It smote their systems like a mutual shock, everyone falling into deep silence as they all suddenly recalled why they were here. Layla watched the enormous Dragon skeleton pass by. It wasn’t close to the highway, a quarter-mile or so out, but it was massive and couldn’t be missed, big as a young blue whale. As Layla and the others stared at it while Yousry drove on, she saw how the bones glittered in the high-noon day, an aquamarine-rose sheen to them. Every Crystal Dragon had the color of a different gemstone as they matured, Layla knew. The color generally didn’t have anything to do with their power, only their bloodlines, and as they passed the skeleton, Layla wondered if it had been anyone Dusk knew, or one of the Tunisians.
She couldn’t tell, of course. Layla thought perhaps Dusk could, staring at the remains with a vibrating intensity that rumbled the entire car like it just might shake the Jeep apart. But as they drove on, he said nothing, and she and Adrian didn’t prod.
All the same, it was a reminder of the ancient battle. As they drove on, winding steeply into the heights now up tier after tier of the plateau, they saw Dragon skeletons scattered in clusters of crystal-snowed rocks, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups as if they’d been battling. It was a gruesome reminder of the fact that Dusk’s clan and the Tunisians had fought each other to the death, obviously using the cliff-sides and sandstone pinnacles to hammer their enemies against the rocks in order to make them submit.
Or die.
As Yousry drove around a last pinnacle into the citadel, they suddenly saw the entire city spread out before them, layer upon layer of buildings all made out of crystal marching up in tiers to its heights. Layla had never seen anything so lovely. Sprawling through the sandstone pinnacles at the top of the plateau, it was like a desert Machu Picchu, the city glittering under the sun in every jewel tone imaginable. Beautiful like a gemstone of a thousand colors, the city glittered under the wide desert sky. Clouds wreathed the lost heights of pyramids and temples and gargantuan effigies as large as those in Giza, but made entirely out of diamond and sapphire, rose quartz, citrine, and more.
The sight stole Layla’s breath. But even as lovely as it was, it was also horrid. Though many buildings stood, there were just as many that had been blasted to bits, often with dozens of massive Crystal Dragon skeletons littering the ruins. The devastation was terrible, entire sections of the city reduced to rubble. Dragon bones littered everything, some massive as fully mature dinosaurs, dead like all the rest of the city. Every skeleton glittered in different colors beneath the noontime sky, the blinding fall of crystal snow laying over it all like a beautiful shroud.
Layla felt Dusk’s breath clench in his throat as his chest hitched. Lifting his fingers, he rubbed tears out from behind his chic sunglasses, and Layla’s heart broke for him. She didn’t know if he had memories of the city from his childhood, but whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this. It was awful, and Layla’s heart twisted as tears slipped from beneath Dusk’s sunglasses at last. She felt him screaming through their Bind as he set his jaw and Layla twined her fingers though his, to let him know she was there. He gripped her fingers hard; too hard. But Layla didn’t ask for her hand back. Reaching out also, Adrian covered their hands with his, watching it all as Yousry drove silently in.
The city had been lovely, Layla saw as they drove past two rose quartz pyramids that flanked the highway like a portal into the city proper, though one pyramid was hopelessly smashed. The city was still beautiful despite the damage and the dead, with sprawling sandstone plateaus and hills lifting to its heights, all of it grown over with crystal plazas and gardens, archways, tiers, and buildings. Some buildings were Romanesque in their design, while others were decidedly Egyptian. Some mansion-houses and temples had a Persian feel to them, as if the Crystal Dragons simply borrowed whatever architecture they liked to grow their city of splendor. But what would have been marble columns or granite in other cultures were done here in pure ruby and garnet, citrine and sapphire, aquamarine and vibrant emerald – and often an incredible meld of many colors.
It was a wealth of strength and glory shining beneath the desert sun, and despite its half-ruined state, Layla felt how it had been, and how it could be again. Setting his jaw in the front seat, Dusk had ceased to cry as they wound their way up the heights along the main highway. Some lost magic still lingered here, and as they came into the heart of the citadel, Layla saw beautiful hanging gardens in the ruins. Run riot with flowers, trees, and vines since no one had been around to tend them for centuries, they were lovely and wild, as if a desert forest had claimed the ruins in the absence of civilization. The weather was almost humid in the central city, ultra-green vegetation crawling over ruined domes and walks of the city-scape.
As if it could somehow take all that destruction back to beauty.
Clouds wreathed the upper reaches of the city, though there was no rain in them today, creating a haunting pattern of light and shade as they reached a truly massive plateau of temples at the very top. All of these were Egyptian, designed just like the long-ago temples of the Nile. The highway suddenly split, going around one centrally-featured temple, and Dusk signaled for them to stop before its massive columns.
As everyone climbed out of the Jeep, Layla watched patterns shimmer in the temple’s walls and massive Egyptian colonnades. Built entirely out of yellow citrine, the temple shone in the noontime, flowing patterns of lotus, cartouches, and ankhs revealed in its depths as the sunlight struck it. It was like watching waterfalls of sunshine pass through rivers of molten gold, and as Layla marveled at it with a tremendous awe, she felt the rest doing so also. Surrounded by lush gardens, jasmine and honeysuckle vines crawled up the walls, though they couldn’t obscure the temple’s incredible grace. But while everyone else gazed at the temple, Dusk turned, staring back down the highway from whence they’d come.
Looking out over the destruction of his city.
“This is the Temple of the Sun,” Dusk spoke quietly, though his resonant voice echoed in the overgrown plaza like he’d yelled. “This was the main celebration temple of the city, and the place they confirmed their Kings and Queens. When battle came, this was where they hid the children. I snuck out. I wanted to watch the battle. I saw the carnage, and… it shocked me. I know I ran. I don’t remember anything after that, except watching my father fall trying to protect me, somewhere else in the city. I don’t remember anything more until I was cradled in Yousry’s arms.”
