Chapter 4 #2
The Black Dragon gives a tremendous roar now, however, when it had previously been silent. It weathered the runnels of pure evil tunneling into its dead flesh for the past ten minutes as we talked; but it can’t hold back now, as whatever lives in this cavern suddenly responds to Lithava’s Wraith.
That evil has surged up to claim the Black Dragon and its shield all around us. Lithava’s dragon regroups, roaring in my face beyond my blazing shield that I survived her sudden attack, as the black taint of the Rift surges higher.
That evil is responding to our kin-fight, as I feel it gain power a hundredfold, now that Lithava just tried to off me, sister against sister.
And gods save me, I can’t fight it anymore, as the blackest void that lives inside me rushes up, too, resonating with the blistering power inside this cavern.
Demanding I finish this.
As the pure wrath of my unhinged Bone Magic roars its supremacy to the world now, spilling out of my throat as I roar in matching hatred at my sister, I feel my blackest inner dragon careen up in a starry black midnight all around me—to fight.
I don’t even know when I shifted up, but Lithava and I are on each other like howling cats as I blast my auric Bloodshield out at her and tackle her. Rolling and biting and swiping with powerful talons and jaws, I pummel her with insane drives of magic.
Lithava fights back like a mad devil, having hidden how much power and magic she had recovered as we talked.
The evil inside the ruby cavern goes wild as we battle each other.
The Black Dragon goes wild with it, connected to both Lithava and me, feeling our hate roar through the very blood and bones that make us.
As the Black Dragon’s shield suddenly explodes out like a bomb, I barely notice it, even though the Rift’s leviathan evil is unleashed to get to us, thanks to the Usurper’s confusion from our fight.
That black malevolence surges all over me, blistering me and trying to capture me as I fight my sister to the death now. I feel its unhinged glee. It wants us to kill each other; it wants kin to battle against kin, to off each other in glorious battle, forever.
It wants this divisiveness, when we had tried so hard to be whole. As the terrible sensation engulfs me, seething all over my dragon-flesh and trying to seize me as my sister and I fight with ripping talons, gouging fangs, and terrible, spiked waves of magic, I’m lost.
I’m lost to the viciousness inside me as I go Berserk and Wraith all at once, and don’t give a damn.
I’m gone to the sensations of battle as I dive into the blackest cavern within me.
I’ve surrendered to the rip, the gouge, the fling, and the hate, as it drives all through my bones and veins, making me want to kill.
I abandon everything that makes me who I am, as I become one with the evil inside this cavern. I’m taken as it seethes all over us, not to take us now, but to goad us to fight on forever. Forever, or until one of us dies. For that is what it wants—death, glory, and horror.
And the finality of this rift between sisters.
The schism between us devours me. The schism inside me devours me, too, as I find my inner black Bone Magic drake fighting to the death with my brighter Blood Magic drakaina now, deep within my bones and veins.
A sensation like ripping apart from the inside out blisters through me. Like I am nothing but tissue paper, and these forces could tear me asunder with their broken, hateful contentiousness.
Still, I fight on, lost to my worst place as my wings and scales blaze oilslick-black now, vicious violet-black magic careening off me. Because I am the same as the Black Dragon now, a Black Dragon in truth, as acrid ropes of utter midnight fling off me, everywhere.
I am it, and it is me, as it roars and crashes through the ruby cavern now like a mad thing, unhinged by Lithava’s and my fight. She is the same; we are all Black Dragons now, as terrible sigils of diseased crimson-black and horrid violet rip through our bodies de novo.
We are the hell in the darkness; we are the fallen gods that make other dragons tremble in terror, as we blaze and hammer, bite and gorge and throw down with our bodies and our magic.
Through it all, some part of me knows I’m draining my drakes to death. Through our old bond as family, I feel Lithava doing the same, as we use our drakes’ power to boost ours and continue battling each other in this forsaken ruby midnight.
All around, the crystal cavern glows viciously now, pulsing with bloody red light like a heartbeat. As we fight, sister against sister, kin against kin, something down here has come alive, wanting ruination more than ever before.
I feel it as countless tentacles of oilslick darkness surge all over us now, roaring through the cavern as we battle. They’re draining us, but I can’t stop it—draining us and our drakes, as whatever evil down here pushes us to fight on, harder.
Forever.
