“Nothing we want to find out about, I’m sure.” Dusk spoke with a fierce growl, glancing around. “Come on, let’s find a way out of here before Markus has time to figure out we’re all free.”
“Too late, I think.” Adrian gave a furious growl as he glanced to the blast-hole Dusk had made in the far room of glittering crystal bone-sigils. Raising his hands, Adrian whirled them in a quick movement like Kung Fu, manifesting an enormous ball of fire between his palms. “I think King Markus just rang the dinner-bell. And we’re the dinner.”
The fire that manifested between Adrian’s palms was smelted like diamond-fire, Layla saw, a blinding white heat and light from having so many Crystal Dragons in the Bind now. As Layla felt the tremendous power in Adrian’s manifestation, the trio stepped quickly back-to-back in a fighting ring. It was then that Layla felt what Adrian had already; a massive surge of darkness surrounding their oubliette. Through Dusk’s blast-hole, that nasty wave of darkness suddenly came pouring in, as if the tone King Markus made had summoned it. Like a wall of night, it flowed over the bone-sigils, darkening everything in a vast sea. Pouring in like an endless tide, it was unstoppable, and Layla felt Dusk and Adrian come to fighting-alertness as that devouring midnight surrounded them.
“Revenants!” Dusk growled. “Gods, I’ve never seen so many!”
As Dusk raised his hands, manifesting enormous spikes of diamond-fire crystal in the air, shrieking with the same terrible sound he’d used to kill Revenants in the tunnels, Layla looked into that seething, roiling mass. She could feel thousands of Vampire Revenants surging around them, ready to attack. King Markus had summoned them with his tone, exactly like calling hounds in with a dinner-bell. And it wasn’t just the ones in the room. Thousands more were coming, Layla knew, as the Crystal Dragon dead within her spread their combined senses wide.
Hundreds of thousands – coming in from the Thin Ways all over the earth.
“Incoming!” Adrian roared, as a thick rope of darkness suddenly shot at them, followed by a dozen more. Heaving his ball of smelted diamond-fire at them as Dusk threw crystal-fire lances, they were a blaze of motion as dozens more tentacles of night assaulted their trio, trying to take them down. And though Dusk and Adrian were fast with their defensive attacks, they weren’t fast enough to hold back such a tremendous force – growing larger by the moment as more Vampire Revenants came flooding in.
As the walls of the bone-troves began to shatter all around them, black night flooding in from every direction, Adrian and Dusk roared in tandem. As if they had one mind, they suddenly left off their attacks, simultaneously taking enormous breaths – and roaring out a smelted ring of luminous diamond-fire all around their trio. They’d harnessed the power of the dead inside the Bind, and the ring of white plasma they’d breathed seared back Revenants in all directions – that flowing, shimmering fire devouring Revenants right and left as it rang with the horrible wight-killing sound.
As Layla readied her hands with white-hot fire also, she saw fire-diamond scales blossom at Adrian’s temples and cheekbones like a Crystal Dragon. Likewise, Dusk’s skin burst with a nimbus of etheric diamond-fire like a Desert Dragon, to have channeled so much power through their bodies from the dead. As they heaved hard breaths, pumping more power into their barrier with each roar, massive red-diamond talons shot from Adrian’s fingers, huge diamond-sapphire talons from Dusk’s. They were both suddenly growing, shifting, shredding their clothing with spines shooting from their shoulders and serrated scales blossoming in curling patterns all over their bodies.
Both fully half-shifted like Norbu Gyatso.
Now Dragon-men ten feet tall, Dusk and Adrian were scaled with fantastic patterns of gold-diamond light through their natural colorings. Huge spines of light flowed from their shoulders and skulls, massive Dragon-horns corkscrewing back from their temples with vivid light. As both roared in unison again, flaring the plasma wall around them thirty feet high, Layla suddenly felt a warning surge from the thousands of Royal Crystal Dragons inside her Bind.
Gripping Dusk’s scaled arm in a hand like taloned steel, Layla roared above the battle. “We can’t hold! Hundreds of thousands of Revenants are coming! Markus summoned them from all over the earth!”
“Fuck!” Dusk cursed, though in his Dragon-man stature, what came out was mostly growl. Breathing another gout of diamond-plasma into the barrier, Dusk roared at Adrian. “Adrian! We need to go!”
“Anytime!” Adrian roared back, whirling as he breathed another massive gout of flame into the barrier also.
“Markus’ throne hall is directly above us!” Layla roared above the din of screeching Revenants and roaring plasma-fire. “The dead can take us up, but we have to go now! Even the Bind can’t hold the thousands of souls inside me for long!”
