"Time to wake up," Brigid said.
Shane opened his eyes, but there was no light. It was chilly in the spire barracks, but Shane cast away his blankets. He reached under his bed and grabbed a fresh set of linens.
"The Princess is readying herself to leave. You should hurry."
He asked one of the constructs for a bar of soap, then left the spire. At the edge of the forest he stripped naked and summoned water, heated it with fire, and showered himself while floating a few feet off the ground. When the Purple Dragon descended the spire ramp, he was waiting near the bottom, kneeling, immaculate, and fully awake. It was before sunrise, the sky was a chilly blue, and the horizon shone with dull gold.
It troubled Shane that he had not seen Felix in his bed in the barracks, and he did not stand beside Astrid in the cool morning air.
"Felix has his own fate," Astrid said. "Just as you have your own fate. We go toward the south now."
"I am ready to leave," Shane said.
"There is an object that will be needed in our journey to the south. A leather-bound book, a gift to you, from the advisor to the Green Dragon."
"As you say, Almighty Dragon."
The spire was slightly brighter in the morning twilight, but it was still difficult to make out the shapes of the steps, the doorways, and the beds in the barracks. He connected to his realms, and floated down to the floor, slid under his bed, illuminated by the crackling light of storm sorcery. He slipped the thin leather-bound book into his jacket, and then he left, floating through the foyer back down to where Astrid waited for him.
Brigid was standing in front of a portal. She reached up toward him, and then he was seized by unrecognizable sorcery. With a flash of light they were all taken to the other side: a sunless, grayish magenta sky, a dark haze that played tricks on the eyes, and the souls of the living soldiers camped at the edge of the runway nearby.
Astrid stood beside her sister Elvira. The second Purple Dragon wore a mother-of-pearl dress, her long purple hair tumbled over her shoulders in ringlets, and her face betrayed a sadistic smile. She licked her lips. Shane shivered.
Brigid walked out into the forest clearing alone, and then she veered into her draconic form. She was as large as Felix had been when shapeshifted, with purple scales that glistened with a green-magenta sheen. Whereas Felix had looked menacing and predatory while shapeshifted, Brigid looked graceful, noble, even beautiful. Astrid did not ask for help, she simply floated with her sister up into the saddle using some indetectable type of magic. Brigid stalked through the forest to the runway, charged, spread her wings, and plummeted over the escarpment. Shane felt a primal response to that ten-thousand foot drop beyond the edge. Rationally, he knew he was safe, but his body was anything but rational.
Shane had flown the route before, but in the opposite direction. He had spent his original flight to the north paying attention to every direction, so every sight was familiar. However, he had never seen the landscape from the other side, the Elemental Plane of Spirits. There was no crimson sunrise, there were no ebon shadows or wispy clouds. The snow on the peaks was pure white. It didn't even reflect the dull magenta light of the sky. Shane made note of the differences as they flew to the south. Without a sun in the sky, lulled by Elvira's haunting songs, Shane began to lose his sense of time.
He still felt tired from his early rise, so he curled up in his harness and nodded off to sleep. It was an uneasy, dreamless sleep, half-awake from the frequent flapping of Brigid's great wings. The sight of tens of thousands of souls, ghostly white projections in the Plane of Spirits, managed to pull Shane to full consciousness. A Rilnese army, Shane thought. A purple spire glistened on top of a plateau nearby. Shane immediately recognized the unmistakable shape of the city of Needlewood, a circular clearing in the forest spotted with jagged red spires, devoid of mortal constructions.
Brigid followed a path through the sky that Shane began to recognize from above. He had taken the same route to the south in his youth, smuggled across the border with Riln. They flew over a river with another purple spire constructed on one bank. Shane theorized in that moment that Brigid was using the purple spires to navigate. Maybe she had some ability to sense them at a distance? The Purple Dragon did not confirm or disconfirm this theory.
