Arc 1, Chapter 12: The Dragon's Answer

  The smoke stung his eyes. He blinked through it, trying to see.

  Everyone stood frozen. Silent. The air felt thick in his lungs, heavy with smoke and the stretched-tight feeling before a storm breaks. He could hear his own heartbeat pounding against his ribs.

  Ash stared at the crater where the dragon had been.

  Black smoke rising in thick columns. The stench of burned corruption mixed with ozone and char. The blast had melted the earth to glass, dark and smooth. Cracks spread outward from the center in jagged lines.

  Around him, knights began to lower their weapons. Shoulders sagged. A knight nearby let out a long breath, shaky, loud in the silence. Others followed. Breathing again. They looked like men who thought it might be over.

  The smoke moved wrong.

  It drifted back toward the crater. Pulled inward. Like something at the center was breathing it in.

  The Seed of Life screamed inside his chest, pure panic flooding through him.

  Isolde whispered beside him. "No."

  Barely a sound. Her voice cracked on the word.

  "It's still there."

  The smoke cleared.

  The dragon stood in the crater's heart.

  Wings folded against its body. Head lowered. Corruption poured from every gap in its scales, pooling beneath it in rivers of black that steamed against the ground. It looked darker than before. More concentrated. As if the blast had burned away everything except the dragon itself.

  The armor on its chest glowed.

  Pure mana radiated from the metal plates. He felt it from fifty feet away, pressing against his skin like heat from a furnace. Bright. Clean. Untouched. The shrine's attack had struck the armor dead center.

  And the armor had drunk it. All of it. Every fragment of power Isolde had called down through the sky.

  "High pure mana."

  Isolde's voice came out hollow and distant, like she was talking to herself.

  "War-grade craftsmanship. Refined beyond anything I've encountered."

  She turned her blind eyes toward the dragon.

  "Why does a corrupted dragon wear human armor?"

  Ash looked at the armor again, metal plates strapped across corrupted flesh. Someone had forged that armor. Someone had fitted it to a dragon.

  The knights stayed silent. The dragon raised its head.

  The dragon's eyes swept across the clearing. Black pits, dead and empty. Its massive head turned, drifting from one end of the clearing to the other.

  The dragon's mouth stretched wide and a roar tore out of it.

  He felt it before he heard it. A vibration that climbed through his boots, through his bones, into his clenched jaw. The ground trembled. Pebbles rattled across the crater. The air grew thick in his lungs.

  The dragon roared again.

  Higher now. Louder. The sound hit a pitch that made his skull ache. Knights staggered. Hands flew to helmets, pressing against their ears. A knight to his left screamed, a raw sound torn from his throat.

  He tried to move. Tried to raise his dagger. His legs locked. His arms stayed at his sides.

  The third roar hit.

  Pressure slammed down on him.

  He collapsed. His knees hit the ground. His hands followed. His face pressed against the earth, and the vibration rattled through his skull until his vision blurred and his thoughts broke apart.

  Around him, everyone else fell.

  Knights in heavy armor crashed down around him. The old commander, scarred and battle-worn, dropped to his knees beside men half his age. Even the corrupted creatures pressing against the barrier went still, pinned by the same weight crushing Ash into the ground.

  Even the monsters stopped moving.

  Ash had felt magic before. Heavy spells, crushing wards. This was different. This was the dragon itself, its sheer presence grinding them all into the dirt.

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  Isolde knelt beside him, her mouth open. She tried to scream but no sound came out. The pressure had her pinned in the mud like everyone else.

  The dragon raised its head toward the sky.

  Mana began to gather at its maw.

  Black and white mana swirled at its jaws. The air warped where they met, bending like heat over a fire. Two colors that never mixed, spinning in the same space.

  A circle expanded above the dragon.

  Massive. Fifty feet across. A hundred. Growing. Symbols burned into the night sky inside it, shapes Ash had never seen before, lines and angles that made his eyes ache when he tried to follow them. The circle spun slowly, pulsing with the same black and white light gathering in the dragon's mouth.

  The dragon breathed upward, into the circle.

  A column of black and white erupted from its jaws, tearing through the air, punching through the center of the spinning circle. It kept going, up and up, until Ash lost sight of it in the darkness above.

  A second passed. Two.

  Then Ash understood.

  The connection. The link Isolde had opened to call down the attack. It was still open. The dragon had fired back through it.

  The shrine had gone quiet.

  The eldest knelt in the inner circle with her three sisters, the middle eight behind them, the outer twelve at their backs. Her voice had given out minutes ago, spent on the invocation. Exhaustion pressed down on her shoulders, her arms, her bowed head.

  She raised her head, turning her face toward the ceiling. The air had changed. Grown heavy. Dark mana pressed down from above, stronger than anything she had felt before.

  "Something comes."

  Her voice came out steady. She had felt many things in her years of service. This was different.

  "Something terrible."

  Power exploded above her head.

