II-32 Dragons (III)

You know, there’s a special kind of misery that every Master-Tier experiences. It’s a kind of misery that comes when you live long enough and survive enough fights, because by the end, the system is going to put you against someone like you. Worse, eventually, it’s going to find someone who has your number. 

It was on the border of Lone Star that I found mine. Orcs… Don’t let anyone tell you that they’re stupid creatures. They make use of mercenaries as well, and just about anyone will work with them. They can be expected to keep their word sometimes, even. Especially if you’re strong enough. Especially if you will offer them a good fight in the future. Orcs got a strange sense of rationality to them.

One such person is an elf by the name of Earth Moves. Real stupid name maybe, but every Gate Raider knows who that one is. He started building fortresses for these orcs, and I was on the other side, trying to smash through so the boys and girls of Lone Star could finish the job with their artillery. Except, it wasn’t that easy of a job for me. Because Earth Moves was a good godsdamn Geomancer. And more than being a felling good Geomancer, he was also a Master Dynamancer—which meant he could manipulate all the major forces that hold existence together too. 

With all that power, he built a massive city-sized mobile, self-mending fortress. Everything I broke, he reassembled. And his protections were more than just metal or stone or something solid. It was the air. He created a magnetic hurricane, and started flinging out steel shards at people using the thunderstorm he called in.

I tried pushing in five times. He beat me like I was his unwanted stepchild every time—even with support. Did I fold over and give up just because someone was better as me at being a Pathbearer?

No. I called my wife and all the other Masters I knew to help me. Another thing about Earth Moves—he’s good, but also a colossal asshole. He’s on his own. You don’t do well on your own.

There’s another lesson that most Master Tiers get to learn. It is another ugly lesson. You’re going to run into someone better than you, but there are plenty of people better than me laying dead in the mud. I’m still here because I dealt with the problem, and I was never truly alone. Through a diversion and a storm of our own, we grounded him, and I built an even larger fort around his and pinned Earth Moves and the orcs in place.  He might be better at fortresses, but when it came to just smashing against each other with raw expendable material, I had the advantage, and without the bastard being able to fly, we had time.

What followed next, though, that’s another story. I’ll tell you all about the miseries of siege and close quarters combat some other day.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

II-32
Dragons (III)

The kukri-wielding dragon held her blade high. It glinted in the dark like a crescent star.

Shiv comparatively clenched his fists and took on a fighting stance. He reached into his cloak and gathered a few bone drills with his Biomancy. 

Time to test how fast this bastard was, Shiv thought. The dragon made a gesture with her off-hand, just a slight curl of a finger, teasing him, telling him to come forth—and he did. Just not the way she expected.

He launched a bone drill. It tore through the air—and hit nothing. The dragon dodged forward into the drill and vanished from the world. A second later, she rematerialized a few meters away, her immense presence chilling his skin. 

Master-Tier Dodge, Shiv blinked. He launched himself off the ground, just in time for the dragon to leave a deep gouge where he had been. All he caught was the afterimage of the kukri, but the cut turned into a beam of light that split the ground for kilometers and ended with a mountain of ice bursting out of the earth just over the horizon.

Shiv fired two more drills and charged the dragon. She dodged through him. As she materialized behind him, and taunted him—tapping the flat of her blade against his back before he could turn. For a brief moment, he felt the heat of her blade but also the state of her Magical Resistance. She wasn’t nearly as durable as the Jealousy. But he had to hit her first.

And that wasn’t going to be easy.

“She moves like she is weightless,” Can Hu said it. “She is testing us. Learning our ways, Don’t strike blindly. Drag her in close; trade a blow if you have to. I will see if I can distract her with a drone.’

Just then, a massive tsunami of electrified metal twisted over the distance, arcing like massive fingers that upended an entire section of the wilderness. Enormous chunks of land rose up behind the kukri wielding dragon, and she shifted her stance. While she held Shiv here, her fellow traitor knights were fighting the Shadow Cells and Shiv’s team. He needed to finish this fight. Fast.

Her knife twisted. A huge flame column rose in the corner of Shiv’s vision. The damned dragon then angled her blade, trying to reflect the light into his eyes. Shiv dashed left and circled her. She gave a scoffing laugh as she lowered the blade again, feinting.

He didn’t react. Lesser vampires were feinting bastards too—he could tell when someone wasn’t going to commit to the strike. There was something about the momentum being restrained.

