Lyskilde leaned out of an alley to watch the dracolisk lurching in its chains. Thick scaly muscles bulged as he thrashed against the trap that pinned him to the plaza. He could break free if he cared to. Perhaps he relished in seeing the guards clenching their bums at the edge of soiling themselves.
Most of the citizens in the nearby streets cowered in their homes, or hid deeper into the Dust Quarter, but a few dim-witted folk still lurked in the streets trying to get a peek at the anomaly.
His silkite-enamelled scales were nearly black, but reflected sunlight playing off his back glittered in myriad hues, a vibrant cascade of colour emanating from the prismatic scale at the base of his neck. His four thick legs ended in a row of sword-like claws. His two arms curved in long blades like scythes, gnashing parallel incisions into the steel as he thrashed about.
General Bartholomaeus Gammel and Lord Herluf Sorenrov were watching the poor dracolisk with what remained of the Army unit, thirty tired folk sweating in their armour as the morning sun warmed them. It did not surprise her that the malignant Sorenrov family was involved.
Herluf pursued a grudge against the Queen ever since his father was put to the gibbet by the late Queen. His grudge was exacerbated by the death of his mother... After she had Claire Kirkegaard and her husband assassinated, the Residential Quarter hanged her and left her corpse for the crows. Herluf was the sort of person who found someone else to blame every chance he could.
Anyone who would put a dracolisk in chains had to have a heart full of bile and a brain full of dust. Crueler than the chains were the bloody, scarred stumps where the dracolisk’s wings had been, and the crystal muzzle that sealed his jaws and veiled his eyes. Sensible, if they enjoyed living, but if it was life they desired they should have left the poor thing in the Glass Desert. The dracolisk would make them pay for their disrespect.
Gottfred returned from his course around the plaza and crouched next to her. “Have you got a plan yet?” It would be simpler if Torfinn were with them. Then there would be no soldiers and if the dracolisk liked his food grilled, they might even convince him to just leave.
“How many did you find?” she asked.
“I found all of Isadora’s Spellwards, scattered around watching this thing since they brought it in three hours ago. They are willing to let us take the lead, because we have you and Johnny, but they will be there to support us if we need them.”
“Then my plan is simple. You, Johnny, Alan, and I will speak to the General while the others get into formation. They won’t want to release the dracolisk while the Queen is not here, so we take the time to pick the lock on that muzzle. Got that, Johnny?”
Johnny grinned. “Should be simple. Those dullards won’t even notice.”
“Wait,” Gottfred put up both his hands, and shook his head incredulously, “you don’t mean to let him out?”
“Of course I do,” Lyskilde said. “Dracolisks are easier to reason with than they are to kill. Those chains can’t hold him anyway. I think the only reason he stays there is because they used the shrills to frighten him. How else did the shrills know he was here? They met. If he gets out on his own, he will be blind and afraid, and there will be chaos in the street.” She jabbed her head towards Johnny. “Our experience with them will mean nothing. At least if he can see, we can predict what he will do, and freeing him might allow us to convince him to leave.”
“If he can see he can glass.” Gottfred said nervously.
“Which is predictable.” She crossed her arms at him.
“Fine.” Gottfred did not sound convinced, but even so he stood up, and gestured for Lyskilde to take the lead while he stretched his back.
They strode confidently into the plaza, and a hush fell over the soldiers. Herluf spotted them and immediately turned to hurry away, but stumbled and fell to the dusty ground as another team of Spellwards stepped into his path on the western street. He sputtered and coughed, scrambling with one arm to pull down his purple, gold-embroidered shirt to cover his sweaty gut, and made his way awkwardly to his feet.
The guards drew their longswords, and Bartholomaeus stood before them laughing deeply. “This all you brought? Think to take care of this beast before the Queen gets here? I’m sorry to ruin your morning, but this creature is mad with rage, and it has the Queen’s scent.” He waved a nightgown in the air like a flag. It was frilly and blue, embroidered with interlocking gears along the hem. “When we release it, it will hunt her down and slaughter her in front of everyone.” He cackled through bared teeth.