Across the border, Shane recognized the mountains that had been visible from the open windows of the monastery where he had been trained in sorcery. He caught a glimpse of the empty quad of the monastery itself, nestled in heavily-eroded white-gold rocks. If he had been on the other side, he fashioned that he would have heard the bells at least once as he flew overhead.
South they flew, to the southernmost limit that Shane had ventured in his childhood. The forest thinned and opened into chaparral, rolling hills and shrubland. When Shane had been about ten years old, the monks at the monastery took him to the edge of the sacred chaparral to pray to the Blue Dragon. There were storm clouds then, and lightning in the rainy desert at dusk. There were no clouds in the Plane of Spirits, and the landscape below suddenly seemed demystified, cheapened, like a museum diorama.
Beyond the chaparral they came upon the great salt lakes, and it was there that Brigid descended, skimming the salt flats to bleed airspeed. She landed gently on the ground, sembled into her human form, and then opened a cyan portal. Shane was plucked to the other side, alone. He suddenly felt an intense cold. The sky was gray, violent and undulating. Sand blasted his body, pinning his clothes against his body. He reached out to connect to the Realm of Wind, and established a barrier against the wind. Brigid and Astrid followed through the portal, but Elvira remained on the other side.
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"Such is the nature of the desert," Astrid said. "Hot and windy, or cold and windy. Alas, we need respite."
A brilliant purple light appeared near her chest. It darkened even the gray sky in Shane's vision. He reached out to more Realms and began to float with storm sorcery. He lifted his companions off the ground as the new purple spire began to form.
"Shane, my dear. What do you make of this land?" Astrid asked.
Shane was at a loss for words. In such a state, he fell back on the arguments of long-dead men, writers from bygone days who penned their opinions in sturdy leather-bound books. "Almighty Dragon, deserts are the bane of armies. In order to cross a desert, armies need to carry sufficient supplies for the entire journey, because they cannot replenish those supplies as they march."
The Purple Dragon giggled. "And how would Felix reply to your condemnation?"
Shane glanced around as he hovered a few feet off the trembling salt flat. What would Felix think? He realized the shape of the answer she wanted to hear. "Felix would like to be here in his airplane. If something goes wrong, he would have plenty of flat space in which to land. Also it is very dry here, and the metal engine of his airplane could be preserved for decades or centuries. Felix would hide airplanes in caves in this land. He, or his descendants, could march an army on horseback to the caves and take to the sky to surprise an enemy."
"Very good," the Purple Dragon said. "I am, as always, impressed by your intelligence, my servant. If you were King of any land, what percentage of your land would ideally be sacrificed to the desert?"
"No more than half, Almighty Dragon."
"A wise answer."
"It is your own wisdom that I strive to reflect, Almighty Dragon."
"I appreciate that you recognize this fact."
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They returned to the Plane of Spirits after a brief respite, and resumed the journey to the south. The desert turned to rugged badlands, then to jagged peaks, then to dry grasslands, and finally dense jungle. Blue crystal spires pierced the landscape, some as tall as the Teeth of the Red Dragon, looming thirty thousand feet overhead. Brigid rolled to one side, and began to descend toward a plateau in a basin, surrounded on all sides by a blue river of crystal spires.
"Why do you read?" Astrid asked as they descended.
"Almighty Dragon, I read so that I might become part of a spirit that is older than myself."
"There is one other who answered thus," the Purple Dragon said. "Her name is Vaska, and she is much older than myself. Why does she read?"
"The books she reads must be much older than herself," Shane replied.
"She reads many of the books she wrote herself."
"She penned them in a moment of genius."
"Vaska may have had her moments of genius," Astrid said, "however she would never dare put them to pen. I think that she was like a predator. She saw Ingrid through her network of spies and arranged for her to become bonded to Titania. She arranged for Ashe to be released from her prison, and she arranged for herself to become the ruler of all Elemental Planes."
Shane had no response to these revelations. He slid his hand down across his leather pack, feeling the thick holy book of the Church of the Lady Ghost, which Alice had given to him as a gift. Below, Brigid descended toward a plateau.
