“Argh!” The first of the very human screams rose to join us in the tortured air. Looking down, I saw that Red Hounds and Daza were staggering and falling to their knees, eyes wild and staring, and hands grasping their throat—
“No!” I shouted, reaching down towards them in a futile, powerless gesture as I realized that Inyene’s foul curse was somehow poisoning my people…
“We fly!” Ymmen snarled ferociously his soot-wind voice through my mind, suddenly beating his wings to send us up higher and higher over the Pass, above the advancing flare of poisonous green light.
“No, Ymmen, no – the others!” I screamed, tears springing to my eyes. Abioye! Tamin! Montfre!
But Ymmen wasn’t stopping at all. He wasn’t even slowing down a fraction as he sought to outpace the terrible curse that Inyene had released from some arcane magical artifact that she had found in her murderous career.
“I’ll not have another soul-sister die!” Ymmen was adamant, taking us so high that the air grew suddenly cold and terrible, and we were surrounded by the gray storm clouds of the Masaka peaks. There was a crackling hiss like the dried and brittle reeds swaying in the Soussa winds, and a gleam of silver frost ripple over Ymmen’s black scales – and over me.
Instantly, every muscle in my body started to shake and even my bones started to ache—
Was this some new curse of the metal queen!?
“No.” I heard Ymmen say, as he did – something – and I felt a rising kiss of warmth spread out from the dragon’s heart and all through his body. I had no name for what he did, or whether this was a dragon’s magic or just a strange ability pregnant in their ancient bodies – but the warmth spread through my mind as well, from the place where we were one. Even without the forced connection of the Stone Crown, I could somehow feel the burning sun-bonfire that was Ymmen’s soul, and it was keeping both him and me alive.
“This is just the high frosts. It lives high up in the air, all over the entire world where the winds run cold,” Ymmen informed me. And this warmth that he spent from his very being was the way that all dragon-kind could survive up here where no other creature could.
But there were still the others, somewhere far down there, dying, one by one, under Inyene’s green curse. I looked down to see that the green haze of light was now falling and fading, as if it could not penetrate the blanket of the high frosts.
“Please – take us down!” I begged Ymmen. I had to see the fate that had befallen my dearest friends and family – even if it was a terrible one.
Ymmen did not say anything in response, but I sensed his terrible certainty and his resignation as he tipped his wings downwards, snapping and flicking off what remained of the frost that had plated there.
The gray storm clouds lightened, gray thin – I saw the suggestion of the two walls of the Pass below, and—
There was a flaring orb of radiant blue-white light in the pass’s center. Montfre, I knew instinctively – although I had no knowledge of his Torvald magics.
But I was right, I saw as we speared down through the skies towards them. Inyene’s green wave of magic had dissipated, leaving handfuls of my people – Red Hounds and Daza both – on the ground, their bodies terribly stilled—
All apart from the now heavy knot of defenders inside Montfre’s protective shell. It seemed that the green poison had no effect on the mechanical dragons at all – of course not! I thought. They were not beasts, but machines – no life to kill! – and Abioye or Tamin or Montfre had somehow managed to call as many of the remaining war band behind their scrapped metal-dragon barricade, and into the safety of Montfre’s magic. And there were clearly obvious signs of a few that hadn’t made it under Montfre’s protection in time, I saw in dismay.
“BWAAR!” There was a clanging, discordant note as the vast shadow of Inyene’s dragon appeared, blasting its plume of oil and fire at the last of the defenders. It looked powerful enough to engulf them all – but instead Inyene’s ghastly flames only broke over Montfre’s protective circle.
“Yes!” I punched the air in exultation…
Until I saw the blue orb shrink rapidly inwards by several meters.
Oh no. I remembered how every act of Montfre’s magic cost him dearly, and wondered if, somewhere down there in the heart of the defenders the young, platinum-haired mage was shaking with aches and fugues and barely remaining conscious as he sought to save what was left of those around him.
Another screech of metal pierced the air as one of the mechanical dragons leapt into the space abandoned by my defenders to open its steel maw and blast at the blue orb after Inyene’s dragon had finished. Once again, Montfre’s protective circle contracted by a couple of meters.
There was no way for the defenders to counter the mechanical dragons and Inyene, and, as Inyene circled the last knot of those who had dared to defy her, the mechanical dragons she had created were encircling the barricade and preparing to overwhelm it with fire and fury—
I couldn’t watch.
I couldn’t do nothing.
There was only one thing that I could do—
“I’m sorry, brother,” I whispered to Ymmen in my mind as I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the Stone Crown.
Instantly, the buzzing in my ears leapt to a sharp crescendo of noise and headache. It was almost too much pain to bear thinking about, and all my courage wavered as I was overwhelmed by nausea and dizziness—
But I could not give up. I would MAKE this cursed Crown obey me! I thought with clenched teeth, because I knew that I had to. I had to do this for my friends, who were already about to die below me.
But…the Lady Red’s ultimatum! A small part of me balked. If I used the Crown now – what would the dragons then do, in retaliation? I knew that they might try to take out their impotent rage against me – but would they also turn against the rest of the Daza for my actions?
I was so close to turning away from the lure of the Stone Crown’s power – until a new thought, almost like a different voice, swelled in my mind.
If I could command the Lady Red and her brood to save my warband – then surely I could command them to leave the Daza alone, afterwards…?
Suddenly, I felt a new pressure as the Stone Crown, which had been slipping and loose on my head in the heartbeat before, suddenly clamped tighter to my temples. I knew without even having to try that the Stone Crown would now no longer budge from my head, sealed again to my skull, just as it had been the very first time I had put it on.
And the buzzing sound was all around me – I was swimming in the noise of storm and growls and teeth and…
Dragons.
It was the sound of the dragons of the Plains. I could hear them, yes, but I could also feel them and even see them in some strange dragon-sense way. I saw the bright, hot flames of the Lady Red, as well as the slower, heavier heart-flames of the green-scaled dragons…
“Lady Red and all her brood!” I shouted in the skies as Ymmen twitched underneath me. My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded deeper and colder.