22. Hope in the Darkest Night #3
“Avandeer.” Aeson almost smiled at the sight of Tivar and her soulkin, until that moment of relief was shattered when the telltale smell of death and blood reached Lyara’s snout.
“No…” Aeson shook his head in disbelief. He had hardly processed the betrayal when a second dragon alighted on the opposite side of the group, bloodied scales shimmering like rubies beneath the moonlight. “Lyina…” Aeson murmured. “Traitor.”
Three more dragons landed around them, and even the Uraks paused at the sight.
“Lay down your weapons,” Tivar called from Avandeer’s back. “Do not throw your lives away. Too much death has come this night already. Aeson, please.”
“I would rather burn in the void for a thousand years than betray my kind.” Atara levelled her níthral at Tivar. “I call for Alvadru. Is there a shred of honour left in any of your bones? Do you dare face me beneath the eyes of the Enkara?”
“Tivar,” one of the traitors roared. “Eltoar gave the call to fall back. We must go.”
Before Tivar could answer, a series of roars thundered in the night.
Above, Aeson saw through Lyara’s eyes as she dropped, the corpse of a dead traitor in her clutches.
She released the dragon’s body and watched as it slammed into one of the dragons that surrounded them, crushing the Draleid and snapping the dragon’s wing.
At the same time, Harken and Atara’s soulkins swept back and forth, spewing dragonfire across the Uraks and traitors alike.
“We go now, or we die here!” Aeson roared. He looked over at the apprentices and the hatchlings, at Chora, who still screamed in the grass. Only six of the apprentices remained, their dragons too small to carry them. “Harken, can Thorandír carry Chora?”
The man didn’t even answer, he simply sprinted to Chora’s side and hauled her over his shoulder. Thacia, Atara, and Haviríl all grabbed apprentices, Thacia and Atara both taking two of the smaller children each.
Aeson snatched Atara’s arm. “Fly north.”
She nodded and mounted her soulkin.
Aeson grabbed hold of the last apprentice, a young man of fifteen or sixteen. “Come with me if you want to live.”
As he spoke, Lyara alighted at their side, her wingbeats sending the flames into spirals. The young man nodded and climbed onto Lyara’s back with Aeson.
His soulkin, a silver scaled dragon half the size of a horse, shook his frills and readied to fly with them.
“Iralíse!” Aeson roared. Fly. They did not wait to see the others take to wing. Even as they rose, the traitors were lifting into the air. But no dragon could match Lyara for speed. She cracked her wings again and rose, finding the currents to carry her.
An arc of purple lightning streaked past her on the left, then the right. She folded her wings and plummeted, the apprentice holding on for dear life as she unfurled them once more and swept upwards.
Lyara soared up and over the north-facing boundary wall, streaking towards the western hatchery tower.
A glance over his shoulder told Aeson that the traitors were still giving chase, two of them in tight formation.
Lyara couldn’t take the two at once, not with the apprentice on her back as well.
Nor could she outrun them with the silver hatchling at her side. He was not swift enough.
Aeson drew a settling breath as a plume of fire streaked past them on the right. He opened himself fully to the Spark. If they ran, the hatchling would die. If they fought, there was a chance, however slim.
He reached his mind out to Lyara, and whispered, “Du é ilumel na myonei irís sunvur. L’aryn din niasson il?n v?etír na du arkul sathkin, thwe l’uva niassa dir empe thrame aiel é ?rnil.
Inre lar tusuk, l’uva andin lenna dir. Aiar vaerakanra r?vke bralunan na lamye míril.
Umayar nur r?vken vaera kesto. Palín m? lar kalíme vaera lirtha bralun na sintu istalién.
Draleid n’aldryr, Lyara. Rakina nai dauva. ”
You are the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
I have loved you from the moment you opened your eyes, and I will love you long after they are closed.
Should we fall, I will find you again. They will not sing stories of us.
There will be none left to sing. But let it be that we nonetheless will make a story that deserves telling.
Dragonbound by fire, Lyara. Broken by death.
Lyara unleashed a bone-rattling roar as she swept out to the side, ready to turn back on the traitors.
But as she did, a ripple of energy swept through the air, and Aeson’s skin goosefleshed.
Below, the buildings shook, stone cracking and falling.
In the distance, an arc of lightning carved through the night and smashed into a tower.
