Chapter 9: The Queen's Spite, the Queen's Fury, the Queen's No Longer (Part II)
The Time: Present day, 720 A.E.
The Place: Central Saimr
Some of the disciples scream as the demons lumber into view, and Ari really can't blame them. These things look horrific. Festering skin stretched too tight across misshapen bones, exposed tissue and glowing eyes, too many limbs and too many mouths. Most of them are Larval- or Pupal-class beasts warped from livestock, relatively minor nuisances that wouldn't be a problem individually but are in fact a significant problem en masse. They howl and screech and pant and cackle, foam dripping from gaping maws, claws and hooves and strange hands scything paths through the underbrush.
So many… Her Aethersight is alive with pinpricks of light; the bright glare of the defensive array behind her mirrored by the sea of dots surrounding them. What kind of caster can control this many demons at once?!
And, to make matters worse, she can't sense the big ones anymore. Something is cloaking them, the same way it's cloaking the demon army's handler.
"Steady!" the Grand Matron calls somewhere behind her.
Ari grimaces. The barrier is nearly finished, but while it'll keep the demons out, it will also prevent anyone inside from casting anything dangerous enough to be useful. The sentinels will probably put up a more permeable second layer to protect the warcasters, but that'll take even more time and its flexibility will also require it to sacrifice some defensive capability. They'll just have to suck it up for a while.
Behind her, the air vibrates with the twang of the scouts' crossbows, and, a moment later, the high whine of Tselai's Najasa. In an instant, a hail of arrows and a flare of pale blue light shoots past her shoulder and peppers the first wave of demons. Najasa's lone spectral bolt pierces the skull of an oncoming beast that sort of resembles a deer stretched out like putty. It strikes home beautifully, sending the deer-thing crashing to the dirt with an airy scream. Its comrades trample its still-twitching body in their rush, dark blood and dirt spraying in clouds from their feet. But as they pass, the arrow's light swells and brightens until it bursts into a cloud of translucent powder blue oak leaves. Beautiful—and, for the demons, quite dangerous; as the leaves drift on the breeze, they attach to the demons' purulent bodies and begin to sizzle and smoke with purifying energy.
"Nice shot, Tseba!" Ari shouts.
It's her turn now.
It's been… a while since Ari has wielded Aleneth-Dal. The javelin isn't awake and aware the way Varul is, but it still sparks resentfully in her grasp as she hefts it, as though it's complaining about her long absence.
"I'm sorry," she mutters as she raises her arm and takes aim, leaning back on Techa."You know Varul gets jealous."
And then she lets it fly. Overhead, the dark sky turns even darker as wispy night clouds mushroom into thick, rumbling storm banks, a churning maelstrom that flickers with the same sinister red light as before. Aleneth-Dal rockets past slavering rows of beasts until it dips, suddenly, and spears through the meaty chest of a warped bull she can just barely make out some hundred yards back. The beast bellows in anguish, but its misery doesn't last long: a shock of crimson lightning roars from the heavens, kissing Aleneth-Dal's hilt like an amorous lover before obliterating the bull demon and every creature within several yards of it into a slurry of charred flesh. The entire clearing shakes with the force of the strike, and the sound is so immense that a few of the beasts throw their handler's yoke in terror, crashing into their fellows in their haste to flee.
Techa's poor ears are pinned against her skull in abject fear, and Ari spares a second to give her shoulder a pat. If the thunder is loud for her, she can't imagine what it's like for the barghests. She can't hear shit anymore except the ringing in her skull, but from the corner of her eye she spots a flurry of movement: Matron Jairani leaps into the air and extends her hand with a burst of spiritual energy. A ball of violet light flares to life in her palm and then uncoils, spilling from her fingers until it coalesces into a vicious black whip coated in True Flame. Her spiritual weapon, Dutmaqt. At the apex of her jump, Matron Jairani flings Dutmaqt forward with a mighty crack that's so loud it rivals the thunder, so loud it pierces through the cottony layer of numbness blocking Ari's ears. It strikes a cluster of gray-skinned demons that are like eighty percent mouth and detonates, sending jets of screaming fire in every direction.
The demons scatter on either side of the searing blast, losing their momentum as they slam into each other and tumble to the ground. Before they can regain their footing, Matron Tanavi is on them. She might be built like an auntie, but when she swings her heavy bronze war hammer overhead and brings it down on the fallen beasts, the earth cleaves in twain beneath the force of her strike, setting off an eruption of dirt and rock.
Ari grins fiendishly. "Fuck 'em up!"
