A Dawn of Dragonfire: Dragonlore, Book 1 (34 page)

The stream of fire roared toward the Starlit Demon, and for an instant, fear filled Elethor.  What if his fire burned the beast?  What if it attacked them?  But the Starlit Demon opened its maw wider, swallowing the flames.  Lyana blew fire too, and the demon feasted.

The dragons let their flames die.  The Starlit Demon roared.

"Is that all the fire you can kindle?"  It made a deep sound like laughter, body shaking.  "All the dragons of Requiem would not fill my belly.  Ten thousand blew their fire upon me, but I knew no fill."

"If you follow us, we will grant you more fire!" Elethor shouted.

The demon's laughter deepened, cruel laughter that made the chamber shake.  The pillar of stone upon which Elethor and Lyana had stood crumbled and fell.  Cracks raced across the Starlit Demon's stone body, emitting beams of light.

"The armies of your fathers blew flames from their mouths into mine, but my craving was stronger."  The Starlit Demon glared at Elethor, drenching him with light.  "And so I toppled their halls, and feasted upon their children.  Your kings were not pleased.  How will you feed me when your fathers could not?"

Elethor hovered before the beast, his wings blowing rocks and dust off its body.

"I will not feed you dragonfire.  I will feed you sunfire itself.  Ten thousand phoenixes fly over Requiem, and each is woven from the Sun God's flame.  Emerge from your lair, Starlit Demon!  Follow me to Requiem, and you will feast."

The Starlit Demon rose, filling the chamber with its girth.  Its claws emerged from the darkness below, raining earth; each seemed carved of flint, larger than a horse.  It tossed back its head and roared, and the sound crashed against the chamber walls, cracking them.  Lyana screamed in pain; the demon's howl knocked her back in the air.  Elethor grimaced.  He felt like that roar could crush his scales and snap his ribs.

"Will you follow, Starlit Demon?" he cried.  "Will you fly to Requiem and feast upon the phoenix fire?"

The demon leaped.

The chamber seemed to explode.

A fountain of stone and light, the Starlit Demon crashed into the ceiling, claws digging, maw biting.  Boulders cascaded.  Dust filled the air, blinding Elethor.  He flew backward until his back hit a wall.  He saw nothing but raining rock, clouds of dust, and beams of starlight.

"Lyana!" he shouted.

He could not see nor hear her.  A boulder fell before him, grazing his tail.  Elethor flattened himself against the wall.  Rocks pummeled him.  He tried to call for Lyana again, but dust and rocks filled his mouth.

The starlight dimmed, and Elethor managed to blow fire, lighting the darkness.  Through the storm of debris, he discerned the Starlit Demon burrowing into a hole in the ceiling, tail lashing.  Soon the beast disappeared into the tunnel it dug, driving upward like a great earthworm.

"Elethor!" came a cry from across the chamber, and Lyana flew toward him.  Dust coated her blue scales, turning her gray.  With three great flaps of her wings, she soared toward the hole in the ceiling.  "Come on, Elethor, we follow!"

With that, she soared into the hole above, following the Starlit Demon.  Heart hammering, Elethor pushed himself off the wall.  Dust and rocks rained against his wings as he flapped them, but he gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and forced himself to fly.  The tunnel gaped above him, fifty feet wide.  He saw Lyana's tail swish above and he followed.

Tunnel walls blurred at his sides.  The light of the Starlit Demon fell in rays.  Dirt and rocks cascaded, clanking against his scales.

He flew for what seemed like leagues.  The Starlit Demon burrowed and roared, crashing through the stone and dirt.  Elethor growled, slipstreaming in the beast's wake.  If he swerved to the right or left, boulders would tumble against him, denting scales.  Lyana flew above him, drafting behind the demon's tail.  The behemoth dwarfed the two dragons, ten times their size.

The demon cut through the Abyss.  The tunnel drove through craggy chambers, revealing the horrors of the underworld: nests of squirming eggs, rotten children coiled inside them; bloated worms, six feet long and bearing human faces; bodies that rotted, squirming with insects, yet still screamed in pain.  But soon the tunnel grew colder, and Elethor saw bones, rocks, soil, and the buried ruins of old cities.

We are leaving the Abyss,
he thought. 
We are leaving this unholy underworld and entering the crust of the world.