A second arc followed, then a third, then a score, then fifty.
Lyara snapped left then right, avoiding the lightning as it streaked from the dark stormclouds above. Across the sky, dragons fell, smoke trailing in their wake.
Lyara shrieked, and Aeson raised a hand over his eyes as a flash of blinding light consumed everything.
A shockwave of air smashed into Lyara and sent her careening sideways.
She had barely regained her balance when an eruption of fire spewed from somewhere in the centre of the city, striking towards the sky.
The flames swept outwards like a tidal wave in all directions, the city becoming nothing but screams and fire.
Aeson watched as the raging flames not only spread out, but up, and faster than his mind could comprehend.
“Uora!” he roared. Rise!
Lyara swept upwards, her wings cracking against the night, the rain pummelling her scales. Upwards and only upwards as the flames washed over the city. Everywhere Aeson looked, dragons climbed towards the sky, desperately trying to outrun the devastation.
He glanced over his shoulder. The flames climbed with them, relentless. He saw neither of his pursuers in the chaos. But what he did see broke him.
The small silver dragon tried desperately to climb, but his wingbeats slowed, exhaustion taking over, and Aeson watched as the rising flames consumed him.
Within a heartbeat, the young Draleid who sat before Aeson screamed and thrashed, and before a thing could be done, the young man threw himself from Lyara’s back and fell into the flames.
“Uora,” Aeson whispered, closing his eyes and pressing himself to Lyara’s scales.
Up and up they rose, until the flames finally ceased their chase, and Lyara’s warmth was the only thing keeping Aeson’s body from freezing.
He surrounded himself with threads of Air, helping him to breathe as they broke through the dense clouds to see an ocean of shimmering pink and the Blood Moon hanging like a wound in the night.
After a moment, Lyara dropped back into the clouds, using them as cover as she flew north. She dared not drop below, both for fear of the flames and of the ruin they would witness.
When they were many miles clear of the city, Lyara dropped lower in search of the forest and the forked river to which they had sent the other young apprentice and his soulkin.
But they found only ash, and char, and ruin.
For miles upon miles, the flames had left nothing in their wake.
Aeson would not have believed such power was possible had he not seen it with his own eyes.
Onwards they flew until Lyara’s wings ached, and eventually they spotted trees in the distance by a sloping hill. She alighted at the forest’s edge, her legs giving way beneath her, exhaustion setting in. Aeson slid from her back, every bone in his body shaking.
Only then, as they stood alone so far from home did Aeson collapse, a hollowness in his chest, a chasm the size of all those they had lost. It took every ounce of his strength to haul himself to his feet and walk to Lyara’s head.
She lay listless, images of fire and death and fury and loss cycling through her mind relentlessly.
Again and again she watched dragons die, watched her world unravel a single thread at a time.
For the first time since Lyara had hatched, Aeson wanted her to feel rage. He wanted that fire to ignite inside her and burn away her pain. But in that moment, loss and sorrow were all she could find.
Aeson knelt beside her and rested his palms on her scales, allowing their minds to drift into one another.
He carried her pain, and she his. Together they would find a way forward.
They would because they had to, because they would not allow all that death to have been for nothing.
But for now, they needed a moment to bleed, to mourn, and to simply lie still.
They must have fallen into slumber at some point because Aeson jolted awake at the sound of wingbeats, unsure of how much time had passed, and through Lyara’s eyes, they saw something moving in the clouds.
Aeson closed his eyes for a moment, begging the gods to grant his soul some respite, then dragged himself to his feet and readied himself to die with his blades in his hands. Her heart heavy, Lyara stood behind him, her forelimbs spread wide, her frills on end, her fire reigniting within her heart.
That was when the scent of hammered silver and fresh rain touched her nostrils, and a cold air filled her lungs.
Their shared heartbeat thumped once and then twice in hope, until the clouds broke, and, with crimson light spraying behind them, Thorandír and Seynarí took shape in the night. Harken and Atara’s soulkin.
Aeson’s body almost melted with relief as he pressed his hand over his heart and thanked Varyn for listening to his prayers.
The two dragons descended slowly, Seynarí wobbling in the air. And when they finally alighted on the grass, she collapsed, the membrane of her right wing torn to ribbons, a vicious gash along the left side of her skull.