Matron Tanavi has just enough time to roll her eyes before she readies her next swing. The head of the warhammer, having had its first taste of blood, now glows crimson. This is Tanavi's spiritual weapon, Maqyin. When it crashes into its next target—another demon built like a bull—spikes of coagulated blood pierce all the way through the beast's thick body and shoot out the other side, puncturing the creatures clustered around it with immense force.
Not to be outdone, Matron Jairani twirls in the air and brings Dutmaqt down in a straight line. The blow is swift and brutal, and in its wake bursts a wall of True Flame some twenty feet long and at least as tall. The more ground she incinerates, the tighter the demons have to pack together to avoid it, giving Matron Jairani a multitude of targets.
But Tanavi and Jairani can only cover so much ground. To Ari's left, Grand Matron Hvasira surges into the fray. In her hands is a war scythe, long and wicked and shining silver. That's Qiyoq. Its curved blade smokes with the same dark energy that Varul emits, and as the Grand Matron swings it in a wide arc, Qiyoq cuts through three beasts like a hot knife through butter. Unlike Tanavi and Jairani's weapons, the scythe doesn't explode with flashy spiritual energy. The Devouring Flame is a double-edged blade; it must be wielded carefully or it will bite its allies just as viciously as its enemies.
On the opposite side of the circle, the scouts have turned to aid Mother Misery and Matron Rusala, sending storms of arrows to pincushion the approaching demons. Mother Misery, in her "scraggly old woman" guise, lifts her hands as she chants, and a white haze spews out in front of her. As it floods the eyes and mouths and nostrils of the dead, those ungainly corpses start to jerk and shudder, struggling to their feet amidst the stampede. Matron Rusala waves a golden censer disgorging clouds of emerald smoke that turns the demons dazed and unsteady. But it's obvious that, without the raw force of someone like Tanavi or Jairani, they're struggling to hold back the onslaught. Ari turns Techa with her heels and whistles. A streak of red-gold emerges from the smoking circle of bodies a few lines back and shoots over the heads of the wave in front of her, and Aleneth-Dal returns to her hand purring like a kitten.
Because she's the bestest girl ever, Techa pushes through the chaos and awful loud sounds and sprints to the opposite end of the clearing as Ari lifts Aleneth-Dal over her head and twirls it. Slowly, the clouds start to mimic her movements, coalescing into a swirl of deepest gray and crimson.
She needs to find the caster (or casters), but she can't risk leaving the central formation unprotected, especially when she has no idea where the big guys are. And frankly, even if she does manage to dispatch the handler, their demon army will still be a problem. A less pressing problem without a single driving intelligence pushing them to attack the same target strategically, but if the army scatters, some of the stragglers might find their way to the villages peppered along this stretch of the royal highway. No matter how she spins this, it's trouble.
So for the time being, she pushes it from her mind and focuses on channeling her energy into Aleneth-Dal, allowing it to whisper sweetly to the grumbling clouds above. The reserves of her core are deep and potent, but that doesn't mean she can waste them willy-nilly. Many of her most useful techniques are numina leeches; she has to pace herself or she'll be worthless later.
Finally, Aleneth-Dal is sated and begins to whine in her hand, begging to be set loose. Ari doesn't even need to throw it this time: the javelin shoots from her grip as fast as a scout's arrow, zipping up into the air and then across the line of approaching demons, little more than a gilded blur in the night. But in its wake, the sky opens up and disgorges a thick pillar of lightning that reaches out and strikes the earth like a celestial fist—and this time, it doesn't immediately retract, instead dragging red fingers of scorching electricity down the line of beasts. Techa yelps at the colossal sound of thunder and screaming creatures and the burning light, shying away from the plume of smoke and dust and vaporized blood that chokes the air.
Rusala and Mother Misery both gawp at her as the pillar of lightning dissipates. The trench it leaves behind is deep and smoldering and filled with blackened bodies.
Matron Rusala opens her mouth helplessly several times. Ari is at this point pretty much totally deaf, but she can just make out the shape of the syllables her lips form.
Saint Batira? How?
"Later!" Ari shouts at the top of her lungs, not particularly caring if anyone can hear her.
And, as it happens, it doesn't matter if anyone does, because the ground suddenly starts to rumble even harder than before. Ari whips around on Techa, who is shivering violently but still responds to her commands. She's going to get all the treats after this.
The treeline on the far end of the clearing is shaking, leaves shedding from trembling branches in fits and starts. Ari is already whistling for Aleneth-Dal as she urges Techa forward once more, through the clash of demons. Spells and blood and arrows fly, weapons sink into meat, demons scream and casters shout. The air is thick with smoke and the clearing is alive with swirling magic; the Amnion feels thin and fragile. If it tears… well, it won't be the worst thing in the world for her, but it'll probably be a boon to the heavenborn enemy casters as well. If she has means of quickly converting raw anima to refined numina, certainly they do as well. And perhaps they'll open another rift…?
