The title of this chapter is a reference to The Witcher 3 - Blood and Wine, where the Night of Long Fangs was the night when a whole city was beset by vampires. The soundtrack has a great track with the name Night of Long Fangs, and I listened to it a lot when I wrote the following events. The entire scene was incredibly difficult to write and I really hope it came out alright. Action scenes are among my weaknesses, but the last third of Lightbringer has quite a few of them. It's good practice, I guess :D - Have fun reading what I hope is an intense and epic battle!
XXV. Night of Long Fangs
Ljosira lost her temper. Loki barely managed to catch her before she could lunge at Natta. He had to bodily hold her back, and even with his arms like steel bands around her, she squirmed against his grip like a wild animal.
"Ljosira, no! It's too dangerous –", he tried desperately to calm her.
"Release him!", the dragon princess screamed, blind to all else around her. "Vegr! Vegr, wake up!" But her brother did not stir at her frantic calls. Mjölnir soared back into Thor's hand. He and Heimdall both assumed battle-stances. The gatekeeper's face was contorted into a furious grimace. Odin himself raised Gungnir, his features grim and unforgiving.
"It's useless.", Natta spoke softly, yet still it resonated like a shout in the graveyard silence which had fallen over the plaza. And then she struck her unholy spear straight downward. The Lightbringer's mortal body lit up in a flickering rainbow of colors. Loki saw the shield enchantments flare to protect him, but the spear-tip tore through them mercilessly.
Natta drove Dragonbane right into Vegr's heart. Rich red blood gushed forth from the wound, followed by a torrent of pure light. The dark metal absorbed it all, siphoning the dragon's life-force from him, sapping his soul. Somewhere above Asgard, a sky-shattering roar answered the scream that tore from the throat of the dragon prince. Another followed, and then another, until Loki could hear nothing but the chorus of outraged dragon cries.
The heavens split wide open as the Lightbringers plunged through the blanket of shadow. Their presence lifted some of the darkness until all of Asgard seemed flooded by a strange twilight, neither night nor day. The circling Darkflight intercepted their opponents' descent on Asgard, and soon blurs of white and black were spiralling above, engaged in a brutal war. Their angry shrieks were painful to the ear.
Vegr fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, his body empty. And Natta raised Dragonbane, a hideous smile playing around her lips. The weapon brimmed with power, dark energy surging around it. Loki could feel the dragon soul trapped within the metal, almost hear the agonized wails of the immortal creature, now bound to Natta's will.
Thor and Heimdall both charged in unison, hammer and sword striking out at the Darkflight leader. Ljosira went slack in Loki's arms like a doll. The next moment, everything drowned in the nova of her transformation. Thunderous screeches rent the air, crashes erupted all around the plaza.
When Loki regained his vision, he saw a great black shape rise from a cloud of dust, her wings a night sky forsaken by stars. Ancient runes glowed on her spiked horns. At the centre of her forehead, there gleamed Dragonbane, fused into her skull as a gemstone into a crown.
Two towers had crumbled entirely in the collateral damage, but Natta freed herself from the rubble, slender and elegant like a winding snake. Before she could take to the sky, a giant white head broke from the ruins. Ljosira's jaws closed around the sinuous black tail and she bodily flung the Darkflight leader aside. Natta smashed into a metal statue, bearing the entire thing to the ground with her.
"By the gods, what do we do?!", Thor yelled above the clamour of battle. His hammer clashed with the head of a black dragon who'd landed on the vandalized plaza and was advancing on them quickly.
Beside him, Heimdall leaned heavily onto his sword, grasping his face with one hand as though heÄd been wounded. Loki knew that the gatekeeper endured his bond-partner's agony, felt the full force of such a substantial loss now.
Vegr might not be dead yet, but whatever Dragonbane had done to him, it must have been unimaginably painful to have the soul sheared away from the body by that abominable spear. Sundered and confined into the horrible weapon, he suffered now, helpless as Natta used his power without mercy.
"Mann the cannons! Shoot the Darkflight from the sky!", Odin barked orders to the guards.
Some of them ran into the palace while others readied their spears. More black dragons landed in the streets between the golden towers and beautiful houses, uncaring that their wings and immense bodies toppled buildings and devastated homes.
Onyx fire seared above the people's heads. They ran in fear, blind and desperate to escape. Ljosira had freed herself from the tons of stone, but her movements were hindered by the fleeing Asgardians everywhere around her. She spread her wings to shelter the innocent from the rain of stone and glass. Her scream rang on and on like a giant bell. It was answered by a dozen others, one voice carrying over all noise.
Loki looked up to see the largest dragon he would ever come to set eyes on. His body shimmered like the dawn of a new day as he streaked from the gloomy clouds towards Asgard. The sensation of his magic was almost too much to bear for a mind sensitive to sorcery – Loki staggered beneath the onslaught of the dragon king's rage.
"Elding!", Heimdall called, straightening out of his crouched posture. The great dragon's appearance seemed to bolster the soldiers with new strength. They lined up and began throwing spears at the black invaders wreaking havoc on their homeland. Some even charged boldly into the fray with their swords raised.