“Ah, good instinct,” the dragon breathed.

He launched three more bone drills—the first to provoke, the second two wild guesses at where she was going to emerge after the dodge. The first shot hit nothing, the second she caught and the third she deflected with her blade. She slashed with her blade and a beam of searing hit splashed against Shiv. He parried that with a push of his Magebreaker. The gauntlet rang. Then the dragon was him in a sudden blast of speed.

Her blade came flashing, glinting as she struck in an unpredictable pattern. Shiv was used to being the slower party, the weaker party, the inferior fighter. He learned to keep himself alive through preparation and aggression. The dragon was on another level entirely. She scored three cuts along his helmet and dodged into a reverse-grip stab that smashed into his back. Shiv grunted but shrugged the hits off. But then she tapped the blade and vanished in a flash of golden mana consumed her. Suddenly, Shiv felt her drive the same reverse-grip stab into his back, launching him off balance. Then she channeled another beam of light into his armor. He turned as the intense heat washed over him—blinded him.

“Incoming tail!” Can Hu declared. “From below!”

That was the only reason Shiv wasn’t struck dead-on. He caught the limb—and felt frost rush up his arms. His Adamantine Adaption struggled to adapt to two conditions at once, and the knife’s beam cleaved deeper. Shiv shoved her tail aside, but then she teleported—and speared her blade into his chest. Again, Can Hu warned Shiv, and he caught the blade with his hands—tried to twist it away from her.

Only for her to vanish into gold and repeat the same reserve-grip strike into his back—spiking him to the dirt.

“Chronomancy,” Can Hu said. “She has inflicted a fixed point in time on us. I will watch your back.”

Shiv righted himself with his field. Then, the dragon began her dance. Her blade flowed perfectly without losing momentum. Slashes and stab kept coming from every angle, and she was never still, growing faster with each second. Every impact shattered the earth and turned the soil into mush. Can Hu’s drones shot in, then. They sailed across the sky and fired a series of missiles. The dragon knight split them apart with a flick of her blade, slashed the drones apart with a flashing beam, and vanished into gold again.

Can Hu warned Shiv this time. He reached to catch the dragon—but dodged through him first. Rather than using her knife, she latched her tail around his leg and discharged her Momentum Core. The world lurched around Shiv. He cursed and tried to hold himself steady. It was hopeless. She drove him into the ground. It was like being dragged by an avalanche moving at the speed of lightning. He tore another chasm through the world. Shiv’s absurd Toughness left him undamaged, but the chaos made him unable to get his bearings. He crashed against the earth three more times, and he only managed to tear chunks out of the ground with his gravitic field.

And just as she started to slow, she triggered her Chronomancy again and drove her dagger into Shiv’s back with the partial power of a Momentum Core behind it.

Shiv felt her slice a full centimeter through the outer layer of his armor before he adapted. He shrugged her aside and tore his own throat open. A wyrm sailed out from his hand thereafter, and it struck her wrist.

For the first time, he heard her grunt in surprise as a blast of crimson mana consumed them both.

She teleported again—materializing three hundred meters away, just beyond the reach of his Biomancy.

Shiv sneered. His armor was nicked and battered. But it was still holding. He pulled replacement bits of bone and molded it over the damage, sealing the small rents that her blade and blows left.

“Not much finesse for someone so small,” the dragon hummed. “Like I’m fighting a brute nested in the body of an insect.”

“Enough of this shit,” Shiv growled. He slammed his fists together, every blow building up his own Momentum Core. She might be faster, but he could still make this hard for her—make her be on the receiving end of a discharge for once.

But just then he caught sight of a most spectacular scene—a literal storm of arrows descended from the sky. So many they were practically raindrops. A flash of fire illuminated the darkness above, and it revealed a strange battle between two dragons and a small army. A small army of copies made from Adam. The Young Lord was using Harkness’s rapier! The clones blinked and vanished only as long as it took to fire a single shot. Whatever wounds they took, Adam would take as well, but this was perfect. This would stall the dragons.

“Everyone brace!” Adam cried, his mind drowning in stress and terror. “Mind mana arrows! Focus on their minds! It stuns them! They only have one Psychom—ah!” Shiv felt a brutal blow take Adam, but his Legendary armor kept him alive. “One! One! Psychomancer! I don’t know where the fragment is yet! Shiv! Help! Bloody help me!”