Made from layers of red-gold rock piled high, and rimmed with shrubs and stout evergreen trees, the plateau was surrounded by blue spires, packed together like toothpicks in the floodplains on all sides. Brigid pulled her wings up at the last second, dumping airspeed and gently landing on the very center of the plateau. Shane and the two Purple Dragons floated down off her back, and she sembled back into her human form. A cyan portal formed as she sembled.
Beyond the portal, the sky was partly cloudy. The golden sheen at the tops of the great cloudy pillars indicated that it was near dusk. Astrid and Brigid came through the portal with Shane, and then Brigid consumed one of her potions, vanishing from sight. He stood with Astrid near the edge of the plateau, overlooking the death trap of blue spines in the canyon. Thunder raged in the distance. Shadows darkened the sky.
Shadows in the shape of wings.
The Blue Dragon, a massive hulking beast, smashed through the clouds, sending them to the sides in swirling vortexes. He crashed down into the basin below the plateau, crushing the blue crystal spines like grass. His long, serpentine neck rose above the plateau, his long horns created lightning with each motion of his neck, and he looked down upon the Purple Dragon with hesitation. Shane saw the great beast and almost fell to his knees, but the power surging through him reminded him of his fate. He was not this creature's Chosen One. He had prayed to this beat as a child, and betraying him, even now, sent a shiver down his spine that he could not control.
"I SEE YOU!" the Blue Dragon bellowed. "Blind! A Fate Binder, you see into the perfect darkness of Mother Ashe. Why have you come to my land? What has become of my best friend, the Red Dragon?"
Then the Purple Dragon spoke thus: "You know well that the soul of the Red Dragon has returned to your mistress, the Elemental Queen of Darkness."
"And you have come to consume my soul," the Blue Dragon growled.
"No, Ashe has arranged your return. I will send you to her presently. Do you have any final words in this life?"
Shane stood upon the desert plateau, watching in awe as the two Dragons conversed. The massive Blue Dragon twisted his head up and away, refusing to make eye contact with the Purple Dragon.
"I miss my best friend. I regret that the mortals killed her."
Spectral white jaws appeared around the Blue Dragon's throat. With a great magenta flash of light, a full Purple Dragon appeared, with massive jaws clamping down at frightening speed, crushing the throat of the Blue Dragon. The resulting motions defied mortal logic. Shane thought he saw Elvira crush the Blue Dragon's face against the plateau, and then ravage his serpentine neck with her claws. Every motion that the Purple Dragon made created lightning, storms, thunder, snow, ice, death. When the Blue Dragon's head struck the ground, the whole plateau trembled.
The Blue Dragon fell into the chasms beyond the edge of the plateau. His skin, scales, muscles, and soul turned into blue crystal dust, leaving behind only a massive skeleton.
"It is such a shame that I could not consume his soul myself," Astrid said. "However, a deal is a deal. His soul shall return to Ashe. As for you, servant, I have new orders."
Instinctively, Shane floated a few feet off the ground to prevent falling over from the force of the Blue Dragon's head striking the ground. He tried his best to prostrate himself a few inches over the dusty plateau floor. "Almighty Dragon, speak, and I shall obey."
"You are the Chosen One, and you shall convince the leaders of the armies of Riln as such. You shall give them the schematics for the flying machine that Felix now commands. You shall establish in this land a new air force, and you shall, in time, take absolute control of this entire half of the content. You shall slaughter all opposition, you shall broker no compromise, and you shall endure no betrayal. Bring the light of Titania to your people. This is the command of your master, Princess Astrid of the Purple Dragons, do this for me and with my blessing."
Shane banished his connections and fell to the dusty floor of the plateau. Tears rolled down his face in the cold southern desert winds. He looked up at Astrid. She looked down at him from behind that steel mask of hers, the ones that hid the ravaged sockets where she should have eyes. His entire fate clicked into place.
"Almighty Dragon," Shane said, "it shall be as you command."