Lyskilde and Johnny looked at each other and laughed, though she only laughed so hard because Johnny buckled over and squealed until her ribs ached. “That’s why you’re going to die today, Bart, and the Queen is not.” She heaved trying to catch her breath. Gottfred and Alan were not laughing, so they stood still trying to look composed. “Woo!” She shook her head, “Listen, dracolisks can sniff out a single stone on a mountain, but they’re smarter than you are. Do you honestly think he cares a whit about the Queen when the one who has him in chains is right here?”
The dracolisk faced them calmly, listening. This was no monster. He did not growl or hiss like drakes. Some of the guards prodded him uselessly with spears, but a dracolisk this size had scales that could not be penetrated even by a dragon’s fangs, let alone steel spear tips. All the prodding served to do was disrespect him.
“Most people,” Johnny said, “can only learn basic spells. Plenty of folk use them to wash clothes or heat water. But what fools like you fail to understand is that it is not something in our blood that allows us to advance beyond that level. It is perseverance, and gruelling work that few have the time, or the stomach for. So you can poke things with a spear, and you can practice doing that all day, but that will always be your limit. Meanwhile, I can use a flick of water to pick a lock from fifty feet away without blinking, and you morons don’t even have the skill to notice.” She pointed at the dracolisk.
Bartholomaeus would have pissed himself out of his uniform if he were any smarter. Instead he grimaced, his face burning with anger. He took only the insult, and not the warning, while Herluf quivered with enough dread for the both of them. But Bartholomaeus did turn to face the dracolisk. All of the guards turned to face the dracolisk.
Johnny’s pointing finger shifted to an outward palm, as she prepared for what she knew would come. Dracolisks just could not help but look at things. “Go ahead and open your mouth, dracolisk, tell us your name so we know who our adversary is. And don’t fear the shrills, there are none here.”
Understanding, the dracolisk opened his massive maw. The open lock slipped and fell clattering to the metal floor as the heavy crystal helmet that covered the entire front of his head creaked open on rusted hinges and smashed against the ground. The thirty guards scampered away from him, brandishing their weapons, and putting too much trust in their chains. The dracolisk eyed Johnny, who grinned at him, and then turned to Bartholomaeus. Herluf ran for the street, and this time the Spellwards let him pass.
“Rudemedsvar.” The dracolisk said, his voice curled deeply around his tongues to sound almost like a cave echoing with the hissing of snakes. His maw was as wide as Lyskilde was tall, and his deadly teeth shone threateningly in the dawn light as he spread his jaws.
His forty tongues snapped out of his mouth like whips, tangling Bartholomaeus and dragging him in. The general screamed, pleading for anyone to save him, but the spears of his men bent harmlessly off of Rudemedsvar’s invulnerable scales. Bartholomaeus gurgled as he folded between the dracolisk’s jaws. Armour and bones made a sickening crunch as twelve-inch teeth punctured Bartholomaeus’s body.
He devoured Bartholomaeus quickly, armour and all, and then shattered the pitiful chains by stepping forward. The guards scattered, but Rudemedsvar turned, closing a brightly shimmering translucent eyelid like a film over his sky blue eyes. A wide glimmering wall of clear ice burst into existence in front of Johnny’s outstretched hand to shelter the four of them.
In a breath’s time everything Rudemedsvar could see was rotted through with crystalline corruption six inches deep, as a vibration in the light rippled like a rug-whip smashing the plaza, blasting dust into the air, and contorting it into a wave of stinging needles. The ice barrier clouded, draining of colour and growing spines of swirling crystal as the energy spun off its edges. Glass-like crystal spines spiralled from surfaces as his energy clenched the rushing air. The guards were vitrified instantly, crystalizing into memories of their final moment, but as their momentum continued to carry them they toppled and the ringing of their shattering forms scattered their existence to the wind.
