Chapter 22

Peony was falling. There was no other word for it. His senses told him he was falling, and as he looked down the farm lane, his perspective shifted. It felt like he’d stepped off a cliff. He clawed at the ground, as it whipped past. He tore his hands, but it didn’t slow his fall.

It occurred to him that he should be screaming. People screamed when they fell…

Peony had been sitting on one of the garden terraces set into the side of the tower. It was one of the higher terraces, extending out from near the top of the tower, suspended over the roof of the palace. There was a place in the corner, where one of the climbing vines had loosened part of the railing and caused the fat baluster to fall inward. Peony had found this, and discovered that with just a little effort, he could squeeze through and sit where the stone rail had been. The climbing vine sheltered him from view on the terrace, or in the tower, and he was too high up to otherwise be seen. When he needed to be alone, he’d climb into his spot, and sit with his feet dangling over the edge, looking at his own private, bird’s-eye view of the world. All of Highfall stretched out beneath him, people bustling about their lives in the city below. From here, looking like tiny bugs.

He was sitting in his spot when Master Pembroke started speaking with someone nearby. Peony recognized the Master’s voice. He felt guilty for listening to something private, but didn’t dare move and be discovered.

“You’re sure about this?” Master Pembroke said.

“Overheard it me-own-self,” said the other voice.

Peony didn’t recognize the second speaker. It sounded like a man, with the drawl of the city in his voice.

“Said they’d found a way to close it,” the man continued. “And they just needed someone to go through and do it. The king’s quiet for a bit, then he says, ‘I think it’s time to resurrect a tyrant.’ To which the mask replies, ‘Endelmyer’s going to be a problem.’ Then the king says he’ll just move him without anyone knowing.”

“When did you overhear this?” asked Master Pembroke.

“It was yesterday, wasn’t it? Same as every time.”

“This is unacceptable, you should have brought this to me sooner.”

“I can’t move once I’m my place, can I? I’m not as small as I used to be.”

“No, you’re not,” said Master Pembroke.

Peony heard sounds of a struggle, then someone appeared, leaning back over the railing. It was a gangly youth, around Peony’s age. His eyes were wide and frightened. Someone was keeping him balanced on the edge with a hold on his shirtfront.

“No, please,” said the youth. “Pull me back, pull me back.”

“What are you supposed to do when you hear news about the rift?”

“Please, they was meetin almost all night, what was I supposed to do?”

The youth looked over at Peony. They locked eyes for a moment, and terror shot through Peony at the thought of being discovered eavesdropping. The youth opened his mouth to say something, but Master Pembroke chose that moment to let go. The youth fell. Whatever he was about to say, turned into a scream. It cut off when he hit the roof. His body bounced, then flopped bonelessly into a roll before tumbling off the palace wall.

Peony surfaced from the memory like waking suddenly from a dream. He was still falling. The “ground” was rising up to meet him too fast. He was falling towards the steep, wooded hill of the bluff, but that didn’t matter at this moment. The bluff had become the palace roof, and he was about to bounce into a lifeless roll.

Before he got to the hill, the direction of “down” began to change, and the ground became a steep slope instead of a vertical wall. Peony began to slide across the ground, as if down a hill, which slowed the approach of the bluff. He hit the slope and went rolling downhill. He felt downhill become uphill again somewhere in the tumble. He began to slow, then a tree jumped up and hit him in the stomach.

Peony fell to the ground, unable to move, trying to remember how to breathe. He was wracked by the most incredible pain he’d ever felt, which immediately topped itself when he was finally drew in a breath. It felt like he was being stabbed in the chest with knives. Being able to breathe again was still sweet, and Peony gasped in air, despite the knives.

A bright light caught his attention and he pushed himself into a sitting position. He was almost halfway up the bluff and had a good view of the valley. He saw a searing line of light high in the air, shining an angry red across the landscape. He squinted at it, trying to make sense of it. The line was growing, headed for the ground.

He tracked the line upward and saw the winged form of the dragon, painted a bloody red by the light coming from its mouth. The light touched down, and for a moment it looked like the dragon was being held aloft by a glowing bar of iron. The light snapped off. Everything was thrown into darkness, and Peony blinked rapidly, trying to see anything. There was a thump—that he felt more than heard—then a blinding flash of white light bloomed on the ground. Peony shielded his eyes as he was hit by the loudest sound he’d ever heard. The roar of the explosion was followed by a rolling wave of heat that knocked him flat. The world went away, leaving him floating in darkness…

Peony woke and struggled back into a sitting position. He saw a giant mushroom walking across the valley. It was dark and shadowy in the moonlight. Its head seemed to be growing.

‘What sort of monster is that?’ Peony wondered.

