It exploded. Like a bomb had hit the milky wall, it blasted apart, each massive shard gold-edged as if gilded by Layla’s power. Throwing up a fast shield of wind, Layla was thrown down to the floor from the force of her blast. As the wall exploded out, enormous masses of glittering gemstone in a wealth of colors were suddenly tumbling down upon her from behind the wall. And as they poured down, Layla realized what she was seeing.
Bones.
Thousands upon thousands of Crystal Dragon bones.
CHAPTER 29 – DIAMOND
It took everything Layla had to hold her shield-wall as that mass of Crystal Dragon bones poured down over her, scattering across the octagonal catacomb and crashing into the walls. As she watched the bones come, Layla realized what she was seeing behind the catacomb’s broken wall – masses of dis-articulated Crystal Dragon bones piled in a tremendous underground grave that reached back three hundred feet or more into a dark hall. So vast that the light from Layla’s location couldn’t even reach it, she stared with enormous eyes as those bones, some huge as mammoth or dinosaur bones, poured down upon her.
As the cascade finally stopped from the mass grave like the catacombs beneath Paris, Layla heard a whirling, screaming sound rush through her oubliette. With a terrible wind, Layla was suddenly assaulted with roaring tremolos of power like she, Dusk, and Adrian had experienced in Egypt. With the unleashing of their bones, the unrestful Crystal Dragon dead to whom those bones belonged had also been unleashed – and they were furious, racing around Layla with a ringing roar that shook her and Adrian’s underground prison like earthquakes beneath a crystal mountain. Covering her ears, Layla wanted to hide from that tremendous sound, but even as she shrank back, the drakaina inside her took charge. With a violent roar, Layla screamed all her borrowed Crystal power into that maelstrom, bringing that surging, careening noise to an abrupt halt.
As one, she felt the bodiless spirits of the Crystal dead turn to stare at her.
And as one, Layla felt their attention in each grain of diamond sand inside her.
They were the same. Layla could feel it as she dropped her shield-wall, letting it dissipate to curls of golden fire in the air. Like the entire chamber breathed, she could feel thousands of dead Royal Crystal Dragons listening, waiting, not just outside her but within her. And in that pause, Layla knew that somehow, Markus Ambrose had harnessed the power of his dead Royals by trapping them down here.
Entombed but never put to rest.
As Layla felt all that tremendous energy funneling in through every compass point, she knew there were similar mass graves behind every wall of the catacomb. As she realized it, she felt the power of thousands, even tens of thousands of dead Royals, funneling into the octagonal room and straight up through the crystal dome – right up into Markus’ throne hall high above. Markus had trapped his dead and used his unique resonance to harness their power to his. It had grown his power exponentially. With each foe he killed, with each battle won against others of his own kind, he had trapped them down here to live for eternity, unrestful and enraged.
As he used his crystal palace to hold them imprisoned – forcing their power to be chained to his resonance forever.
It was ugly. It was so, so ugly, and as Layla had that thought, she suddenly knew what to do. Laying her hands on the nearest glittering bone, dark green like malachite, she closed her eyes, summoning a tremendous resonance up from deep within. With a soaring hum from her magics, she used the vast diamond power within her to press a spinning, rumbling sound deep inside the bone at her fingertips. As she did, it sublimated beneath her hands like green glass, turning to a malleable liquid. Amazed, Layla glanced down, but the sands within her knew what to do. Her hands moved, sculpting that substance like taffy – coaxing it into a new shape. As the crystal was re-shaped into a massive sigil beneath her hands like a strange Egyptian hieroglyph, she felt the spirit within the bone cry out. As her hands found the final shape for it, the hieroglyph brightened.
And as she finished, she felt the bone’s spirit rise up inside her from those vast sands, glittering like the shining malachite symbol inside her body.
You have released me from him.
Layla heard the voice distinctly in her mind, a Crystal Dragon woman about Layla’s own age, killed long ago, but who had been a powerful First of her clan in Romania over a millennia ago. “Released you from whom?” Layla breathed even though she already knew, the room around her vibrating with aware Crystal Dragon dead, listening.
King Markus.The voice came again inside Layla’s mind.I did my Trials. I succeeded. He invited me to his quarters in the palace, and then…
Suddenly, the spirit inside Layla screamed with such a horrible sound that tremors reverberated all through Layla’s bones. She saw a series of images in her mind. Markus, trying to rape the young raven-haired woman, to take her as a concubine so she would give him powerful sons. Her fighting his resonance in her body, screaming and roaring up fast into her Dragon. She was quick and fierce, but Markus was vicious and faster. In moments, he’d pinned her as his beast – and torn her head off in his jaws.
Layla felt the young Royal Crystal Dragon woman roar as she saw the mass grave behind the wall, as the woman discovered what Layla had figured out already. That all the Royals not subservient enough to obey King Markus were here, sequestered deep beneath the palace as their power was stolen from their unrestful bones and used by the man they despised. Deep inside Layla, the Crystal Dragon woman gave a furious snarl, feeling what was being done to her people. And she became aware of something else, also – that the energy of the dead was being used by King Markus to control his living Royals. He was using his Lineage’s dead to subdue its living, the dead trapped inside the confines of the palace but the living coerced to remain there.
All of them, being used against their will.
And both Layla and the dead Crystal Dragon Royal within her knew it had to stop.
You are a Bind.The woman suddenly spoke inside Layla’s body.I feel it, as I once felt it when I met a Bind in life. Take me. Bind me. Add my power to yours directly and take it from King Markus. I would rather serve someone in love than in terror, and Binds do nothing without love. Take me. Use my power – and break him at last.
Layla’s drakaina didn’t even need to be asked twice. With a tremendous roar, Layla felt her golden power sweep up the spirit of the Royal Crystal Dragon woman, pouring her power directly into Layla like dark green lightning through Layla’s veins. Layla cried out, shuddering with agony and ecstasy as her flesh tried to roil and split – but the Crystal Dragon woman now Bound to her stopped her shift.
Putting Layla’s hands to the next nearest bone, the Bound woman whispered.More. Take them also. We will come to you. We will come to you, and kill him.
Layla moved on instinct as a tremendous resonance poured through her now, not Markus’ or even Dusk’s magic anymore, but the amazingly strong woman she had Bound, shuddering her power through Layla’s body and out her hands. Sublimating the next bone from another Royal into luminous citrine, Layla sculpted another sigil, flaring it to completion. She felt that Royal, a strong Royal Crystal Dragon man of advanced age like Norbu Gyatso, flood into her and be instantly oriented by the woman. He assented to the Bind, and before Layla knew it, his power had joined the woman’s.
Moving Layla’s hands to the next bone, and the next, and the next.
One after another, the restless spirits of dead Royal Crystal Dragons flooded Layla’s body. Hot and bright, cool and luminous, they were like every color of stars in the sky as they blazed through her, each one of similar power to Dusk, or greater. These were the ones Markus had not been able to control, so he had killed them. They were his rebels, his outcasts, his challengers – each with a story of woe done at Markus’ hands.
They were furious.
And they wanted him dead.
As Layla’s body surged with a hundred souls Bound inside her now, her magic suddenly flared, thrusting Layla up from her knees in the middle of all those luminous sigils and screaming a massive shockwave through her body. As she roared with the voices of a hundred Royal Crystal Dragons at once, the octagonal walls around her exploded. Bones of the dead came pouring out all around, and Layla’s power swept them up in a bright wind of golden fire now – brushing her fingers past them all and sublimating them instantly to her touch.