Lyskilde instinctively sprinted out from the cover of Johnny’s wall, away from Rudemedsvar. She ran towards the east, and her team stuck to her heels. She could see where the glass ended down the eastern streets, three hundred feet away. Too far to take advantage of. But he did not slash their barrier to strike them in hiding as she predicted, instead his sickle arms clawed the plaza into scattered thorns of glass as he approached them pensively.
“Where are the shrills?” Rudemedsvar’s tongues licked remnant drops of blood from his chin. “I will kill them, before they know I am there.”
“The shrills are dead,” Lyskilde said, slowing to a stop. Alan’s eyebrow raised questioningly, as if he had not heard about them.
“By whose hand?” The dracolisk drawled, showing sharp teeth under the curl of his lip. He inched closer. He was larger than any she had encountered. Looking at the gnarled, bloodstained stumps protruding with jagged bone where they had broken off his wings, any ability she had to feel pity for Bartholomaeus or his men evaporated like sweat from her heated brow.
“We did. The Spellwards,” she replied.
Behind him, one of the other teams was in position to leap to his back and pry off his prismatic scale. Rudemedsvar growled, showing more of his teeth. “No you did not! Who slew the shrills?”
She hung her head, and ran her fingers through her hair. Dracolisks could smell the truth, and she had forgotten how uncanny it was. “Highward Fourstaile the Chrysanthemum and Lander Nickellegering. There were nearly sixty of us Spellwards supporting them, I did not lie to you.”
“Then perhaps I should have no fear of you, small one, you are neither chrysanthemum nor nickel, and neither are your thirty-five companions that skulk amongst the steel.” He slammed his sinuous tail to the ground, scattering bits of glass. The wards behind him were far enough away, but they shrugged at Lyskilde in understanding as they backed further.
“It is true that I have not proven myself strong by slaying a shrill, a creature I understand even you are wary of.” She hoped to convince him they were a threat without having to kill him to do so.
“I do not fear a shrill,” he said, “but I do fear two.”
“As does anyone with sense,” Johnny added.
Rudemedsvar drew close, turning slowly to circle around them. He was monitoring how the others moved to follow him from the back and sides, testing their formation.
“There is a reason your hearts are not wracked with fear. You have faced my kind and lived. Although, perhaps not whole?” He directed the question at Lyskilde’s hooked arm. Every question he asked them gave him knowledge that fueled his advantage, but if she answered and he did not smell the truth in her words, then she would lose his trust. She could not convince him to leave without bloodshed unless he trusted her.
She offered a name, “Tomhedenskar.”
“I did not know him well, but he was less powerful than I.”
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“And I was less powerful when I killed him than I am now.”
If dracolisks could be said to grin, then Rudemedsvar did. “The repugnant bitterness of truth. How did he earn his death?”
Lyskilde shrugged. “He picked a fight he could not win, it’s as simple as that.”
The dracolisk’s eyes narrowed, and Johnny’s hand swung up defensively. Rudemedsvar was not using his glimmering eyelids, but narrowed eyes could be an attempt to hide if he was. He continued circling them, lifting one of his blades above Lyskilde’s head. She ducked out of the way as it dropped, but she knew that he was just testing her reflexes.
She had to move to avoid Rudemedsvar’s scythe dropping, and that was barely playing to him. Their true speed was obscene. Memories of her battle with Tomhedenskar resurfaced, and fear began to well up in her.
***
Lyskilde could see the sprawling, twisting landscape of the Glass Desert before her. She was barely past its borders; they were only patrolling the edge. It was uncommon for dracolisks to leave the desert, but their vigilance should diminish that to never.
Except this towering creature who declared his name Tomhedenskar had devoured her Captain and vitrified her entire squad.
Her arm was glass. Its weight dragged at her, slowing her and threatening to put her in harm’s way, but she was afraid to let it go. She could no longer tell how long she had been running, diving, burning every drop of energy she could muster to survive against his onslaught. “There is a reason we respect the dracolisks.” Her Captain had told them. He had also said the larger ones only hunt in Vindulv’s Woods, where the Great Wolf could repel their glass.
