The Beginning After The End (Web Novel)
chapter-455

My heart fluttered inside my chest, hardly daring to beat as I reached for the mana necessary to cast a spell. It didn’t have to be complicated, or even strong. A jet of water, condensed to burst like a firework—just enough to get the dragons’ attention. If they flew away…

Even though I couldn’t feel his manifested intent, I knew the monster named Raest was barely a dozen feet away. He’ll sense what I’m doing, I thought hopelessly. There was no way I could hide the spell from someone as powerful as him…even if I suppressed my mana, he would see right through me. Despite his missing arm and cracked skin, he could cross the distance and break my neck without revealing even a blip of his mana.

Although I wasn’t looking at it, I could feel Jarrod’s lifeless body next to me, and I knew it didn’t matter if Raest managed to reach me. Not if I could fire of the spell first—

I jumped with fright as the air crackled with power, and a voice like thunder boomed across the mountainside. “Agents of Agrona,” the voice said, resounding as if projected by every bare stone. “We know you’re here, so-called Wraiths, and that you have the Sovereign, Oludari of the Vritra clan. Guardian Charon Indrath is offering you this one opportunity to turn yourselves over to our authority and release your prisoner to us.”

The black dragon swept low, flying past our caravan of wagons beside the road, its bright yellow eyes scouring us in search of the hidden Wraiths. The wind of its passage made my hair fly back, and his aura at such a close range stole my breath. The spell I’d been stealthily attempting to form died on my fingertips.

Awe and relief overwhelmed me. I leaned against Jarrod’s body, still clutching his arm with one hand, and wept silently.

“Consider yourself fortunate, dragon,” the harsh, bittersweet voice of Perhata answered. Her words were disembodied, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once, giving no clue of her physical location. “We aren’t here for you, not today. But that won’t stop us from delivering your wings to Agrona if you interfere.”

The black dragon wheeled high above, reconvening with the two white dragons, their wings beating slowly to keep their enormous bodies in the air. “Don’t be absurd,” it said, its tone thick with disbelief. “Your flight is over, your incursion into Dicathen failed. You can no longer run, nor can you hide from us. You insult yourselves by not accepting reality.”

Someone farther up the caravan cheered, exalting in the dragons’ presence. Several people quickly joined them, and my relief took on a tinge of fear. Be quiet, I pleaded, not wanting them to draw attention to themselves.

Perhata’s disembodied laughter echoed across the mountainside, drowning out all other noise. “You have yet to mention that we hold not one hostage, but a couple hundred, yes? I have been trained since birth to kill your kind, asura, but know that in the process of fighting this losing battle, you would be condemning all these people—the very people you claim to protect—to a grisly death. You know as well as I that, if this mountain becomes a battlefield, you cannot save them, not even from your own powers.”

I swallowed hard, my swollen eyes instinctively tracking across the nearby wagons and carts, and the faces of those who rode in them.

The dragon was silent for only a beat before answering. “You are cowards. Claim to be our equals all you wish, but the fact that you hide behind magicless lessers to save yourselves tells us everything we need to know.” It twisted its long neck, giving the other two dragons a meaningful look.

As if reacting to a command, they both descended, transforming as they did so. The gleaming white scales melded together and formed shining plate armor, the reptilian features flattening and becoming humanoid. By the time their feet touched the ground, both dragons wore the forms of severe but beautiful women, long blonde hair streaming down their backs from beneath scaled helmets. Each bore an identical tower shield and longspear.

“See how heartless your saviors are?” Perhata’s voice oozed from the air. “We were prepared to let you live, only desiring the return of one of our own. But these asuras, they think of you only as a flock of wogarts to be tended and maintained. If a few here and there need to be slaughtered for the good of the herd, though, they won’t hesitate. You all should have bowed to High Sovereign Agrona when you had the chance.”

The two asuran women landed on a flat outcropping above the caravan. They remained there only a moment, searching the wagons below, before one of them leapt off, carving a graceful arc through the air and landing light as a feather near the end of the train, only a few wagons down from where I knelt—and the Wraith, Raest, hid.

“Although unlikely, if any of you manage to survive this, tell your kin,” Perhata continued, her words an intrusion I couldn’t block out or escape. “Share with everyone you encounter the cruelty of the Indrath clan and the kindness of the Vritra.”

Lying, manipulative witch, I thought bitterly, but at the same time, I knew she was right about the dragons’ willingness to sacrifice us. Squeezing my eyes shut tight, I pressed outward against my despair until my ears rang and my face burned red. These refugees—most women and children—need me to have hope, to care if they live or die. Because I might be the only one here who does.

My mind went inexplicably to Kacheri, the little girl who vanished in an instant of spellfire, collateral damage as the Wraiths exterminated our mages and guards.

