22. Hope in the Darkest Night
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hope in the Darkest Night
A moment of calm. A moment of peace. A single instant in which the world stood still and Farda sat astride Shinyara, high above Ilnaen, and stared at the crimson moon that bloodied the sky.
One moment from what he knew would be a lifetime of ghosts and regrets. And then Shinyara dove, and the world was on fire.
Dragons filled the skies, flames streaming across the night, blood falling like rain.
Shinyara snapped to the left to avoid a pillar of dragonfire, then angled her wings to swoop below two dragons who ripped each other to pieces while careening across the sky.
Something hard slammed into her side, and she spun, righting herself almost instantly.
An arc of lightning streaked towards her flank and erupted in a spray of blinding light as it smashed into a Sparkward erected by Farda, threads of each elemental strand swirling about him.
Shinyara shifted in the air, curling backwards towards the dragon who had rammed her, a great beast with scales of deep yellow and a soul that burned with rage.
The dragon surged towards them. Just before they collided, Shinyara twisted and swept beneath their attacker.
She sank her talons into his belly, tore him open, then broke free with a crack of her wings.
As the dragon fell, the gemstone around Farda’s neck screamed at him to draw in the Essence, to not leave it to wither from the world. He did not hesitate. He opened himself and felt the Essence flow, felt the world grow cold and his body ignite with strength.
The power was immense, unknowable, but it was the numbness he craved, the smothering of his pain and of his guilt.
With the Essence in his veins, everything grew still.
He breathed in that stillness, that apathy, and let it fill him.
He was tired of the pain, of his heart always bleeding.
His joy, his love, his hope had all died with Hana and Valyianne.
Shinyara was his soul and the light of everything, but even she had grown dim and bitter.
The girls had not just been his, so too had they been hers.
Her hatchlings, her duty, her loves. Farda had been so withdrawn the day they had died he’d not seen her pain, but he saw it now, and they ached together.
The Order had let them die, had let so many die. They had been the cause of more death and blood in Epheria than any Karvosi invasion, disease, or war of kings.
The world needed to change. This was not how Farda had wanted that change to come.
It was the furthest thing from anything he had ever wanted.
But he was not the man he had once been, and if blood was what was required, he would give it.
He had little use for it anyway. Alvira had turned her back on him.
The Order had turned its back on him. Eltoar was the only one who had come to him, the only one who had found the courage within himself to tell Farda the truth.
As Shinyara weaved through the air, a roar eclipsed all else, so primal and violent that the rain seemed to shake as it fell.
Shinyara snapped her head around, and there in the distance, the great shadow that was Helios descended upon the Tower of Faith.
And as Shinyara watched, the last few fragments of her heart cracked at the sight of Vyldrar clinging to the tower’s side.
Helios’s jaws closed around Vyldrar’s neck, and the two dragons fell into the city below.
A terrible darkness shivered through Farda in that moment, and every drop of apathy in his veins burned away.
Memories of Alvira poured across his mind.
Memories of her laugh, of her strength, of her comfort.
Everything could have been so different…
Everything should have been so different.
Farda leaned forwards and pulled his mind into Shinyara’s. “Iralíse!”
Fly!
As Aeson fell from the ruins of the Tower of Faith, the bridge collapsing above him, he could think of nothing but the sight of Alvira Serris’ headless body, of Eltoar letting her fall.
The Archon was dead. Ilnaen burned. Eltoar Daethana had betrayed them all. The Order had fallen.
The wind crashed at him like a waterfall raging in the wrong direction, the flickering of torches and dragonfire a blur in his vision.
A warning flashed in the back of Aeson’s mind, and he let himself drift into Lyara. His soulkin swept around the tower’s midsection, twisted in the air, and matched his descent. He pulled himself to the nape of her neck with threads of Air and pressed down into her scales.
With force and speed unlike anything else of the natural world, Lyara snapped her wings open and arrested her dive, whipping forwards through a wall of raging fire and twisting to avoid a block of falling stone that smashed into a clutch of souls below.
She turned and dodged, weaving between turrets and towers that jutted upwards as the bridge collapsed around them, white stone pummelling the city like monstrous hail.
