I inhale slowly, tasting the aroma of the city that’s baked in the sun for months. It smells like old blood here, blood and terror, and I remember some poroniec children are probably held in the tower in cages.
Good riddance. I never cared for those beasts made by Mokosz.
“And burn!”
I rise into the air, hovering ten feet above the ground, both palms trained on the tower. Fire shoots out of my hands, white hot and sizzling, sparks raining down. They bite through the cobblestones, making tiny, deep holes before they fizzle out. The tower groans, the stones heating fast, first red, then golden, now blindingly white.
Inside, dragons scream.
I fly around the tower for show, spitting fire from every side to bake it evenly.
“Dragon pie,”I tell Jaga with a laugh.“That’s accurate, isn’t it?”
“This is madness. How will you save Slawa from Perun’s vengeance?”
“All in good time. Now listen to the screams and let yourself enjoy them, hm? You hate dragons for raping your precious wilas. Now all the guards are gone, and Perun will be hard pressed to replace them.”
She says nothing, and I tell myself it’s because she’s so enamored with me after I did everything she wanted, and more.
She probably hates herself for liking it. Good. At least we both suffer.
It takes ten minutes until the last dragon dies, suffocating from the smoke and heat. I grow enormous, batlike wings from shadows for myself, and coast lazily around the tower, throwing a ball of fire here and there. The crowd swells, bieses of all kindsblocking the narrow streets leading to the square, craning their necks as they talk in hushed voices.
No one claps, and no one protests.
I have a split second’s warning when wings flap above me. Two dragons dive at me from above, circling each other in graceful spirals. Aha. They must have been on patrol, or spending a leisurely midday in the Wila Garden.
Pity I don’t have more time, or I’d drag this out.
“Look, pickles to go with the pie.”
I beat my shadowy wings, exploding up faster than the dragons ever could. My movements are pure magic, while theirs are limited by gravity and mass. The dragons stop, confused, as I shoot up right between their noses. It takes them too long to reverse course.
I rain down acid.
The beasts screech in horrible pain as scales and flesh melt off their bones in midair. The acid is potent, my own battle invention, and it eats through them so fast, they are half-skeletons when they hit the ground. Both are instantly dead, their corpses steaming and hissing.
Jaga cackles, the sound so clear, she must be laughing out loud.
“Pickles!”
I perform an elaborate aerial spin for the onlookers, a small dance of triumph and joy. There are shouts of dismay and awe, and now, some of them clap. I take a bow, still hovering in the air, right when the tower behind me explodes.
Stones fly in all directions, red-hot and deadly. I have half a second to decide. Save the people or let them be wrecked?
Jaga’s watching.
I shoot out my shadows, spreading them in every direction like a funereal veil. For a moment, the sunlit square goes dark, darker than night. I grunt from effort, but I’ve caught all thestones, and I call my shadows back, putting all the rubble away in a neat pile in the ruins of the steaming tower.
There is no sign of the bodies. They burned down to the finest ash.
Dead silence swathes the square, mamunas, kobolds, wilas, and others watching me with slack jaws and terrified eyes. In the silence resounds a slow, mocking clapping.
Mokosz squeezes through the crowd to stand at the front. She wags her finger at me.
“Naughty Woland. Fun is over.”
Well.Thatwill spoil my plan well enough.
