Chapter 81: The Sixth Pair

She's spent millennia hoarding power.

The All-King's words seared themselves into Eni's head, sharpened with his cold contempt for the dragon. He flew more nimbly than any Avian, changing directions so quickly that Eni's stomach seemed to have been left behind thousands of feet up in the air. The night sky grew momentarily as bright as day as Neira let forth another gout of flame, but the All-King was impossibly fast for his size.

He snapped into a sudden roll, turning on his side and pulling his wings in tight as he went into a harrowing dive. Eni cried out, her fingers utterly unable to find purchase on the smooth scales of his back, but his mental voice came again.

You won't fall.

Amusement as bitterly chilled as his distaste for Neira colored his speech, and even as Eni despaired at it she knew he was right. It was as though she had become a part of him; her legs straddled his powerful spine, coming nowhere near reaching his belly, but she didn't move by as much as an inch even as they plunged toward the volcano below. Burning rock, glowing red-orange and nearly as hot as Neira's fire, filled Eni's eyes, reflecting dully off the impossibly deep blackness of Vanargand's hide. His wings snapped open at the last possible instant, billowing as they caught the updraft, and Eni was momentarily too heavy to breathe as they soared back upwards.

Their acceleration was like being crushed under a carriage, Eni's vision dancing with spots of colors as it went gray around the edges, and through it all the dragon's mind was pressed against hers. The pressure of his thoughts was worse than anything on her body, heavier by far and crueler than the pull of their speed. The All-King was nearly exultant as he powered through the air, avoiding Neira's attack with delight at the sheer joy of living.

Listen well, little bird, he said, and Eni could feel the strength of what he called her, an idle sort of fondness like that of a teacher for a young and naïve student. I slept long, he went on, and even as Eni's heart pounded in her throat she managed to respond.

"Are you weaker than her?" she asked, the words coming out of her mouth but also through the pulsing thread of her power that connected them.

She felt an odd doubling sensation, the mundane and the magical overlapping without quite meshing. His laughter filled her, and acid fear spread through every fiber of her being. There was nothing kind or caring about the sound, its richness an awful contrast to its pitiless nature. No, he replied, and Eni felt no room for doubt in that single Derkomai word, Nergorath plots and schemes, building her strength in preparation for an overpowering strike. It is how she defeated her siblings, one by one, and it is what she will try with me.

"How can you know that?" Eni demanded, a flicker of terrified curiosity coming into her heart.

The All-King would have been slumbering for long eons at the time Neira had consolidated her power, his Dracryst a quiescent treasure that waited until Tin had been born to a mortal she-wolf. His knowledge should have been long out of date, the draconic being waking to find himself in a world utterly unlike the one he had left behind. Unless…

I know many things, little bird, Vanargand said with oily slyness, spinning smoothly as he wheeled in a vast circle, dodging another attempted strike by Neira. Everything I consume is mine.

There was a savage ferocity to the claim that almost broke Eni's head, a rapacious hunger beyond anything she could have imagined. She used their own strength against them, the All-King went on, resuming his point as abruptly as he changed direction midair, We will surpass her at her own game.

There was a cruel pleasure in his plan; Eni could taste his delight and hear the despair he was sure Neira would feel. It all passed through her in a single heartbeat, the alien sensation of his mind battering her own with its unmatchable power. You have the Dracryst you stole, the All-King went on, Find the thread she used to bind it to herself.

She caught a flash of his deduction, his thoughts moving so rapidly and with such cunning that the intermediary steps vanished in a blur. Neira had used her champion to take down the first of her victims, and for each subsequent one used the Dracrysts she captured to overpower the next. She could almost see Abraxas, riding upon Neira's back in much the same way that she was astride Vanargand, and feel how the hare had lent his own strength. The battle was dizzying, their foe magnificent. Akaran in his prime was glorious, too brilliant to look at as bolts of lightning surged across his scales and arced between his wings. He bellowed his fury, the ground itself shaking with the force of his voice.

