Even as Bjorn fights going black, roaring up to me as his big golden drake and seizing me with powerful talons, trying to haul me off, my bones twist and crack from the terrible retribution inside me, my blood boiling with wrath. I shake Bjorn off; as the ancient power of the cosmic rift energy takes me, I roar a towering shockwave like the Black Dragon’s.
Sundering our mortal world as it punches right through the Void from my indomitable wrath.
That roar calls the Usurper to do my bidding. Tethered to me now, the Black Dragon roars with me as I use its ancient voice, and we roar as one. The universal horror of our screeching, thundering, harpy-and-hell voice breaks Lithava and her drakes’ latest Bloodshield instantly. It blasts Lithava and her drakes with the full force of its bone-shattering and blood-wrenching curses, where they’ve fallen inside the cavern.
Their bones are broken. Blood jettisons from their bodies as the Black Dragon’s curses seethe all over them, making them screech with ungodly sounds in this cavern of hell. My drakes scream as the Rift’s taint surges all around us. Far above, the battle achieves a renewed ferocity as the Rift’scosmic energy gains power a hundredfold, pitting every last warrior against their kin now, hard.
Bodies drop all around, as the Black Dragon roars its supremacy to the skies, felling more with its most terrible heart-curse. But I have no mercy; only satisfaction as I wing down hard into the space where my sister and her drakes have fallen inside the black cavern.
As the Black Rift’s leviathan darkness boils up all around us now, creating a clear space for me to do my worst, I feel the Rift’s darkness devour me. It gives me unimaginable power, just like it once gave Hedda, as everything that was good inside me blisters away.
I understand now, how Hedda made this same choice—to eliminate her sister in wrath. Because I will never again be touched by the light of the sun, as I prepare to take Lithava’s life.
That dark force drains a black hole from all my drakes now as they crash-land around me, writhing and roaring, trying to foist this blackness off. But they can’t, because it’sinsideus. It’s always been there; we only had to succumb to it.
Which I do now, as I prepare to take my kinswoman’s life.
My Bloodbonds threaten to go out now, as I pull an insane amount of energy from myself and all my drakes, thanks to their new status as Bloodwalkers. My bonds to all my mates strain hard, our collective life-force guttering, as I use it all to command the Black Dragon with my most towering roar, calling it to my side.
The behemoth comes; it cannot remain separate from the resonance I roar all through it by my utterly destroying presence as it heaves to my side now, flapping its gargantuan wings wide.
My sister and her drakes draw into a protective knot as they desperately try to heal and throw up a shield-wall against my unforgiving might. But I am ruthless to punish those who must be punished; the Rikyava I was is lost, as a hurricane of black energy surges all around me.
I hear only the utter wrath of the cosmic division energy, churning like an infernal ocean through my veins. It thunders through my bones like anearthquake as that presence roars inside me—to destroy all heart, love, passion, and light from this earth.
I go into my emptiest place now, ready to do my worst. Cold hellfire consumes me, as I stare my sister and her drakes down, black fire boiling from me as my drakes writhe all around me on the blistered ground.
Because Lithava, Lars, Arvid, Emil, and Oggi must be punished for their crimes. Not just punished; they have tosuffer forever. What they’ve done is unforgivable; and what I’m about to do is more so, as I open my mouth and roar like the Black Dragon itself now.
Yoking my entire mind, heart, and soul with the Usurper—as one.
Gathering the entirety of my diabolical power, I will not curse their hearts. Because even as I control the Black Dragon and it does my will, inhaling and preparing for its most devastating strike, I’m about to do something even worse.
Because death is too good for Lithava and her drakes. I want them to suffer as I rip from them that which is most precious.
And what is most precious to them is their everlasting soul. I am gone as everything around me combusts now, black oilslick flame boiling out of me as I prepare to skewer all my terrible division energy and the Black Dragon’s into my sister and her drakes.
And rip their very souls to pieces, as they shriek to the endless stars in the universe.
29
UNITE
As I inhale, ready to unleash the Black Dragon upon my sister Lithava and her drakes, shredding their souls to the everlasting universe, I feel my drakes roar in hell, knowing what I’m about to do. They still fight going to their darkest place. My drakes find a synergy with each other now, and with Lærke, as a blazing unity rises between them—that they will not give up.
But nothing is a barrier to me now, not even the light I once shared with my drakes. I seize onto the energetic signatures of Lithava and her drakes, and their very souls in the Void. I gather those signatures to me in the cosmos, clenching my taloned fist to grip the threads of their everlasting fates in my hand.
As I prepare for my final drive, I know my true purpose. Because my fate was always this—to become this severing darkness in the universe.
I was always supposed to channel the Rift-energy from the Void; I inhale now in tandem with the Black Dragon, ready to shred my sister and her drakes all throughout the cosmos just as Hedda once did to her sister, Aesa.
But even as I do, someone roars and surges in before me. Twosomeones, I cannot halt my roar with the Black Dragon as it tears from my throat, along with the Usurper’s.
A black drake, vicious as the night is long, his lithe, mamba-like form is hit square on by our soul-shredding scream, as the stunning opal-white and green drakaina beside him gets hit, as well.
An unmentionable shriek tears from both their throats as my worst curse boils all through them both, ripping them apart from the inside out. They fall together in a complex knot—even as incredible tattoos of black and crimson seethe out all over the black drake’s chest now, and throughout the white drakaina, too.
Done in oceanic red and black Blood Dragon designs with sea-monster dragons and raiding ships, those tattoos shine a towering white so bright it burns my eyes now. As auric fire bursts from both of them, I feel some force in those tattoos counteract my ultimate destruction, as they blaze my infernal sundering away.