"To battle!", Thor cried, throwing his hammer without preamble. It went flying and collided with a Darkflight's chest. The violent thunder unleashed unto the dragon sent it to the ground in a heap.
Loki could not concentrate under the tidal wave of magical energy. It was just too much. Too many creatures of ungraspable power in one place, and none of them seemed to care anymore. The Lightbringers were in a mad frenzy because their crown prince had been taken from them. They would fight to the death now to avenge their brother.
He had thought he'd known wrath in all of its many shapes, but he had never felt the collective fury of dozens of immortal beings. It was an unstoppable inferno, a wheel of fire which rolled over everything in its wake. And even this, he knew, had been part of Natta's plan. She'd wanted the Lightbringers to throw all caution to the wind, had lured them here by her atrocious act so they would make Asgard into a battlefield between the two dragon clans.
The realm would not survive this raw amassing of magical forces. Elding crashed down on Natta just as she tried once again to take flight, while a Darkflight vulture swooped in to attack Ljosira. Loki barely sidestepped some flying rubble. A guard flew past him and he saw Thor and Heimdall, engaged into a desperate skirmish with the dragon they had managed to wound before.
Destruction reigned everywhere. Beams of fire set countless buildings aflame, the entire city was engulfed in clouds of smoke and dust. Residents ran screaming through the ruined streets. Ashes rained from the sky. Loki saw Elding tower above the spires, the white-hot flames shooting from his mouth illuminating the eternal night. A petrifying beauty, to watch his eight-horned head rear up as he struck down his enemies.
Natta darted around him like an elusive shadow, intangible and much quicker than the bulky dragon king, who had difficulty moving within the restrictive spaces of the city. She swiped and bit, sending out bolts of devastating energy from the weapon on her brow. Her claws were gleaming onyx scythes slashing audibly through the air. And then another spire fell, drowning everything in impervious dust.
In all the chaos, it only took mere minutes for the battle to become so confusing that Loki lost sight of Thor and Ljosira. He shouldered the limp body and struggled to find his way through the wreckage to the last place where he'd seen her.
"Ljosira!", he yelled, desperately. They could not get separated! He had to talk some sense into her before this escalated even further, although he had little idea how to manage that. But if the fighting went on, Asgard would be completely destroyed.
The ground rumbled beneath his feet and he could feel the very fabric that held the realm together quiver, splinter. Groping his way onward, he directed the terrified people to flee into the palace halls if they could. Doubtful they would be safe there for long, yet it was the only thing he could do to help them.
Out of nowhere, a giant onyx tail lashed through the fog of war. It sliced the wall behind him clean in half, and the building came tumbling down in a deafening crash. Loki could not evade it. It would crush him to a pulp –
A wing stretched out above his head just as he wrapped himself around the slender body he carried to shield it. He was buried beneath the leathery mass, but it protected him from the bulk of the flying rubble and metal. A pained screech tore through his heart, making magic spill from his hands like a riptide. Pieces of the crumbled tower went flying as he wiggled free.
"My light!", Loki cried out. Ljosira managed to pull her wing from the wreckage with his help. Her neck wound in a sheltering circle around him, her great head coming into view. Jaws bloodied, eyes fierce and glinting with savage fury. For a maddening instant, he thought she would attack him. He'd never seen her like that before. She was not violent by nature, none of her clan were. But they had been driven to the limits of their patience and shoved over the edge by the mutilation of their crown prince.
"Are you hurt, my love?", her voice spoke into his thoughts.
"Never mind me! Here, you need this to be safe.", he cut her short, climbing onto her neck to fasten strands of her mane around her mortal body. He cast several spells to strengthen the knots.
"My brother suffers unspeakable torment. I can feel his pain as if the spear had been driven through my heart." She sounded broken, her sorrow like thorns to tender flesh.
"We need to stop this, Ljosira – Asgard can't take much more of this.", Loki urged her, slipping to the ground again. The iridescent scales that covered her whole body were dirty and soiled with blood from several smaller claw marks and bites. He pressed himself against the side of her face, wiping the filth from her scales with both hands. It was useless of course, but he had to make a frantic effort to calm her through this gentle gesture.
"I don't know how. I don't.", she squeezed her eyes shut, lip curling into a tortured snarl.
Loki sensed the attack before he saw or heard it. A rush of air heralding the approach of something large. The next he knew, Ljosira flung out her front leg and he was pretty much slapped aside. His body soared helplessly through the air and he glimpsed an obsidian mass entangled with a faded white one, before he landed in a mound of glass shards. And still, within all the chaos, Ljosira managed to drape her wing over him as a boulder fell from the sky. He huddled into a tiny ball as he'd done so many times as a child. Darkness fell around him.
And then, Loki felt a surge of magical energy, so tremendous that he feared his head might split. It was neither light nor shadow. Instead, it descended on the realm like a silk sheet, enveloping all of Asgard beneath its suffocating force. This is the end, he thought bitterly, unable even to take a breath. He heard one last, incensed dragon roar and thought it might have been Natta. Then it was silent.