And we do, lost to the rip and the tear, and the hammering of our ungodly bodies and magics. I don’t even register it when someone blasts in through a portal, open to the sky far above the ancient, ruined city.
But I understand now why this city is ruined, and why every fight that takes place here is a battle to the death.
Whatever lives down here, whatever this thing is that our most ancient Ancestors caused, it’s the source of our division.
And it will divide us forever, as I continue to fight my sister to the death.
Despite a bunch of someones dragging me away now.
Someone has come—lots of someones—now hauling Lithava and me apart. The Black Dragon is lost in its confusion, bashing its gargantuan head against the ruby columns as they continue to seethe with a terrible magic, brighter and even more malevolent than ever before.
But Lithava and I are being separated, dragged apart as our dragons. We continue to roar and blast magical drives at each other, but those who have come for us are strong, despite how vastly depleted I feel they are right now.
We’re all almost done, thanks to how badly the evil down here has eaten us during my sister’s and my fight. But as someone finally gets a powerful bite on my neck, a massive gold and red drake, another drake roars through jaws clamped around some brightly glowing object.
As that drake thrusts his bright object at the evil taint careening all around us, the leviathan ooze shrieks back. It’s the only thing that saves us, as my own faculties suddenly come crashing back.
I realize Bjorn, Strom, Mikkel, Laerke, and Baldur have come—to save me from myself.
Though all of them boil with crimson-black curses scalding all through their flesh, their dragon-colors gone disastrously dark from my own infectious Black Dragon ripping into them via our Bloodbonds and pushing them to go black, too, they’re able to weather the storm.
I feel how Bjorn’s masterful yoking of my drakes’ powers, and his blazing, righteous heart, keeps them all from being swamped by the leviathan darkness devouring me in my kin-fight with my sister.
Bjorn has tethered all my drakes together, fighting this darkness as one, as Baldur wields the Soulstone, amplifying its might with his power to push the darkness back.
Strom works his mind-powers in a tirade, bound tight with Mikkel’s and even Laerke’s mind-abilities, though she’s not in our Bloodbond, to paralyze the Black Dragon enough so we all don’t get squashed as it flails and thrashes inside the cave.
Lithava’s drakes are no less, as they contain her from getting to me. They try to keep their group from being smashed by the Black Dragon and seared by its terrible ropes of darkness, blistering through the cavern anew.
But they don’t have the Soulstone, and I feel no matching brightness inside their group like I have with Baldur, Bjorn, Strom, and Mikkel, even Laerke.
They can’t push back this leviathan taint like we can; though both groups snarl at each other now, Bjorn with a massive hateful roar at his father, Oggi Magnussen, who has finally arrived on the scene, and Mikkel and Laerke with matching hatred for their foster-father, Emil Beck, who is here also, we have bigger problems right now.
My drakes and I can hold off the gargantuan darkness of the Black Rift with whatever light remains in us. Lithava and her drakes can’t, however, as I see them get overtaken by the Rift’s black tentacles now, issuing out in a tirade from the ruby crystals.
They’re being devoured; I can’t get them out. Though some part of me screams to see my sister become overrun by that terrible darkness now, I can’t get to her, can’t free her.
Because I don’t have enough energy left, as I feel a deep fatigue shudder all through me now, like I once felt during our battle at the Jarl of Copenhagen’s palace. I feel it in my drakes, too; we’re all going to die, right here and now, if we can’t get out of this place fast.
Because the evil taint of the Black Rift is still trying to devour us, too. As Baldur roars again, pushing his cosmic brightness to the max and whipping around in a circle to drive the evil darkness back with the searing-white Soulstone in his jaws, I know we’re out of time.
The Black Dragon is insane, bashing its head against the walls and columns over and over as the Black Rift’s leviathan taint ravages it. Lithava and her drakes have disappeared, overrun by the Rift’s evil in its terrible nest of darkness inside the ruby cavern.
We’re all that’s left, as I feel Bjorn give a masterful heave of his magics now. Roaring as if his soul might just tear right apart, he hauls all of our bound power into one hand with a hard clench of his taloned fist—then slams his palm out, thrusting all that power into the empty space before us.
A new portal rips open in the ruby cavern, right before our snouts. With one vast mind-heave from Mikkel, Laerke, and Strom, all of us are shoved through, as the portal closes with a snap.
The leviathan darkness of the Rift, the Black Dragon, and Lithava and her drakes, gone behind it.