A contorted cat-looking demon with two heads darts in front of them; Techa leaps forward with a snarl and clamps its neck in her powerful jaws, shaking it viciously like a wet rag until it falls limp. But another cat demon flits around her rear and rakes out with filthy claws, gouging lines in her flank. Techa yowls in pain and Ari lashes out furiously with a kick that pummels the beast's head into fine dark mist. But they can't afford to get held up—apologetically, she funnels a thin stream of her own numina into Techa and drives her harder even though her sides are heaving and her mouth froths with blood-tinged foam. If they stop, they'll be overwhelmed.
Techa seems to understand it, or at least understand her urgency. She pins her ears back and throws herself forward, barreling through oncoming demons with enough force to topple them.
Aleneth-Dal streaks back to her hand just as a massive shape bowls over a number of trees as it emerges into the moonlight.
Another fucking Harbinger?! Another one?! Seriously!!! This is so unfair! Where are they getting these bastards from, a demon breeding farm???
The last one loosely resembled a horse, at least around the skull, but this one looks more humanoid. Its puce-skinned face is horrific—elongated like it's been tugged by a god at either end, bitterly sunken, its expression warped into anguished fury—but it still has two eyes, a nose, and a gaping mouth. Greasy dark hair spills from its mottled head down its naked body to form a sort of squalid pelt. It runs hunched over like the last one, and its eyes are two angry yellow boils deep in its sockets. Livid purple magma drips from its slack, pitted lips. Fucking great.
Its mouth opens in a bellow that even she can hear as it spots the coven's formation. Droplets of magma fly forth like spittle, sizzling mightily as it falls on the backs of the lesser demons below and eats directly through flesh and bone. The demons howl in pain as they're burned alive. Ohhhh, goddammit.
Ari floods Aleneth-Dal with numina as the Harbinger resumes its charge. She has to hope she can blast this thing back before it reaches them—
She doesn't get the chance. Something huge and ink-dark explodes from the ground in front of her, flooding the air with a tidal wave of thick, frigid shadow. Techa screeches to a halt just in time to avoid it; Ari shudders despite herself as the deep arctic chill of that magic slithers past her skin to settle in her bones anyway. The feeling is—immense, as though a thousand-stone weight is pressing down on her from every angle. She grunts and bows over Techa's quivering back to brace herself, overwhelmed into dumb stillness as she gapes at the scene before her.
She can just barely discern the sinuous curves of the massive, muscular serpent still emerging from the ground through the fog of living darkness. It's mind-bogglingly long, and blinking at regular intervals along its sides are dozens of luminous silver eyes. Their slitted pupils dart back and forth, some of them fixating on her, some on the demons around them. Just above the cloud of swelling gloom, maybe forty feet up, a head emerges: long and horned and encased in a skull of shining dark bone studded with knife-like fangs, more draconic than serpentine.
The Queen's Spite opens her enormous jaws and, before the Harbinger can arrest its momentum, strikes with devastating speed and power, fangs latching deep into the Harbinger's meaty shoulder. Demons flee in all directions as the two titans crash to the ground in their midst, but many of them are caught by the cloud of shadows: as they run, their limbs lock up, crystals of black frost pebbling their noses and mouths. Already Suyan's glimmering black coils have begun to wrap around the Harbinger's body; its violet magma spittle smokes furiously when it touches her scaled hide but cannot burn through. The Harbinger cries out in pain and putrid anger, pummeling her with boulder-sized fists, but the silver eyes on her sides disappear before they're struck and the blows rebound harmlessly off what must be diamond-hard scales.
Ari feels faint with shock. Suyan stayed. She actually stayed to help. Well… maybe that's not so surprising; Sahan clearly lured these people here for a reason, but still—
She's so shocked that she doesn't immediately notice the second huge shape bursting through the treeline until its jaws latch onto Suyan's throat. The great serpent rears back with a furious, rattling hiss, the two silver points deep in the sockets of that skull flaring. She doesn't release her body's hold on the choking Harbinger, but she whips around to face this new threat—
Oh, fuck. Ari wants to cry. How! How does this night keep getting worse!!!
Olive green scales, burning yellow eyes, curling horns, a stout, four-legged body topped with an ornate silver and emerald green saddle. A drake. A divine beast. And its rider, a figure in bright silver armor with a plumed helm. They hold a long, deadly-looking spear in one hand and the drake's reins in the other.