Eni could feel his astonishment wash over and through her, Akaran's incredulity that his sister could dare act against him as fierce as a squall. Neira answered his challenge in kind, her hide sleek and unscarred as it flashed in the light her brother produced. Abraxas was larger than life atop Neira's back, the hare's arms outstretched and his staff upraised as he lent—

Focus!

The undeniable command from Vanargand cut to Eni's core and pulled her from her reverie, the strange combination of imagination and memory dissolving at once. She shook her head groggily, trying to purge the intoxicating sensation, and took in an unsteady breath as she fumbled for her satchel. The straps holding it on were scorched in the front, and the tough leather that it was made of was battered and gouged, but it was intact. A cold wind rushed past her face as the All-King plunged into an inversion, Eni's gorge rising as her ears dangled and she clutched at her bag tightly to avoid dropping it. Snowflakes rushed around in a dazzling swirl, illuminated by the eclipsing glare of Vanargand's burning eyes, and he cut back toward Neira while he laughed.

The mocking sound blotted out anything else, as cold as an icicle and as hard as steel, and Neira's face twisted into an expression of unbridled rage. "You dare think you can best me?" she demanded, her wings suddenly reversing direction so she hovered before the All-King like a wall, "You will be torn asunder, Sincarn!"

Her own disdain was sharp and corrosive, the syllables filled with absolute certainty. Eni could see it in her head, an image of Neira's adversary being unraveled just as Tin's body had come undone to reveal his fiery soul once more. "I will pull you apart to the very quanta of your being," Neira raged as Vanargand soared above her, her pitiless gaze upon him, "I will sift you for all eternity if I must and rebuild Kidu from your wretched remains!"

Kidu?

Vanargand spoke with his mind, the thunderous force passing through Eni on its way to Neira. The other dragon's wings trembled ever so slightly, her eyes betraying a hint of apprehension at his tone. There was nuance beyond measure in the Derkomia name, volumes of meaning compressed into the sigil that Eni could feel burning in her mind. The All-King's cold amusement was nearly constant, but there was something worse, something that had given Neira pause just as it had Eni. Vanargand knew something they didn't, some secret he delighted in and couldn't wait to share.

Neira roared, the fires at her core surging to vivid life. Eni cried out as she raised one paw to shield her eyes, and even with her eyelids closed she was not blinded by the light. The bones in her arm were visible, ghostly white and surrounded by rivers of red and purple that could only be her veins and arteries as they sang with life. Her flesh swam in dreamy shades of blue and green, opaque and yet transparent, and tears welled up as she tried to blink her vision clear.

By the time spots of brilliant color were no longer dancing before her, Vanargand had raced away from Neira, the other dragon far behind him as he ascended higher into the sky and above the clouds. The temperature dropped to bitter lows, the air so thin that Eni was gasping but unable to fill her lungs. She wheezed, fumbling for the closures on her satchel as she pulled on the strand of magic that connected her to the dragon.

I can't breathe! she shouted with her mind alone, her lips moving but silent with nothing to carry the words, and Vanargand chuckled indulgently.

You think it so, and thus it is, he replied, but he spread his wings and descended lazily in a slow spiral until Eni could at last suck in greedy breaths.

She tried steadying her trembling paws as she opened her bag and pulled Iamata's Dracryst free. It sang to her, the feeling of it against her paws like a galvanic shock, and beneath the weight of the slumbering dragon's mind she felt something else.

Terror.

Iamata, even dormant and reduced as she was, could feel the proximity of Vanargand. She feared and hated him in equal measure, her scorn flowing through Eni like a poison. The All-King was something that should not be, that could not be, and yet he existed in defiant mockery of the natural order, an upstart too dangerous to be left alive. Eni tried to hold onto herself as she felt the Dracryst fighting her mind, Vanargand's acrobatics diminishing to a dull and unimportant background noise. Her body was being thrown around violently as the dragon that wasn't a dragon maneuvered nimbly, but she barely noticed, turning her attention to Iamata.

