What will be your price for helping us? Azar asks.
Price? Thunar didn’t say there would be a price.
Before I can ask Azar what he’s saying, my bonded answers. He never does anything without being paid. Trust me.
I want a human able to be bonded for every blessed from those asking for aid. He turns toward me with a diabolical smile. And I want her to upgrade every single earth blessed as she has the ones who were already here.
That could kill her for all we know, Azar says. I flatly refuse.
Thunar shrugs. Then me and mine will locate our own humans, and the rest of you can act as you see fit.
“Wait,” I say. “Before you storm off and leave us to handle a hundred thousand vanir with half the available forces, let me at least try.”
I can already feel Azar’s resistance, but I wave him back.
“There must be some earth blessed nearby, no?”
Thunar’s smile is broad. Of course.
Before he’s even had time to summon them, two dozen or so earth blessed pop up from the ground, crawl over the edge of the cliffside, and descend from a nearby hill. As they gather closer, I realize there are closer to three dozen.
It’s too many. Azar steps between me and the dragons. I forbid it.
I sigh. “You already know how well it works to forbid me from doing things.” I walk slowly around him, keeping one hand on his body as I do. By the time I reach the front, his scowl’s a little less fierce. “Just let me try, and I promise to be careful.”
There’s a big difference between a few dozen and?—
“Thousands?” I can’t help my smile. “Yes, I’m not excellent at math, but even I know that.”
With Azar still fuming at my back, which basically kills all the organic life forms below his mouth, I approach the earth blessed.
“The first time I upgraded the earth blessed, it was a fluke.” I shrug. “Freya had the vanir trapped, and when I went into the volcano to try and retrieve the heart, I met her instead.” I tap my chest. “The heart was inside of her, the same as it’s inside of me. She bargained with me, and told me that I couldn’t leave without making a decision.”
A smallish brown earth blessed with a completely smooth, snake-like face, and large lizard-style legs asks, What kind of decision?
“I had to choose whether to allow the earth blessed to continue as they were—small, powerless, eaten by their companions, but able to reproduce—or make them like the other blessed, able to defend themselves. Like the strike and flame blessed, they would also be able to fly, but they would no longer be able to shift into a human form, and they’d lose their ability to procreate. Either way, there was a tradeoff.”
How did you decide? This time the dragon asking is large, quite large, and grassy green, with pitch-black eyes and massive scales the size of dinner plates that almost look like enormous oak leaves. Why didn’t you choose to keep them as they were?
“I’ve always been motivated by keeping the people I love safe. Today, the people I love and care about are begging me to encourage you to help them fight the vanir. In order to do that, I must do all I can to restore you earth blessed to the strength you should always have had.”
The earth blessed never had wings, Thunar says. They didn’t exist before we left this place.
I turn around then and face him. “It would have been helpful if you’d told Azar that before he left, you know. We had to find that out for ourselves.”
Thunar doesn’t look like he cares. My father shared what he wished. I’ve learned not to contradict his will, at least, not very far and not very often. His bizarre expression might even be a weird sort of wry smile. It’s hard to tell with dragons, and the bigger and fiercer they are, the harder it is to read their toothy, scaly faces.
I spin back around. “Today, I plan to ask Jörð for her help, and I plan to tell her that every single earth blessed she levels up today will help protect the earth children under attack in the USA, the land I come from. Would that be a true promise?”
The earth blessed murmur, their telepathic input flying back and forth so quickly that I can’t really understand it. I do make out a few things, however.
The vanir are frightening.
The earth blessed are the smallest and weakest. Why should we fight for the earth children?
Without waiting for their input, I go ahead and unsheathe both swords, and I plunge them into the ground, all the way down to the hilts. Then I call out as loudly as I can, speaking, but also using my telepathic blast power. It’s the closest thing to a loudspeaker I can get.
“Jörð, your humble servant Gyta, Gullveig, Elizabeth Chadwick, custodian of the heart, wielder of the earth and sky blessed blades, asks you for a favor. Please use your magical power and strength to boost the power and abilities of the earth blessed dragons. Make them larger, stronger, and give them wings, so that they might help protect your children from the vanir who threaten their lives and their free will. Help us so that we can help your children and your earth to remain strong and flourish.”
