Silus tumbled between Piotr’s hind legs and found himself on his back, looking up at the pale belly of the beast. He drove his sword up, but the blade bowed against the tough flesh, barely making an impression. He was about to try again when the dragon shifted and turned to face him. Now out of the creature’s shadow, Silus saw that Shalim had taken the opportunity to hurry his family away from the site of the massacre, and he urged them to keep going.
Piotr growled, and as it did so Silus saw two great fleshy sacks inflating on either side of its throat; the dragon’s belly might have been armoured by thick hide, but these looked very vulnerable indeed.
Silus feinted to the left; the dragon snapped at empty air and growled in frustration, its neck pouches distending further. Silus came in close and swung his sword, the skin of the pouch above him slowly peeling back as his blade cut deep. A thickly-veined membrane rolled slowly away from the incision, hanging like a goitre. He lashed out again and Piotr cried out as the membrane finally ruptured.
Silus didn’t know what he had expected dragon’s blood to look like, but it wasn’t this pale, almost translucent tide that now washed over him. The substance covered him from head to toe — it was in his eyes, his hair, he could even taste the acrid tang of it at the back of his throat. Whatever this was, he realised, it wasn’t blood. It smelled something like the pitch they used to tar the hulls of ships in Nurn, or the naphtha employed in the immolation of heretics outside Scholten Cathedral.
He wiped his eyes just in time to see Piotr swing round again, its great scimitar-blade teeth only inches from his face as it breathed out. Silus saw something like a spark deep in the dragon’s throat and there was a gust of hot wind. When the beast made a sound like a cough and shook its head, Silus dived beneath its jaws, before leaping back to his feet. Seeing the wound in the dragon’s throat, he struck out again, and this time was rewarded with a rich, amber flow.
As the dragon’s blood drenched him, he felt a peculiar surge of energy. Before he knew what was happening, he was on his knees, darkness descending. He was not afraid, for he saw now that he was beneath the waves and the song of the ocean surrounded him. A weak glimmer of sunlight barely revealed the shapes that moved below, but he knew what they were. After all, their blood ran in his veins.
They opened their arms to welcome him and everything that was human fell away.
Kelosfelt the surge of magic as the dragon’s blood was spilled and saw the terrible change that it wrought upon his friend.
Silus fell, his eyes rolling up until they showed only the whites, his back arching until the mage was sure his spine would snap. Indeed, even from where he stood, he could hear the bones shift. Silus cried out as, all along the curve of his back, black spikes punched through the flesh, blood tricking from the wounds. His shoulder blades realigned and grew, fan-like protrusions slicing through skin and spreading out in quills of black bone. The fingers of his hands elongated, the nails growing into sharp talons. Silus’s screams were muffled as his jaw distended and his gums shrank back from teeth that now looked as keen as blades.
The raw magic in the dragon’s blood had woken that which had lain dormant — or which Silus had suppressed — and the Chadassa nature had become his own.
Kelos watched Silus fight like the creatures who had bequeathed him his powers, with a ferocity and blood-lust that chilled the mage. When the dragon tried to close its jaws around him, Silus’s right arm lashed out and his fist punched through the roof of its mouth. He didn’t need his sword now, and he soon finished Piotr, the amber blood of the dragon soaking the sand around him in a spreading pool.
Seeing its companion slaughtered, the azure dragon raised its head and let out a long ululating call. The answer seemed to come from all around them, and soon Kelos saw dark shapes to the east. From this distance they looked like a flock of crows. More dragons were winging their way towards them, the beat of their wings whipping the desert sands up into spirals as they came in to land.
As the azure light of the dragon had begun to seek out and take apart Illiun’s people, Ignacio led his people in song; the Swords raising their voices to their god in praise of His judgement. Now, however, they clearly had a more pressing concern, as the monster that Silus had become headed their way.
“Die, demon!” one of Ignacio’s companions yelled.
Kelos couldn’t help but admire the man’s determination, but his faith stood him in no stead against the claws of the Chadassa hybrid. He was torn apart within moments, his gore covering his companions as they began to draw their own swords.
This was all going horribly wrong. Kelos had meant the revelation of the dragons to be awe-inspiring, a prelude to the audacious sorcery he would perform to send them all home. Now they were surrounded by more of the terrible creatures, fighting had begun to break out amongst their own kind, and soon Illiun and his people would be entirely eradicated. Kelos no longer had time to carefully channel the power of the azure dragon, but needed immediate access to its magic, and he had just seen the best way to achieve that. He was only sorry that it had come to this; the death of such a magnificent beast would be a tragedy.
Ignacio himself was now facing off against Silus. Unlike his brother in faith, he had fought against the Chadassa before and had already scored a few hits. Bloody red stripes banded Silus’s torso, one so severe that Kelos could see ribs through the wound.
“No!” he shouted, as Ignacio brought his sword to bear once more. “Don’t, I need him.”
Ignacio danced out of the way of Silus’s talons and turned to the mage as he raced towards them. “Keep out of this, Kelos. Much good Silus’s plans have done us. Now let the true agents of Kerberos deal with this.”
“Silus… Silus, look at me,” Kelos said, ducking in front of Ignacio and waving his arms. As ruthless as he knew the newest recruit to the Swords to be, he didn’t think that Ignacio would go through him to get to Silus.
Kelos barely retracted his stomach in time to avoid Silus’s swipe to his torso. Had he been standing an inch closer, he would have been disembowelled.
“That’s it, come to Kelos. You remember me, right?”
He drew Silus back, step by step, taking him ever closer to the azure dragon. Only a few of the settlers remained; Illiun was amongst their number, and he was doing his best to protect the survivors. Kelos could just make out Katya, Emuel and Zac huddling against the flanks of the black dragon, who appeared to be shielding them from the conflict. Katya noticed the mage and raised her hand and smiled, assuring him that they were safe.
Kelos continued to draw Silus onwards and when he felt the heat of the azure dragon at his back, he tumbled to the side, hoping that Silus would now ignore him and switch his priority to the larger target.
Kelos was glad to see his instincts pay off, as Silus launched himself at the dragon.
The mage was hypnotised, for a moment, by the sheer brute violence before him.
The azure dragon was all controlled rage and precise, focused force. Katherine Makennon would give her right arm to acquire such a weapon, Kelos considered. Perhaps, then, it was just as well that he would no longer be attempting to bring any of the dragons back to Twilight.
Somehow, Silus had managed to clamber onto the dragon’s neck; he made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a scream as he sank his teeth into the creature’s rough hide. Kelos felt the sudden rush of magic as the first drop of the dragon’s blood was spilled, but it wasn’t enough. For the sorcery he intended to perform, he required a full sacrifice.
The mage suddenly ducked as the dragon turned, its tail coming round like the boom of a ship caught by the wind. He regained his feet quickly and backed away, only for a ferocious gale to whip up the sand around him as something moved between him and the sun. Kelos looked up to see more dragons coming in to land.