A/N: Chap 26 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thanks for reading!
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Comes the Darksome Dragon Flying
The water slammed her into sandstone, snatching her back to painful awareness. The sound of the water roaring around her drowned out her own pained cry as she was pressed against the stone.
For a seeming eternity, all she could do was hold onto the rock and gasp for breath as the water pummeled her back and arms. Never before had she missed her Olympian blood as much as she did in that moment.
The corrupted wound in her stomach felt like a continuous punch to her gut. It would take weirwood sap to heal it. Her arms and legs trembled from the trip down the endless waterfalls of the river, and the pummeling of the water after. And her soul?
What she witnessed left her shaken almost as badly as her encounter with Sennecherib himself. In all her life, she'd never witnessed a soul consumed by a demonic power before. Not like what she witnessed with Melisandre.
"The only way is forward." Her voice was lost in the roar of the water, but the intent remained. She may have lacked the physical strength to escape, but she still had her magic. She turned her head enough to glimpse at the whirlpool she'd become caught in. A formation of granite rose up from the limestone, forming a sheltered area. With a thought, she pulled the heat from the water and almost instantly a wall of ice spanned the open space.
The pummeling ended; she sagged tiredly against the rock in relief. After a moment, she dragged herself out of the milky, ash-stained water that now pooled around her feet and stared up at the sky. The ash cloud from the volcano she'd created covered the thin slice of sky between the gorge walls. The particulates were already beginning to fall, drifting like delicate snow.
She couldn't tell if the vibrations under her were from the river, volcano, or both.
There was no question that staying in the river would be the fastest way to get back to Asshai. But when she lifted her arm she could see the acid in the water had already begun eating holes in the leather she wore. Her skin felt hot and irritated, and she didn't even want to think about what it was doing to her hair. If she were purely mortal, the water would have killed her already.
Plus there was the sheer violence of the river. Even with her coaxing the spirits to keep her atop the waves, the gorge acted as a giant nozzle that forced the spirits together with so much energy it rivaled what she could call on. She could direct it, but not calm it. At least not without exhausting herself.
The idea of condensing air just made her headache. Being chased by an exploding volcano was one thing; but the energy required to condense air was wasteful. She was so tired.
Instead, she dipped her hand into the water and redirected the flow. At her urging the water formed a thick ramp of ice that adhered tightly to the side of the wall, growing thicker as the ice continued up in the form of steps.
She pulled herself off the rock and onto the icy staircase. Water continued to flow up around her feet, strengthening each step as Taylor's tired, trembling legs pushed her upwards. The river must have carried her farther than she realized, because it was only a span of fifty feet or so before she reached the carved path that led south. She stepped onto the path and released the spirits of the water to quickly melt and fall back into the raging river below.
Her staff and bow and arrows were lost; she had no food nor money. And now her clothes were eaten and chewed away. She stripped out of her sodden, damaged clothes and drew the water and acid from them with a flicker of magic. Spells of transmutation, learned from the House of Knowing, restored some of the cloth, enough to at least give her some modesty.
With nothing else to do, Taylor forced herself to her feet. The demons that so plagued her steps north seemed to have fled with the burning sky overhead. If nothing else, the path was downhill.
After an hour of walking, she heard the sound of growling. A party of men came around the curve of the trail twenty feet ahead of her. Five men in the same red robes and armor as the soldiers that had accompanied her to Stygai walked the trail with two massive, leashed hounds with thick black fur that had been cruelly branded with blood runes.
The five temple soldiers stopped and stared at her as the two dogs barked. Everyone had the beaten, crushed souls of conditioned slaves. Two of them carried crossbows.
All five reacted to her without any hesitation at all. The two with crossbows raised their weapons and loosed their bolts; the two holding the dogs released their hounds; and the fifth drew a short, vicious looking curved blade and ran toward her.
It all happened so quickly, and Taylor was so tired and so hurt, that she couldn't stop one of the crossbow bolts from slamming into her upper right chest. She stumbled back in shock from the painful blow. The two massive hounds charged at her, but with an angry cry she seized their spirits.
The two animals stopped, spun, and then jumped onto the charging swordsman.
Magic swirled; stone from across the narrow gorge broke from the cliffs and shot across the space even as they sharpened. As the swordsman yelled under the assault of the war hounds, a rain of stone darts shattered the skulls of the four other men. They dropped dead without a sound. The swordsman followed quickly with a touch of Hel wind from Taylor's hand.
The two hounds settled on their haunches as they began to eat their former masters. Taylor, still on her rump, stared down incredulously at the crossbow bolt protruding from her shoulder. "You've got to be kidding me. Really? Poison?"
