Raze My Blood (Dragons of Blood and Bone #6)

Chapter 1

BATTLE

Battle is in a Blood Dragon’s soul; rage and wrath are the very blood and bones that make us.

We fight and fuck; we roar all through the endless Void as we glorify in what we were made for.

And we don’t stop until it’s over, as I shift up fast now, racing through the starry midnight after my sister, Lithava Andersen.

To end her in the skies.

Snow glimmers beneath the crystal stars and setting moon as I crash hard into Lithava in the hidden city up in Magnussen lands. My drakes take on hers as we battle within the ring of False Black Dragon Knights surrounding us in the ancient vale.

I don’t even know how long we’ve fought, as we hurl massive drives of magic at each other, surging in on fast wings to take each other out. Snarling and vicious, Lithava and I are both terrible in our power as the battle rages above the blasted-out cavern of the ancient citadel.

Both Bloodwalkers, our four Bloodbonded drakes solidify our power—just like our Ancestors, Hedda and Aesa Anderlen. We fight like they did now, sister against sister, as tremendous swathes of auric fire and darkness heave from us in masterful maneuvers through the battle.

Dawn is near as I roar, full of rage and wrath both, as my drakes and I hammer my sister and her mates throughout the brightening sky. Vicious with insane intent, our enemies raze us back, as terrible crimson and oilslick-dark sigils scrawl through their flesh.

They’re cursed by the magic they’ve accepted from our Ancestor Hedda Anderlen and her drakes. My drakes and I shine like falling stars now, in opposition to them, as ancient sigils blaze through our flesh, too, thanks to the far brighter power surging through us from the cavern below.

But it’s a terrible magic that devours us.

As a sun-hot power fills me now, shining brighter than a supernova, I understand that something about this battle is beyond furious.

A godlike power, it’s heinous in its seething rage and furious glory, as my drakes and I rip through the skies, fighting in a way we’ve never fought before.

That insane brightness pounds like a million stars throughout our bones and veins. Even as it floods me, gloriously righteous, something about it undoes me.

Utterly deadly, an ungodly rage fills me now—to not just kill those who’ve betrayed us, but to banish them from this world forever. The desire to rip all familial bonds apart devours me now; a terrible feeling engulfs me as I feel that something about this fight is not right.

Because although Lithava has screwed the pooch too many times with her former coup against our uncle, the Blood Dragon King, and now orchestrating the Black Dragon’s second rise in the world, I can’t stop what’s happening to me.

Although Blood Dragons live for the fight, everything inside me screams that Lithava’s my enemy to the end of the world and back. An insane, rageful madness scours all through me, even though I know she’s my sister.

A part of me knows I should have compassion for her, and how our ancient Ancestor Hedda used Lithava for her own agenda.

But the same madness also takes my sister and her drakes.

Some terrible power, just as dark as ours is bright, sweeps them as they fight with this same hellish madness coursing through them as well.

I feel it roar all through my bones now, as the oilslick evil that lives beneath the cavern’s fissure infects my sister and her drakes. It’s just as much as the star-white sigils in the cavern inundate us; two sides of the same power, they fight each other in this snowy vale.

The ancient brightness that fuels us is godlike, but the dark evil that fuels Lithava and her drakes from the rift is its match. As all of it surges from our battle raging above, the black leviathan of the rift sears insane hell-ropes of oilslick-violet sigildry through the air.

Blistering with diseased crimson, those sigils careen through my sister and her drakes, devouring them as they fight.

I feel how that fell blackness pushes their minds as they coordinate vicious drives against us; our enemies slash gargantuan volleys of oilslick-black auric fire through the air at us, just as dark as our fire is light.

Their passion is ruin and devastation, countering our righteous salvation, as my drakes and I roar and return their insane ferocity, as we battle to the death in the first light cresting over the mountains.

But as the sun shines into my eyes from the new dawn, a sending from my Ancestors suddenly rips through my mind. It hammers me so hard it smacks me from the skies; I plummet, wings useless, as this spontaneous Bloodwalking claims me.

Terrible images barrel through my dragon-mind as voices roar and talons rip. A torpid vision, I scream in agony with a harpy’s overtones in my dragon-voice, as thousands of memories from my Ancestors claim me now.

