Thunder crested the skies, impossible on the half-clear night. It swirled around the daemon and Tallah’s hair reacted to the static charge. A heavy, malicious presence spilled out of the figure, palpable its intensity even across the distance.

It aimed its arms down at the dragon and let loose the jagged spears of power.

‘If it kills the critter, it may be better for us,’ Anna suggested. ‘It’s as dangerous to us as it is to them.’

It’s not killing it.

Tallah knew this with cold certainty, the unease in her guts growing as the daemon’s lightning cut through the dragon’s flames. If they meant to kill the beast, the daemons would have mobbed, their full numbers enough to get the task done. A dragon could be made to bleed, and it could be killed with a monstrous cost of life.

But…

The way the more dangerous monsters held back. The halfhearted assault. The oddness of the mood on the air. And, most of all, that strange, talking daemon taking the initiative.

‘This battle is not for you,’ its words resounded in her ears.

Lightning stabbed at the dragon, piercing its body as if the great armour wasn’t even there. Tallah knew from unpleasant experience that a dragon’s hide could shrug off a Titan’s Punishment with ease, treating it as nothing more than mild irritation. She’d seen the likes of the Adjunct running for her life after striking one of these walking calamities.

To see it pierced beggared the imagination. To see there was no blood or wound made it worse.

The daemon raised its arms to the sky and the jagged pulses of power coalesced into white, blinding light threaded around its fingers. More of the threads punched through the dragon’s back, neck, wings, and snaked across its body.

Bindings. The word came to her unbidden, but it made horrifying sense. It wasn’t trying to kill the thing. It was attempting domination.

The first net flew over the wall, a tight ball of iron that sailed at a precise arc over the battlefield and aimed towards the creature. It cast wide, the net opening and missing its pinprick of a target. Tallah cursed and launched her own fire at the daemon.

It shrugged it off as if it were of no concern and continued to wrestle with the dragon caught in its snare.

The great lizard thrashed and spat flames at its assailant. It tried to take to the air but its wings couldn’t lift it far enough. It was as if the luminous threads sapped its strength. Even its fire diminished heartbeat by heartbeat, its roar turning to a mewling growl. If dying or not was impossible to say from a distance, but something was definitely wrong.

‘I’m here,’ Bianca whispered just as the next two nets flew overhead. Tallah followed them on tethers of force.

Bianca reached out and nudged the nets just enough to correct their trajectory. They hit the daemon in full. The first staggered it, and the second drew it down to the ground in a flailing mass. Its focus snapped, the threads of its spell shattering like glass. Two armies held their breath as the dragon shook its head and growled, the sound a low boom that vibrated even Tallah’s bones. It flapped its wings once and was airborne. A swish of its tail spun it around to face where the daemon had fallen.

It drew a great, loud inhale of breath. Then spat it down onto the daemon as a thick stream of jet-black flames. Tallah covered her face against the blast of super-heated air that exploded from the scene.

The ground itself ran like wax. It became red, then white, then melted into a puddle of overheated rock that would slag to obsidian. The beast’s fury could be felt from all the way up on the walls, the intense heat of its breath blasting the air.

“I don’t think it’s dead,” Tallah said as she wove her illum into a single lance. She fashioned a spear of phosphorus-white fire and held it above her head. The air sizzled with its heat as she waited for the dragon to finish its assault.

When the lizard finally dropped to the ground, panting with the effort, there was only a crater remained. It glowed like hearth embers, red and angry, the entire landscape around it warped by the heat of dragon’s fire.

The dragon sniffed and approached cautiously, tail swishing in anger, wings held open, head low.

Lightning errupted from the hole. It wasn’t quite quick enough this time, its target dodging out of the way with a swiftness and deftness that belied its terrifying size. It roared again in frustration and took to the air. If its annoyance couldn’t burn, then it was probably not worth fighting further.