After a moment, he realized what he was looking at. It was a cloud of smoke being blown by the wind. The cloud was shaped like a mushroom. He turned his gaze to where he’d seen the flash. The farm was gone. All of it. The only thing that remained was a black absence of snow. It looked like a pockmark scar on the landscape.

He held very still, looking up into the sky for the dragon. He coudln’t have been out long. He could still see the mushroom cloud.

The dragon had been easy to spot when it was producing that red light. After a minute of searching Peony finally caught a glint of moonlight and tracked the movement. The wings of the creature didn’t reflect light, he noted their outline as a shadow on the stars. The dragon was circling so high up it looked small.

He looked back down at the devastation where he and Lance had been standing a couple moments ago. He jolted forward,

“Lance!” He said.

It came out as a hoarse wheeze as the knives in his chest returned when he sat forward. He leaned back slow and careful, looking up to see where the dragon was. He spotted it more quickly this time, still circling high overhead.

“How am I supposed to fight that?” Peony said under his breath.

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He’d grown up being told he was the solution to the dragon problem. He would bring about a new age and save thousands of lives. With his power, he’d save the world one day. Peony slumped against the tree, feeling very small.

Something crashed through the undergrowth nearby and he flinched. The sound stopped. He sat up, listening hard. Something crashed right behind him. He whipped around, gasping at the pain this caused. A board lay right behind him, one end smoking.

“What…”

Something small and hard hit him on the foot. It bounced off and hissed into the snow. He picked it up. It was a piece of charred wood. Something hit the ground behind him. Peony looked back at the smoldering plank and realized what was happening. It was raining debris from the farm. He threw his arms over his head and curled up into a ball as more began to land around him. Fragments of various sizes plunked down or thudded, continuing this way for half a minute like a cloudburst. Then it slowed and stopped.

The dragon uttered another long, low, menacing call. His chest stabbed with the knifing pain as the dragon trumpeted, making the trees shake. Peony clutched a hand to his chest and realized he was still holding something. He looked down at the piece of charcoal he held, then over at the plank nearby. He had an idea.

***

Tythos and Sigrun stepped outside the camp and Tythos held up a hand so she didn’t step on the pattern of bones lying in the snow. The pair of soldiers had kept pace with them as they exited the camp; at a distance. They now stood by the last row of tents, watching.

The nightmare walked over and looked Sigrun up and down.

“Aww, have you made a little friend?” it said.

Tythos ignored this.

“Is everything ready?” he asked.

“Yeees, but I give it about a fifty-percent chance of working in your state. If you’d just deepen our bond we could be sure—“

“You know what I think about that. Let’s get started.”

Tythos knelt and placed the black hand on the bones.

“You really should step outside the circle. On the small chance you live through this, being inside the circle might have unforeseen side effects.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Tythos growled.

He motioned Sigrun forward.

“Step outside the circle. Don’t distrurb the bones or we’ll explode and die.”

A sharp boom caused everyone to flinch. The sound was too abbreviated to be thunder. Tythos knew what that sound was. The dragon.

“Come on! Move, move, move!“ Tythos shouted.

He leapt over the line of bones and Sigrun followed. He knelt down and replaced the black hand. The nightmare sighed as he began to pull, then shrugged and began flowing into the black hand. Pain washed over him like he’d caught fire. Tythos gritted his teeth and pulled harder. A roaring sound built in his ears drowning out the rest of the world. The edges of his vision began to go dark, the blackness building along with a pounding in his head. It felt like the strain was about to make his head explode. He pulled harder. His vision went dark, and he was racked with so much pain that he could no longer tell if he was upright or not. Then he felt a shift.

Tythos had activated so many sigils that he could do it blind. Which was good, because he was. Moving his focus forward, Tythos pushed. It felt like he was pushing his own stomach up and out through his throat. He pushed anyway. He vomited. He couldn’t tell if it was bile, blood or actually his stomach that came out of his mouth. He didn’t worry about it, he pushed harder. The roaring sound pressed in on him, and Tythos completely lost feeling, even the pain disappearing as he plunged into blackness.

***

Sigrun watched as Tythos knelt by the macabre display of human remains. She didn’t know what he was doing or where these bones had come from, but it seemed to be important to him. Despite what he had said, she suspected that he was enacting some sort of revenge on the soldiers for what they had done. She felt a twinge in her gut as this suspicion pulled at her. However, her duty came first.

Her commanding officer had made it very clear, by any means necessary. Loss of human life, acceptable. Loss of team members, acceptable. Her duty was to secure the deal with Tythos and deliver him to Ginnung Gap. So she watched as he knelt, and the pattern of human bones laid out in front of him began to glow.

As the glow grew brighter and began to light up the night, the soldiers who were observing them cried out and drew their swords.

“Shit,” Sigrun muttered.

