Ricardo and X looked on as the great dragon's head slithered down to his prey once more. Their daughter lay in the clutches of something neither of them could hope to fight and survive. Ricardo slipped his hand into X's, and in a voice so low he could barely hear himself, said, "I have loved you since I met you, mi corazon."

X held his hand in a grip both powerful and gentle. "Back at you, Ricky."

There was a brief calm in the storm of scales below. X's face hardened, and he said, "This thing ain't walkin' away from here untouched."

Fierce pride burned in Ricardo's heart, and he squeezed his beloved's hand. "Si, mi corazon." The Power of his Dark Lady flowed through his veins, and he would show this worm what it meant to trifle with the Morrigan's Lady in Waiting.

"What the hell?"

Ricardo followed X's gaze down to their daughter and the dragon. It had frozen, staring at her, its jaws parted inches from her head. The scales along the entire length of its body vibrated, as if the great beast were having a convulsion. The only still place was where the coils wrapped around Tee... around Teresa.

She spoke so quietly Ricardo almost couldn't hear it over the vibrations of the dragon's scales.

"I remember who I am. I remember who I was. I remember who I should have been."

The dragon's voice was a steam kettle of rage hissing between its jaws.

"Your puny Fae magics cannot hold me long, Sidhe bitch. Release me, and I will make your end swift."

"You are right. My magic could not hope to contain you, Drake. I have no magic of containment, or of combat, or of destruction."

"So, end this!"

"I remember who I am. I am Teresa, Medic Knight of the Sidhe, charged with healing my fellow Knights in the thick of battle. I am Teresa, lover of beauty, who fell in love with the first images men put on cave walls, the first patterns they formed of sand, the first Art they ever made. I am Teresa, who watched my love flower and bloom, the rose at the tip of humanity's long, thorny stem.

"I am Teresa, who saw old flowers fading for lack of care and grasped at the stem. I am Teresa Gelt, who gathered up all the fallen petals, cursing each thorn as it cut me, until all that remained were curses and hate. I am Teresa Gelt, who sold her soul for revenge on those who protected my first love from my bitter hatred."

Teresa cried now, golden tears raining down her face to soak her spiderweb tunic. The dragon's vibration made a constant, angry buzz, and his voice hissed where it had thundered earlier.

"Get on with it! Your magic cannot contain me forever. If you release me now, I will kill your friends quickly, but you... you I will torture by making you watch them die!"

"I am Tee, who learned once more what it means to love. Not to take, but to give. Not greed, but generosity. Not to desire, but to care."

"Oh, ye flipping gods above, I am going to torture everyone in this room to death. Just finish your soliloquy and release me!"

Teresa’s gentle sobs stopped, but her eyes still dripped golden tears. Those eyes held kindness, but Ricardo could see an echo of X's hardness deep inside them. She raised her hands and laid her palms gently on the dragon's art-encrusted hide.

"No. I am Misty, who learned that beauty can be found in unlikely places, and love can be found in places more unlikely still. I am Misty, who learned that love is the source of everything beautiful, and without that love beauty withers, dies, and becomes something horrible, like I became."

"Just release me and die already, bitch!"

Misty smiled. "I am Teresa Misty Gelt. I love all things beautiful." All the softness rushed from her eyes, and they gleamed like orbs of solid, hard gold. "And beautiful things love me."

Teresa lifted her hands. The artwork followed them, wrenching its way out of the coils that wrapped around her. A steam kettle shriek rang through the room as the art pressed in around Teresa, lifting her clear of the dragon's confining coils, carrying her over to where Phil knelt with Micah's head in her lap. Expanding out from the dragon's central coils, paintings and sculpture and weapons and armor all tore their way free. Each one pulled a chunk of scale and skin with it, and with each piece of art, the steam whistle blew again, blasting the room with pain and suffering.

One by one, the art arranged itself between the thrashing, naked coils of the dragon and the quiet, serene form of Teresa. Finally, with a shriek and a horrible sucking sound, six pieces tore free from the dragon's limbs, body, and face. An ancient suit of armor floated down and arranged itself in front of Teresa, almost as if it waited for her to don it.

The steam kettle shriek became a scream, and the scream became words wrenched from a place of pain and madness. "You horrible little bitch! I am going to smash you and all your little friends into paste! There won't be enough left of you to eat, I'm going to crush you and burn you and piss on your desecrated remains! I'm going to..."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Excuse me," a masculine voice cut through the dragon's shrieking like a battleship cutting through fog, "I think I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Micah stepped out from behind the wall of Art. His bedraggled clothes didn't detract in the slightest from his dignity; he looked like an Old Testament prophet returned from the wasteland. Faster than thought, the skinless wyrm struck at him, maw gaping, lunging, and snapping shut. But it closed on empty space; Micah had stepped to the side, and before the dragon could pull away, his hands lashed out, grabbing the beast's upper and lower jaws.

"Did you know," he said conversationally, "that the jaws of most reptiles have a great deal of power when closing, but are relatively easy to hold shut?"

The dragon's jaw muscles bunched, and a muffled scream echoed through his chest as his jaw muscles, already torn from his skin flaying itself from him, ripped apart. The dragon thrashed, pulling Micah through the air, slamming him around the room. The walls shuddered under the shock, the beautiful facing falling to expose the steel and concrete beneath. With every impact, Micah spun, absorbing it on his feet, but the thrashing serpent didn’t tire, he grew more and more frantic.