The black figure climbing up from the cooling crater had not survived quite pristine. Tallah’s enhanced sight showed cracks in its black body, black curls of smoke rising out from shattered skin. The white mask of its face was ashen, red light glinting through heat cracks.

It staggered up the incline, slipped on the molten rock, and finally shot up into the night, almost too quick to see in the smoke-choked air. The angle of its flight was undeniable. It was chasing after the gargantuan shape of the dragon.

Bianca accelerated them forward to give chase. The lance of fire trailed like a comet behind their flight.

‘This isn’t Grefe,’ Bianca said, urgency in her voice. ‘I don’t have a ceiling or walls to grab onto. We aren’t flying.’

Tallah understood Bianca’s limitations in this scenario. It was worth being reminded before she committed fully to the chase.

But instinct urged her to try and get those two monsters separated somehow. Whatever the daemon was doing, it couldn’t be something in the Rock’s favour. That weave it had used was odd, radiating a malice that she’d never met before. Somehow, she assumed a creature of this magnitude of power could have killed the dragon much quicker than it had tried already.

Anna was the first to give voice to their fears. ‘A daemon-controlled dragon… Now that would be a lovely calamity to deal with.’

Calamity was exactly what it would be. A dragon was dangerous enough on its own when unprovoked. Under control, it would be a terrifying weapon for whoever wielded it.

She had to leap across the forest and the things within were already braying for her blood. They jumped. Threw stones. Cast spears and loosed arrows. Tallah didn’t have the resources just then to counterattack, not if she wanted to keep sight of the two flying high above her ceiling.

Bianca dodged and slipped between the projectiles and the leaping hopefuls. She picked some from the sky and reversed their vectors. Monster howled in pain below.

Lightning cracked the sky again, outlined sharply against the kicked-up ashes on the wind.

The dragon screamed in agony. Tallah caught sight of it plummeting, wrapped in the web of light again.

With Bianca guiding their flight, Tallah took aim at the origin point of the weave. The daemon was straining. The dragon came out of its dive and rose back up high into the sky, bellowing defiance. It spat its blistering black breath.

The threads broke but lightning quickly remade them.

Tallah took careful aim. Poured all of herself into the weave and cast the spear.

It streaked across the sky like an inverse meteor.

The dragon circled the daemon. It belched flames. It roared and dodged the lighting bolts aimed its way.

The daemon did not pay enough attention. It turned a fraction of a heartbeat too late.

Tallah’s spear struck the black body. Night turned to day. The whole Cauldron shuddered with the violence of the explosion. Even the dragon remained hovering uncertainly, the force of the blast nudging it off its trajectory.

Smoke cleared. The daemon’s presence lingered in the air, oppressive and poisonous, like violated illum. It hadn’t been enough.

It turned its blank stare on her.

There it was, still hovering in the air, a single wing keeping it aloft. Half of it was simply gone. An arm. A leg. Almost half of its torso. Tallah doubted it was any less dangerous now.

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“Blood and bile, it’s resilient,” she cussed as her hands and chest grew cold.

‘Time to run,’ Bianca suggested and dropped them hard towards the ground.

Several beastmen jumped away as she dropped in their midst. Anna ripped the skins off them and flung the blood upward as needles to shatter against the thing’s hide.

Tallah had just enough time to crane her neck and see the thing descend upon her. The dragon followed it, still spitting flames. She had no more strength to do a second cast, but it had been a good enough attempt. The thing could be hurt.

And if it could be hurt, it could definitely be killed.

All she needed to do now was survive the chase. Easier said than done.

What a sight this would be. A dragon chasing a daemon chasing a sorceress across the corpse-strewn clearing. It would be comedic if not for the dual threat of death by either lightning or immolation. It would be quick at least.

Bianca yanked her hard towards the Rock. Cheers of encouragement echoed over the span of the Cauldron.

“Not the fortress, Bianca. The dragon will crash into it.”

‘Then where?!’ The ghost sounded panicked even if her stores of illum were strong.