“Your friend?” the kukri-wielding dragon said. Her stance was unbroken, her wings twitched behind her, and the ground turned to solid slabs of ice beneath her feet. “Would you like to go save him?”

Shiv replied by launching a salvo of bone drills at her. She casually parried most of them without ever-taking her eyes off him. Her lower claw tapped the blade again.

“There!” Can Hu snarled. “The tell. She is going to strike your back again—expect the dodge.”

“Yeah.”

True to Can Hu’s predictions, the dragon vanished into gold and dodged through Shiv. Then, both the dragon and Shiv surprised each other. Instead of trying to grab or attack the dragon directly, he flung a massive net of skin decoys over her eyes, fastening a blindfold of adamantine-hard skin to steal her sight. She teleported. A spatial bubble collapsed around them as they were squeezed across a vast distance of space.

Pressed together in that confined space, the tides of battle turned for the first time. Shiv ruptured all his organs and ground his bones to dust to fuel a new Woundeater. He crashed against the blinded dragon before she could respond. Two blasts washed over her, one physical, the other magical. She cried out and dodged, but there was no place for her to rematerialize. The pressure flung her back, and Shiv seized her right arm before hammering his gravitic field upward at her elbow.

The arm clicked. Partial tendon tear, Shiv instinctively knew. But the dragon had Master-Tier Toughness as well, and she unleashed a blast of frost out from her wings. Shiv felt a heavy coldness cling to him, but it was nothing before his Gravitic Wrestler. He shattered the ice block—only for her to dissolve into gold and drive her blade down against his back again.

Rage exploded through Shiv. He poured it into his Momentum Core and caught the dragon before she could continue. “Stop!” He slammed his head into her chest and she grunted. “Doing!” His Momentum Core was just about to fill. “That!” He discharged, squeezing her back in a tight lock just as he crashed into her. Two of her ribs dislocated. The dragon choked—but then she vanished into gold and stabbed him in the back again, knocking him off balance.

“Godsdammit!” Shiv snarled. He hated this dragon. He hated that knife. He wanted to have that knife. Shiv was going to take that knife from this dead dragon.

The teleportation bubble burst. He crashed hard into the ground and tried to grind himself to a halt with his gravitic field. She crashed behind him with a loud gasp. As Shiv finally came to a halt, he turned to find the dragon gulping down a massive potion before tossing it aside. He sighed. “Great. Perfect. Of course she has a dragon-sized regeneration potion.”

They were in another section of the Umbral Wilderness now. Not far away, a dense thicket of colossal brambles was burning. Eight splattered Weaverenesses lay dead around an unmoving dragon knight, its body pincushioned by crossbow bolts. Overhead, arrows continued to rain down as blasts of Psychomancy were followed by psionic wails. Shiv could hear the Jealousy and Uva hissing out in pain as a dragon drove a lance into her, breaking her spell and letting the dragon Psychomancer recover.

Magical arrows dripped down from above, bombarding the land. Whatever semblance of order or a plan was dead. The dragons fought in groups of three, teleporting through the air and launching counter-charges against any and all attackers. Their defense was mobile; dynamic. Their flight patterns also intersected each other constantly, and that was only the core group.

There were also assholes like the kukri dragon, who seemed like some kind of independent warrior—or someone that constant assisted all the other dragons whenever they needed it.

Valor had understated these bastards. Shiv and the others were absolutely not ready for this fight. But this was not a reasonable world, and Shiv was a perfectly unreasonable man in return.

Didn’t matter. He was going to beat the damned bastards anyway.

The kukri dragon shook out her wounded arm and popped her ribs back into place. Then, she resumed her stance, and her kukri shone brighter than ever. She left his skin decoys for now. A mark on the side seemed to indicate how she was unable to remove them easily and ended up cutting herself.

“Clever choice,” she breathed, tapping the knife to her face. “But how’s the body? Saw some interesting Biomancy earlier. Are you healed?”

Shiv snorted. “Yeah, don’t flatter yourself. That was nothing. You should have seen me when I fought a Jealousy.”

“And you should have seen me when I killed my dragon and took its body,” she replied. “But are you the opposite? Are you a monster wearing a guise? Raw technique. Animal. Instinctual. Primal. Like a dragon pretending to be a man.”