"Neira killed you," she murmured, feeling her grasp loosen as Iamata pulled away from her, "Surely, you must—"

Nothing slays a dragon.

It wasn't quite a thought, but it flashed through Eni's head nonetheless. Perhaps it was a memory, but it lacked the vividness of either the All-King or Neira, dreamily imprecise from the mostly quiescent Dracryst. Iamata wasn't aware, not really, but even her slumbering mind felt as though it greatly outweighed Eni's. The endless rush of waves floated through her, the ocean on a calm day when the dragon had loved it best. The sky and the water, each precisely the same color and yet unmistakable from each other, had been Iamata's domain, her undisputed territory.

The vision filled Eni's, empty of life until a dragon surged out of the sea and into the air, flying effortlessly as great streamers trailed her graceful body before plunging beneath the waves once more. She approached the gulf where numerous tiny tributaries forked off of a massive river, and then Iamata herself split. The dragon multiplied, each copy identical and yet somehow different, and Eni understood.

Iamata's body had perished before in long-past eons, but she had always been reborn, her draconic essence untouched and restored on each occasion. She would revenge herself upon her sister, given the chance, but wouldn't act against her, not in service to an abomination like the All-King. Neira had Iamata's power and support even as she slumbered, waiting to be intact once more, but Eni didn't feel despair.

She knew she should have; Tin's loss was a constant ache, every action that Vanargand took a blasphemy against who the wolf had been. They were outmatched, the only source of help Eni could reach for stubbornly refusing to act. Iamata wanted them to fail, wanted her sister to bind the All-King into a mortal form once more. But in the dragon's defiance, there was an opening, a shimmering connection so faint it was like trying to spot a candle from a hundred miles away at noon. The slightest eddy of power threatened to overwhelm it, to hide it from Eni's view, and yet she knew it was there, tracing it with her own magic. It was nothing compared to what had bound the Dracrysts together in Invermir when Neira had twisted Zathos's body into a twisted conduit, nothing compared to the raw strength that gave each of the magnificent orbs its life.

But it was there.

It was thinner than the silk of a spider's web but infinitely tougher, like moonbeams given physical form. The connection from the Dracryst was beautiful in its own right, elegant in its simplicity and strength. Derkomai sigils smaller than the width of a rice grain seemed to float around the binding, swirling and changing so quickly that they were like fireflies, and Eni plucked the strand with a finger of her power.

It resonated, a dim chime like a bell just audible over the rush of the air blowing past, and a sense of triumph came over Eni. She clutched at the Dracryst, opening her mouth to tell Vanargand that she had found what he sought, and—

Would it be so bad, really?

Eni's own voice crooned in her ear, the words soft and tempting. You could help Nergorath. Do as she asks, bear her a son as she tries again for her beloved. And who is to say what happens next?

"Stop," Eni whispered, squeezing the Dracryst clutched in her paws tight as she tried to clear her head, "You… You can't fool me."

It had to be a trick, the dragon whispering her honeyed promises in an attempt to sway her. Or perhaps it was her own mind, betraying her as it tore itself apart under the weight of her power. Her awareness was sinking, being pulled into the depths beyond consciousness by a force she couldn't fight.

Is it fooling you to say the All-King cannot be trusted? Eni's voice asked her in eerie harmony with Neira's. The question pummeled her, her grip on the Dracryst slackening no matter how she tried to hold on. Is it a lie to say he cares naught for anything but himself?

Eni couldn't articulate a single protest, her mind buckling under the weight of the onslaught. He is the maw that eternally hungers, and he shall devour you as he consumed my Kidu, leveret. But there will be no one to follow your trail. No one will cut you from his belly as I will pull my beloved free.

Your beloved?

Vanargand's voice surged through Eni, gripping her with a cold strength as he grabbed the line of power Eni had found that connected the Dracryst to Neira. She felt it through their own connection, her perception widening until she could see as the All-King did. The two dragons were floating in midair, facing each other as howling waves of theurgy poured from a raw wound in the sky.