He exhaled a shaky breath of relief, and his eyes stung.  How long would nightmares of this place haunt him?  At once he knew the answer: for the rest of his life.  He would not forget the sight of Nedath, a dead girl atop the body of a centipede.  In the dark he would always see Lyana wrapped in cobwebs, turning into a shriveled creature.  Every night, he knew that he would dream of the bodies upon the hooks, undying beasts that fed upon their own flesh.

He looked at Lyana, who flew above him, and his heart seemed so small, so cold, wrapped in ice.

Nobody else will ever know,
he thought.
  Only Lyana and I.  We'll never be able to speak of what we saw… not to anyone above ground, maybe not even to each other.
 He could barely see; his eyes blurred with tears. 
But we still have each other.  Lyana is saved… and I will always be with her, to hold her in the darkness when our nightmares swell.

The thought of Lyana made his chest feel a little warmer.  She kept the terror at bay.  Elethor nodded as he flew, eyes damp. 
We will live in peace again, together—we will save our people, we will stargaze on Lacrimosa Hill, and we will leave this darkness behind us.  She and I.

All his life, Lyana had been a thorn in his side, the sanctimonious girl who'd endlessly scold and lecture him.  But today as he flew, he saw above him a strong, wise woman… a woman he wanted to spend his life with.  A woman, he knew, that he could learn to love.

The Starlit Demon burrowed for what seemed like hours, roaring in the dark, until it crashed through a slab of stone, and screams rose above.

Elethor gasped.

As he shot up, he saw burrows running alongside the tunnel the Starlit Demon carved.  His people—thin, bloodied Vir Requis—cowered there like ants underground.  They covered their eyes in the demon's starlight and cried.

An instant later, the Starlit Demon crashed through the topsoil and shot into the night sky, a geyser bursting into the world.  An army of phoenixes burned above, screeching and flapping wings of fire.  The world spun.  The sound deafened Elethor.  Boulders cascaded and the tunnels began to crumble.  Several Vir Requis fell into the darkness, tumbling past Elethor.  They shifted into dragons below him, howled, and flew behind him.

"Elethor!" Lyana cried above.  She soared out of the tunnel and into the night, crashing into the army of phoenixes.

Elethor howled and shot into the night.  The phoenixes swooped.  Dragons flew up below him.  Vir Requis still in human forms ran deeper into tunnels.  Sound and light crashed.

 
 
SOLINA

She was flying with her troops, a phoenix in the night, when the demon burst from underground.

It looked like a great scarab made of stone, larger than a whale.  Its claws tore through the earth, and its eyes blazed, two stars shooting beams of light.  The earth crumbled around it, a sinkhole falling into darkness.  Vir Requis screamed and fell from their burrows, now revealed to the night.

It looks,
Solina thought in a moment of incredulity,
like a gopher bursting from an anthill.

She spread out her wings of fire and shrieked.  Considering its girth, she had expected this stone demon to crawl upon the earth, but it came soaring into the sky.  Wingless, it flew toward her and her phoenixes.  Its eyes nearly blinded her, and its roars thudded against her, fanning her flames.

"Kill the beast!" she shrieked, her voice emerging from her beak like typhoons of sound.  "Sunspear Phalanx!  Dragonbone!  Bring it down!"

The two phalanxes swooped in formation, each a terror of fifty phoenixes.  One fell upon the stone demon from the right, the other from its left.  Their beaks and talons thrashed its hide.

They crashed against the beast like flaming paper against a cliff.

Solina watched, shrieking, the flames crackling with fury across her.  The phoenixes attacked the stone demon again, wave after wave of them, only to crash against it.  The demon's eyes blazed with starlight.  Its claws lashed and its teeth bit, tearing phoenixes apart.  Their flames filled its maw, ran down its throat, and blazed through the fissures along its belly.  The demon seemed like a great, flying furnace.

And my men are stoking its fire,
Solina realized.  She howled, a sound that could shatter walls.  Elethor had found a demon in the depths, a creature to eat the flames of her wrath.  As she flew above, she saw the beast swallow three phoenixes.  Other firebirds slashed at its body, only to die at its claws and fall, shredded, like burning leaves.

Solina narrowed her eyes and swooped, claws outstretched.

You think yourself clever, Elethor.  But you have only doomed yourself.