“Yousry? You found Dusk as a child after the battle?” Layla blinked, glancing over at the Djinn. “But I thought Emir Rhakvir found Dusk, wandering out in the desert?”
“Not exactly.” Yousry spoke soberly, his face sad as he glanced at Layla. “I was nearby one hundred and fifty years ago, when the Tunisians traveled here through the earth by the Thin Ways. Possessed like devils, the entire desert heaved as they came, and deep in meditation in the hills just to the north, I felt it. Always looking for a good story, I followed the vibrations upon my winds, arriving just in time to see carnage explode through the city. It was awful, but I couldn’t look away. I watched it all, for the three days it took for the last Crystal Dragon to finally fall. And when I spied a small child wandering away from the plateau afterwards down in the desert to the west, god knows how he got down there, screaming and crying his heart out and causing earthquakes all the way… I knew I had to get to him before anyone else did. Even so, Dusk killed three villages in his misery – mixed villages of Djinn and half-humans living in the Twilight Realm nearby. Intercessoria don’t forgive such things, even from children. So I saved the boy and brought him to Emir Rhakvir, who was busy in the area at the time, negotiating with a delegation of Egyptian Desert Dragons. In his mercy, Emir adopted the boy and negotiated a truce with the Intercessoria as Dusk’s protector – I still have no idea precisely how he managed it. And here we are.”
Layla was about to respond to Yousry’s awful story, when she felt something shudder the entire city in a tremendous shockwave, the whole plateau trembling beneath their feet. Like the earth had become thunder, that massive shockwave shook their group where they stood. As if a vibration of earthquakes and tsunamis could manifest in the air and become pure sound, that enormous concussion poured in from every corner of the city, towards the highway. Hitting the highway’s broad causeway and flowing up it in a fast wave, that vibration roared as it came, ringing broken temples and hale ones all around like a jangling symphony of bells.
It was terrible, like the vibrations in the crystal wall before Dusk had brought it down – and in that cacophonous roar, Layla thought she heard voices screaming. Flooding the world with wrath as they roared, it was a sound Layla couldn’t escape, not just inside her ears but also deep inside her skull. The terrible sound was in her very bones. And as that roar rushed up the highway to their position, Dusk slammed up a crystal shield fast around them all, even Yousry this time. Arching in a dome above them, Dusk’s shield even went under their feet. As the sound rushed up the hill and surrounded them, screaming like a million specters all at once, Layla felt the force of it rattle Dusk’s shield-wall to its foundation.
“Jesus Christ!” Adrian swore, his aqua eyes enormous as he raised his hands in shock, blue-red flames sparking fast in them, though even Layla could see there was nothing to fight. Roaring, surging, furious, that sound menaced Dusk’s shield for fifteen seconds, rushing around them like a never-ending wave of sonic booms, before surging into the temple behind them and careening up to the sky, gone. As Dusk let his shield-wall drop, breathing hard and ashen from holding that sound at bay, the entire party shuddered.
Though Layla still felt a press of malevolent spirits in the air.
“The Crystal dead!” Yousry spoke urgently, his eyes wide. “We have angered them by coming here!”
“More like, they were already pissed off that they’re dead, and now we’re intruding on their burial ground.” Adrian growled deeply, his hands still up as if fire might somehow be necessary.
“This isn’t a burial ground,” Dusk countered soberly, gazing around the ruins. “This is an open grave, Adrian. None of these Dragons have been laid to rest yet, and they’re pissed about it. Not to mention the way they died; brutal rather than peaceful.”
“So how do we lay them to rest?” Layla spoke, raising her hands and sparking a red-gold fire in her palms just as they felt another malevolent push of vibration coming their way again. “Because if I’m not mistaken, we’re not going to last against much more of this.”
“Forget the fire, grab me and hold on!” Dusk roared as he grit his teeth, then cast another thick shield-sphere around them all. Layla and Adrian seized his shoulders, adding their power to his – and their Bind rose not a moment too soon. That wave of screaming, furious energy rushed up the causeway again, hammering Dusk’s shields and making them crack this time. With a terrible wrenching sound, the Jeep was suddenly eviscerated by those malevolent vibrations, tearing it apart from the gas tank up as if the spirits were furious they couldn’t get the intruders. Everything they’d brought with them was torn to shreds in that hurtling mass of sound. As it threw pieces of the Jeep and all its contents at Dusk’s dome like hundred-mile-an-hour fastballs, Dusk cried out, trembling under the strain as his whole body shook.
Layla and Adrian held their hands clamped to Dusk’s shoulders, holding him fast from falling. Their power as a trio blossomed out through the Bind, but even so, Dusk was already weak from having expended so much energy getting here. As the last piece of Jeep was hurtled into his crystal sphere, he screamed, suddenly sprouting a vicious nosebleed.
The fury of the Crystal Dragon dead roared away, and with a deep shudder, Dusk let his shields drop. But he wiped at his bloody nose with his bare wrist, cursing as he breathed hard.
“Is there anywhere we can hide from this, Dusk?” Layla asked urgently. “Inside the temple?”
“They’ll find us.” He shook his head. “They’re channeling their magics through all the crystal floes and architecture in this entire city. It goes deep underground, Layla, in massive caverns all through the plateau. There’s no place we can run from them, not without flying out of here anyway.” Dusk glanced to Adrian, and Adrian gave a sober nod.
“If we have to, I’m on it.” He growled darkly. “Better to retreat and figure this out another day than die right now.”
