As Markus surged up in fury, roaring so hard it shattered broken-topped columns all around, madness shone in his all-diamond eyes. Dusk roared back. Swirling into a thick wind-dome as the two massive Crystal drakes faced off, Adrian and Layla could only weather the storm. Layla felt Adrian focus on a sound, blasting it to her through their Bind. It was his remembered sound of crystal singing bowls being rung in an orchestra, from when he and Layla had calmed Dusk back at Riad Rhakvir. But rather than soothe Dusk now, that sound suddenly took all the power of the Crystal dead inside him and smoothed it into a might so enormous that Layla quailed.
Wondering if this battle might just blast the world apart.
The Crystal palace shattered around them as Markus blasted Dusk first with a shockwave of terrible power. With fury in his eyes, Dusk’s roar shattered fault lines through the floor, and Layla heard a terrible sound as the entire Crystal Palace cracked for a mile as his power rolled the earth in a tremendous wave. That wave unsteadied Markus, but he had tricks, and he was old. Surging in close, Markus used a rolling wave in the earth to hammer Dusk bodily, slamming his massive diamond-spiked head into Dusk’s broad sapphire chest. Dusk was thrown five hundred feet, slamming into a column and shattering it as he roared in pain. Sapphire-red blood flowed from Dusk’s chest, but he was nearly as fast as Markus, whipping his massive spiked tail and slamming Markus in the face. Layla felt more than saw Markus’ left eye shatter as he roared in pain, white-red blood leaking out from six deep rents in his face and cheek.
Markus charged again. Suddenly, the fighting drakes were a blur of sound and motion and terrible muscled force; colliding, roaring, biting, and raking with thunderous talons. They smashed into columns; they brought the throne hall down all around as the earth heaved, breaking the ground and thrusting it up into sundered promontories and depressions.
Layla and Adrian suddenly had only one job as the battle raged – protecting themselves and the unconscious Crystal Dragons from the sundering palace and breaking earth. With a twinned roar, Layla and Adrian expanded their wind-shields, bolstered by the dead inside Layla’s Bind, whirling hundreds of unconscious Dragons into a tight pile. Cocooning unconscious Dragons with thick flows of wind, they swept away shattered crystal shards and kept them from falling into the Thin Ways and dark pits opening all around. Layla roared with agony and ecstasy as power unlike anything she’d ever known surged through her. Her Dragon’s tears were diamond-fire, her winds bursting with smelted plasma as she felt her magic twist so hard into Adrian’s that they became one.
And yet, it was barely enough to keep everyone safe as the entire palace came down over the whole hilltop. Surging, roaring, biting, thundering, the two Crystal drakes were still at it, both bleeding profusely now. Markus was a formidable beast, even with just his own energy to draw upon. His attacks were efficient and precise, his magics tightly-honed into lance-deep strikes that put Dusk off-balance again and again.
But Dusk used his own power and heart to channel the dead, coordinating all that enormous might into wave after wave of blistering, earth-shattering attacks. Layla could feel Dusk learning from the dead; deep within his bones they whispered of this maneuver or that which had been effective against Markus in the past. Slowly but surely, it was working – putting Markus off-balance now. And as Markus at last began to tire, bleeding from countless wounds, he backed off, catching his breath.
But suddenly, Markus glanced to Layla within her cocoon of wind. In his cunning mind, Layla felt his tactics change. She felt Markus suddenly shift his power – flooding everything he had into the Bind. Stars burst in Layla’s Dragon-vision as her body suddenly felt on-fire with power – and a deep feeling of love. Markus’ energy had dug into the Bind through the link they still shared, flaring the love Layla’s Bind manifested when she Bound someone. It was a manipulation of her power, but it was effective, King Markus’ resonance already twisting her, turning her.
Making her drop her fire-shields and focus all of her terrible power, currently twined with Adrian’s – against Dusk.
Dusk didn’t see it coming. He didn’t see her turn, inhaling to blast him with a plasma-fire backed by all of King Markus’ energy. But the Crystal dead did. Before Layla could exhale, the Crystal dead surged inside Dusk. His earth-shattering roar gathered up debris from the entire throne hall in an inhalation of sound that swallowed the world. And in a reverse shockwave, Dusk hurled that mass of crystal together into a meteor high above the palace, hammering it together in the air with a sudden, terrible crash.
As that mass of crystal blasted together far above King Markus, just as Layla’s out-breath of fire began, Markus looked up in surprise. His connection to Layla faltered; her fire ceased. And like a single mind, the Crystal dead rushed through Layla’s Bind just as that white mass of debris hurtled down. As Layla screamed at the mass with all the golden overtones of her drakaina, and Dusk roared at it with all the power of his drake, and Adrian roared with all the fires of the world into that mass, Layla felt her, Dusk, and Adrian’s powers smelt together; entirely. She felt their magics crash together and sublimate – as the Crystal dead thrust all their power into the falling debris also.
