Chapter 21
The whisper of an ancient voice wove between the bounds of her mind. Griselda didn’t realize her body was moving on its own as she motioned her hands toward the shackles that held the skeletal dragon.
Within an instant, ice materialized from the air before her fingers and shot out toward the chains binding it high in the cathedral’s rafters.
“No!” Lazarus shouted, reaching his own decrepit hands toward her.
Before she could react, an ethereal roar shattered every stained glass pane throughout the room in an echoed reverberation. Rust and bones fell around them as large claws landed with an earth shattering rumble on the dirt floor. A slew of blood and pus pooled beneath the body of the dragon.
Griselda stared in awe at the size of the skeletal leg closest to her. The dragon’s head swiveled around until it stood mere inches from her face.
“You. Smell. Of. Him.” The words twisted through her as the dragon turned and opened its maw toward Lazarus.
“Unfortunately, he apparently created me. Do with him what you will. Else wise, I’ll make sure he meets his end.” Griselda’s emotions were dead as she stared pointedly toward the shivering skeletal mass before her.
She folded her arms and decided to watch. This gigantic dragon barely fit in the room as a decaying mass. She could only imagine what it would have been like had it have been fully alive and muscled.
“She doesn’t know what she speaks of!” Lazarus threw his hands aside in a wide grasp.
“I gave you a second chance at life, Mish’Ta!
I prevented your untimely death and gave you the best vantage point in all the lands to witness my glorious powers as an atonement for bringing such wretched and vile diseases to my people. ”
Mish’Ta?
Griselda looked the dragon over. Flesh barely clung to its body.
She didn’t understand how it still spoke, but stranger things had happened lately.
Odd runes were etched into its bones that steadily began to glow with an uneasy haze.
Segments of the dragon still held together by the luck of its sinew and remnants of muscle.
“Lies. Deceit. Cowardice.”
The final statement held a venom that sent goosebumps down Griselda’s spine. The room steadily began to heat up. Lazarus’ feet freed themselves from the melted ice as he stomped higher up the stairs.
“False. Prophet.”
Turning to point a crooked finger at Mish’Ta, Lazarus’ jaw fell open and his eyes shined with a twisted anger. No words fell from his mouth. Though, Griselda could sense the anger that boiled inside his bones at Mish’Ta’s accusation.
A stiff wind whistled in through the shattered windows. A thought crossed Griselda’s mind in that moment pertaining to what the outside world beyond these walls truly looked like now that the illusion was gone.
“Turn your mind to the all seeing and realize the wrongs of your ways!” Lazarus raised his arms skyward as a ball of dark ooze swirled between his hands.
The booming shout brought Griselda back to reality. Staring down at her own hands, she tried to make something happen like before.
“Impudent. Necromancer.”
The sound of someone trying to light a fire sizzled from beside her. The ribs of the dragon exposed a pair of lungs that crackled like a burning coal. Orange light webbed through the organ as sparks burst from the corners of Mish’Ta’s bone maw.
“Necromancer? I bring life to all those around me! I am the sole source of life. Nothing can die under my hand.” The robed skeleton spread his arms wider, the mass between growing more viscous as time went on.
“Nothing. Lives. Either.”
Griselda stepped back, realizing the room felt like it was about to explode between this battle of undead. Ducking behind a pillar, she continued to force ice back out from her fingertips.
Something.
Anything.
A hopeful possibility that she could save her own hide should this entire matter turn south.
A rattling forced her face up as Mish’Ta’s tail wrapped around her and the pillar in a strangely protective hold. No sooner had the air been knocked from her lungs by the massive bones than a bright light filled the room.
Such a blinding light that it rivaled the glow of when she first opened the doors to the cathedral.
Such a light that she wondered if Lazarus had used Mish’Ta’s fire as the source of the illusion.
A groaning rumble tore through the cathedral. Glancing around the pillar, Griselda attempted to make sense of their bodies through the brightness.
Lazarus still stood. The black orb balanced between him and Mish’Ta. Whereas Mish’Ta’s lower jaw was slanted at an awkward angle while her fire tore from her throat.
“You are nothing like you were back then. I may have given you the gift of life, but you’ve lost all your strength!” cackled Lazarus.
The room dimmed as Mish’Ta’s fire spewed and sputtered. Flecks of flame singed and melted the shards of glass around the room.
I should be dead.