Vanargand crackled with malice, overwhelming as he forced his power straight into Neira's heart. 

You have forgotten his name, lizard. Enkidu is gone.

Eni knew beyond a doubt that he had spoken the dragon's true name, and she could feel his essence, physically identical to Vanargand and yet impossibly different in every aspect. There was kindness in every line of his being, a gentleness that could not be denied. Neira bellowed her defiance but Eni heard the uncertainty, the hesitation as Vanargand flaunted his superior knowledge.

The trail is cold and dead. He left you.

Neira's power trembled only for a moment at Vanargand's onslaught, channeled directly to her very core. It lasted less than a second, faster than a beat of Eni's heart or a blink of her eyes. It was an instant so short Eni could barely recognize it, one that should have been gone by the time her thoughts identified it.

It stretched infinitely.

Vanargand lashed out with his jaws and with his power, his teeth sinking into Neira's neck even as his magic bound her. He was a being of impossible strength, the spots where he bit her glowing brilliantly as her fiery blood welled up. The falling snowflakes in the sky looked frozen in place, his attack so quick that there was no time for them to move. Iridescent bands tore at Neira, the dragon screaming in rage and pain as her body came apart, Vanargand greedily reaching out to consume her very essence. Eni caught a glimpse of who Neira was at her heart, at the shimmering power that animated her, and then it was gone. A concussive blast like the strike of a lightning bolt traced its way through Eni's head, magic washing over her as Vanargand ate Neira, and horror filled her.

Eni cried out, her voice lengthening as time dragged on hatefully, Neira vanishing with a terrible slowness until only the All-King was left. He twisted his long neck around, his fearsome blue eyes holding hers as his wicked voice filled her mind. You helped me, little bird, he said, the smile as much in his words as it was on his gruesome maw, What wonders there are in this world, to say nothing of those I promised yet to come!

He laughed, the sound dissonant and almost bestial. It was utter madness and sober sanity, cruel amusement and genuine pleasure. The All-King was a creature of contradictions, of extremes too vast to rectify and yet brought together into his singular form. Eni's strength faded from her as he pulled back the strand of his power linking them together, his laugh only growing louder as she fell—

Cold.

I woke up to coldness beyond imagining, my cheek pressed against sharp crystals of ice. My vision danced in and out of focus, my fingers limply stretched out before me. They barely twitched at my command, so numb I could barely move them. The white of my fur was barely distinguishable from the snow that surrounded me, the tattered remains of my sleeve the only visible spot of color in the world.

It had been blue, once. The same blue as Tin's eyes, I think. I had never realized it before, but it was undeniable in the light of dawn, the glimmering rays of the sun stretching through the pines that surrounded me and illuminating what had once been fine silk. I shivered, too weary to move and too frozen to remain where I was, my body indescribably heavy. I was weary in a way words can't describe, feeble things that they are. And yet, how much of my life had I devoted to them?

My thoughts were as sluggish as my arms and legs, my mind utterly unable to trace the sequence of events that had brought me to my resting place. The forest around me was strange and wild, the trees enormous and their fragrance somehow alien and unfamiliar. The sharp bite of pine had a pungency I had liked, once, but it felt meaningless in the moment. I wanted nothing more than to sleep, than to stretch out and let the drifting snow cover me. It was falling gently, each flake a brilliant little mirror that caught the sun and glowed as red as a ruby. They muffled the world in their comforting blanket, the soft sounds of the forest all but erased.

It was a blank page, awaiting the ink of a scribe, but I had written enough. There was nothing left to say, nothing left worth recording. Not with—

Tears filled my eyes suddenly as a memory came brutally to the forefront, the sight of Tin's body motionless in snow so vivid he could have been before me. There would have been a kind of symmetry if I stayed where I was, no matter how far away Invermir was. The thought should have aroused some kind of curiosity, but it didn't. It couldn't. What difference did it make? I could be on the moon itself and it wouldn't change anything; he would still be—

I didn't want to think about it, but I was helpless to resist. It all washed over me in an instant, a riptide of the mind that pulled me irresistibly along. I had succeeded and failed, but whether I had done so in equal measure was impossible to determine. I had given everything I had, everything I had ever dreamed of reduced to ashes.

