Furee Born: The Dragon Mage Series Book IV (7 page)

Melly brushed too long
hair out of his face and smiled at him.  “Solan will protect his knights.”  Her
words turned teasing.  “All he asked is that we stay out of trouble while he’s
gone.”

She watched Rhune’s
tension drop from his shoulders when Clare laughed.

“He does know Rhune is
here, right?” Clare teased, ruffling her brother’s hair despite the belligerent
look he flashed her.  “Trouble is his specialty.”

Melly listened to the
good-natured arguing that commenced with a smile.  She did her best to hide her
worry, but she would not be able to relax until Solan returned and Furee and
Riva were alright.  She felt a light wind flirt about her skirts and whisper
across her thoughts.  This time her smile was real.  With a thought, she sent
the wind out after her mate, and slowly her smile disappeared again.  Now all
she could do was wait for its return
and word of her
friends’ fate.

Riva felt the blast of
heat even before the sounds of the explosion reached her ears.  For a moment,
shock held her immobile, but the dragon knight acted quickly, pushing her back
to the wall and surrounding her on all sides.  Each grim-faced warrior had
drawn their weapons out in use and acted from one blink to the next.

They were overrun so fast
it took Riva a moment to make sense of what she was seeing. The wrongness of
the beasts that poured in through the door was enough to have her stomach
roiling.  There was nothing natural about what attacked.  Twisted creatures
with horns and fangs and extra eyes, or in some cases, no eyes at all.  Great
claws on each hand and foot.  They looked to have been taken from every viscous
beast in the wild and melded together into a hodge-podge of evil.

Adair, Aarion, and Balin
waded in with swords that moved so fast they appeared to be flashes of light. 
Hacked monster parts flew around them.  Riva could do nothing but huddle behind
Furee as the creatures died in droves.  The smoke from the fires drifted in
around them, and Riva pulled a part of her tunic up and over her mouth so she
could breathe.  She was on the verge of panic, but shakily, she held herself
together.  The smell of the smoke was worse even than the crazed mutant beasts
attacking, but she was determined to hold it together.  Furee stood before her
like a bulwark of strength if anything slipped by the others, which was rare; his
flashing sword did the rest.

After what seemed like
hours, the flow of beasts slowed to a trickle, then stopped.  When they had a
clear view to the door, the dragon knights moved as one with Furee sheathing
his sword and sweeping up Riva, carrying her over the mountain of carnage.  The
brave thing to do would have been to insist he let her walk so he could fight
whatever came at them, maybe ask for a weapon of her own, but it was taking
every scrap of bravery she had not to run screaming from the smoke and fire. 
Then she noticed all those piled up creature parts were squirming.  She swallowed
her bile with difficulty and pressed her face into Furee’s neck, her arms wrapped
tightly around his neck.  She shuddered with every distant explosion and eerie
wail.

Furee was angry.  His
mate was in danger and shivering with fear in his arms.  From the sounds around
them, it seemed that Graedon’s unnatural creatures were coming in an endless
destructive stream from deep within the bowels of Isolation.  He never should
have brought Riva here.  It was too hard to defend.  Too many pockets of
darkness that had yet to be cleared and Riva was paying the price for his lack
of foresight.  Worse, they were being driven out by fire into areas that would
be even harder to defend.  A trap had been sprung and he had brought his mate
here.

A creature with a single
horn in the center of his massive head charged around the corner at them and
Aarion whirled into motion, taking the head, both arms, and then with a final
twirl, two cloven hooves.  Furee was careful to keep out of the way of claws
and teeth as they moved around the creature.  They had learned in past battles
that the things did not die.  They were impervious to most fire.  Only Furee
and the fire mages, Braedon and Asha, burned hot enough to destroy them. 
Normal dragon fire was useless against them.  So cutting them into pieces that
could do no harm was the only way, until they could destroy them permanently. 
And until Riva was safely away, he was not starting any more fires here.

Two more beasts came at
them as soon as they started down the great staircase.  The stairs ran along
the long outside wall and spiraled down the entire length of the mountain. 
Adair and Balin stepped down to take care of the beasts, but beyond them,
hundreds began to fill the stairs from the bowels and the smoke was thickening and
rising.  Furee and Aarion shared a look, and then Furee handed Riva off to
Aarion’s waiting arms and moved around the short fight to get room.  Without
another option, he would do what he had to and trust Riva to hold it together.

