Desdemona finally let a broad smile spread across her face. It felt like it had been years since she’d allowed such an expression to touch her. Even longer since she’d felt true joy. But as a dense wave of ethera swept over her most hated enemies, how could she feel anything else?

  The little ball that represented Isaiah Roberts sparked, then fell to the ground. She knew from her experiments that, wherever that despotic dictator really was, he’d been rendered insensate by the sudden influx of so much hostile ethera. Because he didn’t simply watch through those hated drones. Rather, he was connected to them like they were part of his body. That allowed him far more control than would have been possible otherwise, but it came with significant problems as well.

  Like the fact that an attack on his drones was an attack on him.

  Hopefully, he would still be unconscious when she finished the others off. That way, her agents could complete their task.

  Even as the sphere fell to the floor with a loud thud, the crates outside burst open to reveal hundreds of high-level fighters. All women. Desdemona knew better than to trust men with anything of consequence. Even if they didn’t let their natural tendencies drive them to evil, they would likely screw everything up.

  That just came with the territory.

  She had no idea if men were evil by nature or if society pushed those tendencies to the fore. But what she did know was that she’d never met a man who didn’t let their base predisposition rule them. Not her father. Not her brothers. Certainly not her late husband. Even her son had begun to show the signs.

  Desdemona was almost grateful that he was now dead, though that thought made her feel like a terrible person and an even worse mother. It added to her guilt. Her rage. Her desire for justice.

  Outside the warehouse, the sound of rifle fire filled the air as the other part of her plan came to fruition. It had taken months to smuggle so many people into the city. Months more to wedge them into place, where they could influence others. Desdemona’s agents took what was already there – jealousy, greed, and anger – and whipped the population into a frenzy.

  Young men and women were the primary target. They were impressionable. Easy to manipulate. And they’d not had a chance to be beaten down by the system that told them they were worth less than the people on the surface. Desdemona’s people provided a spark, and it had become a wildfire intent on burning away the injustices upon which Seattle’s current structure had been built.

  Of course, they were all doomed.

  They couldn’t stand against trained soldiers. For all that their plight was unfortunate, the reality was that their station was justified. If they’d been worthwhile, they would have been taken from the Undercity and nurtured. Many had been. And in a fight with trained soldiers, all with appropriate classes, a bunch of Scholars, Entertainers, and low-value Tradesmen had little chance of victory.

  But they were fantastic distractions.

  Most were disenfranchised young men, as well. So, expendable. In fact, she could almost convince herself that she was doing the world a favor by sending them to their inevitable deaths.

  Next, the man carrying poor Cora collapsed to his knees. Gunnar Lindstrom. A powerful and somewhat honorable man. He spent most of his free time feeding the needy and helping where he could. Of course, he was also an unrepentant killer. As a man, any good had to be outweighed by something equally terrible.

  More importantly, he was just another tool. A powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. Desdemona had never expected Lindstrom to accomplish his mission. For all his effectiveness as an assassin, Hart was well beyond him. What she had not expected was for the Butcher of Bloodrock Bay to show him mercy.

  When the sniper returned to Seattle and began his clumsy investigation, Desdemona had been forced to adjust her plans. Originally, she’d intended to make her move as Hart battled the city’s martial forces. But he’d showed more control than expected, forcing her to go in a different direction.

  But now, she had him precisely where she wanted him.

  She watched as Hart fell to his knees beneath the combined weight of the Daughters of Deianira. All from Desdemona’s most powerful ability:

  It combined with another:

  Through those two abilities, Desdemona had created a vast store of dense ethera. However, without a means of release, it was useless. Thankfully, her class, Dominarch, gave her the tools to use that power.

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  The first thing she’d cast was fittingly called Matron’s Authority, and it fueled a pre-established, though temporary domain. As Hart struggled to deal with the combined power of the Daughters of Deianira, she pushed herself upright and looked down on him.

  He was so proud.

  So dangerous.

  The most powerful man in the world, and yet, he could not stand against the sisterhood she had worked so tirelessly to gather into her protective embrace. Cast-offs. Thieves. Whores and battered spouses. She had listened to each and every horrible story. She had held them in her arms as they wept for everything they’d lost. Their families. Their innocence. Their sense of agency.

  And she had given them the means to control their own fate. All she’d required was a little bit of power in return. Not even enough to notice. Not really.

  The bulk of that power went toward fueling Matron’s Authority, but a lesser part went toward inflating her personal might.

  The highest Desdemona had ever climbed in the power rankings was the mid-forties. But while her leveling speed might have been slower than it was for many other elites, it was steady. Where they might have fallen off, she had continued to climb. Even though the power rankings were a thing of the past, she knew that if it still existed, she would find herself near the top.

  And when she used Mother’s Rage, her already-high attributes skyrocketed into the thousands. A point or two from every branded member of the Daughters went a long way toward pushing her to the top.

  Her muscles sang with increased strength as she reached down and flipped the desk to the side. It crashed into the wall, shattering into splinters. Stepping forward, she stood over Elijah Hart, over the most powerful man in the world. And she saw him for the pitiful creature he was.

  “Just another man,” she muttered, reaching down to grab a handful of hair. His jaw hung slack, and his eyes had fallen closed. His body wasn’t limp, but it was obvious that the domain had done its work well.

  Hart’s eyes snapped open.

  Then, he let out a harsh laugh. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, his voice low but unbothered. Something shifted beneath his skin, and the green scales she took to be ethereal tattoos writhed. His hair pulled free of her fingers, retracting into his skull. Moss propagated across his head and down his back as his scales spread across his body.