The only things she could do were run, stay out of sight, and gather mana. She was attuned to Light, and in the Glass Desert she was swathed in natural Light mana. She tripped, and in the moment she forgot her arm was glass. It shattered as she tried to brace herself, and she cried out as jagged shards pressed into her ribs.
Tomhedenskar crawled around the straight wall of glass she had tried to hide behind. There had been a town here, once, and that wall had been a dwelling. Now as the dracolisk bared down on her, it would become her grave, her blood would stain the wall, or she would be another bit of glass lost in the Desert. She raised her arm, which to her eyes shone brilliantly with the dense pool of Light mana she was holding.
To kill a dracolisk, you could get to his flesh under his prismatic scale, or you could cast a spell that could penetrate even the impenetrable. And she might finally have enough Light mana to survive casting Absence of Illumination.
***
Lyskilde shook off the memory. She felt weak, unqualified to face Rudemedsvar. He drooled at her fear and coiled his body like a spring. She did not have hours to cast that spell again. She would have to trust the training. The training meant to ensure that what happened to her a decade ago would not happen to anyone again.
It had been the first time in history anyone dared to fight the dracolisks enough to figure out how it could be done. So when the tension in his coiled body released, and he spun towards them in a thrashing whirlwind of death that carved gashes in the glass, she stepped towards him, exactly two feet, to put her precisely eighteen feet away from him; the length of his claws. The others stepped forward as well, keeping their positions relative to hers, and he spun harmlessly overhead, cleaving the glass mere inches before and behind them, before landing with a crash.
Lyskilde turned to face him, and her breath caught in her throat. The angle was wrong, just past her the space between gashes in the ground curved like hooks, instead of the gentle sloping arch they should have been. Alan and Johnny were nothing more than carved up heaps and spatters of blood. His spiral was irregular, but that did not offer a solution. Her heart pounded, she trembled, her gaze wavering between the sliced up glass and the blood. Gottfred was snapping his fingers at her, but the blood…
Gottfred tried to push her. She realised it was his wings. They broke off his wings, and so his whirlwind of blades was centred differently, no longer following the rules they had memorised. Alan and Johnny were dead, and it could have easily been her and Gottfred. It could be all of them. Why did they trust her? Gottfred shook her, but she felt too muddled to return. How had they even captured him? Johnny’s question rang out in her mind.
She let Gottfred drag her back as Rudemedsvar followed them, slashing sluggishly as he panted from his exertion.
Gottfred pulled her to the fountain and sat her down behind it. The dracolisk glassed again, and the curled spikes at the edge of the fountain lengthened above her head. She could hear him starting to thrash about, and peered over the edge of the fountain to look. Two Spellwards were on his back, trying to get their blades under his prismatic scale. He spun like a wheel to throw them off. She had to do something. She thought of Lyrua, the pampered Queen who found it in her to stand up and fight. If only a little, Lyskilde needed that conviction.
She pushed herself up. They needed to act before Rudemedsvar was ready to glass again. So she began gathering Gravity mana. It was the rarest element by attunement, despite the fact that the mana itself was omnipresent. She had been learning it from Toldremand, and knew well despite her greenness with it that it was extremely difficult to do anything worthwhile. That was why she had lost confidence that she could earn her Gravity crest.
Moreover, Gravity opposed her Light. She should not be able to manipulate it at all without collapsing into a black hole. But she had found a way.
Rudemedsvar was swiping at the team that pestered him like mosquitos. She was glad they had the energy to avoid him. Drawing her blade, she sliced her forearm just above her hook to draw blood. She made rhythmic motions in the air, trying to trace the outline of a flower with her bloodied hook. Rudemedsvar sprang across the plaza, whirling to face her while the other team chased after him. He closed his reflective eyelid, and it shimmered in the light. Of course he would not let her cast her spell, even if he did not know what it would do.
Gottfred shot a spark of light at Rudemedsvar’s face and it burst into a blinding wash that forced the dracolisk’s eyes closed. He shook his head, hardly phased, but it was enough; his gaze was wasted while his eyes were closed.
“Plan to fill us in?” Gottfred whispered to her.