“Nah,” Shiv said, looking up at the sky. “It’s just how a chef fights.”

The dragon paused. “A chef—”

She vanished into gold.

“Behind,” Can Hu declared.

But Shiv was exhausted of this shit. He launched another spread of skin decoys and wrapped it around her blade. The dragon cried out in surprise as Shiv attached the end of his skin decoys into a full set of adamantine armor and staked it into deep underground using his gravitic field and Biomancy. She lurched as her blade hand was pulled into the soil—and Shiv clapped the sides of her head, like 811 did to him days before.

She snarled—and Shiv launched every skin decoy he had left down her throat and expanded them to spread out. The dragon choked. Shiv tried to grab her, but she teleported away.

Striking Proficiency > 31

Frictionless Vector > 53

He grunted and blasted into the air. “Can Hu, keep an eye open for her. I’m going for Adam and Uva.”

“Affirmative,” Can Hu said.

As Shiv approached the aerial battleground, he began to slam his fists together, charging up his Momentum Core. At the same time, he listened to the psionic chatter streamed through Uva’s mind.

“Gray Zone here! We’ve taken too many casualties. We need to pull out! We’re combat ineffective!”

“Liquid Serpent. I have traded an arm to kill a dragon. I think that means I can kill at least seven more…”

“Still Water. Target got pulled out by a Jump Mage. They’re back in the air. They’re all converging on the Jealousy. Sister Uva—you got more inbound! Lots of inbound!”

Shiv snarled. He needed to get Adam out of the mess first. Then Uva. “Shiv here! I’m on approach! Adam! Hold on!”

“I’ve been bloody holding on for the past—” Adam’s thoughts broke off as the sky fractured with lightning. Above a dragon rose above all others, holding a lance aloft. From the lance extended tendrils of magical lightning that spread across the battlefield, striking every dragon, every weapon, even Shiv. He felt a force pull at him, and Shiv cried out as he struggled to resist the pull. It was like he was prying himself out from the hand of a giant, but with an incredible effort, Shiv broke free.

Gravitic Wrestler > 111

The same could not be said for each of Adam’s clones. Shiv watched in horror as every single clone was torn to the sky, drawn to the lance like it was a singularity.

“Magnetism!” Can Hu declared. “And Dynamancer’s spell was not done. Shiv. Discharge your core now.”

Shiv slammed a final blow against himself and did just that. But he could already hear Adam screaming—not psionically, but literally. Even from so far away… An echo of the Young Lord’s pain spilled across the telepathic link, and rage exploded inside Shiv. He offered all of it to his Momentum Core.

“LET GO OF MY ASSHOLE!” Shiv roared. A tide of force rippled from his body as he accelerated faster than ever before. Six other dragons-knights where in the area. Only two managed a response to Shiv. The first was a rival Biomancer bearing a great shield. Shiv felt them shape a spell—only to be swatted from the air as a badly wounded Jealousy carrying a group of Weaveresses on its head exploded out from the darkness, smashing into a squad of dragons. The other was the hammer-wielding wind dragon that first intercepted Shiv.

It rushed him with a roar and brought its hammer down. This time, however, Shiv was pissed. He struck the hammer dead on and launched himself again with his gravitic field. The dragon’s eyes widened as he blasted the weapon apart—ignoring how the impact fractured one of his collarbones as well. The hammer came apart in a mana explosion. Lightning lashed at Shiv. Can Hu cried out—but order Shiv to keep going. And he did. 

So fast the lance-bearing dragon-knight didn’t see him coming.

Momentum Core > 82

Shiv met the dragon Dynamancer, and its emerald armor cracked. It was like a falling boulder impacting a plate. The knight went tumbling head over tail, coughing blood from its mouth and losing hold of its lance. All the rage drained out of Shiv right after, but then he saw Adam—felt Adam’s condition with his Biomancy and cold terror rushed through him.

Every wound sustained by a clone would be inflicted on the original Adam, and the lightning—it seared all of them at once. The man inside the armor was more like a smoking lump of flesh. Most of his organs were—his skin and bones were—his heart wasn’t beating.

“No,” Shiv growled. He launched himself toward Adam and caught him—just in time for a javelin made from pure force to cut Shiv’s left leg to the bone. The Deathless didn’t even notice the pain. He activated his Song of the Vigilant and immediate channeled a wyrm into Adam. “You’re not dead! You don’t get to die, you shit!”