Ashes.

The sky should have been dark with them; the ground should have been carpeted in gray. Volcanoes left undeniable traces of their eruptions, and yet there were none. I didn't quite care why, the mystery utterly insignificant, but another one met my eyes as the sun rose higher and its light penetrated further from a cloudless blue sky. Before me, the mighty pines of the woods were broken into splinters, trees that had been nearly as tall as cathedrals snapped like twigs. The destruction continued for as far as I could see, the passage of some enormous power unmistakable by the scars of the blight it had left behind.

Had I done it?

My heart was slow and weak, a chilling wind biting through my fur, and I tried crawling in the direction of the path. My legs didn't want to work right, tingling with pins and needles as I tried to stretch them, but I dragged myself along, the ground absolutely frigid against my chest and belly until I reached the nearest tree. I grabbed it, barely able to feel the rough bark or sticky sap, and pulled myself upright.

It took far too long, draining what little strength I had left, and my vision went gray as I caught my breath, balanced only by the pine. I pulled the tattered remains of my clothes tight, dimly aware of the straps of my satchel still on my back, and took my first hesitant step forward. My face nearly met the ground as I stumbled, but I managed to remain upright long enough to take another.

And another.

Soon I was staggering along, snow crunching underfoot as I followed the path of destroyed trees. I paused long enough to grab a downed branch, leaning on it heavily as a walking stick as I hobbled along. The snow had piled in drifts around the trees, but the deeper I went into the woods the less of it there was, and at some point I realized my breath was no longer visible. It was warming up, the snow giving way to slushy mounds as though it was early spring.

I pressed on, my legs slowly regaining some measure of their strength, and after an endless slog the downed trees gave way to a vast and newly formed clearing. There were fragments of wood everywhere, hundreds of trees brought down to mere stumps, and the space could have comfortably fit a small town. The lushness of evergreen needles and the dull brown of branches was interrupted by a single impossible shape at the center.

I had never before wanted so badly to believe what my eyes were showing me. Not just my eyes; my ears were full of a sound as comfortingly familiar as the sight that awaited me. My mouth worked silently, my throat closing up as words failed me. I swayed in place, too afraid to move as if doing so could make everything vanish like a mirage, but as long seconds went past nothing changed.

He was there.

Tin was curled into a tight ball, his black fur gleaming in the light of morning as the sides of his chest slowly rose and fell with each breath. No injuries marred his naked body, and as I stared in disbelief he shifted slowly as if he could sense my presence. I was barely aware of my legs as I walked toward him, feeling as though I was floating above the ground until at last I was before him. He sat up slowly as I fell into a crouch, his eyelids opening and his gaze meeting mine. His body had changed in ways I hadn't seen from a distance, his claws longer and more powerful and curved spines mixed into his mane, but his eyes were the same as always. Pools of blue surrounded by brilliant white gazed at me, warm and soft.

I drank in his face, taking in the powerful emotions carved into his features and etching each one indelibly into my memory. The forest around us sang with power, brilliant colors seeming to seep out of everything living as my magic called out and was answered in kind. The world was dazzling beyond imagining, the woods alight with shifting shapes and sounds that pulsed like music in my ears, but it was nothing compared to him.

Tin reached out at the same moment that I did, his face breaking into a smile more beautiful than our surroundings as his arms and tail wrapped around me and hugged me tight. He was illuminated and transformed by the expression, the feeling of him in every fiber of my being as we rose together. His heart pounded in time with mine, his body warm and real. 

I wanted to speak but couldn't, although as I squeezed him back as hard as I could I didn't mind. There would be time for words, time to discuss what lay ahead of us, but in the moment all I wanted was to savor it, engraving the flawless memory into my mind. I had found him; every cold and lonely road had been worth it for where they brought me.

Our embrace lasted an eternity and promised another.

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