The Green Dragon King kicked part of the tail, which was, as he said, a block of ice out of the room and into the courtyard. It hit and ricocheted against other chunks before being stopped by the largest piece. That was the base of the tail where it had sheared off from the Behemoth’s main body. Blood smeared half of it and it was starting to melt, leaving a pool of smelly, biological fluid. Jahara picked up one of the chunks of “ice”.
“You can see the veins and arteries inside it. Even the scales! But this isn’t frozen flesh at all. It’s just ice. Like an ice sculpture,” Jahara said with awe in her voice and eyes.
“Like no ice sculpture I’ve ever seen,” Anwar murmured as he fished around the ice, picking up a scaled piece before tossing it away.
“And we thought Caden and Iolaire were the weakest of us!” Mei remarked with a bark of laughter. She shook her head. “I’m glad we were wrong.”
“He’s just learning,” Esme said as she rearranged her hair back into its careful coif. Her dress was torn and ripped, but she still looked regal nonetheless. “Who knows how powerful he’ll be in time.”
“Indeed. And he is learning at record speed also thankfully,” Jahara mused as she twisted and turned the ice in the light.
There was blood running down Jahara’s right temple, bruises on her knees and left thigh, and raw scrapes on her bare shoulders, but she appeared not to notice them at all even as her Wise Women fanned out into the group and began to clean wounds. Valerius felt the sting of cuts all over the bottom of his bare feet and shoulders from the broken glass, but he waved away help. Once Raziel returned, everything would heal. Now that he’d seen Caden he knew that was going to happen soon. He ached and was tired, but the bone deep exhaustion was gone. He had a feeling that this meant that Raziel was doing better, too. He wished he’d had the time to ask Caden. He was certain there was a story to be told there.
“Caden can cause us to shift. I suppose he went after the Behemoth now to do that. Send the blasted thing back to the Spirit Realm and solve our problem of it blowing up a huge chunk of Valerius’ territory,” Tez said as he dusted dirt and rubble off of him and Kaila.
“Yes, that’s what Caden said. Or I think he did. My ears were ringing,” Valerius said and grimaced as he strode outside onto the courtyard.
He wanted to see Caden and Iolaire. He wasn’t afraid for them, strangely. He had a sense that Caden was different. More confident. More composed. More accepting fully of what he was. Caden had always been capable, but there had been this sense of completeness and comfort in what he was that had not been there before. The others followed his bloody footprints outside.
“Valerius, you’re bleeding quite a bit,” Tez remarked. “You really should get that seen to.”
“It will be fine. We’ll all be fine. Soon,” Valerius said as his eyes scanned the sky for a white glowing draconid form. Bleeding or no, healing or no, he would not have gone in and been tended to with Caden out there. He needed to see his lover.
“There!” Illarion’s left hand shot out towards the Mid. “Caden and Iolaire have that ugly bastard down already!”
The beautiful White Dragon hovered above Dragon Strike Square.
Caden. Iolaire. Thank the gods.
His heart swelled in relief and joy. They were all right. They were more than all right. They seemed in charge. But then he looked farther down. In the center of the square was a large furrow where the Behemoth had crash landed. Even from here, he could tell that it wasn’t just rock and dirt piled up on either side of the hideous hydra.
Is it still a Hydra with one head? Valerius thought. It is a particularly hideous Dragon… no, not a Dragon. I do not know what that is.
“In the Square… all those people,”Jahara whispered. She dropped the chunk of ice and held onto the railing. “Death.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Esme said softly. “We knew we weren’t going to get out of this night without casualties.”
“I thought the casualties would be us,” Tez admitted and Kaila put a comforting arm around his waist.
“It’s not over yet,” Mei remarked darkly.
“Oh, I think it rather is,” Illarion chuckled. “Can’t you feel it? Caden and Iolaire’s gift. It’s in the rising of the storm. Look!”
Lightning cracked open the sky. The Helix with the red and white was still slowly spinning. The lightning seemed to come from it. There was a terrible, bone-shaking roar from the Behemoth and then there was a light. A burst of white light that left Iolaire and pulsed outwards.
The light spread over the Behemoth’s body. The Behemoth’s head reared back as if denying the call--the command--and then there was another pulse. The Behemoth’s body quivered. A shudder went all the way through it. The flesh began to blur. And then… then the Behemoth was gone.
The White Dragon darted in and caught people that were falling. The Behemoth must have grabbed hold of some before it simply winked out of existence. But no, it still existed. It had just shifted back to the Horde.
“He caught them!” Jahara clasped her hands under her chin as if in prayer.
“But not all of them.” Kaila squinted. “There are others, naked, running into the crowd--”
“The Horde,” Anwar breathed. “Of course, they’re still here and still under the Behemoth’s control until our Dragons destroy the creature!”
“It doesn’t look like all of them though. Just a few,” Kaila said as she squinted. “Unless the others are dead already.”
“Is that good that there are so few then?” Tez asked. “Well, probably good, because Caden and Iolaire can handle them alone, but that means a lot of those souls won’t have bodies to go back to.”