Countless light-years away, within the realm of humanity which the Aesir called Midgard, a darkness crept up on the shining beacon in the skies above. It slid slowly into place, overshadowing the sun. The city of New York was one of the greatest settlements ever built by humans, filled to bursting with people.
Once, they had walked beneath the night sky and looked up to it for hours, watching in awe as the stars wandered across the endless inky dome. Much time had passed since those childhood days of humanity, so much that most people had forgotten the stories told by the constellations, the legends of magic, the dancing dragons between the clouds.
Pragmatics now, they were grounded firmly to the earth beneath their feet, their eyes fixated onto the things close to them rather than the vast, wondrous cosmos enveloping their world. Most, but not all. Sometimes a little girl or boy would dream of gleaming wings and rainbow scales in the sunlight, like rows and rows of twinkling gemstones. They would wake, excited and hopeful, to gaze out their windows, expecting to see a creature of myth streaking by above their homes.
On the upmost level of the elegant manor house at 177A Bleecker Street, a man gazed through a circular window adorned with a mystical symbol. He had never been a particularly dreamy child, but had preferred books on science instead. Absorbing hundreds of pages on medicine, chemistry, neurobiology the way others drew air into their lungs – and never forgetting a single thing he had read.
He had come a long way, from ambition bordering on downright arrogance to learning – not always the easy way – that the world was much stranger, and much more complicated than he had assumed. Rubbing his hands to calm the tremble, he contemplated that the most important lessons were usually the ones hardest to accept. It isn't about you. Well, she had been right, as always. Would that he had her wisdom to guide him through what lay ahead.
"You look troubled.", a heavily accented voice spoke behind him. Stephen Strange turned around, or rather hovered around, since he levitated several feet above the ground to have a better view of the sky. Wong walked across the meticulously polished parquet floor. His almond-shaped eyes darted to the window and then back to Strange, his ageless features as so often quite stoic.
"Have you seen the sky?" Strange landed on the ground gracefully, the Cloak of Levitation floating around him in a docile manner. Fickle thing. It still sometimes did whatever it wanted, but he was getting the hang of it. Wong nodded.
"Yes, it is why I came. It's the same in Kamar-Taj, Hong Kong, London. I believe all of Earth is experiencing this total eclipse right now."
"Impossible. A total eclipse would be seen on a small part of the world, never on all of it. And besides, there are none scheduled until –", Strange argued, but the librarian interrupted him.
"Because it's not a natural occurrence. Something is very wrong."
"Oh, good. Things aren't just plain wrong anymore, they have to be very wrong.", Strange commented acerbically. In a more serious tone, he added: "I can't sense any intruders. But it feels like everything is… muted, disrupted somehow."
"I feel it too. The intricate fabric of magic is out of balance. I fear something terrible is happening to its guardians.", Wong mused, lifting his hand to shield his eyes as he gazed at the ring of light in the sky, and the shadow which darkened it.
"I thought we were the guardians of magic.", Strange said, frowning. Wong sighed in a distinctly patronizing way.
"On Earth, we are. But we are not the apex sorcerers. Have you read The Rise of Agamotto? It was written by his apprentice, supposedly. Many pieces of it are missing, but there is some wisdom to be learned from that book."
"I may have… skipped that one. I've been meaning to catch up on my reading, but the artefacts were acting up and I had to write some checks for the repairs… You know how it is…", Strange articulated. Wong just looked at him blankly. It seemed he did not know 'how it is', being the librarian and all. Skipping over books was likely a sacrilege to him. "Just tell me what it says, will you?"
"Fine. We use Eldritch magic for our shields and portals and most of our spells. It is based on light, the purest form of energy, conjured by drawing upon our astral connection to the greater construct of the universe.", Wong explained, making the other man huff in exasperation.
"Yes, yes, it's the first lesson we ever learn. Agamotto discovered how to tap into the astral nexus, other dimensions… and so forth. I am not some half-baked apprentice anymore, you know.", Strange pointed out.
"Agamotto did not discover Eldritch magic. He was taught how to use it, by the master of masters, an entity which does not merely know it down to the core, but is magic, made manifest. Even after everything you have seen, you have a rational mind which bristles at the thought of legends being true unless you have laid eyes on them."
"So, who… or what was this master?", Strange wondered, intrigued. Wong gazed into the distance, an almost boyish fascination on his face.
"The book only mentions him as 'the Lightbringer'. As for what he was, or rather still is… there are many names, and everywhere across the world people remember them, but they don't believe. So little imagination these days. Where I come from, we call them long. Arach, ryu, dreki, Drache. Dragons, my friend. Dragons guard magic." Stephen Strange, the Master of the New York Sanctum of the Mystic Arts, just stared at him.
"They have not been seen for a thousand years. But I have a feeling the time of their absence has come to an end. You should read up on them as long as you still can. If you are to be the Sorcerer Supreme, you will have to know how to palaver with dragons and not be eaten alive in the process." Wong let out a barking laugh, as though he found the stricken expression on his sorcerer fellow's face incredibly amusing.