Where the stone demon had burst from the ground, a chasm loomed, its rims crumbling into darkness.  Alongside the cavern walls, Solina saw openings to a dozen burrows.  Inside each burrow the weredragons still cowered, fragile humans not daring to fly, even now.  She saw only several dragons flying behind the stony demon; the rest were too cowardly to shift and emerge to battle.

But I will bring the battle to them,
Solina thought. 
I spent a moon trying to break into these places… and now, Elethor, you have opened a dozen doors.

She snarled, skirted around the feasting demon of stone, and swooped into the gaping chasm.  A dozen burrows surrounded her, running from the chasm walls into darkness.  Weredragons wept in their human forms and tried to flee deeper, but their burrows were packed tight; they could either become dragons and fly into the phoenix sky, or die as humans underground.

Men with swords were rushing to each tunnel's entrance, pushing back the women and children.  But in one tunnel, a crumbly burrow like a wormhole, only children wept, torn from their mothers' grasps when the demon had crashed through their hideout.  Shrieking, her flames crackling, Solina flew toward that tunnel.

The children screamed.  Across the crater, men howled inside their own tunnels.  A ball of fire, Solina shifted in midair, becoming a woman again.  As she flew, she drew her twin blades.  She tumbled into the children's tunnel, swords swinging.

Aknur, her left blade of nightfire, halved a young boy's face.  Raem, her right blade of dawn, cut a girl from collarbone to navel.  The other children were fleeing deeper, tripping over one another, wailing in fear.  Solina grinned and walked deeper, blades swinging, showering blood and cutting down the vermin.

I will not let these creatures grow and breed,
she thought as she sliced two girls who embraced and wept. 
I will clear the world of their darkness, Sun God, for your wrath and glory.

She stepped deeper into the tunnel, over bodies and severed limbs, leaving a trail of blood and sunlight.

I will kill them all.

Howls rose behind her.  Flames crackled.  Solina spun to see a brass dragon fly toward the tunnel she stood in.  Solina's grin widened, her heart pounded, and she licked blood off her lips.

"Elethor!" she cried and raised her dripping swords.  "You have come to me at last."

 
 
ADIA

She stood in the tunnel, comforting a girl whose hands had burned to stumps, when the world collapsed.

The floor cracked, and she watched children fall into the chasm.  Boulders fell from the ceiling, crushing people around her.  The tunnels shook, dirt rained, and a tower of stone jutted up before her.  Great claws, larger than Adia's body, sliced before her.  A creature as large as a temple, its eyes blazing beacons, rose before her, leaving ruin and blood in its wake.

As people fell and screamed, Adia thought she glimpsed two dragons—brass and blue—flying after the creature, following it through the tunnel it carved.

The Starlit Demon,
she knew.  Tears sprang into her eyes. 
Lyana is alive.  My daughter is alive!

As dust flew and stones rolled, Adia clenched her jaw.  She wanted to run through the people, shift into a dragon, and fly to Lyana.  She forced herself to remain.

This is my station.  These are my people to heal.

She moved from one to another, digging them from the rubble.  One old man wept, clutching a fractured arm.  Beside him a young boy lay, his leg buried under a boulder.  How could she heal them all?  How could she choose between them—grant death to one, life to the other?

Adia was kneeling over a pregnant woman whose head was bleeding when fire screamed.  She looked up and saw phoenixes raining into the chasm the Starlit Demon had left.  One phoenix flew to a tunnel that gaped open across the chasm, shifted into Solina, and leaped into a crowd of screaming children.  Several other phoenixes swooped toward the tunnel Adia huddled in, shifted into Tiran men with blades and armor, and ran into the throng of survivors.

Adia found herself snarling.  The time to hide was over, she realized; they would find no more shelter underground, not with the tunnels collapsing around them.  They had to flee.  Her heart ached to leave the wounded woman… but Adia left her.

"Vir Requis!" she shouted, running toward the Tirans at the entrance.  "Vir Requis, follow!  We shift!  We fly!  To the sky, children of Requiem!"

As she ran, she grabbed a sword from a fallen soldier, drew it, and swung the blade.  Around her, living soldiers of Requiem swung their own blades.  One Tiran fell into the chasm.  Adia ran and barreled into another, shoving him into the darkness.

"Find the sky!" Adia shouted, leaped from tunnel into chasm, and shifted into a dragon.