Male dragons are smaller than their female counterparts, and they can't fly, but they can still breathe dragonfire. Smoke pours from the drake's jaws as it rears back and lets loose a gout of True Flame that only misses Suyan because she disperses into mist. Without her muscular coils supporting it, the Harbinger crashes to the ground with an echoing wail.
Despair clogs up Ari's innards like cold grease. What is she supposed to do? She can't just—leave Suyan to face a Harbinger and a fucking dragon by herself, but she's likely to get in the way if she throws herself directly into the fray. In this form, Suyan relies on wide-scale attacks. If Ari gets too close, she'll only force Suyan to work around her. She'll have to do what she can from a distance.
On that note, Aleneth-Dal is primed and ready to go, and Ari lets it fly. It soars directly towards the drake, sparking with menace. But no one manages to tame a dragon by being a slouch: the drake's rider spots the threat and throws up a barrier so swiftly Ari can't help but be impressed. Aleneth-Dal strikes that pale blue wall of energy but doesn't break through no matter how hard it wriggles. Even the flash of lightning that follows it only puts a crack in the barrier.
Ari swallows a sigh. Well. It was worth a shot.
As the Harbinger struggles to right itself, that cloud of mist begins to reform, bright silver eyes shining through the dark as a serpentine body starts to take shape. Ari is much more startled when a voice pierces through her mind, at once incredibly familiar and deeply foreign.
Stay out of this, mutt, Suyan snaps between her ears in a voice that is so like Sahan's but—more youthful, more expressive, less settled and refined in its arrogance. Like a spoiled lordling with something to prove rather than a seasoned monarch at the apex of her power.
Ari almost laughs. Suyan didn't have to fake her personality at all when she donned her false identity, did she?
Wordlessly, Ari recalls Aleneth-Dal. She could stay to help regardless—she does have other tools at her disposal—but if Suyan can hold her own here then Ari can focus her attention on trying to reach the enemy casters. If she can just disrupt them enough, maybe she can force the two major threats to split their attention…
It's as she's pondering how best to do this that she feels a pulse of magic through the clearing. She startles, glancing up at the chaos around her. The coven is doing an admirable job of pushing back the demons, but she spots several wounded scouts dragged into the defensive array, moaning in agony as Mother Mouse's physickers frantically attend them. She's incredibly relieved to see Tselai still slinging purgative arrows from Najasa, but even from here she can make out the weary expression on his face and the tremor in his arms as he draws. Ambren is crouched next to one of the wounded scouts, a pale blue glow engulfing his hands as he does what he can to patch the woman up. Ranan is, surprisingly, stuck to Tselai like glue, his face set with determination as he reaches out to grab Tselai's arm and funnel numina into him. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Tselai doesn't shake him off and even inclines his head in curt gratitude.
Who knew all it took to make those two get along was a near-death experience!
But Ari's fond inventory of her ducklings is disrupted by another pulse of magic that she can feel in her core. Her heart drops. She recognizes this spell. She spins around, hoping against hope that this is somehow Mother Misery's work, but she's not that lucky. All around the clearing, the clumps of dead demons begin to stir as someone pours bucketloads of energy into their shattered corpses.
No, no, no. Come on, no.
A grandmaster diabolist, a grandmaster necromancer, and a dragonrider? Working together? Just to get to Suyan? She feels like she's missing something. Suyan is a hugely powerful weapon, but is she really worth all this? What is happening here?!
Ari clenches her jaw so hard her teeth ache as clusters of dead demons stagger to their feet. There are shouts of dismay from the coven members around her. Some of the bodies are broken beyond fixing, but this is hardly an obstacle to a grandmaster: the ones that are little more than chunks of meat hobble over to one another and begin to meld, skin and organs liquefying and clinging together to create ever more twisted flesh puppets.
This sucks so bad.
With hardly a second thought, Ari dismisses Aleneth-Dal. She can't afford to let it drain her reserves dry when all the damage it throws out can be repaired like this. Aleneth-Dal rattles petulantly in her hand as it fades into red-gold sparks, and immediately the stormbank overhead begins to drift apart.
What to do, what to do… She could call upon her own necromancy and try to wrest control of the risen corpses away from the caster, but she's never pitted herself against a grandmaster before. She has a lot of raw power for a mortal, however thin her godsblood runs, but she doesn't know how she matches up to the heavenborn. If she tries and fails, the backlash could knock her out of commission for the rest of the fight. No. Too risky.
As her eyes dart across the battlefield, she notices something that seems obvious in retrospect: the demons felled by Grand Matron Hvasira's Devouring Flame don't respond to the necromancer's call. The Devouring Flame, wielded by a master, can sever the soul's connection to the body so thoroughly that it can never be mended.
Varul. She has to wake Varul.
