“You should not be able to enter this place,” Froenz said, almost as if to himself.
Endreas’s smirk grew into a smile, but it quickly wilted as his gaze moved away from Froenz and found Python. “Oracle.”
Python gripped the back of the king’s throne. “What are you waiting for?” he growled to Froenz. “Kill him!”
“Yes, kill me,” Endreas said, drifting over to one of the flanking dwarfs, who was glaring bloody murder up at him. Endreas removed his glove and ran his finger down the curve of the dwarf’s axe blade, drawing blood. “Ouch,” he said, licking the blood from his skin. For a split second, his gaze flicked to meet Magda’s.
Finally.
But then he was tugging his glove back on and returning to the center of the hall. With Elven flourish, although she once would’ve called it Pixie flourish, he drew his swords, spinning, whipping tendrils of shadow around him.
Sweat could be heard dripping onto the polished floors as the dwarfs stood poised at the ready, waiting.
“Now... lord dwarf, you, the oracle, her, and that,”—he pointed his sword from Magda to Kaelan—“will return with me and submit to the King’s justice.”
“My lord—” Python growled.
“And the others?” Froenz asked. “My people?”
“If you come peacefully, we will allow the women and children to leave.”
“And if I refuse?” Froenz asked in the same granite voice.
Endreas slid his swords back into their sheaths.
“I have a friend who has been waiting to exact her own kind of justice for what you’ve done to her children.”
A thunderous thud accompanied the hall’s quaking. Crystal globes fell and shattered around them. Cracks appeared in the ceiling. Faces turned upwards, mouths agape.
Magda drew back her knives and crouched, slapping Kaelan’s cheek. “Wake up.”
His eyes fluttered. He rolled onto his back as another deafening boom sounded from above. The hall shook with increasing violence.
And then a distant shrieking roar echoed through the earth and into the hall, filling Magda’s heart with claws of ice.
The troll in the back blubbered, “Dragon.” The word echoed softly through the hall.
And then a mass exodus began, goblins and imps and the troll shoving through the line of dwarfs to open the hall’s doors.
Endreas stood at the center of the hall, arms folded, face serene as the hordes streamed past him. “What say you, dwarf?”
Froenz strode down the steps of his dais, his men parting before him and closing again behind him.
“This is my hall!”
He lifted his axe and let out a war cry to match the roar of the dragon above. The lines of dwarf warriors surged forward.
Endreas spun. A black whirlwind formed around him, growing and growing, spinning up to the ceiling. Shadows peeled away from the cyclone and resolved into Elven warriors, who met the dwarfs’ axes with their swords as the shadows sloughed away from their blades like phantom sheaths.
“Damn it,” Magda growled as she was buffeted by the dwarfs pushing by her to reach the Elves. She grasped Kaelan’s arm and attempted to heave him up, but she was too weak to carry him.
Another boom from above splintered a nearby pillar. She threw herself over Kaelan. Hunks of stone crashed and shattered around them. Fragments pelted her, cutting her arms. Dust choked the air.
She hooked her arms under his shoulders, intending to drag him towards the doors. But they were at the far end of the hall and the battle barred the way. She let Kaelan slump to the floor again, waving the dust away, searching for another exit. Surely Froenz didn’t enter through the main doors.
She crouched, covering Kaelan again as an Elf almost backed into her, and a dwarf’s axe thunked into the stone a few inches from her knee. Another Elf appeared, a woman, she grabbed the dwarf’s head by the hair and yanked it back, slitting his throat. Blood poured in a crimson gush across the dwarf’s chest.
The Elf’s deep green eyes lingered on Magda quizzically for a moment before she was drawn away by the battle.