She could feel it; she could see it. It was already causing the flesh around the wound to darken. With a curse, she gripped the bolt and pulled it out. Dark, poisoned blood began to pour out. She didn't have the breath to scream; the world around her narrowed from the pain of it.
She wasn't the 16-year-old Vanir child who had to use fruit, or seek fresh flowing water and the sun's blessing for healing. She had over twenty years among the Free Folk, and another two traveling the world. And she spent the last few months absorbing almost all the accumulated magical knowledge of the planet. And the poison did not carry magical, soul-destroying corruption. Just poison.
It still fucking hurt.
She transmuted the poison to water, and then healed the wound to nothing but a puckered scar. Unlike the knife wound, the poison had no demonic energy that she could detect. Even so, she remained sitting as the sheer unfairness of it all settled about her shoulders.
The two war hounds whined, sensing her mood. She slowly released her control over them. "Come," she said, speaking to their spirits.
The two animals had been trained as viciously as the humans, but still they came and let her use them to regain her feet. She stepped past the partially eaten swordsman and moved to the other four. Quickly going through their armor revealed no money at all, but all of them had packs of hard biscuits, jerked meat and dried fruits. They also carried well-watered wine bladders that hung from their belts.
She ate the contents of one of the four packets entirely, and washed the mostly tasteless food down with the entire bladder.
The belts were all too big for her, but she looped one around her hips and fitted it with the remaining food packs, wine bladders and one of their swords. It made her hips look almost cartoonishly broad next to the rest of her body. She considered taking some of their clothing, but dismissed it after a moment.
She did want one thing from them, though.
Kneeling down beside one of the bodies, she reached down to touch the dead man's head and pulled until she felt his broken soul return. "Why did you try to kill me?"
The dead man opened his mouth with an awful, supernatural moan. Doing so revealed a long-severed tongue.
"Never mind." She released the soul and stood. "This place sucks," she declared. "Come on, boys. Let's go see who else wants to kill me."
The two war hounds fell into step behind her.
She came across the waystation three hours before sunset. Not surprisingly, two temple guards stood at either side of the carved stone entrance. With her bifrost eyes she could see almost thirty more men inside. Most appeared to be more soldiers, but two were dressed just like Melisandre was, with satin and silk. Both of those men had a pendant hanging from a leather strap around his neck; each bore soul fragments.
She briefly considered trying to sneak by them. A simple glamor could have hidden her from their eyes. But her shoulder ached where the last soldier shot her; and her stomach hurt from the demon-laced poison of the blade Melisandre stabbed her with, and she decided she was done playing nice.
She seized the two men with the spirits of the air and then shot them like bullets across the gorge. They left bloodstains where they hit before they fell into the river below. The other soldiers within rushed out to see what was happening, doing so in convenient single-file since the path was not wide enough to allow large numbers side-by-side.
With flicks of her wrist, she blew them off the path and into the river one at a time, until finally one of the priests emerged. He was chanting spells of protection and had just enough magic to reduce her casual blow to a push.
He didn't have a magical answer for the warhounds.
Taylor continued forward until she reached the door. The second priest stood within the waystation, flanked by two more soldiers with crossbows. This time, Taylor was prepared. Simple spells of fire ignited the bones within the soldiers' skulls, causing the heads to explode violently.
The priest, who was chanting a pyrokinetic spell himself, stopped and screamed in alarm when the heads of his men pulped. Clutching his soul-fragment ruby, he fell to his knees. "Mercy! Mercy!"
Behind him, a cast-iron pot hung from a tripod over a fire; she could smell the stew. Dinner tonight.
Her new companions padded silently into the waystation and sat staring hungrily at the priest with bloody muzzles. Taylor walked right up to him, then sat tiredly on the floor. "So… what do I call you? Abanero? Or Rael?"
The man gaped. "I don't…how do you know…?"
"You split your soul, you ignorant worm." Taylor hissed the words; she couldn't help her anger. "You fools don't know what a blasphemy that is. The only, truly eternal part of a human being, and you shattered yours. The part you kept is called Abenero, a Priest of R'hllor from the Red Temple of Port Moraq. The part you shoved into your little ruby there was Rael, a pious little kid who loved singing and making people happy. You killed the good one, and kept the lesser."
Abenero the Priest stared at her, his jaw hanging open. "You are…"
"Really, fucking angry," Taylor said. "Why did your men attack me, Abenero?"
"You…I mean…you destroyed the holy city! You murdered the Avatar of R'hllor. You are the demon that destroyed mighty Valyria! The fires can be seen from Asshai! Ash covers the whole of the Shadowlands! When you left five years ago, it was thought…."
Taylor held up a hand. "What?"
"What, what?"
"Abenero, what do you mean, I left five years ago? It only took us 90 days to reach Asshai."