Yet, she didn’t feel any heat from the flames that had danced around the room seconds prior. Mish’Ta’s tail released its grip as the dragon fell to the ground.
Running from the pillar, Griselda dove under the safety of her jaw and began whispering inside her mouth as Lazarus launched a segment of the orb toward the ground.
“Don’t give up. I know you’re tired. I know you only wish to sleep, and I promise you’ll get that. Right now, I need you. Thrasik needs you.” She placed her palms on the roof of Mish’Ta’s mouth, barely reaching as she stood on her tiptoes.
“Thrasik.”
The mention of his name lit something in the dragon as she raised her skull.
“You. Bonded.”
In a way that she would never be able to fully describe, Griselda felt a warmth wrap around her core. An ethereal warmth that both made her ache to sob and tingle with the desire to laugh. A smile ripped across her lips as she frantically nodded.
“He is my everything, even if it’s the doing of this wretched man. I will make sure Lazarus pays for all of his wrongs.” Her words barely left her throat before Mish’Ta reached into her skull and pulled Griselda from beneath her.
“Me. First.”
Mish’Ta held her off to the side, keeping her far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to act or stop the dragon.
Lazarus mimicked a yawn as he motioned a finger toward the dragon, ordering the floating orb to shoot directly into her skull.
Mish’Ta took the force without hesitation. A thundering quake vibrated down the dragon’s bones, shaking Griselda amongst her claws.
Without blinking, she watched as Mish’Ta took a deep breath and wrapped her skeletal jaws around the cackling necromancer. A chamber of bone and teeth.
“I can just walk out of here, Mish’Ta. You should know better by now,” sneered the eldritch skeleton.
Without blinking, Griselda took in the moment in a mixture of horror and awe. The next events cascaded within seconds.
The door beside Lazarus pulled back with a hard yank as a obsidian reptile poked its head through, covered in blood and cuts.
Mish’Ta released her flames, keeping her teeth clenched and roasting Lazarus in an ethereally luminous flame.
Otherworldly shrieks ripped from between her jaws as dark ooze seeped between each fang and out of her throat.
That same light radiated down her body and filtered through her segmented bones.
Griselda didn’t realize she was on the verge of hyperventilating and frantically ripped her gaze between the door and Mish’Ta’s glowing body. A clawed hand popped out from the shadows of the entryway and hurriedly motioned her over.
She didn’t know where to move or why she was frozen in place. Her emotions had been staunch and placid mere moments before, but in this moment of watching what she could only describe as a holy event unfolding before her eyes— she felt true unabashed panic.
The shadowy ooze exploding from Lazarus splattered through Mish’Ta’s fangs against the pillars and walls with a sickening squelch. Griselda’s mind replayed the moment in the woods, before she met Thrasik, where that strange liquid sprayed from under the bush. It was eerily familiar.
Something clicked in her mind at that very moment.
Something that had been right under her nose this entire time.
Her viridian eyes splayed wide as chills raced along her skin.
“Run. Far.”
Griselda’s face paled.
“Flee.”
Mish’Ta’s jaw began to struggle against an unknown force as something seemed to be attempting to pry it open.
“It. Devours. All.”
A line raced down the center of Mish’Ta’s skull with a resounding crack.
“Griselda!” The deep voice ripped her from the panicked haze, drawing her attention toward the door.
How desperately she’d needed to hear his voice. To know he wasn’t harmed. Griselda’s heart thrummed to a beat that felt it would explode out of her ribs. She wanted nothing more than to go back to their borrowed cave.
Thrasik’s dark opalescent spiked maw suddenly materialized before her, his thick arms scooping her up as they dashed through the entryway.
“We have to leave now.” He continued to stare over his shoulder once they made it through, gently putting her down.
“But what about Mish’Ta?” Griselda’s question seemed to hit a sour pang in him.
Thrasik’s scales sunk slim against his body as his shoulders dropped. He continued to stare past the entryway for a moment before a roar echoed outside the chamber.
“Leave. Know. I. Loved—”
The ceiling of the cathedral began to cave in. Red lightning jolted through the room in an instant, cutting off Mish’Ta’s final words as exploding bone reverberated amongst the space.
Griselda gripped Thrasik’s hand as he flinched, holding it tight enough she was sure his scales would leave indents along her palm. His muscles tensed under her touch, but she still tugged his arm.
“Thrasik, we have to hurry. Lazarus will only come back for revenge if she wasn’t able to kill him.” Her words slipped softer from her lips than she intended.