“Run!” She bolted for the nearest street. Rudemedsvar’s rumbling howl rolled after them as they sprinted between the towers. It was a short street on the south side of the plaza, and so had been spared the glass. Curious commoners scrambled back into their homes as the pounding of Rudemedsvar’s six limbs shook the street, knocking the dust back into the air. Lyskilde kept gathering Gravity. She was beginning to feel its weight dragging her down. Particles of dust in the air floated towards her and stuck to her as if drawn by static.
If she allowed herself to slow, Rudemedsvar would catch them. As they met the outer wall of the city, they turned east. She could see the dracolisk approaching, his four muscular legs braced against the towers to suspend himself above the street, he ran between the walls like a screw, twisting his entire body around and around, slashing the street with his claws as his arms swung in massive arcs, deafening her with unimaginable echoes of banging steel. There had been no training for that.
She could not give in to fear now. She kept running. Gottfred was running just ahead of her, and she barely kept up with him. If she fell, he could not stop, or they might both be killed. She buried the thought. She kept growing heavier under the weight of the Gravity mana she was holding. The spiralling, gnashing mass of Rudemedsvar’s form slithered effortlessly around the corner in pursuit, his reversible knees bending odd directions to keep him aloft.
Gottfred shot an orb of bright light into the air to block Rudemedsvar’s vision of them, and they rounded the next corner, back north towards the Daughter’s Plaza. The violent shaking of the streets knocked dust into the air in clouds that coated her like a robe. Now she was not only heavy, she was struggling to breathe through the layer of dust on her face cloth. She peeled the dust off in one disgusting mass. It crumbled as she tried to shake it off her hand, and the flakes fell to stick to her clothes. Every step knocked a layer of dust free from her boots, only to have more leap back on and coat them like mud.
Rudemedsvar spun around the corner, undeterred by Gottfred’s light. They reached where the street returned to glass, and a wave of dust trailed after her. Now the dust knocked free of her boots was left in her wake, and it was a little easier to run. They were nearly at the plaza, but Rudemedsvar was closing. She was counting on that, because she needed to be close to him to cast her spell, but they had to make it to the plaza. The other Wards could do nothing to help until they were off the street and he was no longer twisting around.
The dracolisk’s breathing became hoarse, almost coughing. Gottfred looked over his shoulder. “Liquid glass,” he said. She turned to look, only for a moment.
Rudemedsvar’s wide jaws hung open. His many tongues flicked around, snatching dust and moulding it with molten saliva into a clay-like sphere. With a snap of his jaws he spit the ball of molten glass at them. It ignited the clouds of dust, leaving a trail of flame in its wake. Gottfred conjured a lance of Light and hurled it at the ball, triggering a burst of glass that spun out across the street like ribbons, and cooled into a hundred crystal streamers hanging from wall to wall.
They kept running. A torrent of clear shards exploded behind them as Rudemedsvar slammed through the glass after them. They made it to the plaza, and she could see Wards waiting out of the corner of her eyes. They leaped out, and combined their mana to seal the street with a massive wall of ice as tall and thick as the towers. The air grew dry from all the moisture they pulled to cast their spell.
Rudemedsvar challenged the wall directly, rocking the entire plaza as he rammed it with his body. Lyskilde looked up as cracks ran through it, and she realised they had not made a massive wall, they had stacked two. Split at an angle near the centre, the top began to slide from the force of the crash, and fell heavily on top of Rudemedsvar. He roared, and as the racket of shattering glass and ice swathed the plaza, the Spellwards returned to formation, with only Lyskilde and Gottfred in the open.
A bright light pierced the cracked wall of ice, and it drained of colour, turning clear white. Another bright light came, a straight and horizontal bar, and energy rippled out from the wall, annihilating it in a storm of cutting glass shards. The bar of energy soared through the air like the wings of a giant bird and crashed through a tower on the north side. Where it struck the tower, a layer of glass formed all the way through, and it shattered under the steel’s weight, bringing the entire building crashing to the ground. The rounded top knocked the glassed Saarch off his pedestal to shatter in the fountain.
