Clarios caused the earth to quake with each thunderous step. Loran turned from Wilfrid and continued walking toward the gigatherion. There before her was her destiny, the king’s destinyas Emere had told her. It would be enough for her to have reached it. Her pace quickened. Soon, she was running. The bloody battlefield, the melting snow, the yellow ground beneath it all blurred into one. Only the gigatherion Clarios remained in clear sight.
Something burst from the gigatherion. They seemed to number in the hundreds. To Loran, they seemed almost suspended in the air. Small metal pellets. Turning, she avoided all but one that hit her chest. It hurt. The pellet was of considerable power. But it did not pierce her scales. If Loran had not approached the gigatherion, that attack would have rained down on her Arlanders. She ran on.
About twenty paces from the gigatherion, she ran up a boulder jutting from the ground and sprang from it—pellets raining down on her once more. She twisted in the air but could not avoid so many of them at this close range. They hit the right side of her waist, her neck, and her left arm. One grazed a part of her cheek that wasn’t covered in scales, leaving a tear that bled. She paid it no mind. A common enough thing that happened even in sword practice. Loran flew through the scattering of pellets and plunged her white-hot swords into the front left knee of the gigatherion.
This wasn’t to disable the machine. Loran pulled herself up by the hilt and stepped on the flats of the two embedded blades to climb Clarios. There had to be a point of weakness somewhere. Maybe a door of some sort that led to the Power generator. Then maybe, just as she did with the chariots at Fire-Dragon Square, she could destroy the generator and stop Clarios.
The gigatherion had seemed slow from a distance only because of its size. Being right up against it freed her from this illusion. With every step Clarios took she felt like she was hanging from the pendulum of a giant clock. As she found whatever handholdsher claws could in its rivets and seams, Loran almost lost her grip many times.
The volcano in the distance, as always, continued to send up white smoke. The dragon had said to her that it would come when summoned.Who am I to refuse a royal decree?Had Arienne failed? Loran had seen the girl only that once, after all. A sorcerer she might be, but Loran knew nothing of Arienne’s abilities. But she had sensed that the young sorcerer would pull through. She still felt this now.
With her draconic strength and speed, Loran clawed her way up without a moment’s rest. A single stop to catch a breath could mean the difference between victory and massacre. She didn’t even stop to look around until she had made it to the shoulder of the giant machine beast. Perhaps because it couldn’t find a way to attack her, it was moving its large bulk toward the alliance. Just a few showers of those pellets from before and they would be decimated.
Loran had hoped Wilfrid would have ordered a retreat, but her general was simply too stubborn. The main contingent remained, refusing to take a single step back. Only a small band of warriors led by Griogal was moving now, carrying the wounded to the fortress.
Etched into the gigatherion’s shoulder were different writings and symbols. She searched for the words “Power generator,” focusing her sight through her left eye as much as she could. Then a strange violet ripple became visible in the air around her. She crawled against it, hoping to get to the origin.
The winds were strong, from Clarios walking so briskly. She crawled until she could see that the violet ripple was emanating fromthe back of the neck. As she gripped the seam beneath her, hanging on as best she could, Clarios came to a stop.
And then it roared, a sound so loud it almost pierced Loran’s eardrums. She screamed. The scene before her undulated as if she were looking at it through a distorted lens. The Powered force that warped the very air shot forward at impossible speed. The fortress in the distance exploded. Towers and walls turned to dust.
There had been at least a hundred people left in it. Children and the sick among them. Speechless, Loran stared; there was a hiss from her left eye, the sound of a tear evaporating.
She could not stop here. Turning her gaze from the fortress, she continued to climb to the source of the aura.
There it was, right in the middle, a steel hatch.CLASS 2 POWER GENERATOR HADIYA. She needed to smash this and enter. Retracting her claws and making a fist, she brought down all her might upon the hatch—but her fist was stopped before it even met the hatch.
Where her fist had stopped shone a rune she couldn’t read. It gave off bright violet waves like light reflected from a pond. Desperately, she punched it again and again. She tried piercing it with her claws, scratching at it. Even stomping on it. But the rune continued to shine intact, emitting the violet waves. A sorcerous protection. Much stronger than what protected the Powered armor the centurion Marius had worn in Dehan Forest.
The strength left her shoulders. Now there was truly nothing she could do. Wasthisthe king’s destiny? Was her final act to accept this ending? The gigatherion knew not of, nor cared for, her turmoil. It continued to move forward.
And then, her heart gave a huge thump.
Something was coming from behind her. The smoke from the volcano was black now, and a white cloud above it scattered into nothing. There was a rumbling, and then a sound like thunder. The gigatherion stopped. The volcano erupted, spewing a gush of lava into the air above.
From the smoke, something black and red leaped forth at incredible speed. Loran focused her left eye with all her might. The fire-dragon. And someone was holding on to its scale-covered back for dear life. Arienne, with Wurmath at her side. They were flying toward her. So fast, she wondered if the rider could hold on, but with a flap of the dragon’s wings, they approached even faster.
Clarios turned. Loran held on to a handle by the hatch, but her eyes never left the dragon. The gigatherion’s head was also trained on the approaching dragon, as if in anticipation of its new adversary.
The fire-dragon closed in at an unimaginable speed. Not slowing at all, it slammed directly into the gigatherion. Loran was flung into the air, the shock breaking off the handle in her hand, and she fell, spiraling toward the ground far below.
“Are you all right?”
Arienne’s voice. Loran’s shoulder blades ached—she must’ve landed on them. Despite having fallen from a great height, she wasn’t injured.
“Lady Arienne?”
“I have brought the dragon, Your Highness.” She bowed.
There was something different about Arienne. The violet ripple Loran had seen on the gigatherion’s shoulder was also surrounding the sorcerer.
Above her, the fire-dragon battled Clarios, attacking it mercilessly with its claws. Perhaps remembering its battle from twenty years ago, the dragon did not waste its fire on the gigatherion. It flew in and out of Clarios’s range, striking more nimbly than one would expect of a creature of its size. Clarios had already lost an arm. It tried to grab or strike the dragon whenever it swooped down for an attack, which only resulted in flailing its remaining three arms in the air.
“You have risen, King of Arland.”
The dragon’s greeting rumbled in the sky.
Loran shouted, “I was never asleep!”