Ari grabs the hilt of the dagger at her waist and pulls it from its sheath, pressing her palm desperately against the flat of its bronze blade. "Come on, sweetheart, wake up," she murmurs as she clutches to the dull connection between her core and her spiritual weapon. It's easier to funnel energy to Varul than to anyone or anything else, and now she does so with abandon. She has to take the risk. Even if it empties her out, it won't matter if she can just wake Varul. Varul has protected her since the day Sahan gifted her to Ari, never leaving her side, throwing herself into every fight with abandon.
Varul is the reason she's alive now.
Ari shuts her eyes, relying on Techa to dodge demons and risen corpses without her direction, and focuses entirely on rousing her spiritual weapon.
Come on, come on, come on… Power pours out of her in a steady stream, emptying into the vast reservoir that is Varul's boundless hunger. She's not called the Divine Famine for nothing; this shard of Sahan guzzles down her numina by the bucketful and eagerly opens her mouth for more. Her concentration is broken, briefly, by a huge black tail whipping out of the shadows and smashing into one of the empty carriages, reducing it to splinters. A whole pack of demons falls with it.
Finally, she can sense Varul stirring—the faintest sigh, like she's just beneath the surface of awareness. Eagerly, Ari opens herself up, letting Varul drink as much of her spirit as she can spare. The chaos around her fades to an indistinct blur as Ari focuses all her attention on that golden thread connecting her to Varul.
"Hayardam gunot, Varul." Wake up.
All at once, the dagger in her hand melts into a flickering dark flame, and an instant later that flame explodes. It curls around her like a lover's hand, its avid warmth pleasant even against her sweat-soaked skin. Almost reluctantly, it withdraws and begins to take shape, billowing and hissing as it grows into a beast large enough to rival the drake. Four long legs tipped in savage claws; a large, muscular body coated in thick dark fur braided with all manner of tiny charms and paper talismans; a powerful, horned lupine head encased in the same shining dark bone as Suyan's. Two brilliant silver eyes.
And three scars, glowing molten gold against her pitch-black fur: one upon her throat, and one through each shoulder.
The sight of them makes Ari's eyes sting viciously.
The Divine Famine hits the ground with a rumble, claws digging deep divots in the soil. A mane of black fire crackles upon her spine; the charms braided in her fur tinkle cheerily. Then she throws back her head and howls—a sound like countless screaming voices, like a frigid wind whipping through an empty mountain pass, like the screeching clash of a thousand-thousand blades.
"What the fuck?" she distantly hears Jairani shout.
Ari hasn't seen this form since before her death. After Varul revived her, she'd been too weak to return to her truer shape, reduced instead to donning the guise of the ragged sighthound that's become such a familiar sight around Kachai Fortress.
"Varul," Ari sniffles, barely restraining the urge to bawl her eyes out with sheer pride.
That massive head swings around to regard her, silver eyes shining, jaws parted to reveal a king's hoard of razor-sharp teeth. Techa cowers beneath that ravenous gaze, but Ari waves brightly, blowing a half-dozen kisses Varul's way.
"Beautiful! Great job, sweetheart! You're the best!"
Varul's lips peel back in a wolfy grin that seems almost shy (if you ignore the fact that it reveals even more of her deadly teeth).
Then, as though showing off, Varul shakes her impressive self, snaps around, and opens her slavering jaws to expel a blast of dark flame that reduces a wide swathe of demons in front of her to shrieking cinders that cannot be pasted back together by even a grandmaster.
Ari claps. So cool! Clearly the best, best, best Heavenly Blade!
As the Devouring Flame eats through the pneumatic cores of the demons struck by her breath, Varul greedily sucks the remnants of their spiritual energy down her gullet. Golden notches ignite on either side of her throat as she swallows, and the flames on her back kick higher.
Ari watches as some of the demons hesitate, their handler clearly recalculating everything in the face of not one but two Heavenly Blades—particularly one that counters them so effectively. Varul was made to plow through armies, stoking herself hotter with every kill. Her Devouring Flame is potent enough to break down even souls, and Varul herself can devour that energy endlessly to sustain herself through a battle of attrition. Even better, her control over the Devouring Flame far outstrips Hvasira's (sorry, Grand Matron, it's just the truth!).
In one fell swoop, the tides of this battle have turned in Kachai Coven's favor.
What their enemies hopefully don't realize is that this Varul and the Varul so feared in Saimerian war stories aren't quite the same. She's still very powerful, still very dangerous, but she poured so much of herself into rebuilding Ari's body and soul. She's only just recovered enough to take on this form after devouring the last Harbinger; Ari can't let her push herself too hard.