Aeson whipped threads of Air about them, protecting his soulkin with all his strength. He would not let this city be their tomb.
A block of stone the size of a cart careened past them, missing Aeson’s head by a finger’s width as Lyara twisted to avoid it.
A cloud of dust and embers rose about them from the ruins of the shattered bridge, and when they finally emerged on the other side all they could see was devastation.
Ilnaen was a blazing inferno. Rivers of fire snaked across the sky.
Dragons tore each other limb from limb. In the streets, Uraks ravaged anything that moved.
He drew a long breath and closed his eyes, seeing through Lyara’s. In that moment, words Alvira had spoken to him came to the fore.
“The difference between the heroes in the stories we tell and those who are lost to the annals is one simple thing. A true warrior gets back up. No matter the pain, no matter the odds. We are the Draleid, Aeson. If we do not stand, what hope have others? You must be the light they look to. You must be their hope.”
Aeson let the words repeat in his mind. He opened his eyes and did not shy away from the darkness that consumed the city. The traitors may have brought Ilnaen to its knees, but he would make them pay in blood for every stone that fell and every life they stole.
Below, Lyara spotted a smaller dragon who smelled of berries and burning wood, scales coloured like winter leaves. Two larger dragons chased her across the city top. Both smelled of death and blood, their hearts radiating hunger.
“Uthikar.”
Together.
Lyara folded her wings and plummeted, pressure building within her.
She unfurled her wings at the last moment, shifting left and sweeping towards the two traitors.
At the last moment, she extended her legs and smashed into the closest of the two, her talons sinking into bright green scales.
The dragon shrieked, but Lyara smashed the creature into the white stone of the blazing buildings as they flew, scales and blood bursting into the air.
Aeson watched as the Draleid’s head crashed into a length of shattered steel, helmet collapsing inwards.
As the dragon shrieked, Lyara let it go, and it went straight through a wall, vanishing in flames and smoke.
In the same motion, Lyara angled herself and swept down and around so that Aeson hung inverted in the air above the second traitor for just a moment before Lyara spun and crashed down upon them.
Once more her talons cracked through scale and flesh as she tore into the dragon’s back and ripped it from the air.
As they fell, she snatched the Draleid in her jaws and cleaved him in half with a single wrench of her neck.
As his body flapped into the wind, Lyara bit down into the dragon’s wing, tasting blood and flesh. She released it just before they would crash, watching the creature smash into the stone below, crushing a host of Uraks beneath it.
The dragon was still moving when Lyara spread her wings and alighted atop it. She kicked her head back and unleashed a torrent of fire down over the traitor’s broken body, her flames raging until she felt its heartbeat fade.
As the flames died, the street came into view, scores of Uraks charging towards them.
Lyara reared with a beat of her wings and once more spewed dragonfire from her open maw. Her heart found joy in the monsters’ screams, in the smell of their burning flesh.
They were the destroyers of life, the shadow that smothered all light. She was fire incarnate, she was fury, and she was deliverance.
As the blazing bodies collapsed to the stone, Lyara charged, cracked her wings, and lifted back into the air. Above, the small dragon they had protected swung back towards them, her white and brown scales glowing in the firelight.
“Thank you,” came a voice carried on threads of Air. The Draleid looked no older than sixteen summers, garbed in nothing but his smallclothes and brown robes.
“Fly this place!” Aeson called back. “Do not stop. Do not look back.” He thought for a second. How far had this treachery gone? What safe havens existed for the young Draleid to flee to? “There is a woodland fifty miles north, marked by a forked river. Wait there for a day and no longer.”
“The others!” the young Draleid called back. “We got separated! They were making for the southern gate with the hatchlings!”
“Go! I will find them.”
Lyara separated from the young dragon and swept around a golden turret, a crack of her wings launching her forwards like a spear. They could not look back; they could only hope.
Shinyara swept low across the city, shifting left and right to avoid streaks of lightning or shards of stone and metal launched by mages below.
She cracked her wings and soared upwards as they approached the broken remnants that were the Tower of Faith, still jutting high above the structures that surrounded it.