Because what I feel is battle unending. Battle so extensive it rips this world apart, hundreds of thousands of minds heave into me now, inundating me in a jumbled madness as I roar in unending pain, caught in what my Ancestors are sending me.

But even as this Bloodwalker vision devastates me, I suddenly understand what they’re trying to tell me. I feel what’s really going on in this place, as my Ancestors contact me with the rising sun.

The realization hits me like a star exploding, as I know I don’t fight with my own will inside my veins anymore, but the will of this place, which creates a terrible possession.

Something in this place commands us in an ancient and deadly game. And we are its pawns, as I finally get my wings beneath me, soaring up hard now from where I plummeted all the way into the black cavern below.

White sigils blaze around the immense cavern, as black ooze scorches up through the massive rift in the floor. But as I regain my sanity in the epicenter of all this destruction, I understand the terrible pull that comes from both sides of this ancient magic now—to clash it out to the end.

Because whatever lives inside this broken cavern wants us to fight, as I wing up hard now back into the sky. It wants us to devastate each other, raging so terribly bright and Wraithing so utterly dark that we rip our world apart.

Doom takes me as I fly back up hard into the battle against my sister and her drakes. Because I understand now that whatever power broke this cavern also broke our world, long ago.

Dividing the Dragons of Blood and Bone against themselves, forever.

Ages before me and Lithava, eons before Aesa and Hedda, something terrible happened here, and it sundered us. It split our Lineage apart, dividing Blood and Bone Magic from the united people we once were, sundering us forever from our kin.

And something about this place pushes us to re-create that ancient schism, I know as I rush back up into the battle now—not to fight it but to stop it.

But my drakes and I have been pushed to go supernova with the bright side of this power, even as my sister and her drakes have been pushed into their darkest hell.

There is no escape for any of us, as I give a strangled roar and wing up hard past the battle now, so far up into the cloud-streaked skies I see spots.

It takes everything I have to break from the fray; I heave a burst of white auric fire from my wings as I flap them hard now, fighting to shake off whatever divisive magic digs into us from this place.

My drakes see my sudden retreat; they feel my shocked understanding of what’s really going on here. Though they give strangled roars that I’ve just hamstrung them from decimating our enemies, they wing up hard into the clear skies with me, to escape the furious wrath of the ancients assailing us.

Because this isn’t a fight either side can win, thanks to whatever calamity split this place long ago.

It’s the worst failure of our ancient Ancestors, pushing us to re-create their past; and I won’t have it, as my drakes and I spiral into a protective knot now, in the highest stratosphere of the sky.

For it’s not just Blood Dragons our ancient battle threatens as it rages and wraths anew, but the entire world. As my drakes and I blaze our auric fire hard now, trying to foist off whatever’s got its talons in us, Lithava and her drakes don’t follow.

Far below, my sister roars a hammering drive at her minions, the False Black Dragon Knights, holding their perimeter. As Lithava sends them up to take us out now, I know they’re not cannon fodder.

Every dragon in the False Knights is an elite fighter, nearly equal to my drakes and me. Plus, they outnumber us with their five hundred fighters, though we have our Bloodbond, Laerke Thorsen, and Mikka Halsbrand, Head Watcher for the Black Dragon Knights.

But five hundred to seven are very bad odds, as the False Knights come at us like a battering ram now.

Lithava’s magic possesses them through her connection to Hedda; as they seethe towards us with diseased oilslick curses devouring them, my drakes and I snarl and haul ass back into a tight ring, talons out.

We explode a massive wave of auric fire at them with our united roar, blasting their ring so their scales burn a furious white, but we’re outnumbered.

Worse, as our white sigils flicker out upon our scales, I understand we’ve rejected our Ancestor’s brightest power by trying to retreat from this battle.

As the next wave of False Knights comes at us, it’s only our own Bloodbond uniting us as we crash into that insane wave of dragon-flesh.

Giving our all, we rip, rage, and fight as we combat this horde with our brimstone fury.

But we’re getting caught in spiked Bloodnets and nicked by incredible drives of Bloodspears now that the godlike power has abandoned us.