Unfortunately, there's someone else's ego she forgot to consider. A great many silver eyes ignite in Suyan's cloud of darkness, locking onto Varul unerringly. A sharp hiss rends the air, and the lingering warmth on Ari's skin fades as the air chills in the face of the great serpent's fury.
Ugh, of course. Of course the one trait from Sahan that every single Heavenly Blade inherited is her unimpeachable belief in her own superiority. Even though they're all pieces of the same person, they still can't overcome the desire to compete with each other—particularly now that Varul serves a different master.
"Lord Suyan!" Ari calls irritably. "Don't we have bigger problems right now?!"
Thankfully, Suyan's huffing and puffing is interrupted by the drake breathing a plume of violet flame that pierces her veil of shadows, forcing her to refocus her attention on her actual adversaries.
Varul snarls—a deep, guttural sound—and leaps, crushing smaller demons underfoot as she bounds through the enemy ranks, unleashing devastating blasts of black fire as quickly as she can channel the energy for them. The diabolist and the necromancer aren't perfectly in concert; some beasts flee, others throw themselves at Varul's feet, trying desperately to overwhelm her with sheer numbers. The huge wolf kicks and bites and stomps and burns, all the while shimmering beneath the visible cloak of energy she absorbs constantly from the foes she destroys.
For the first time, Ari feels a flicker of hope.
But, as expected, it's dashed in due time.
The drake explodes from the shadows, its olive hide covered with hoarfrost and speckled with fang-shaped gouges. Upon its back, the silver-clad rider lifts that fancy-looking spear and points it skyward. From its tip shoots a light that streaks towards the stars and then, with a boom, explodes into a dazzling white flare that lifts the pall of night.
There… cannot possibly be more forces in reserve, right? Right?!
At once, the horde of demons suddenly starts to peel back. Ari stares at them in shock, masses of risen corpses and battered living monsters scurrying back towards the treeline. They're… retreating?
The drake screams as Suyan strikes at its flank again and again, forcing it to engage her, but the Harbinger (which is in much worse shape) stumbles from the shadows with a groan, limping to rejoin its comrades. Varul, now totally unimpeded by the ants below, gives chase.
Her heart lifts. That's it, then. They're—they're going to turn back!
And then another sound splits the night open. A rhythmic thumping, like distant thunder, or a titan's heartbeat. A roar, so impossibly loud and piercing that even from a distance it scrapes her abused eardrums raw.
Scalp tingling with cold dread, Ari slowly looks over her shoulder.
There's a shadow in the sky. Little more than a far-off smudge, but swiftly growing closer, louder, more defined. That thumping sound… wings.
A female. A High Dragon.
Everything in Ari's stomach turns to ice. Her heart pounds frantically inside her ribs. She feels, simultaneously, the urge to vomit and the urge to drop to the ground and cower.
She looks at the translucent blue glow of the defensive array and knows, immediately and intimately, that it won't stand up to a High Dragon's flames. It'll splinter under the first blast. The coven's sentinels are strong, but they're only human. Even if they had the rest of the night, they couldn't build a barrier that would shield them from a High Dragon's wrath. Her eyes lock on her disciples, staring frozen at that rapidly-approaching shadow with abject terror.
Before her conscious mind catches up, her body is urging Techa back, back to the heart of the camp, back behind the defensive array. Varul has given up on the Harbinger and is sprinting towards her, whining anxiously. Suyan can't let up on the drake; the two of them are locked in a bloody tangle of scaly coils and clawing limbs.
There's another roar, and the ground shakes with it. The High Dragon is close enough to make out details, now: she's not as large as Syuasi was, not by a long shot, but she's big enough. Her wingspan can be measured in the hundreds of feet. Her scales are deepest red; her eyes glow to match. As she draws level with the ground, every might flap of her wings rustles the treetops.
As soon as she passes through the soothing coolness of the defensive array, Ari throws herself from Techa's back. There are people clustered all around her, shouting, screaming, crying, clutching onto each other. Some try to run, though there's nowhere to go.
"Stay with me!" Ari bellows, as loudly as her lungs will allow her. Someone is talking to her, someone is grabbing at her arm, but she shrugs them off. She drops to one knee on the grass, which stinks of blood, and closes her eyes. She has seconds. That's it. With no finesse, no grace, no care, she reaches into her core and pulls as hard as she can. Her spiritual veins twang with the force of the numina suddenly flooding through them; the blood ink under her flesh heats and spreads to the surface of her skin, spilling out in mesmerizing patterns as it works to regulate her overwhelming pneumatic flow.
