For whatever reason it brought us here.
“Maybe it wants us to talk…?” I wonder aloud now as I consider it. Still not quite present in my mental faculties, I realize I spoke aloud and shut my trap.
Lithava chuckles, thick and terrible, before turning her head and spitting again. Derision is all over her face as she manages to roll to her side now, coughing more blood out onto the stones so her lungs don’t fill with it. It’s then that I notice a massive talon-puncture from the Black Dragon, skewered into her left side and ribs.
A mortal wound, far past any dragon’s skill to shift and mend.
“You need healing.” I heave out a hard breath, using all my willpower to sit up. I manage, though I have to hang my head as starbursts rush in, consuming me for a minute.
I don’t know what I’m doing as I reach out, drag-crawling my way across the smooth white agate stone floor. But my hands are on Lithava’s side now as she continues to cough blood and draw labored breaths, unable to move much, unlike me.
I feel like ass as I use whatever power I have left to heal my sister’s deadly wound. I’m not great at healing, though, and riddled with the Black Dragon’s curses, it needs serious metaphysical attention, as I draw on my Bloodbond with all my drakes now to help my sister survive.
She might be able to heal it; with my hands on her, covered in her blood now, I feel how she draws on all her Bloodbound drakes, as well. Far away, both groups look for us. I close my eyes, feeling how everyone got blasted twenty miles from the battle, and injuries abound. All my drakes are alive, however, and that’s something, as I open my eyes now.
Gazing down at my sister’s ruined flesh and wondering why I feel compelled to heal her when I want her fucking dead.
“Love was always your undoing, little sister.” Lithava chuckles now, as if reading my mind. Rolling her head, she looks at me, still lying on her side in her ever-growing blood pool upon the alabaster stone.
“Love is my strength, and you know it.” I snap back at her, irritatedand still wondering why the fuck I’m doing this right now when I could just sit back and let her die.
“So you believe…” Lithava grates, although her breathing is less labored now, and her blood pool has slowed in its spread. She draws a deep breath, then sighs, as a long silence stretches between us.
The Black Dragon looks on as it holds its outstretched wings and its shield above us.
“My drakes will find me, you know.” Lithava eyeballs me, though her gaze is far less black-crimson now and far more of the simple, jewel-vibrant lavender I remember. “No matter what you said to the Black Dragon when you penetrated its mind and got it to drag us down here for a little heart-to-heart chat, my drakes will come. Sooner than you think.”
I blink then to realize my sister thinks I was the one who got the Black Dragon to haul us down here. As that thought hits me, I realize she wasn’t party to what I said to it inside its mind, nor it to me.
Despite Hedda’s black ring on her finger, and the strange bond she somehow has to Hedda as our Ancestor’s mortal instrument, Lithava doesn’t know it was the Black Dragon itself who decided to dive us down here, ending the battle before that battle ended us.
I stare at Lithava in silence, wondering just what the fuck I should say, as the Black Dragon holds this space for us, still blistered by the cavern’s evil acid.
It’s then that I see the ripped scar still standing out crimson upon my sister’s forehead; right between her brows where her Innersight rests, it’s ugly and charred, like some sigil left by the Black Dragon itself.
I know it was the recoil of her own curse breaking that did it. That curse was levied upon me in the Void, preventing me from speaking to my real Ancestors as someone impersonated them. I understand now that it was Lithava, though I still don’t know how she did it, because the magic she wielded was Hedda’s.
As I scowl and continue healing her for whatever reason, I glance down at the black ring on her left index finger.
And my silver one on my left ring finger—forever linked to the black.
“You should stop healing me and convince this big bastard to make your getaway. You and your drakes might survive a few more days if you do.” Lithava coughs as she nods at the gargantuan dragon still shielding us in the underground cavern. It stands firm, impassive now within the ancient columns of blood-red crystals. They form stalagmites and stalactites all around us, plus jagged clusters and even floor-to-ceiling columns, that swirl with a haunted crimson light as all of it drips tarry acid in slow runnels.
Clustering in around the Black Dragon and its shield now, to claim us.
“You know Hedda’s dead, right?” I bite now as I heal Lithava. “You don’t have to do what she wants of you.”
“You knownothingof our Anderlen benefactress, whelp! So don’t pretend like you do.” Lithava snaps back, as crimson roars in her eyes, though she can only sustain it for the briefest moment. In far worse shape than I am, Lithava can only surrender to my healing, even as she growls now that I provoked her.
“I know enough,” I say, as the Black Dragon watches us. I get real with my once-sister now, while moving my hands to a different area of her massive puncture wound to heal it.
“You’ve been duped by Hedda, you know.” I give it to her straight, no-holds-barred. “She doesn’t want you as her ultimate mortal instrument to wield the Black Dragon—she wants me. She’s manipulating you, having you get everything ready so it can all be handed over to me. Once I’m ready to wield the Black Dragon with my Bloodwalker power, rather than yours.”
Lithava’s violet eyes fly open wide now, as she inhales sharply. For the briefest moment, our gazes connect, and I feel the shock that goes through her. I could never feel my sister’s emotions much through the blood that binds us as family; but I feel them now, as surprise hits her like a kick to the ass.
She didn’t know Hedda was using her, I understand, as her beautifullips fall open and her eyes dart to the black ring upon her finger. But those eyes just as quickly flick back to me, piercing, as renewed wrath heats in them.
Lithava’s fury makes her eyes boil that infernal dark red again, cut through by endless oily black curses. Her darkness roars as the smallest bit manifests in the air now.