‘Land among the corpses,’ Anna ordered. ‘We’ll give them something to worry over.’

Lightning chased her across the field. With only one arm casting it, the daemon was having trouble aiming while also dodging the flames bearing on its back.

“You should have listened.” The daemon’s words crashed into the back of Tallah’s head. “I can’t allow you to interfere more. You are needed alive.” A bolt of lightning vaporised a pile of daemon corpses ahead, missing her legs by an arm’s span. “You are not needed whole.”

Oh, she’d made it angry.

As she landed, skidding and slipping in the blood mud, she turned and raised two middle fingers towards the monster, imitating Vergil’s derision. Anna acted instantly and, in a heartbeat, Tallah was surrounded by naked clones of herself, blood-red, glistening in the moonlight. They stared up at the descending monster, sprouted bat-like wings, and shot up into the sky to crash against it.

“Why didn’t your dolls fly too?” Tallah asked in amazement.

‘Into where? The ceiling?!’

“Fair.”

They flesh dolls gathered in a great pile atop the daemon and tore ineffectually at it. A sweep of its remaining arm shattered three of them in a single hit, while the rest bit and clawed at its nearly impregnable hide.

They’d stopped it for just long enough. The dragon fell them all. It shattered the dolls and grabbed the daemon in a powerful clawed paw. It slammed it into the ground with the weighty impact of a meteor, their impact shaking the entire Cauldron.

Lightning arched into the air, missing the dragon’s head. It pressed down its entire weight on the captive creature, like a cat playing with a feisty mouse. Black flames poured over the daemon, again melting the stones beneath. The flames cut off suddenly and the dragon snapped down.

It pulled, muscles bunching on its neck and shoulders, until it ripped off the daemon’s leg with a sickening crunch. The lizard swallowed. It bit down again, lifted the still burning daemon into the air and snapped it up, its jaws working to break that impressive shell.

Tallah could do nothing but watch as Anna wove around her.

‘It would be nice if that creature bled,’ the ghost said. ‘Would make killing it much easier.’

Still, the ghost wove. More flesh dolls rose from the mounds of the dead, feral-looking things that barely resembled Tallah anymore. They all approached the dragon, closing ranks around it, waiting for the inevitable.

The dragon’s head slammed down into the ground, its jaw opening. The black daemon spilled out and rolled through the mud, shattered but not dead. Anna’s dolls pounced on it, cutting and stabbing and biting. They thrust their claws at the exposed black flesh that shone wetly on its stumps.

There, their claws found purchase. The more they stabbed, the more they managed to break off it, the harder it fought them off, its remaining arm lashing out with incredible force. No doll survived a single strike from the daemon, but together they were managing to wound it.

The dragon watched with animal curiosity, black flames billowing through the gaps in its fangs.

The ground rumbled and Tallah spun in place.

“Bugger me,” she whispered.

The forest had errupted into a mass of bodies rushing across the field of the dead, screaming and howling, waving weapons. The entire waiting threat came at them, braying for blood.

Vilfor’s archers darkened the sky with their arrows and the battle recommenced with a furious howl.

Tallah rushed to draw more illum in and weave another lance. She could kill the creature here and now, and be rid of its threat. If only she could amass enough strength.

The dragon turned in place from its victim and looked at the on-rush of daemons. It roared and charged at the encroaching army, its anger raw and red-hot. It barrelled through the front ranks, head lowered, goring an entire column of monsters in its charge. It snapped down, grabbed a mouthful of bodies, then took to the sky in one powerful flap of its wings.

“No!” the daemon screamed, the first sound out of it since threatening Tallah.

The sound staggered her. Arrows flew crooked. The dolls shattered and melted back into the foul blood that had birthed them.

It took to the sky as well, its flight uneven and ragged. Instead of chasing after the dragon as Tallah feared, it banked sideways and approached the Rock to a hail of arrows and stones cast at it. Vilfor roared up on the battlements, axes held out, challenging the monster.

