Chapter 30 #2
Beast roars and sends an enormous bolt of raging fire towards the Meddera, but Thwaite once again sends a river of water through the air.
The fire turns almost all of it to steam.
The remainder falls to the ground, where it crashes towards them like a tidal wave.
The room is hotter and more humid than the most boiling summer and the floor grows slick with steaming liquid.
“Me and Beast have this—go, Bassen!” He pulls her quickly to the side of the tall, narrow corridor where he can see Winander crouched behind a fallen pillar. Dragon-heated water splashes over the toes of his boots.
Bassen shakes her head angrily, slapping him on his uninjured side.
“Listen to yourself, Torv!” she shouts over the din. “Do you think you don’t need me anymore just because you have a dragon?”
And before Torver can formulate a response, Bassen pulls away from him.
She clenches her fists, her ripped dress swinging around her knees as she marches toward the Meddera.
Before he can think, before he realises exactly what she’s going to do, her mouth is already open in a gargling battlecry. The air temperature is already dropping by the time Torver falls to his knees, watching. Helpless.
For the second time in his life, he doesn’t look away when she makes a kill.
And for the first time, he watches her kill a human being.
Thwaite falls to the ground, clutching his head. The water at Torver’s feet disappears. An ear-splitting scream cuts through the air.
The surviving Meddera recoil in horror. Irton looks away.
Thwaite, their comrade, devolves into a mangled heap of bloodied flesh, looking like he’s been turned inside-out. His clothing is shredded, dyed with his fluids.
“Bassen…” Torver’s whisper is audible only to him.
He watches her back, the way her shoulders rise up and down in a frantic rhythm. Like she’s breathing hard, unable to get her breath.
There’s a shocked silence, a moment of stillness, before Irton gathers his wits and conjures a rowanwood cage around her.
Torver rushes to her, holding his injured arm close to his body. He slaps at the cage with his good hand, shouting sounds he can’t decipher. He pushes his hand through the wooden planks, reaches for her hand.
“Don’t touch me.” Her cheeks are pink, her eyes glinting. Her breaths come fast. “I… I did it.”
She looks down at her hands, across at the body of the man she killed.
But before Torver can thank her or apologise or beg for forgiveness or congratulate her—the Meddera resume their onslaught.
But this time, with no watermancer to send leagues of water at Beast’s flames, the fire finds its mark.
The Meddera have little chance to defend themselves; Irton’s conjured weapons melt in the air, Lineth’s solid smoke evaporates to a soft mist in the heat. And without the bombardment of the Meddera’s defences, Beast is unencumbered.
Despite her broken leg, she claws her way forward over the debris, the fallen walls and pillars, the wreck of the castle around them. She slinks over the obstacles as if she is the wind itself and her flames find their targets.
Irton, Eskett, and Lineth burn like tallow candles.
The Meddera’s screams, the smell of their flesh—it fills Torver, along with the feeling of unadulterated glee that surges through the bond. Despite himself, despite the horror of everything that’s occurred, it’s difficult for that glee not to infect him too.
I love to kill. Beast’s voice is a satisfied hum in his mind. I love it I love it I love it!
Torver quiets, waiting for more violence to erupt. He clenches, on guard. Then, at last, he exhales.
Because the air is still. The surviving Enforcers have fled.
And the Meddera are dead.
You did it. He looks up at his dragon. You are… astounding.
Beast’s pride fills his chest, but the heavy silence that settles over the carnage, it feels like a stone. Torver is heavy with it. With what has happened and what there still is to do.
Beast limps to Bassen’s cage and pries it apart with her claws, and as Bassen steps from the splintered wood, she goes to Torver and pulls him into a hug, carefully avoiding his arrow-struck arm. He presses his face into the bones of her shoulder.
She killed for him. She killed a human being for him.
“Thank you,” he whispers. He pulls away from her embrace and there are tears in her eyes. “I will never be done thanking you.”
“I’m aware.” Bassen wipes her face with her sleeve and gives him a gentle push. “Now, let’s go and give Dunmail some of the same, hm?”
At the end of the corridor, over the rubble and destruction, past the bloodied pulp and charred flesh of the Meddera, is the ornate iron door that the Meddera had been guarding.
Together, Torver and Bassen traverse the long corridor. Beast follows them, her limping steps shaking the ground unevenly, her claws squealing against the marble floor.
The door is still smoking slightly from the heat of the dragonfire, and it’s far too small for Beast to get through without ripping the wall apart. Behind that wall is his Lavellin—in what state, he daren’t think. He swallows hard.
Wait here, he instructs; his command instantly met with frustration.
You can’t go alone, Beast insists. Stand back and I can rip the wall apart. I need to go with you.
Beast leans onto her haunches, ready to tear the wall asunder before—
Stop!
He sends the command with a power he didn’t know he had. He instantly feels guilty, the sensation of Beast’s disappointment in his limbs. She lowers her head to look at him.
He starts again, more softly.
If you tear down that wall, it might crush Lavellin.
We don’t know what’s behind there, he says.
I won’t go alone. I’ll take Bassen with me.
We’re bonded too, me and her. In a way. Bonds of friendship.
You need to stay here and guard Winander—the man gave you your life back and brought us together, remember?
He feels her reluctant agreement and he turns to Bassen.
Urgency and apprehension muddle inside him—feelings he tries and fails to keep from his voice when he asks, “Care to join me, Bass?”
“I wouldn’t dream of letting you attempt this on your own,” she manages to chuckle, turning her back on the remains of the Meddera.
Through the stench of death in the air and the destruction around them, he meets her eyes and there is life in them yet.
She looks up at Beast, the mighty dragon she has spent her life fearing, lest it wake and kill them all.
“Thank you.” She reaches up, and after a moment of hesitation, pats her on the snout. “Please take good care of Winander. We’ll be back in just a moment.”
Torver locks eyes with his bonded mount. An understanding passes between them and Torver turns, resolutely, to the iron door—which instantly burns him when he touches the fire-heated handle.
He hisses in pain and Bassen can’t help but laugh.
She pulls the hem of her dress to the height of the handle and folds it several times to make a thick shield between her skin and the metal.
She presses the handle down, and with a dull thunk, the door swings open.