Rudemedsvar thrust his body out of the street, and she spoke the first words that came to mind, hoping it would be enough to satisfy the verbal spell component. “Flip, you bastard! Into the air!” She offered her memory of the spell to it as a sacrifice, and her hook as a focus.
The hook shattered, then disintegrated to a powder that was quickly lost in the breeze. The cut on her forearm exploded with pain and blood, as the energy of a spell she did not truly know how to cast consumed her flesh, consuming twelve inches of her arm so only a stump at the shoulder remained. Pain shot up through to her ear, but her arm was enough to satisfy the spell, and the force of gravity around Rudemedsvar reversed, throwing them all into the air. He clambered for grip as the invisible force dragged him helplessly skyward.
As they fell towards the sky, floating in a rain of shattered glass, one of the other Wards used a jet of Water to push her into the dracolisk. He had no leverage to throw her off without wings. The woman wedged her blade between his scales, and Rudemedsvar roared. He tried to reach her with his tongues, but another Ward seared them with jets of flame. The woman on his back conjured water to fill the gap in his scales, and froze it to break the scale’s roots.
The spell ended, and they plummeted to the ground with a crash. Lyskilde groaned as the uneven ground slammed into her back, knocking the wind from her lungs. A hail of glass and droplets of blood showered her. She craned her head, looking for Rudemedsvar, and saw him with one broken leg protruding awkwardly from underneath his body, and his prismatic scale discarded in the glass nearby. He struggled to stand, his scythes failing to find ample purchase in the ruined ground. She struggled breathlessly to turn on to her side, to find Gottfred. She found him pushing himself up to sit with blood-soaked arms, and a gash across his forehead that poured blood over his eye.
As the dracolisk made it to his feet, the Spellwards swarmed him. Her muscles clenched, her breath was too ragged to call out to them, to tell them anything. The whirlwind of blades would destroy most of them in an instant, but this was their best chance, and they knew it as well as she did, but still anxiety gripped her. The Water casters combined their mana to draw any remaining moisture from the air. Droplets swarmed the area like time-frozen rainfall before they gathered the water and slammed Rudemedsvar back to the ground with a crashing wave that took his weary legs out from under him and soaked them with icy water.
Wiping the blood and water from his face with his sleeve, Gottfred conjured a lance of Light, and embedded it into the exposed flesh at the base of Rudemedsvar’s neck. The dracolisk howled in pain, thrashing with his scythes, trying to stand on broken and battered legs. The Wards came upon him with more spells, spears of ice pierced his flesh, sticking out like quills. As the ice evaporated back into mana, they were quickly replaced. It was hard to watch. She was not sure the deaths of Alan and Johnny justified his suffering. But it was not their fault that dracolisks were resilient.
“There is a reason we respect the dracolisks.” Her Captain had told them. “They’re smarter than us,” he had said to the greenhorns, when she began her deployment at the Glass Desert nearly nine years ago. They had been among the first. They were not even called Spellwards yet. Lyrua was a girl only just crowned, and Lyskilde just a young guard who learned Light because she was afraid of the dark. “They’re stronger than us.” She remembered the prismatic breastplate her Captain wore, a symbol of his conquest. It had seemed admirable. He was someone who had killed a dracolisk, and wore its only weakness to protect his own. “They have been around longer than us,” he explained. “They are older than the world itself. So they are here because the Goddess who built Ankermune together with the Archangels judged them, and found them worthy of continuing to live alongside her own children, in a world she designed for them. That is why we respect the dracolisks.”
Lyskilde watched Rudemedsvar shudder his final breath. Tears escaped from her eyes, but she was not sure who they were for. She had become a Spellward to protect, to prevent further loss of life as High Queen Lyrua envisioned. Perhaps that was why she cried. Too often, protection was a thinly veiled choice, that one deserved to live more than another. Rudemedsvar had killed Johnny and Alan, but he had not asked to be abducted and mutilated, to be used as a pawn in some political game. So she would grieve them all. “They have as much right to be here as we do.”