It took no notice as it turned sharply and flew parallel to the wall. Lightning uncoiled off its remaining arm and struck the rock structure with the force of an unleashed Titan’s Punishment. Tallah’s knees bucked and she covered her ears to save her hearing.

Great slabs of wall collapsed inward. The ground shook. A whole section of ramparts fell to ruin with a deafening scream of shattering stones and mortar.

The Rock’s innards lay exposed to the vile night, its insides opened to the monsters of the Cauldron.

Tallah’s heart threatened to claw its way out of her at the sight of the great wound inflicted on the ancient fortress. It wasn’t enough to breach all the way to the inner courtyards, but it did open it to a more direct attack.

Daemons dropped whatever else they may have been doing and charged the breach. Even the greater monsters that had laid hidden in the forest now moved with purpose towards the Rock.

Tallah was faced with a choice: give chase to the wounded daemon and try to kill it off, or protect the Rock. It wasn’t an easy choice.

She made one nonetheless.

Bianca launched her into the air and angled her jump towards the daemon limping away as it tried to escape back towards the centre of the Cauldron. A fresh spear trailed her flight like a comet’s tail. It was nearly ready, but the cost proved dizzying.

After this she would be useless for the rest of the night at least, spent of all strength and teetering on the edge of true burnout.

Christina would rip her ears off. It was a concern for later.

Bianca drew them ever closer to their quarry, barely keeping pace with the daemon’s flight.

Gritting her teeth as all her strength poured into this final cast, Tallah loosed the spear up at the struggling daemon. It cut across the sky, aimed for the dead centre of what remained of the monster. A small target to hit, but not impossible.

Twin fireballs shot out from the forest, flew on an arc towards the daemon, and crashed into her lance. They saved the critter.

Tallah cursed under her breath and swung her gaze down at the forest. Several lances fired out in her direction. They would have hit her if not for Bianca’s vigilance. A hard mid-flight yank rattled her bones and brains, but avoided the attack.

The last Tallah saw of the daemon, it disappeared into a pocket of darkness and was gone. And with it, its terrifying presence dissipated. She could breathe again. Just in time to rush back to the defence of the walls. Morning crawled nearer but it would still be a bell’s strike at least until the first ray of sunlight.

For the night, they’d avoided a disaster but met a new one. Demons poured into the Rock through the gaping wound in its side. Those that breached wouldn’t be worried about the light once day broke.

Vilfor would handle that incursion.

Tallah crashed back on her platform, Bianca’s strength just barely enough to clear the wall again. She collapsed to her knees and gasped for breath. With the speed of the flight and the jerks and shudders of sudden acceleration, braking and dodging, every bone in her protested.

Anna retracted her power and Tallah’s eyesight darkened, the world going back to blurry outlines. It was getting worse with each effort.

Tallah lay for a terribly long time just like that, unable to move or find her feet, the weight of the world crushing her shoulders.

“Where's the boy got to?” she wondered distantly. The walls were deserted save for a handful of archers that tracked the skies above her.

All the other soldiers would be in the belly of the fortress, stemming the flow of monsters before they got a foothold into the city.

With an effort of will—and Bianca—Tallah climbed to her feet and stretched the kinks out of her muscles. She turned and regarded the black tide flowing towards the walls as if they hadn’t died by the score just a short while prior.

The dead were forgotten, eaten, or crushed into mulch. The dragon was gone. At least a disaster had been avoided with that small victory.

Looking into the distance, towards the Anvil she could only wonder of what went on in that distant fortress.

She aimed to find out. But first, the rats in the walls needed dealing with. Vergil was likely down there, trying to get himself killed.

I should leave him to the consequences of his actions, she thought glumly.

Nevertheless, her legs knew where they were needed. Still aching, she turned towards the stairs and went down to the first entrance into the bowels of the Rock. The boy had come to her aid earlier. It was only fitting she did the same.

If only she could manage, somehow, to walk straight.