The outside world fades, but even so she feels the wind pick up as the High Dragon approaches, hears the beating of its wings and the growling in its chest. The ground rumbles again as Varul skids to a stop just before her, snapping and snarling at the people surrounding her. There's a flash of light past her eyelids, and then two gloved hands grab her own—firm, reassuring, and deeply familiar even though she's never actually felt them before. Blindly, Ari tightens her grip on those hands. She wants to open her eyes, confirm her suspicions, but she can't. But she doesn't need to: warmth floods into her where their palms meet, even through both of their gloves. More spiritual energy, calm and abiding, tempering her own panic.
"I'm here, Dareja," a soft, steady voice murmurs. "Take whatever you need from me. It's yours."
Dareja. Most Revered One, Most Hallowed One. Hah. No need to be so formal! she wants to say. I don't deserve that title, she wants to say also.
She's never heard this voice before, exactly, not in this permutation, but of course she still recognizes it.
"Varul," she whispers past the dryness in her throat, the rabbiting of her pulse.
Those hands give hers a squeeze.
And then there's no more time for pleasantries. The light and heat and sound, when they come, are tremendous. The force of the High Dragon's breath seems to shake the foundations of the entire world. The barrier rattles, once, and then shatters beneath it, its final reserves spent absorbing the flame. Blistering heat still washes over her, but its killing force is dulled.
She shapes and molds and purifies the energy inside her as fast as she can, heedless of the damage it does to her body to channel this way. It'll heal.
"Stay!" Varul barks to the sobbing, yelling, panicking mass of bodies, but her hold on Ari's hands never falters. Her spiritual energy soothes the abrasions inside Ari's core, sheltering her from the violence of her own casting.
The High Dragons shrieks again. Coming around for a second pass.
Ari breathes in smoke, breathes out peace. Everything clicks into place. All the fear, all the pain pours out of her in that one breath, and all that's left behind is the song.
She opens her eyes. There's a woman crouched in front of her, clad in leathers and furs, her slate gray skin coated in sweat and grime, her stark white hair pulled back in a high tail pinned in place by an ornament of bone. Her expression is fierce, her amethyst eyes undaunted. Ari smiles at her, and some of that unshakeable confidence falters into quiet awe.
Ari opens her mouth, and when she speaks, her voice floods the air in waves of gold. "Qataah."
Protect.
The world itself unfurls, eager to please; reality reshapes itself to follow her command. A massive pulse of gilded flame consumes the camp, pouring out from Ari in an unstoppable torrent. It catches the hems of her cowering allies and winds its way through cloth and skin, meat and bone. It soothes and strengthens, sings and cajoles. One by one, her people—her flock—blink at her with eyes of molten gold, their faces slack with wonder, their wounds knitting together with ease, their parched souls drinking eagerly from the well of her life force. Ari gives and gives and gives, energy streaming from her in thick honeyed swells. And Varul gives and gives and gives back, never letting her run dry, her expression showing not one ounce of the strain she must feel.
As the High Dragon rights herself, soaring towards them with parted jaws, another barrier apparates into place around the formation. It comes together far more quickly than the first, shaped from spun gold instead of palest blue. This time, when the dragon roars out her flame, it bounces harmlessly off that tessellated dome. She screams in anger as she passes overhead, the thunder of her wings dulled by the echoing of the True Sun's song.
This is the power of the Ascendant Flame. This is the power she was elevated to sainthood for.
As she stands, people gather at her feet, stumbling, crawling, lowering themselves to kneel and bow and prostrate before her. Even the matrons, even Preceptor Lenara. Whatever she tells them to do now, they will listen without complaint. Only Varul is unaffected—but Varul follows her every command without any urging, and the open adoration in her gaze is not borne of any enchanting influence. Ari cups her cheek affectionately before she withdraws from the young woman's grasp. Ah, she really is so young, too. No older than twenty, if she has to guess. Was Sahan's hair really so pale in her youth, her eyes really so breathtakingly purple?
Ari lifts her gaze to the sky, to the dragon wheeling overhead. She can't hold this barrier forever. But that's alright. Distantly, she's aware of the drake groaning in agony as spears of black ice pierce its tough hide, its energy exhausted in its struggle to escape Suyan's suffocating grasp. The dragon screeches at the sound, drawing its wings in to dive at Suyan. Suyan merely slips into the fog, but the damage is done—the drake's broken body shudders as ice climbs up its twitching limbs. Divine beasts are resilient; if only the drake's flesh and bones were damaged, it might be pulled to safety now and survive, but Suyan's magic is not so easily cleansed. The High Dragon pulls back up sharply as a hail of ice shards flies from the shadows. Its super-heated flame disperses some of that cloud, but more swirls in to replace it as Suyan reshapes herself from the darkness.