The castle was made for
dragons so there was enough room once he cleared the rest of them that he could
shift.  And he did, aware that Riva was looking at him and the coming horde
with panic on her pretty face.  Her nose and mouth were covered with pieces of
her tunic, but her eyes were red with tears from the smoke and she was coughing
behind the mask.

Furee roared his
displeasure and turned to the swarm coming at them.  He let loose his hottest
flames on the coming tide and reveled in their screams.  As a dragon, his flame
was hotter than any other dragon; in this instance, it meant that creatures
impervious to dragon fire were susceptible to him and he used that to destroy
everything in his path.  By the time he was done, the gold veins in the stone
around them had melted into twining paths of trickling gold.  The creatures
were nothing but ash.  Unfortunately, even as he looked around with
satisfaction at the blackened stairwell, they could hear more coming from deep
below.  His flame was not eternal, even if the dark creatures seemed to be.  He
shifted to his warrior form and went to claim Riva back from Adair. 

He looked her over even
as he approached; she was soaked through, protected from the heat by his back
and Aarion, not to mention Adair and Balin who had both stepped up to shield
her from the heat that she still felt enough to be sweating through her
clothes.

She met his searching
eyes with a cough.  “I’m fine,” she assured him.  It would have been more
effective if her throat had not sounded so scratchy when she attempted to speak
two words.  Furee growled low but took Riva back gently.  He knew she was
scared and determined to hide it from him.

He turned to Aarion.  “We
go through,” he said.

Aarion grimaced but
nodded.  Furee felt for the man.  He had spent a considerable amount of time
patching and reinforcing holes in Isolation that they had made the last time
they fought these beasts.  It would not be an easy thing to destroy his
ancestral home after putting so much effort into returning it to its rights. 
Despite that, Aarion did not hesitate.  Nor did Balin and Adair as they moved
away and shifted to dragon and began clawing at the stone with their diamond-hard
claws.  Even moving at a fast pace, they had barely weakened the stone before
more creatures began to ascend.   They abandoned finesse and instead started
beating at the stone, crumbling it around them.  Furee set Riva down well away
from the danger zone.

He looked above them up to
the empty space of winding stair with an unhappy growl but saw no other choice
when more creatures began to converge at the bottom again.

“I need you to stay here
where it is safe, while I keep the beasts back.  Keep your back to the wall and
call out if you see anything coming from above.  We will never get through
these walls in time if I do not stop the beasts.”

“Go,” Riva said. Stepping
back with a cough, she plastered her back to the wall behind her but had to
step forward again with a gasp when she felt its intense heat.  She raised her
chin a second later, careful to keep space between her and the heated stone
behind her.  “Go,” she repeated, looking equal parts terrified and determined. 
“I will be fine.  Do what you must.”

Seeing that look in her
eyes, Furee was moved to kiss his mate, but he didn’t have the time.  Instead,
without another word, he memorized that look on her face and turned to pass the
three dragons working holes into the wall and down the stairs to join the
fight.  He pulled his sword when he was nearly to the second swarm, this time
flaming up his arm and sword.  The molten fire the length of the blade cut
through unnatural flesh like butter.  When the creatures kept coming, he let
them overrun him, turned his entire body to his hottest flame and listed to the
screams.

Riva breathed through
cloth and stopped watching Furee as soon as he turned his body to solid flame. 
She was not sure the sight of him burning up monsters was ever going to leave
her mind, but she would do her best to forget it as soon as possible.  She
heard no sound through the screams and the crunching of the stone walls, but
something drew her eyes up to the landing above them, where she met the red
bulging eyes of a creature that looked like a desiccated bear.  He towered at
least ten feet tall, with metal claws on all four of his enormous paws, and
teeth that looked serrated in his giant drooling maw.

Riva screamed as loud as
she could, trying to be heard over the noise.  In a second, Furee had blasted
off the burning carcasses surrounding him and moved up the stairs, around the
other dragons that had either missed the scream or assumed Furee would get to
her in time.