More spells and skills crashed against him. A massive arrow sent both him and Adam twisting through the air.

“Support!” Shiv cried. “I need support! Adam’s hurt! I need—”

“Shiv! Psychomancy wave incoming! Get your Magebreaker ready!” At Uva’s cry, a mind magic spell flashed in the distance, and Shiv saw the Jealousy’s body outlined in mystical light. Two dragons had their blades locked inside the Greater Demon. Shiv had no idea how Uva was sustaining her mind-binding spell with the Jealousy—how she could focus with so much mental noise—and so much second pain was being filtered through her. Maybe the Jealousy’s power helped, but he remembered her facing Harkness, and knew this was all her.

She would drop dead before she ever let her spell break.

A rippling tide of Psychomancy exploded across the sky. The dragons attacking her clutched their heads and shrieked. A protective barrier was unleashed by another dragon-white—its scales glittering like shards of purest white. A pocket of safety expanded to shield the dragon Psychomancer and three other knights, but everyone else was caught in the psionic tide. The entire battlefield went silent for a moment, and Shiv took the opportunity to descend as he poured his Woundeater into Adam.

“Come on!” Shiv cried. He couldn’t feel anything happening. Adam was still burned, still ruined. Shiv’s heart combusted with impotent rage. He couldn’t allow this—he wouldn’t accept this. Adam wasn’t going to die. He fed his new anger into his Woundeater and crimson mana radiated from the Young Lord’s insides. “Come on! You don’t get to die on me, you piece of—”

The Woundeater feasted. It rushed through Adam’s fried insides as it began to consume his melted skin and still burning muscles. The Young Lord inhaled violently and Shiv felt relief break inside him, just as they crashed on the ground.

“Behind! Intercepting!” Can Hu declared. Two drones crashed into the eyes of a dragon that was trying to chase them, and it tumbled with a roar of outrage before crashing hard against the ground. Shiv launched a dozen drills at the dragon before it could recover. They bounced off the beast’s armor but pierced through its scales. It cried out and teleported, causing the final three drills to miss.

They were momentarily safe. Shiv held Adam up as if he was the weight of a small doll. The adrenaline dump nearly made the Deathless want to drop dead. Shiv looked at Adam as he extracted his Woundeater, its body radiant with so many crystallized wounds. The Young Lord was hyperventilating, his eyes were wide with terror, and Shiv could feel his courage was cracked.

For a few seconds, Adam had been as close to death as anyone could have been.

“I—you…” Adam swallowed and began to shake.

“It’s okay,” Shiv held him as he looked about. Overhead, Uva let out a cry of offer as a dense mass of shadows spread around the Jealousy. She was breaking away from the enemies—and in the corner of his vision, he saw another dragon-knight falling. Its throat was slit and there was a Weaveress riding it all the way down. “I got you. You’re okay. You’re alive. You’re alive. Holy shit….”

“I was felling dead,” Adam choked. He clung to Shiv. “I thought—”

“I know… I should have come—”

Adam clung to him, and this close, Shiv could feel the raw fear still coursing through Adam.

“Come on, Young Lord. You’re alright. I won’t let them kill you. I won’t.” Shiv winced as Adam shook. The Deathless applied his paltry Psychomancy and pour calmness into Adam’s mind. As much as he could. It worked to some level. Adam’s breaths slowed, and he looked at Shiv. His face was still pale—but that was better than burned. 

“Let—let go of my asshole?” Adam asked.

“What?” Shiv said.

“I heard you say that—w-when I was being… Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” Adam wheezed. He was still shaking. He started laughing, it bordered on manic.

“Yeah, you misheard,” Shiv replied. He looked up at the sky as a flash of fire painted the forms of descending dragons. He counted two squads. Six. Too many for him. Definitely too many up close for Adam. They needed to move.

“I did not mishear,” Adam said. “You… think about what you’re saying next time.”

“Mock me later, we got incoming.” He was about to call out to Uva, but the Jealousy burst into existence above them. For a moment, Shiv expected that she was going to pick them up, but the Greater Demon crashed against the ground instead. Shiv’s insides plunged once more. A Psychomancy spell broke inside the Jealousy’s head as Uva was launched out from its field.