  A circle. She felt its edges, its spinning mass of energy burning into existence between the pillars. Black and white twisting together. The same power she had sensed moments before.

  Around her, the others stirred. She heard them shifting, felt their mana signatures spike with fear, their faces turning upward.

  The circle released. Power crashed down.

  The power hit the air above her like a hammer. She felt it tearing through the ceiling, felt the heat and pressure bearing down on all of them. Black and white mana, fused together, driving straight for the heart of the shrine.

  Stone erupted beneath her.

  She felt the floor shake, felt massive pillars burst upward around them. Ancient stone, thrumming with mana she had never sensed before. The pillars hadn't been there a moment ago.

  Scarlet mana blazed to life.

  Scarlet mana poured from the pillars. She felt it spreading above her, weaving together, forming a barrier. The shield locked into place.

  The column hit.

  The collision swallowed all sound. Her ears went dead. She felt the impact through her bones, through the floor, through the air pressing against her skin.

  The pressure slammed her flat.

  Her face hit cold stone. Her lungs compressed. She tried to breathe and managed only a thin gasp. Around her, she heard her sisters hit the floor one after another, heard their strangled cries, their bodies striking stone. Twenty-three women gasping for air beside her.

  Above them, the shield held.

  She felt the shield above her, straining. Felt the column crushing down on it. The pressure grew.

  One second.

  Her fingers clawed at the stone. Her mouth moved, shaping a prayer, but the pressure crushed the words before they left her throat. Beside her, she heard her sisters struggling, heard choked sobs, bodies scraping against the floor.

  Two seconds.

  The pillars groaned. The mana above her flickered. The barrier shuddered, and she felt cracks racing through it.

  Three seconds.

  One of her sisters stopped struggling. The outer circle. She heard the silence where breathing had been a moment ago. The pressure had crushed something inside her.

  Four seconds.

  Another stopped breathing. Then another. She strained to reach them. The pressure held her down.

  Five seconds.

  The shield shattered above her. She felt the scarlet mana scatter, felt the column tear through where the barrier had been. Centuries of protection, broken in a handful of heartbeats.

  Everything erupted around her.

  Sound and force. The pillars shattered around her. The floor cracked beneath her. Walls collapsed somewhere in the distance. Smoke and dust choked the air.

  Then stillness.

  Silence.

  Ash turned to Isolde. Her face had gone pale. She staggered, knees buckling, barely staying upright.

  She screamed.

  The pressure still pinned them to the ground. Isolde shook beside him, her body fighting the weight pressing down on her.

  "No."

  Her voice came out raw.

  "No, no, no—"

  Ash looked at her face. Her mouth kept moving, shaping the same word over and over.

  The pressure began to fade.

  The dragon lowered its head. The circle above it dissolved.

  Knights stirred around him. Groaning. Some rolled onto their sides. Others stayed flat, breathing hard. The old commander pushed himself up, arms shaking, blood running from his nose and ears.

  Isolde surged to her feet, fast and reckless. She drew her sword. The blade rang as it left the sheath.

  "Isolde—" The word scraped out of his throat.

  She ignored him.

  She charged.

  Ash watched her run toward the dragon, sword raised. Her feet slipped in the mud. Her robes tangled around her legs. She kept running anyway.

  The dragon's tail swept sideways, a thick arc of scaled muscle. It caught Isolde mid-charge and sent her spinning through the air. The dragon's head had already turned away, looking elsewhere.

  Her body spun through the air. Her white robes trailed behind her. Her sword slipped from her grip and vanished into the dark.

  Ash moved.

  The Seed of Life flooded his limbs, forcing his broken body forward. He crossed the distance before she hit the ground.

  He caught her.

  The impact drove him backward. His boots skidded through mud. She was light, but the force behind her sent them both down. They rolled together, tangled, until his back slammed into something solid.

  Pain shot through his spine. His ribs. His arms screamed to let go.

  He held on.

  Isolde's hands opened and closed, grasping at nothing. Her sword was gone.

  Ash looked at her face. Empty and hollow, like she had left her body behind.

  "We have to go." His voice came out hoarse.

  Isolde stayed silent.

  "Isolde." He grabbed her arm and pulled. She was dead weight in his grip.

  "We have to go NOW."

  The dragon turned toward them.

  The old commander's voice cut through the chaos

  "Rear guard — on me!"

  A handful of knights rallied around their commander, swords raised, facing the dragon.

  "Get her out."

  The old man looked at Ash. His face was pale, lined, exhausted.

  "Whatever happens, get the shrine maiden out."

  Ash wanted to argue. The old commander had already turned back toward the dragon.

  "Go."

  Ash pulled Isolde to her feet and draped her arm across his shoulders. She was light, but his body screamed under even that small weight.

  They ran.

  Behind them, the knights charged. Ash heard their war cries, the clash of their blades against the dragon's hide. Then a roar. Then silence.

  Ash kept running. The trees closed around them, and the battlefield disappeared.