She stepped carefully over the glowing pattern of bones, conscious that Tythos had mentioned disturbing them would result in death. She doubted he would exaggerate the danger of something. If anything, he seemed like the person who would downplay it.

Once clear, she unlimbered her sword and stepped forward to meet the two soldiers. The men spread out, getting ready to flank her, or go around her. Sigrun saw an opportunity and leapt between them, swinging for the first man.

With her sword in hand, her training kicked in. Sigrun had done a lot of “protect the objective” training. She had expected to someday be guarding the king. Personal safety came second when you were guarding an objective, and she intentionally turned her back on one man to invite an attack. It was not a great risk however, she was wearing half-plate.

The great sword she was using had a reach that startled most of her opponents. The man she swung for was no exception, and her stroke took him right above the collarbone before he could get his sword up. The man fell, and she tucked her elbows to her side as she turned, guarding her armpits.

She caught the flash of a sword out of the corner of her eye and raised her shoulder to take it on her pauldron. She rolled through the impact and brought her sword around for a second stroke. She caught this man in the neck and separated his head from his shoulders. It went spinning behind her as she finished her turn and looked at Tythos. He was still kneeling by the glowing circle. She saw no threats around him, so she stepped over and finished the first man she had cut. Having both a height and reach advantage in a fight went along way.

By any means necessary.

Sigrun pushed it to the back of her mind and stepped back in front of the man she was set to protect. The glow behind her intensified, and it sounded like Tythos was violently sick. She turned to check on him and as she did the glow snapped off. A sensation passed over her like jumping into cold water. With the sudden lack of light, she was momentarily night-blind.

A dark figure rose from the ground. At first she thought it was Tythos, silhouetted against the snow. Then the figure continue to rise, standing taller than her by a head. Not Tythos. There was a form laying prone at the tall figure’s feet. Had a soldier gotten by her? She swung her sword at the tall figure. Her sword passed through, cleanly, with almost no resistance.

“Oh, so you can see me. How interesting,“ said the figure.

Its voice was strange, deep, yet melodic and playful. And it seemed completely unconcerned that she’d just cut it in half with her sword.

“Who are you?” she asked.

She thought about this for a second, studying the figure that stood in front of her and amended,

“What are you?“

She was sure she had made a clean hit with her sword, and the figure in front of her did not look like any man she had ever seen. Whatever it was, it grinned at her. Its head split, revealing a wide mouth full of white, glistening teeth.

“I’m his better half,“ it said, motioning to the prone figure at its feet. “And while I would love to be less vague—believe me—I’m bound by an inconvenient and borderline paranoid contract, not to answer either of those questions without permission. Honestly, you’d think it’d been written in the cold war by a dashing triple agent.”

“Speak plain creature,” Sigrun said.

“Creature! Well I never—look for yourself if you’re going to be rude. Why do I only get to talk to barbarians?”

Sigrun knelt and inspected the figure on the ground. It was Tythos. He was lying in a pool of blood, unmoving. Sigrun looked up at the dark figure, realizing this was what she’d caught a glimpse of in the farmhouse.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dying. Which is sad, because when he dies, I will too.”

“Dying?” Sigrun rolled him over. “He can’t die, I need him.“

“Yes, I sympathize. I’ve been trying to keep him from dying for over sixty years now. He doesn’t make it easy. It’s like he’s only thinking of himself. His selfishness is truly boundless.”

She slapped Tythos across the face.

“I just killed king’s men for you, asshole! You took my life! My dreams! You killed my city! You can’t die! ” she slapped him again.

Tythos’s head lolled, he was completely unresponsive. Sigrun looked up at the tall black figure. She didn’t understand who or what it was, but it seemed to have answers.

“What do I do? What’s wrong with him? How do we help him?“

The creature’s face contorted into an exaggerated frown. It looked down at Sigrun, who was holding Tythos up by his shirt front.

“Well, I could help him, if you were to willingly give me something of yours.“

“What kind of thing?“

“Like your eyes for example.”

“My eyes?”

“Yes, or you voice, or maybe your right arm. Any one of those things and I might be able to save his life.“

“How would that help?”

“Principle of equal exchange. I can use the life force in what’s freely given, to bolster his.“

“And you can’t do this without me?“

“I could, if he had ever deepened our bond. But that doesn’t help either of us right now.“

Sigrun dug in the bag at her belt, and pulled out her severed finger. The one Tythos had cut off her hand this morning. She held it out to the dark figure.

“Will this help?“

The creature frowned down at what she held out to it.

“It’s a start.“

It snatched the finger off of her hand quick as a toad catching a fly.

“We’re going to need more.“

Sigrun wracked her brain for what she could give up, for what would be enough to save him. For what she could live without to save her career; her honor.

“We’ll have to hurry, we’re about to have company.“

Sigrun looked up, there were soldiers coming.

***