Even as she asked the question, though, she understood. Not a godly realm–not a domain like what she experienced in Triton's grotto of her mother's domain in Newfoundland. Instead, a domain of corruption and demons. But the time dilation effect somehow continued, worse even than her time in Triton's Grotto on Earth, thirty-three thousand years before.
"It has been five years since Melisandre spoke into the glass candle to warn us that you were traveling to the most holy Stygai. That you were responsible for the death of Most Holy Voice of R'hllor, and the destruction of Valyria. The High Priests and Priestesses called for a Convergence and all the priesthood came. You are the demon queen–the great Other whom all good things must fight!"
"Are any more soldiers coming?"
"We are to be relieved in two days," he said.
Which meant no one would be on the trail tomorrow. "I'm going to show you mercy, Abanero. Perhaps more than you deserve. I'm going to restore your shattered soul. I just can't risk another mortal shell opening a door to demons with your cracked souls."
"What…?"
It was so easy to pull the broken soul fragment from his ruby. The gem shattered as she did so. The priest screamed again in alarm as she deftly wove his damaged soul back together. Suddenly a strange thing happened.
As he stared at her with wide-eyed horror, he began to age rapidly. His head full of thick, curly black hair turned gray and then fell from his dark scalp. The flesh of his hands retracted tightly against his bones.
He sagged before her, gasping for breath as he aged fifty years before her eyes.
"You're not looking very good any more, Zael. It would have been…what, fifty years since you split your soul?"
From his suddenly aged face, he glared pure malice at her. "The brothers and sisters of the Lord are right to despise you," he said in a rasping voice. "We will never stop until the Lord's will is done, and you are dead."
"I understand," Taylor said. "Sleep now, Zael."
With a touch of Hel wind, she sent the man's intact but angry soul onto its final destination.
She then helped herself to a heaping bowl of stew.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
The shaking woke her from a dream-ridden sleep. Taylor opened her bifrost eyes and quickly scanned the way station. The magical protections she activated were still strong; she was alone in the space with the supplies from the soldiers she'd killed.
The ground vibrated again; the volcano must have still been erupting. From the night, she heard a mournful shriek. Not a roar, not a howl, but something huge and inhuman. Through the sandstone walls, Taylor directed her magical vision until she spotted it.
The massive shadow dragon she fought in Stygai lay curled up in a narrow valley between peaks. The wounds she gave it, evidently five years ago, prevented the creature from fully escaping the explosion, leaving the beast so badly burned it could no longer fly.
The warhounds, woken by her tension and the sound, whined at her.
"I know," she said. "But…it's a dragon."
After a few hours of rest, she felt much better. The new scar on her stomach could not completely heal, and it still hurt, but she had the corruption of the wound contained well enough for when she had the means to heal it. And the stew definitely helped her mood.
"Stay here," she told the two hounds.
On their journey to Stygai, she would not have wanted to leave the protections. In the night, the demons were at their strongest. But since she destroyed the source of corruption in the land, the few demons that remained fled from her steps. Expending the magic, Taylor created a platform of air and quickly rose up the sheer basalt cliffs until she stood in the night sky.
The planet's distant moon, so similar and yet so alien from her own, hung low on the western horizon. The sun was only an hour from rising. And from that vantage, she saw the massive shadow dragon as it lay dying.
The monstrous beast lifted a head easily as large as her dad's old Ford 150 and glared at her with baleful, sapphire green eyes. It did not have cat slits, she saw, but rather huge pupils well adapted for both night and day. Jaws filled with at least two rows of teeth opened, and from it she smelled both fetid rot and also a strangely chemical smell.
The dragon could breathe fire!
"I am not your enemy."
She spoke the First Tongue of the Vanir. The truth and intent formed the sounds themselves, forcing the dragon to understand.
To her shock, the beast replied. Any who strike at me are my enemy!
Its own first language was a collection of growls, grunts and mental projection of a power equal to any god. Looking at this creature, Taylor realized for the first time that she was looking at a being of untold eons.
She stood before another god. "I am Telos," she declared herself. "Daughter of Kratos, God of War. Daughter of Freya, Goddess of Magic. Reborn Telos of the Trees. I am an enemy of the demons that held sway in this land; of the corruption that held this land in eternal light. Does this make me your enemy?"
Voxtchtatrcka I am. Eternal have I flown these skies. It was your humans that brought the corruption, godling.
"Yes," Taylor said simply. "You were there, weren't you? When the humans first arrived."
Voxtchtatrcka was there when they came, with metal dragons that roared and scorched the skies. With their fearsome weapons and their men of iron stronger even than the children of Voxtchtatrcka. But they seemed wise; they learned the true tongue of Voxtchtatrcka's children and vowed to leave them be. They lied.