Smelting the debris into a liquid-hot comet of diamond – and hurtling it down onto King Markus.
He didn’t even have a chance to roar. With a horrible crunch, it crushed him to the sapphire dais, smelting his body into its tremendous mass. Melting like diamond-hot lava over the throne and dais, that enormous smelted pool surged out in a wave. It was only by a fast move from Dusk that Sky’s sarcophagus was thrust back from that bright-hot liquid. As Layla and Adrian whirled, blasting all the unconscious Royals back with a funnel of wind, sliding them fast across the broken throne hall to its furthest reaches, that mass of sublimated diamond, sapphire, Crystal Dragon King, and palace went pouring down the hole they’d come up.
Down into the oubliette of the dead far below.
CHAPTER 31 – KING
Silence enveloped the throne hall. It was quickly broken by groans as Royal Crystal Dragons all around began shifting down fast into their human forms and coming to from unconsciousness. Stumbling up and gazing wide-eyed upon the shattered mess of the throne hall, shock took their faces as they discovered their King was no longer present. Swirling back down into his human self, Dusk had fallen to his knees in the carnage, and even as Layla condensed back down to human also with that terrible sensation of ripping and crunching seething through her bones, she ran to him. She fell to her knees with him as he curled her into his naked arms. As he gave a hard sob-laugh, kissing her lips, his jubilant roar rang through the broken hall.
“He’s dead! He’s dead. Markus Ambrose is dead.”
It was strangely bizarre, like Dusk had announced the Wicked Witch of the West was dead in Oz. As Layla laughed with Dusk, curling him close, Adrian came to them also, falling to his knees and curling them into his lean, naked body with his jubilant laugh ringing in their ears. Adrian held them both, he and Dusk pressing Layla’s lips with kisses alternately as Adrian’s warm winds curled around them all.
Their bodies were so warm from their tremendous feats of magic, but even as they pressed together, Layla felt the spirits of the Crystal Dragon dead sigh from her. They had been put to rest at last, smelted in with the King’s remains and everything else far below. Like a tremendous breath of air, they broke their voluntary Bind with her, sighing away from her body.
Leaving her Bind with her regular lovers free and clear.
The Bind was free of Markus as well. As Layla laughed in Dusk’s arms, she felt a sweet vibration shudder from him as he held a hand out toward his mother’s sarcophagus. With a crack like thunder as the evening fell, soft and luminous, Layla felt Sky gasp awake. The stars shone above as Sky pushed up from her bier, hale and staring at the mess. As Layla held her Bound men and they held her, she felt Sky’s soft step approach – and then a richly brocaded cloak was draped around her.
“You’ll all catch a chill in this cold. Come. Take my cloak.”
Layla looked up, seeing the beautiful face of Sky Arlohaina smiling sweetly as she draped her sky-blue and gold cloak around Layla, Dusk, and Adrian. As Layla cuddled the cloak close, she realized it smelled like clean river water, Dusk’s mother’s scent almost the same as his. As Dusk glanced up at his mother, tears smote his eyes. And then he was surging up from their trio, embracing his mother fiercely as she embraced him back.
As Adrian helped Layla to her feet, tucking Sky’s cloak around her, Layla watched mother and son reunite. With his classic open-heartedness, Dusk didn’t chastise his mother for never contacting him, and he wasn’t wrathful. He simply opened his heart and embraced her, closing his eyes and sinking deeply into their togetherness. Layla could feel a vast ease flow through his heart, as Sky embraced him deeply back.
“My son!” She murmured softly. “My firstborn son! How I’ve missed you.”
“Mother!” Dusk rasped, still clutching her close. “All these years I thought I could feel you, but I thought you were gone! I thought you were dead, even though I could still feel a thread of your resonance. But you were here the entire time!”
“I wanted to contact you, so many times!” She breathed as they clutched each other. “But Markus was already furious that I had a son who was far more powerful than the ones I had given him. He wanted to kill you; he wanted any opportunity. He would dream about it at night, about the many ways he would manipulate you into coming here so he could end you. I couldn’t let that happen. So I let you believe I was dead, in the hopes you wouldn’t come try to rescue me.”
Dusk choked. Gripping his mother fiercely, he whispered by her ear. “He is dead. He can never hurt you again. Markus will never hurt any of us, ever again.”
Sky choked, clutching her son tighter. And then she broke, sobbing her heart out as Dusk held her. The rest of Markus’ concubines crowded close around her now, clutching ripped cloaks to their post-shift nakedness and holding Sky in a supportive knot. It was so tender that tears stung Layla’s eyes. She couldn’t imagine what these women had endured during Markus’ reign, nor how long some of them had been here. It was so awful she almost couldn’t think about it, knowing the women like the Romanian Royal Crystal Dragon had been the lucky ones.
They had died quickly to Markus’ menace – but these women had endured.