“I’m ready.” Dusk growled as he suddenly faced her, his diamond-white eyes blazing with fury in his man-Dragon face as he caught her close. “I’m ready to face my King. Send us up. And when we arrive – take all the souls of the dead and thrust them into me through the Bind. I’ll do the rest.”
“I will.” Layla breathed. Within her, she felt the thousands of souls sing with the same voice, knowing Dusk would do what had to be done. Layla was the Bind, but she didn’t have the bones of a Crystal Dragon. Dusk did. He would be their champion – and they would let all their combined power be funneled into him at the right moment.
“Ready?!” Dusk roared to Adrian, as he clutched Layla close to his Dragon-body.
Whirling in, Adrian caught them both close also, wrapping them firmly in his arms. “Ready!”
“NOW!” Dusk roared.
As if called by the man they wished to be their King, Layla felt all those dead souls inside her thrust up, the dead ringing the chamber as the ceiling was blasted out above. There was nothing directly above them – only a long crystal chute that went miles up to darkness through which Markus normally drained the dead. Funneling their tremendous power up the crystal chute, the dead heaved Layla, Dusk, and Adrian up on a column of pure sound. Clinging to Dusk with Adrian wrapped around them, Layla felt that enormous roar shoot them up like an express elevator into the black. But where the sound went, the crystal walls of the chute rang like an orchestra, thundering them up higher, faster. Before Layla knew it, the floor of the throne hall had been blasted away above them, and they were thrust up on that column of sound into the hall – as the entire roar of the Crystal Dragon dead flowed suddenly into Dusk.
Layla let it. She felt her body give the souls of the Crystal dead away through the Bind, leaving only the barest thread still connected to herself and Adrian. All that power was channeled into Dusk as they hit the throne hall, skidding across its slick floors. Dusk was a maelstrom of light as he shifted into a Crystal drake of such enormous size that he dwarfed even the heights of the domes. As Layla rolled out of the way with Adrian, she swirled up into her Desert Dragon in a rush of golden fire and wind, as Adrian did the same.
But it was too late. King Markus had felt their arrival. Even as their trio roared fast into their Dragons, King Markus and his living Royals were ready. The throne hall was packed ten deep all around with hundreds of enormous Crystal Dragons in Dragon-form.
As one, they emitted a terrible roar as Dusk, Layla, and Adrian faced off with them at the edge of the blasted-out hole in the floor. Glittering and massive, their fierce gemstone eyes were fixed on the trio as if they had but one mind. Layla felt the horrible ability of King Markus Ambrose yoking them together into one purpose. He couldn’t control their minds or hearts, but he could control their bodies and magics. As Layla and her men faced off in snarling Dragon-form with that terrible mass of gemstone malevolence all around, Layla felt how the Crystal Royals were being puppeted like the most awful marionette show. Some wanted to fight; others didn’t. Some supported Markus; others despised him. But all of them hated being used like this, having their free will taken away.
Having their very bodies hijacked from them.
Up on his high dais, Markus had whirled into an enormous Dragon to rival Dusk’s, sparkling with plates of pure diamond as opposed to Dusk’s shimmering scales of diamond and vivid sapphire. He dwarfed his crystal throne, and as he opened his maw and roared at their trio, his Royals all roared as one. Layla felt them surge; she felt their oncoming attack like some massive inhalation inside her bones.
But Dusk wasted no time. With a shuddering roar like stars blasting together, he shot the entirety of his borrowed energy from the Crystal dead at the highest vaults of the throne hall. It exploded the crystal vaults above, blasting away the entire roof and shattering every stained-crystal window and skylight. As debris hurled out over the entire palace, the heights suddenly opened to the wide February night – the last light leaving the azure sky as Dusk roared to the world, shuddering the entire city with the power of thousands of Crystal dead through the Bind.
The sound was enormous. As the upper reaches of the throne hall blasted apart, the Crystal dead were suddenly freed from whatever enchantments Markus had in this space. As Dusk roared, that sound smote the entire assembly of living Crystal Royals, thundering his enormous shockwave through them. Every Dragon surrounding them was suddenly knocked unconscious in that furious blast-wave – just like Markus had done to Layla in his rooms times a thousand.
Only Markus himself was not affected by that sound – and Layla and Adrian, whom the Crystal spirits were insulating through the Bind. But as his Royals were knocked out, falling in a wave of thudding flesh and scales to lay motionless upon the floor, King Markus was suddenly relieved of his last borrowed power source. He’d already lost the Crystal dead trapped beneath the palace. And now as the Crystal living were knocked unconscious all around him, he had only his own power to draw on.
But it was enough.