Suyan can't duel a dragon from the ground, but that's alright too. As the High Dragon hurtles skyward, flapping its wings hard to make space, another shape descends from the clouds above it. The High Dragon immediately attempt to arrest its momentum, but it's too late: with a monumental, sky-splitting roar, the Queen's Fury, colossal and muscular and black as obsidian save for the ruff of gold feathers gleaming down her neck and spine, slams into the smaller dragon with talons outstretched, sending them both spinning through the air in a stupendous whirl of violet flame. The High Dragon bleats in pain.
The entire clearing glows beneath that molten sky, and in the shadows of the treeline, the army of demons and risen corpses finally makes to flee for good. But though they're swift, they aren't as swift as Suyan. She opens her jaws and breathes cloud after cloud of icy darkness, sending it scything towards the retreating monsters in an inescapable deluge. Every creature it touches finds itself slowing as ice crystallizes in its veins.
Overhead, the High Dragon, clearly outmatched, tries to slip between Harasi's sword-sized talons, but Harasi's fountaining rage makes her nimble; she catches the tip of the smaller dragon's wing in her powerful jaws and shakes it savagely, nearly ripping the joint from the body.
Her rider slings spells left and right, frenzied, but none of them land. An answering force swats them away with contemptuous ease.
Ari's breath catches in her throat. Sahan.
There are hands clutching at the hem of her coat, at her ankles, her knees, her wrists. Varul shoves some of them away, but she's only one body among many, and she won't hurt Ari's flock. Ari pays them no mind. Her eyes are glued to the spectacle in the sky—the billowing flames and spurts of hot blood, the sparking spells and clashing talons.
The smaller dragon is growing weaker. The membranes of her wings are shredded; her cream-colored belly is dyed as red as her scales with blood. She makes one final dash for freedom, twisting from Harasi's jaws, heedless of the chunk of flesh that rips loose in doing so, but it's too late. Harasi opens her mouth and engulfs her in a ball of dragonfire. The High Dragon's squeals pitifully as she falls, pinwheeling through the sky in a haze of smoke and lingering flame, to crash to the ground below with a boom like a mountain splitting in twain.
Distantly, Ari is aware that she should stop channeling, stop calling upon the Ascendant Flame, but she feels so… safe. So settled. Even the thought of seeing Sahan again doesn't rattle her, doesn't twist her insides to bits. Varul is gripping her shoulder, saying something urgent, but Ari can't—or maybe won't—hear it.
That massive black dragon circles overhead, shedding speed, eyeing the smoldering wreckage below, before coasting closer to the ground. Ari loses track of time watching her set the forest aflame, scorching those last fleeing demons and perhaps their masters as well. Varul gives up on trying to talk to her and just holds her by the shoulders, a soothing and solid presence to latch onto.
The song echoes between her ears.
Somewhere nearby, Harasi is landing. The treetops are buffeted by her wingbeats; the earth shakes as her feet strike it. She lowers her bulk to the ground, extending a wing so the figure on her back can dismount gracefully. Ari watches with rapt attention, heart aflutter, not quite nervous but searingly aware.
Her flock turns as one to follow her gaze. As that figure draws unhurriedly closer, indistinct save as a tall silhouette of black and silver, another emotion bubbles up in her chest.
Ah. She's quite angry at this person, isn't she?
On the heels of that realization, the golden barrier melts away, needing no further instruction save the bloom of her emotions.
The air is hot and choked with soot. Everywhere she looks, violet flame roars. Tree limbs groan torturously as they collapse; dying beasts wail and shriek. The figure comes closer, never moving any faster, never giving any indication of strong feeling. As befitting a queen, the robes fluttering in the scalding wind are extraordinarily fine, glittering with elaborate silver embroidery to match the silver chains dangling from ears and horns and throat and shoulders, the branching, ornate silver headpiece inlaid with chunks of brilliant amethyst. Despite the grime, Sahan's steel-colored skin is unblemished and undirtied, her eyes more lustrous than all the platinum in the world.
She stops. She looks at Ari. Ari gazes back. Her stony disdain does not melt away, but her eyes seem to grow a bit brighter, a bit more fervent even as her chin lifts derisively.
Ari thinks of golden flames searing a new expression onto that cold, perfect face—anything at all. Fear, maybe. Sorrow. Joy. Recognition. Anything but that blank disparagement. She's so sick of that.
The energy around her pulses, keen to obey.
It never gets a chance. As Varul shouts a warning she can't make out, trying to push her out of the way but too weak to manage it after emptying her core's reserves for Ari's use, living darkness flares behind her. Ari turns around just in time to see a giant serpent's open mouth lunging towards her.