailled Enforcers launch a charge, they don’t even get close. Their armour turns red with the heat almost instantly. The metals melt, dripping onto the marble floor, scorching the screaming Enforcers within.
More Enforcers charge into the room, some bellowing useless warcries, others shaking in terror and running away into adjoining corridors, trails of urine demarcating their routes.
Arrows and thrown axes are deflected from Beast’s hide and she is unstoppable and so too is Torver atop her.
A power he has never tasted. No Enforcer can hurt him now.
Go upward, Beast. The Meddera live in the highest towers of the Citadel. Where else could Lavellin be?
If a dragon can smile viciously then she does it through the bond. Satisfied, snarling, she leaves the tangled stumps of charcoaled flesh and melted armour behind.
She climbs further into the castle, breaking holes through walls, circling turrets, mounting enormous staircases.
All the while, she fends off the myriad Enforcers, swatting them like flies, burning them with fire and with poison from her noxious talons.
Torver can hear Bassen’s screams behind him, Winander’s weak whimpers—and a groundshaking roar.
He can’t tell if it’s Beast’s triumph pouring from his mouth, or if his own swell of fury is tearing the air asunder from the jaws of his mount.
Either way, the noise shatters a window of stained glass and Beast powers through the gap, climbing the Citadel from the outside. She bursts back in through another enormous window that she shatters with her claws, entering the cavernous halls of the Citadel’s upper floors.
The opulence inside makes Torver’s teeth grind—the space is enough to easily accommodate the dragon. Its walls are adorned in gold and jewels while slum-dwellers suffer in the hovels outside.
But there’s no time to dwell and he’s rocked to the side when Beast brutally swipes at a group of charging Enforcers—firemancers with blades of flame.
Their clanking armour shines silver and with no chainmail or bronze in sight, Torver knows that they must be getting close to the Meddera’s chambers—if only he knew exactly where.
Despite the high-ranking Enforcers’ prowess, Beast overpowers them easily. They’re catapulted across the room by her noxious claws, crashing into the far wall with a sickening sound. They don’t move from where they land, their limbs bent at unnatural angles.
But they don’t stop coming. Despite the carnage the dragon and her rider have wrought, Enforcers still filter in through doors and side-passages, antechambers and corridors.
Torver instructs Beast through the bond.
She kneels down and, ignoring Bassen’s loud protests, Torver slips from her shoulder. He slides down her leg until he lands on the ground with a thud.
He stands beneath his Beast, her powerful front legs either side of him. The gathered Enforcers watch, swords drawn. Drawn, but slowly lowering.
“Where are the Meddera?” Torver shouts with a force that makes his throat sting. “Show me exactly where their chambers are, and my dragon will spare you.”
Torver doesn’t recognise himself, so filled is he with Beast’s rage, with the thought that Lavellin must be close. Somewhere in these labyrinthine towers. It only needs him to find it.
“Where are the Meddera?” Torver screams again.
The surviving Enforcers’ comrades lay dead around them. Bodies litter the floor, blood leaching from between the cracks in dented and melted armour. The purple tapestries on the western wall are alight, making it look like the stone itself is aflame.
“Th-the Meddera?” the closest Enforcer stutters. Sweat glistens in the deep wrinkles of his forehead.
Then, he turns his head and his eyes to the left with such subtlety that Torver thinks he may have imagined it. Torver relays the message to Beast.
Still housing Bassen and Winander in the safe spot at the top of her spine, she rips a hole through the offending wall.
The boulder-like stones crumble beneath her claws.
The waterfall of stone and mortar drowns out any other sound, and the dust that rains down is blinding.
Surrounding sections of wall fall away and the debris shatters nearby pillars, ripping sconces from their holdings, taking chunks from the floor.
When the dust settles and Torver has wiped it from his narrowed eyes, he sees four streaks of purple fabric, retreating.
They’re at the end of a corridor, in front of an ornately wrought metal door. Their purple cloaks are muted to lilac by the dust. Each has a look of determination on their faces, stood with their feet braced in a fighting stance.
Torver grits his teeth as Beast lets loose a mighty plume of dragonfire.
But it’s met instantly with the most powerful jet of water that Torver has ever seen manced. Beast’s fire is reduced to a sizzling steam that rises to the vaulted ceiling above.
Beast, let Bassen and Winander dismount. This is going to take some doing.
Beast thrusts her head to the ground and Torver shouts for Bassen to get herself and Winander to safety.
These men are four of the most powerful wielders of magic in the People’s Kingdom—
But Torver’s attempt to commune on strategy is interrupted when he has to bolt out of the way.
Eskett lifts a section of a fallen marble pillar and flings it towards them as if it weighs nothing. Torver’s bruised ribs shoot pain through his chest when he has to sprint from its path—but to avoid crushing her Master underfoot, Beast can’t dodge in time.
She roars in pain when the pillar crashes into her hind leg.
Torver feels the agony, the flash of panic, down the bond. He knows instantly the bone is broken, but he has no time to react before Irton is conjuring spears and arrows that Lineth uses smoke to throw at them with devastating accuracy.
Torver screams when an arrow pierces his left forearm, coming clean out of the other side.
Blood wells at the entrance and exit points, dripping to the dusty marble floor.
Beast’s pupils narrow to almost invisible slits and her enraged roar shakes the castle itself.
Distant walls topple, their structures weakened by the holes she already tore through them.
Shouts and screams resound from all directions—the sounds of those crushed beneath the crumbling debris, the sounds of those running away in clanking armour.
And suddenly—
A thin hand on his shoulder.
Torver jolts, yelping Bassen’s name.
“What are you doing?” Torver hisses. “Go and hide with Winander! Where is he?”
“He’s safe,” Bassen rips a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress, and fixes the arrow through his bloody arm in place.
“Don’t take that out now,” she stresses, tying the strip off in a hurried knot. “We can’t take you to a healer later if you’ve already bled out.”
“We?” Torver’s voice comes out a pitched cry when he has to quickly manoeuvre out of the path of several spears flung his way.