Though the blackest souls that power it do not. Hedda’s wrath roars through me now, as she floods through the Black Dragon with renewed purpose. It had been able to resist her while communicating with me. Now I feel her command of the creature hammer back like an atom bomb, as Lithava whirls up to the Black Dragon’s location, screeching at it as she wears Hedda’s infernal black ring.
As Lithava assails it, along with Hedda’s everlasting soul, I feel,Receive my blessing…come one last time from the creature’s mind. Before the Black Dragon seizes my sister in its gargantuan talons.
Then dives like a falling star—right down through the center of the fight.
As the Dragon of All Souls forsakes both Lithava’s and Hedda’s commands, seizing my sister’s dragon like a rag doll and barreling down towards us like a comet, all hell breaks loose. Because the Black Dragon has defied its Maker’s and resurrector’s commands, hurtling down into the middle of the battle as it explodes its power out like a bomb.
The net that had been crushing us is blasted out by that gargantuan heave from the Black Dragon. It explodes apart its own creation, even the Black Rift’s massive tentacles of night, as I feel the evil inside the Black Rift shriek.
Like a thousand suns shredding, it’s the most horrible sound as both shields are blasted out all around me. But the force of the Black Dragon’s sudden move hits the battle like an atom bomb; dragons on all sides are heaved back, caught in that blast wave and tossed through the high blue skies, over the ring of mountains.
Even my drakes can’t hold on as that blast wave hits us. Although we’re powerful in our Bloodbond, even our auric fire cannot halt the Black Dragon’s dive.
Bjorn roars like a madman, seizing my drakes’ powers and hauling from them in a riptide to make an auric shield around us, strong enough to resist the Usurper’s descent. But even Bjorn cannot stop a falling star, as the gargantuan body of the Black Dragon slams into that burning shield of light.
As it shatters, hurling my drakes from me in the dawn, I feel one last grip of Bjorn’s talons in my shoulder as he gives the most thundering roar of loving stubbornness. And then he’s ripped from me, as the Black Dragon crashes into him and sends him careening away, far past its endless night.
All breath is pummeled from me as the Black Dragon catches me in its talons. And then we’re crashing through the seething darkness of the Rift, screeching and wrathful that it was denied its meal today.
The Dragon of All Souls takes Lithava and me right down through that darkness, exploding through the sundered floor in the cavern of its birth.
As we descend into the darkness beneath it.
A place so ancient, I don’t even know if I have a soul in its accursed night.
3
REAL
The Black Dragon crash-lands on solid stone as we blast right down through the ancient cavern of the Black Rift, to whatever lies beneath it. Lithava and I spill from its talons, already shifting down to heal our wounds from the Usurper’s bone-crushing grip, as its tarry acid blisters me everywhere.
Pain devours me, and I cough, retching from that rapid descent and the creature’s curses. I’m lying on my back, feeling like everything is broken as I stare up at a cavern full of unfamiliar, gargantuan blood-red crystals.
Tarry acid oozes from those natural crystals as I watch it dripupwardstowards the Rift far above us, rather than down, as if possessed. The Black Dragon stands over Lithava and me like a sentinel, spreading its huge wings and catching the black tar like an acid rain as it begins to drip down into the massive cavern now, instead of up.
Because there’s fresh meat within the Black Rift’s original lair—the place it truly lives, beneath the black cavern. As I feel the ancient mind of the Rift train on Lithava and me to be its next meal, I feel how the Black Dragon is not a meal it can eat.
As the Rift’s taint simmers all around us now upon the cavern’s white floor, a stunning natural formation of opalescent stone, I know this is a place of power the earth formed long ago.
Our ancestors only harnessed that power when they built their sigil-worked cavern above. In the process, they created or perhaps woke something far greater than they could ever understand, here, beneath the cavern.
Something far worse than they knew.
It undid them, as I heave hard breaths, exhausted and unable to move yet in the haunted, bloody light, watching that tar ripple in. With a snort, the Black Dragon flicks its wings now, creating a shield of its magic all around us to prevent the tar from getting to us.
I feel the evil in this place snarl and creep back then, from the Black Dragon’s might. It’s unable to penetrate the undead behemoth’s shield; I blink as I understand that the Black Dragon’s own mind makes it dissimilar enough from the horror that made it, that it can defend us.
The Usurper looks at me now, swiveling its enormous blocky skull to watch me with its undead eyes, as I feel how that evil acid burns it. Like fingers of ancient hellfire, the malevolent ooze of the Rift licks its tar over the Black Dragon’s toe-talons and sheltering wingtips now.
As little holes of acid burn slowly into its undead flesh.
“I fucking should have ended you at Stockholm when I had the chance.”
Lithava’s grating voice interrupts my reverie with the Usurper. She coughs, and it rattles thick with blood as she spits.
I roll my head, looking to where she, too, lies upon the white stone. I see her; we make eye contact. Her malevolent lavender gaze sparks a black, tarry blood-crimson now as she regards me.
She is hacking and spitting blood again as she tries to struggle up, then fails. Her body is spent like mine, both of us still healing from everything the Black Dragon did to us. Inert in this moment, despite our bonds to our drakes, we’re stuck here with the Black Dragon as it shields us.