Shiv blasted across the ground and took her into his arms. Her armor looked intact, but she was spasming violently. He snarled and pulled off her helmet as he cast another wyrm into her. It consumed the vessels ruptured inside her brain, as she stopped shaking immediately. Her sharp features were coated by tears of blood, and she groaned as she clutched her head.

“It’s okay,” Shiv whispered. “I have you. You’re—”

A massive shape slammed down atop the Jealousy, making the now mind-dead Greater Demon bounce slightly. It was the Dynamancer from before. The dragon wasn’t holding its lance anymore, rather it pulled a long pike out from the Jealousy’s body. A pike that vibrated in the same way Shiv’s gauntlet did.

“Shit,” Shiv muttered.

There was always a consequence when a spell broke, and a bastard dragon driving an inertium pike into the Jealousy was probably more than enough to kill whatever Psychomancy was binding Uva to its mind.

The Dynamancer’s armor was still broken, but the dragon itself was healed to Shiv. The blood it coughed still painted the front of its armor, but it glared down at him with the vitality of a warrior prepared to finish a downed foe.

“W-what…” Uva shot up, but Shiv held her close. “What—the Jealousy, I—” And then eight more dragons landed to their sides—and the kukri asshole returned, teleporting just behind them. “Composer,” Uva coughed. “Sorry. I didn’t see him—”

“It’s not your fault,” Shiv said. His insides hardened. He helped Uva to her feet and Adam staggered close behind him.

“Well,” the Young Lord breathed. “Valor said the tainted bastards would be good.”

“They’re alright,” Shiv grunted.

“We have very different metrics for ‘alright,’” Adam grumbled.

“Three,” the dragon Dynamancer said. Its voice was the sound of a falling mountain. “Killed three of my brothers and sisters. Three. Why? Who are you.”

Shiv felt the dragon Biomancer slam its power against his, and he grunted with discomfort. They were stronger. Not significantly, but the difference was there. “Can Hu,” Shiv said. “Got any ideas.”

The automaton crackled slightly as it responded. “A few. Most of them relate to finishing a poem before we are killed. One has me driving the final few drones into our midst and triggering their smoke bomb function and hoping we survive the chaos.”

“Sounds nice,” Shiv said. “Let’s go with the second one first.”

“Valor is also attempting something,” Can Hu said. It projected an image in the corner of Shiv’s vision, and he saw the skull hovering over a dead dragon with a few Weaveresses, casting some kind of Necromancy spell. Shiv cast those memories to his companions. “We’re not beat yet.”

“Right,” Adam said, his near-death still burdening his mind. “Not beaten until we… we are truly dead.”

One of the dragon-knights moved, but the Dynamancer held up a hand.

“That’s the commander,” Uva said. She began shaping a Psychomancy spell, pushing through a flood of agony to complete it. “I can re-bind myself to the Jealousy. I just need a moment. An opening.”

“The dragon commander has an Inertium pike,” Shiv replied. “It’s how your spell got broken. But that also means he doesn’t have Magical Resistance. Adam? Any cunning plans?”

“I’m… I’m thinking…” the Young Lord swallowed. “I fear I dropped the rapier somewhere behind. I still have the new saber you gave me, though. That’s bound.”

“Good,” Shiv said. “Try to find the rapier—”

“I found the fragment!” Adam declared. Shiv awkwardly sifted through the Young Lord’s senses to avoid burdening Uva. He saw what Adam was looking at—and found himself stunned. “And… There are our Aviary agents. In the flesh. The very dead flesh.”

Around the hip of a colossal axe-wielding dragon swayed a string of unmoving bodies. Their faces were masked by representations of ravens, crows, and other birds. At the center of the dead agents was a limb shaped from black crystal, with mithril enamel lining its length and the dim, corrosive glow of Necromancy leaking from its palm.

“Seems like the dragons are twice the traitors,” Shiv chuckled.

“Saves us from bloody fighting the agents too,” Adam sighed. “But that… is a big damned dragon. It’s practically the size of the Jealousy.”

“Bit smaller. I look forward to bullying it.”

Adam scoffed weakly. “Mad bastard.” He paused as he took in the other dragons. All of them bore skill and spell to bear, and the Young Lord grimaced. “Shiv.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not letting me die and… not being like the people who birthed you. I am… glad you are the way you are. I wish I was better than who I was. I wish I was stronger than my bitterness and hate—”

“Adam. Shut up. We’re not doing this shit now. You wanna have this emotional shit? Fine. We do it after we kill these dragons. Over food. If you die, you can’t eat.”