He almost didn’t.  The
bear creature moved faster than she thought possible and was on her from one
blink to the next, sweeping his arms out as if he would capture her or crush
her, rather than slice indiscriminately like the rest of the evil creatures. 
Before he could touch her, Furee was there slamming between them and forcing
the great beast back and away from Riva.  She saw him take the first slash of
claws she had seen him suffer while trying to keep her safe, and the sight of
even that small wound had Riva hitching her breath in reaction.  She was a
healer; it was not the sight of blood that so distracted her, but the sight of
her mate’s blood, ending the idea that Furee was indestructible – an idea she
had not even known gave her comfort until it was gone.  Suddenly, she was less
worried about herself and more about her mate.  A second later, a giant bear
head went flying down the stairs, and Furee was burning and hacking the rest of
the creature to nothing in a frenzy she had not seen in any fight before. 
Whether it was the wound or how close the creature got to Riva, he became rage.

Riva heard the wall
finally fall behind them, and before Adair was finished whooping their success,
Furee had her in his arms and had transformed into his dragon form, carrying
her away from both the fight and the other dragons. Riva could only assume from
where she was crushed to Furee’s scaled chest that the others followed.  Wherever
they were going, she was just grateful to be away from the horror that
Isolation had become.

They left Isolation Mountain
far behind in a blur of snow-capped mountains and green fields.  Breathing the
fresh air, Riva choked and gasped until she could get a good lung full of the
clean air.  She sent her own powers down through her body, healing first the
laboring lungs, then the few burnt patches on her skin, and finally, her abused
and watering eyes.  She could see and breathe again when she came back to herself. 
Even with her eyesight, she had no idea where they were, only that they seemed
to be heading into the mountains, and not across wild forests and lakes toward
Forsaken.

“Furee?
”
she tried calling, but the wind whipped it away as soon as it left her lips. 
Short of pinching his diamond-hard dragon scales, she would just have to wait
until they landed to find out where they were going.  After a moment, Riva
realized that Furee seemed to be getting hotter, not cooler, with the flight. 
That’s when she really started to worry.  Furee had never burned her.  Even
sitting in the heart of his flame, she had never felt more than a warmth and
power.  But she was beginning to feel like she had in the stairway at Isolation
with the blast of heat sticking her curls to her forehead and sweat beading her
clothes wet.  The cold air coming at her so high in the clouds was not enough
to cool down the heat that was Furee’s dragon form at the moment.  Something
was wrong.  “
Furee?!”

***

Braedon knew something
was wrong when he saw Furee at full fire burst streaking across the sky.  They
had reached Isolation in time to see a great hole thrust through the walls and
the dragons pour out.  It was a grim parody of the last fight that Braedon had
witnessed at Isolation.  Only this time his sister was not safely away at
Forsaken.  She was clutched in the arms of a dragon who did not seem to notice
the force bearing down on him from his flank, which gave Braedon more than one
bad feeling.  Furee was not a warrior you could sneak up on at his worst days.

Lux and General Solan attempted
to intercept the three dragon knights coming out of the hole behind Furee. 
Seeing the reinforcements, the other dragons turned as one and headed back into
the fray with General Solan and Lux circling around to come at the creatures
from the rear.  As much as Braedon wanted to follow Furee and his sister, and
not just because it meant taking his mate out of the danger area, Asha made the
decision for both of them.

This is a battle Riva and
Furee must fight without us
, she said in that dragon seer way of
hers that only bothered him when they were discussing his sister.  He gritted
his teeth against the irritation but knew she felt it when her power poured
over him in a cool stream meant to soothe.

With Furee out of the
battle, they will need our fire, and if we go after them, it will only make
things worse for Riva.

Worse for Riva?  Why am I
not reassured?

Then they were crashing
through walls and Braedon flipped over and off the back of his mate just as she
transformed into angry fire mage.  They shifted into place like they had been
fighting together all their lives, and back to back, they began burning to ash
the evil that had overrun Isolation Mountain.  Again.  Around them, dragons in
their warrior forms used swords, axes, and their bare hands to decimate the
attacking beasts.  He had a moment to marvel at the fluid death that was
General Solan with a sword in his hands before he was distracted by the booming
laugh and clang of a great war axe cleaving flesh and bone, and in some cases,
the stone beneath them.  He looked over to see Lux having a great time with
that giant bloody axe of his.