"They were betrayed by their own creations," Taylor said. "And they have suffered, mighty Voxtchtatrcka. As have you. I wish to make my harm to you right. I have the gift of healing. May I be permitted to heal your wounds?"
The ancient god of dragons sniffed at her. You may heal me, godling.
The dragon god was so huge that she had to climb onto his ancient, rock-like scales just to reach the wounds. Her concentrated Hel Wind had carved deep into his flesh, shattering scales that had withstood tens of thousands of years, if not longer. The wounds looked as fresh as if she'd just delivered them, and she wondered if Voxtchtatrcka could even heal on his own.
Magic flowed. She was no longer constrained to enchanting objects to deliver her healing; her studies and experience had shown her far more. The dragon laid his head down as she moved carefully over his flank, healing the long gauge she herself had carved. There were other wounds to heal, though. Some looked like claw marks, others like burns. She healed those as well, until finally she found herself on the joint of his massive wing.
"Are you the last of your kind, Voxtchtatrcka? Are there other dragon gods?"
Voxtchtatrcka had many siblings. They took pity on the humans after the corruption struck. They paid for their pity with their blood. Voxtchtatrcka shall never take pity on the humans again.
The very nature of the First Tongues showed Taylor all she needed–skies filled with dragons of all colors, and in their midst the dragon gods. And she saw the white-blonde hair and purple eyes of the shepherds that the ancient dragon gods chose as their people.
Despite herself, Taylor laid herself against the creature's ancient scales. "I am also the last of my kind, Voxtchtatrcka. I am the last Vanir goddess. The last to speak my mother's tongue; the last to wield my mother's magic."
Voxtchtatrcka does not understand how a human godling can smell of this world. Your kind are not a part of this creation.
"I was reborn here after my death. The gods of the trees have welcomed me as their kin."
The dragon's serpentine neck allowed it to move its head until one eye regarded her. Voxtchtatrcka smells the old ones within you. You are not Voxtchtatrcka's enemy.
"I'm glad. You would make a fearsome enemy."
She felt the vanguard of dawn battling back the shadows. Still on the dragon, Taylor raised herself and greeted the sun as a long-lost brother. She felt the magic of it respond as if she were back in her glade north of the wall. The sunlight bathed her in its warmth.
And because she sat on the dragon's shoulders, she shared the warmth with Voxtchtatrcka.
Telos is truly a godling of creation to be kin to the sun, Voxtchtatrcka's father. The sun is father; the stone is mother. Telos is sister.
"Voxtchtatrcka is brother," Taylor agreed. "The humans hunt me, brother. The corruption I destroyed has twisted many of their number. They worship the very evil that destroyed their ancestors."
Telos kills these petty humans?
"Telos does. But there are many, and it grieves me to have to kill them. Telos is a goddess of magic, life and hope. Death is within her realm, but something she does not enjoy."
Voxtchtatrcka is death, the Dragon thought at her. With their language, she knew his thoughts were not a threat, but rather a statement of inevitable fact. Voxtchtatrcka takes the fire of his children and returns it to Father when their time comes. Voxtchtatrcka's voice cries out through the skies for his children to hear and rejoice that their fire becomes one with father in the sky. This is Voxtchtatrcka's domain; it is Voxtchtatrcka's place. Show me the petty humans who would hunt their own god, and they shall hear Voxtchtatrcka's voice and know their own fire shall be reaped. This Voxtchtatrcka will do for Telos-sister!
As the sun rose over the former Shadowlands, Taylor directed her bifrost eyes south. She focused her vision past the mountain peaks and valleys, until she saw Asshai itself. The sun shone on the city as it did her and Voxtchtatrcka. What she saw left her shaking her head.
Asshai was crawling with red priests and temple soldiers. But that wasn't all–she saw other groups of fighting men gathered around the city, with more ships coming in almost daily. They had the look of professionals–mercenaries. One group even wore the plate armor common to Westeros. At least two thousand soldiers and red priests had gathered from all around the Jade Sea, all to kill her.
"Then let them know the power of Voxtchtatrcka," Taylor said. "They have forgotten, my brother. They have forgotten to fear you. Take me to the human city south of here, brother, and let them remember to worship and fear Voxtchtatrcka, dragon-god of death!"
The eons-old dragon raised his sharp jaw to the sky and shrieked a triumphant challenge to the sky. Taylor grabbed onto the massive scutes that ran in three lines down his spine and positioned herself between them as Voxtchtatrcka spread wings wider than a jumbo jet.
He flapped those wings as he launched himself from the mountains. With Taylor between his massive shoulders, the Death of Dragons flew south to Asshai.