The Young Lord stared at him and nodded. “Well. I suppose it’s settled then. We have to win.”

Uva laughed, too—listening to their conversation. Then, her brows furrowed. “I… might actually have a cunning plan.”

“Three!” the dragon Dynamancer roared suddenly. The world shook from the sheer volume of his voice. Both Uva and Adam flinched. Shiv just sneered.

“Yeah. Were they Pathbearers?” Shiv asked.

“They were,” the Dynamancer replied.

“Then welcome to the life. Strife means dead.” Shiv scoffed. “Did the Aviary agents you guys betrayed and killed have this little outburst with you? After you betrayed the Descenders with them?”

“Lies!” The wind dragon shouted. “You—”

“Shut up, whelp,” Shiv laughed. The blue dragon fumed with anger, and the winds began to scream. “I want to talk to someone that doesn’t break their hammer hitting a target a fraction their size.”

The wind dragon almost snapped. He charged for Shiv, but was held in place by the Dynamancer.

The dragon commander growled at his subordinate knight. “Sir Michaels. Control yourself. Do not be goaded by this… mercenary.” He drew in a deep breath. “You are with Weave? Trying to take the fragment of Valor Thann for yourself, then? Is that it?”

“Three,” Shiv replied. “At least three of you are dead. You give us that arm and that number will stay three.”

Dread Aura > 71

Silver Tongue > 16

The dragon didn’t respond with outrage or anger, instead, he narrowed his eyes and observed Shiv. “You wear the visage. You are a Necrotech?”

“No. Just someone who’s got close relations with death.”

The dragon-knight commander grunted. “Then, let us dispense with the pointless chatter. You and your comrades have fought hard. You have slain some of our number, and Sir Tarlow has asked me to spare you specifically.”

Shiv paused and looked at the kukri-wielding dragon. She was eyeing him—was closer to him and his companions than all the other dragons. She was the biggest danger here. He had nothing to answer her speed right now if she wished to kill either Adam or Uva. That, and she could probably still manifest right behind him and drive the blade into his back.

“Just me?” Shiv asked.

“We cannot abide a Psychomancer. Or surfacer.” The Dynamancer spat in the direction of Adam.

“Drone on approach,” Can Hu said. “Fifteen seconds.”

Shiv let out a breath. This was going to be an ugly fight.

“Adam. Get a spatial arrow ready for you and Uva. You two clear out first and come back for the Jealousy afterward. I’ll try to distract them.”

A burst of worry came from both of them, but Uva imposed her control on their collective emotions. Focus reigned. Everything else vanished into the background. “My plan,” Uva said, reminding Shiv. “It’s simple. They’re vulnerable to a Psychomancer. They rely on speed and constant attacks, but Psychomancy stuns them badly. Kill the Psychomancer if you can, Shiv. Kill the white dragon. We can still break them.”

“We will break them,” he replied. “Valor’s doing something too. We got more than a chance.”

“Eight seconds,” Can Hu declared.

“I’ll try to shoot the damned arm off the back of that dragon. If we can finish the quest, we can—I can get Dimensionality—I’ll be a partial Jump Mage. It’ll give us an advantage, and—and—”

“Get the rapier first,” Shiv replied, trying to focus on the Young Lord. “Keep moving, Adam. I don’t want to scream about my asshole again.”

“You bastard! I knew you said that!”

“Five second,” Can Hu whispered.

“No deal,” Shiv said, replying to the dragon-commander. He cracked his neck. “But I might let Tarlow live if you give me the arm.”

The dragon scoffed. “Ah. Unreasonable and arrogant even to the end. Shame. But good warriors die—”

The drone whistled as it dropped from the sky and detonated. Several dragons launched attacks upward, doing nothing to the blanket of dense, black smoke.

Shiv blasted toward the Dynamancer. Adam forged a watery hand and held onto Uva as he fired a teleportation arrow. They vanished. Two dragons teleported after them. The other dragons closed in on Shiv. And a dagger was driven into Shiv’s back before he got anywhere close to the dragon commander. “For fuck’s sake!”

Then, they were on him, and beneath the falling blades of the dragon-knights, Shiv learned new flavors of pain.