The walls shivered every time the great Wyrm thrashed. Ricardo winced with each impact as Micah was smashed to the walls, the floor, or the ground. He weakened, the pixie could feel it. Ophilia stood, and the floor rang with the sound of a shower of silver as her studs rained to the ground. Her tattoos floated around her as she stepped through the wall of Art bathed in viridian Power and confronted the wounded Drake.

"I really can't abide rude houseguests." Ophilia's singsong reeked of insanity. Tendrils of green light lashed out. One wrapped each of the beast's limbs, one coiled about his throat, and one shot straight into the dragon's skull. Micah dropped, senseless, from the dragon's snout, and another tendril of emerald fire caught him and lay him gently behind Teresa's wall of Art.

A struggle ensued, draconic might versus the wild magic of madness. At first it seemed that Ophilia could hold the dragon; leverage, strength, and size meant nothing to the Power that so closely mirrored the Dark Queen's own. Still he struggled, and still he screamed, epithets in languages fell and dead, screams wishing death and debasement on everyone involved. His right rear leg snapped and went limp, but all but one of the tendrils thinned.

The dragon's mind, already pushed near madness by the pain of being flayed, passed the threshold of insanity. He no longer fought Ophilia's Power; he drank it like mother's milk, and his thrashing became more and more violent. His right arm twisted, snapped, and broke clean off at the shoulder, but his left claw wrenched itself free of the tendril of Power. It shot out and pinned Ophilia to the floor, the dragon leaning over her in a mockery of an embrace. Her back arched as the Power drained out of her in an ever-faster cascade, and the dragon's eyes glowed with putrescent luminescence.

Ricardo didn't see X move. A streak of black, a fleck of silver, and a sliver of steel snapped the cord of magic. The dragon flew backward, blown away by the backlash of severed power. Ophilia whimpered as she slid back across the floor. Before she could slam into the wall of Art, a portion slid aside to allow her passage. The moment her feet were through, it slid back into place, but Ricardo still heard her slam into the far wall.

The dragon picked up Micah's limp form. He yanked at an arm, twisted one of the legs until Micah's foot was by his ear, but when nothing came loose, he smashed the golem into the hardwood floor. Over and over and over he beat the floor with the unconscious Golem, leaving dents larger than a man's head. Finally, a glint from Teresa's wall of Art caught the dragon's eye. In his rage, he threw Micah bodily at the wall.

Like with Ophilia, the wall parted to let him pass. Like Ophilia, Ricardo heard Micah slam into the far wall, followed by the sound of him hitting the floor. The beast threw back his head and screamed his fury at the sky, then took a single step toward Teresa's wall.

Ricardo pulled in all the power the Dark Lady had given him. The beast sensed it and looked up. The moment they made eye contact, Ricardo threw the power of death incarnate into the creature's face. As Ricardo fell, exhausted, one of the beast's eyes snapped shut, the skin around it withering to blackened rot, leaving the eye exposed but whole. The other eye burst in a shower of putrescent muck, but the beast still stood.

X caught him. They both went over on their asses, but X caught him. They lay there and felt the floor shake as the creature came for them.

"No regrets, Ricky boy."

"Only that I would have spent more time with you, mi corazon."

The beast's remaining claw rose into the air above them. Ricardo refused to look at it, staring instead at X, who had eyes only for him. They waited for death to finally return them permanently to their Dark Mistress' realm.

A voice of trumpets and steel rang out through the hall. "Drake! This is your only warning! Back away slowly and return to the realm from whence you came, or I swear by Saint Michael and Saint George..."

A suit of armor hovered between the pixies and the dragon. It was black and white and gray, beautiful and horrible as it fluoresced death. Ricardo could barely see past the twisted space around it, but the dragon didn't look like it was stopping. Before he could move, before he could even try to wake X, hands the size of dinner platters grabbed them both up, and faster than a speeding bullet, carried them behind the wall.

***

Michaela heard Matt go past behind her, knew the pixies were safe, and spoke once more, " I swear by Saint Michael and Saint George and my pretty armored bonnet; I will end you."

The dragon started his lunge, but he was wounded beyond human comprehension. In Paris he had been faster than she was, if not by much, and the only reason she'd survived was her skill with a spear and the intercession of the Host. Here, though...

Here she had her sword in hand, burning red and billowing blue smoke. She slashed his leg, moved, took his spine apart with a backhand, moved again, took off his remaining leg, moved one final time, and stood to meet his lunge with her sword. His weight hammered into her, but her armor weighed more than the planet she stood on. The dragon's lamed jaws collapsed in on themselves as he shoved himself through the billion miles of warped space surrounding her.

His momentum carried his whole body into her. The warped space around her sucked his form down to a single shrieking streak. She staggered half a step when his remains impacted the surface of her breastplate, but her breastplate held.

Her duty done, Michaela stepped out of Time, stepped away from the world, and set her armor and sword to the side. The Presence waited there as it had since before Time, as it would long after Time ended. She sent a prayer winging its way.

"It is done."

Well done, grandchild. Mourn the loss but be at peace. There are two who might be saved if one already has been.

The Presence brushed across her, washing away pain, and fear, and doubt, leaving serenity in its wake. She stepped back into Time smiling.