Chapter 575: Fine. Let’s Fight Then

I tried to avoid them first. I want that noted.

"Back. Slowly."

We backed along the ledge one step at a time. The one ahead followed at exactly our pace, its claws clicking on the stone like somebody drumming their nails on a table. The one above us paced the overhang, and grit trickled down every time it shifted its weight. The one across the gap opened its wings, and the orange glow between its scales flared brighter.

Then it jumped the gap.

It landed on the path behind Bren hard enough to jolt the ledge. Now there was one in front, one behind, one overhead, and nowhere left to back into.

’Okay. We’re not doing the running thing.’

I let out a long breath.

For weeks I had been fighting like a man with his pockets turned out. One chain here. One Feather Step there. Every point of essence counted twice before I dared spend it.

I checked the well. A little over three thousand left. Dragging three people through Feather Step on the way down had eaten more than I liked.

’That will have to do.’

The one in front opened its mouth.

It didn’t breathe fire. It spat. A gout of molten stone came glowing out of its throat and splashed across the path where we had been standing a heartbeat earlier.

By then I had already shaped Emperor’s Dominion into a wall. The molten rock hit the crimson and slid down it, hissing and spitting as it cooled. Behind the wall, I felt the others go lighter as the Dominion lifted them.

"Light! Bren’s side!"

He was already moving. His sword came off his back in one clean pull, and he put himself between Bren and the one behind us without a word.

I snapped my fingers, and the wall detonated.

A chain of explosions rolled along the path and caught the dragon full in the face. It staggered back shaking its head, and the scales around its snout cracked and glowed.

It wasn’t dead. It wasn’t even close.

But it was hurt.

’They can be hurt. Good to know.’

The one overhead dropped.

I sent a chain up to meet it. Chains of Agony wrapped its neck, and I poured the first pain down the links, the plain, simulated agony.

It didn’t care. It just kept falling toward me.

’Next one, then.’

The second chain carried the tearing pain, like two clawed hands prying something apart from the inside. I sank it in and opened it.

The dragon screamed and twisted in midair.

’There you are.’

It hit the ledge on its side instead of on top of me, and the whole path shook under my boots. I Feather Stepped back to Ilse.

"Which one?"

Her horns were up, and the heat rolling off her was strong enough to make my eyes water from three feet away.

"The one behind us. Help Light. Don’t let it get Bren."

She didn’t argue. She went.

The one in front was coming again. It moved fast for something that size, faster than the collector, faster than the Hollow Raven. It tucked its wings and came along the ledge low, and I couldn’t keep my eyes on it long enough to aim.

So I stopped trying to use my eyes.

I lit a lick of white flame on my right hand and flicked it as the dragon went past. It caught on its shoulder and stuck there, a small white sigil burning on the coal-coloured scales.

Then I let the flame off the leash.

Heretical Pursuit curved through the air after its mark, and it no longer mattered how fast the thing moved. The flame found it every time.

At the same time, I layered Purifying Flame underneath. The dragon’s scales were hot with its own heat, the heat of the seam, and Purifying Flame drank that heat and turned it gold. For a moment the dragon wore a coat of gold fire, and I heard it scream.

It came out of the flames smoking, and it came straight at me.

And that was when I remembered the frost.

Brunhilde’s attributes had been sitting on my panel since the seam. Frost Manipulation. Frost Resistance. Call of Ice. I had looked at them and never once had a reason to try them.

Now I had a very hot lizard running at my face.

I remembered the Staglord in the Canyon, the first gate guardian I ever killed with my own hands, and the way its crystal mane cracked when my fire touched it. Heat makes things brittle. So does cold, if the thing is hot enough.

’Call of Ice.’

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just reached for the cold Brunhilde had left in me, pulled on it, and threw it.

The air in front of me went white. A burst of frost hit the dragon’s chest where the orange glow was brightest, and the scales there went dark in an instant.

Then they cracked.

It sounded like a plate dropped on a stone floor. A long line split across its chest, and the glow behind it went out.

I was already moving. Wren came into my hand, and I drove her into the crack.

She went in to the guard.

The dragon shuddered once, and fell.

[You have slain a level 2, Profane-tier Beast: Cinder Drake]

’...One.’

I didn’t get to enjoy it.

The one I had caught with the tearing chain was back on its feet, and it was glowing brighter than before. The crack the detonation had left in its snout was closing while I watched.

It was healing.

’Oh, you poor thing. You’re doing the one thing I can turn against you.’

The chain was still wrapped around its neck. I laid my palm on the links and sent Fallen Divinity down them.

Dark purple light ran along the chain and into the dragon. The healing turned over. The crack that had been closing opened again, wider, and kept on opening, and the dragon clawed at its own face.

It came at me blind. I stepped inside its reach and put my hand flat on the root of its wing.

Necrotic Touch.

The membrane went grey under my palm, then papery, then crumbled like old leaves. The dragon tried to spread that wing, and the wing simply came apart.

It went off the edge and into the drop, screaming all the way down.

[You have slain a level 2, Profane-tier Beast: Cinder Drake]

Meanwhile, behind me, Ilse and Light had the third one pinned against the rock. Light’s blade was buried in its shoulder. Ilse had both hands clamped around its jaw, holding it shut, and her whole body shook with the effort. Steam poured off her. The thing was trying to spit molten rock through its own teeth, and it was leaking out between them in glowing threads.

I sent a chain around its neck.

"Kneel."

Voice of Authority rolled out of me. The last time I said a word like that to a dragon, it had drained my whole well and done nothing at all.

This time, the young dragon’s legs folded.

It went down on the stone, trembling. Light pulled his sword free and drove it back in under the jaw, and held it there until the dragon stopped moving.

[You have slain a level 3, Profane-tier Beast: Cinder Drake]

For a while, nobody said anything. We stood on the ledge breathing hard, with the smell of burnt stone all around us.

Bren was sitting against the wall with her arms over her head. She was alive. She lifted her face and looked at me.

"Is that all of them?"

I opened Death Sense.

It wasn’t. Out in the dark there were more, small and hot and bright. Five. Eight. Twelve of them, spread along the cliffs below, all turning toward the noise we had made.

Then, all at once, every one of them stopped.

They stopped the way the Lost Mouths had stopped when the Archmage came. Heads up. Frozen.

Then they turned away from us and started climbing back into the dark as fast as they could go.

’...Oh no.’

I knew that kind of running. I had done a lot of it.

The rock under our feet began to hum.

Somewhere below, far lower than the young ones, something large had heard them screaming. Death Sense went down after it and came back without a number.

Then the dark beneath the cliff lit up orange, like the door of a furnace swinging open.

And something huge began to climb.