  He grew, and rapidly enough that Desdemona was thrown backward by the sheer force of his expansion. He filled the room with scales and muscle, branches and leaves.

  Only then did she start to panic.

  Drawing a dagger from the sheathe at her waist, Desdemona charged. It was a high-grade item, and one with two major traits. The first was an ethereal drain that, according to the appraisal she’d had done, would cripple anyone less powerful than a demi-god. A tower reward that had cost her a fortune – both in terms of coins and political currency – to acquire.

  But it was worth it.

  The second trait was that it inflicted a high-tier affliction that would turn most people to rot in a matter of seconds.

  She stabbed.

  And the blade skittered across Hart’s emerald scales, not even leaving a scratch.

  “Not a man at all,” came a rumbling voice from above. “I am a dragon.”

  She looked up to see a gaping maw and descending fangs that looked like thorns. And then there was only pain as she felt her body – despite all those attributes – being torn to pieces.

  *    *    *

  Charity Leung dove to her right, taking cover behind a hastily erected shield. A second later, a Molotov cocktail shattered against the opaque blue barrier, spreading dense flames across its surface. From the heat, she could tell that it was no normal accelerant powering that fire. Probably an Alchemist’s concoction.

  She rolled to a kneeling position, then poked her head out from cover, sighted in on one of the rioters, and let loose. Unlike some, she preferred ethereal ammunition, mostly because it took advantage of her Sorcerer archetype and the Spellslinger class she’d been granted.

  The weapon hissed and kicked with the concentrated burst of energy. An instant later, a tiny ball of flame-tinged ethera slammed into one of the rioters, cratering his chest. He flew backward from the kinetic force, and the small, burning bottle in his hands fell among his comrades. It burst, sending those flames to encompass a handful of ragged men in coveralls.

  Charity didn’t hesitate to shift her aim to another. And another after that. Over and over she fired until her core guttered out. Meanwhile, the others around her – the ones who hadn’t succumbed to the surprise attack from within the warehouse – joined her. On three sides, they were protected by hastily deployed shields, but Charity could see the writing on the wall.

  Unless something changed – and soon – they would be overwhelmed. The men were bad enough, if only because of their numbers, but the women were the real problem. They’d emerged from within that warehouse, screaming like banshees. What was even more troubling was that they were all enhanced far beyond what Charity would have expected for a second-rate criminal gang.

  More than half her colleagues had fallen before they’d had a chance to regroup and deploy their barricades.

  “See any more of those crazy bitches?” asked Carl, a burly man with tattoos crawling up his neck.

  Charity shook her head, barking, “Negative. Watch your language.”

  He fired another burst from his own rifle. Carl preferred physical ammunition, and he’d chosen the largest weapon he could find. Charity often teased him about it, saying that he was obviously compensating for other deficiencies, but she couldn’t deny that it packed quite a punch.

  It also used a lot less ethera than her own rifle.

  The sound of gunfire and explosions echoed throughout the Undercity, evidence that theirs was not the only battle in progress. They’d taken every precaution, deploying the cordon ideally. Yet, the rioters had still surprised them.

  “Gonna need to fall back soon,” announced Lisa, who was responsible for one of the barricades. She fired on a charging rioter. “Running low on ethera.”

  The two men who’d deployed the other two barriers echoed the sentiment. However, before they could move, something changed. Suddenly, the oppressive blanket of ethera – a domain, if Charity wasn’t mistaken – disappeared. With that, she felt an influx of strength, and her regeneration began to reclaim some of her spent ethera.

  But more importantly, the remaining women all dropped, unconscious before they even hit the ground. Their limbs were limp, and their expressions slack. It was as if they’d had every ounce of ethera drained in the space of a second.

  Charity never got the chance to inspect further, because a moment later, the warehouse shook like it was under the influence of a localized earthquake. After a second, the concrete walls began to crack, sending cascades of dust to fall upon the ground.

  “What the –”

  Then, one of the walls exploded, revealing a true monster.

  It was reptilian in nature, and it reminded Charity of the giant crocodile that had destroyed half of Seattle nearly a decade before. But where that creature had been primitive and somewhat ungainly, this new arrival was anything but. It was graceful. Sinuous.

  And powerful.

  She could feel the dense ethera wafting off of it waves, almost like a magical jet engine. But the oddities didn’t stop there, because this creature was more than just a big, magical reptile. Not with wings that looked like leaf-covered tree branches and a mossy mane that spilled down its back.

  “Is that a dragon?” breathed Carl, who was as dumbfounded as Charity.

  “I…I don’t…”

  It moved, crashing through the wall so quickly that Charity barely saw more than a blur. A second later, a trail of blood and death was all that remained of the rioters.

  The dragon turned to them, its snout bloody, and for a moment, Charity lost herself in its emerald eyes. Then, it spoke, snapping her back to reality.

  “Save whoever you can in the warehouse. I’ll deal with things out here.”

  The voice rumbled through Charity’s soul, and her body went limp. She very nearly collapsed before pulling herself back to attention. Somehow, she managed to nod, saying, “Yes, sir.”

  Before she could say anything else, the creature was gone, weaving between the buildings as it hunted the other rioters.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Carl.

  “I…I don’t know, but I’m doing what it told me to do. Come on.”

  He shouldered his weapon, probably to mask a tremble of primal fear, and said, “Good enough for me.”

  If you'd like to read more of Path of Dragons, we're almost two full books ahead (book 14 just started) on Patreon. That's 165+ extra chapters, so a ton of extra content for those of you who can't wait to see what Elijah will get up to. Anyway - check it out .

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