I couldn’t save her. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to save everyone now cowering in fear on this mountainside, either. My gaze dragged down to Jarrod. My fingers slid off his strangely still flesh, then curled into white-knuckled fists. One. Just help one person. That’s all it takes.

The asuran woman was approaching, walking along the inside of the carts as she searched them one by one. The men, women, and children occupying them seemed frozen and slightly unreal, like the blurry figures in the background of a painting. Their eyes followed along with the asura’s progress, but they otherwise remained unnervingly still.

Raest was ever so slowly shifting around the cart as the asura approached. Even though I knew he was there and could see him with my own eyes, my attention wanted to slip off him, to look anywhere else.

My breath caught as the Wraith and the asura maneuvered to opposite sides of the same cart, Raest’s steps falling in time with the dragon’s to hide even the whisper-quiet sound of his slow shifting. Everything seemed to be happening so slowly. Where are the other Wraiths? The second dragon? What are they waiting for—

Suddenly the longspear was carving downward, leaving a blurred silver crescent in its wake.

The weapon shattered the heavy cart, sending shards of broken wood and personal belongings flying in every direction. At the front of the cart, a man and woman were propelled off as if they’d been fired from a catapult, so sudden and violent they didn’t even have a chance to scream.

On the other side of the cart, Raest threw himself to the side, so fast I could hardly see his movements, and still that wasn’t fast enough. The longspear sliced down the side of his leg with a spray of blood even as he breathed out a cloud of noxious green poison.

Conjuring an orb of water, I caught the pair of farmers who had been tossed from the wagon, but there was nothing I could do as their two aurochsen were inundated by the cloud, which dissolved both the long shaggy fur and the flesh beneath, so that their pockmarked bones splashed into the muck beneath them.

Silver light radiated out of the dragon’s shield, wrapping her in a moving barrier that repulsed the fog, but the cloud was spreading quickly.

“Run!” I screamed even as I scrambled back from the expanding mist.

In a moment of hesitation, I reached for Jarrod’s arm, wildly thinking I could save his body for a proper burial.

That moment of hesitation nearly cost me my life.

As I slowed and my hand reached out, the fog caught up with me, oozing around my fingers. I was already moving again, hurling myself away, before I registered the pain. The skin of my right hand cracked and blistered in an instant, entire patches sloughing away like shed snake skin as it melted.

Biting back a scream, I cradled the wounded limb to my stomach and sprinted away, lacking even the chance to honor Jarrod’s sacrifice by watching as the flesh-decaying fumes subsumed him.

The two farmers and I bolted past the next wagon in line just as the large feline mana beasts pulling it lunged away from the noise and flaring mana, screeching as they jumped off the road and tried to sprint down the mountain in panic. And perhaps they could have, if not for the wagon connected to their harness, which crashed down on top of them, mana beasts and riders alike vanishing into the wreckage.

Then the noise hit me. The screams were first and loudest, then the explosion of spellfire farther up the caravan. All the mana beasts were the worst though, terrified senseless and shrill enough in their panicked howling to cut through the rest.

Still running, I looked over my shoulder at the fight.

Beyond the thick green cloud, I could just make out the shadows of others sprinting away down the mountain road, abandoning their wagons and carts.

The asura’s shield continued to repulse the spells as the Wraith launched attack after attack, pounding the silver spell with condensed spikes of foul, poisonous magic.

The longspear thrust outward, but at the same time, the entire road fell.

The sudden jarring motion pulled the asura off balance, and the thrust went wide, then I saw no more as I toppled forward, the solid ground I’d been running across vanishing from underneath me.

I landed hard, crashing forward onto my elbows and the side of my face. I sucked in an agonized breath as dirt and gravel was embedded into the ruined flesh of my hand, and would have screamed if something heavy hadn’t landed on me a second after. Even as I turned to see the panicking man I’d saved flailing to get off me, a boulder as large as he was crashed to the road beside us, bounced, and struck him directly, missing me by inches. Boulder and man alike sailed over the edge of the road and vanished into the cloud of dust that now obscured everything in all directions.

Unsure what had happened, I blearily stared around from my back. A small chariot beside me was overturned. A large lupine mana beast was snarling and tearing at the leather straps connecting it to the wreckage in an attempt to be free. There was no sign of the driver.

A woman’s shouts pulled my attention away. It was the dead man’s wife. She was crawling toward the road’s edge, repeating a name I couldn’t make out through the ringing in my skull.

“Stop, don’t go close to the—”

A sudden burst of wind blasted away the dust for a hundred feet in every direction, revealing Raest pinned to the ground with a dragon longspear embedded in his chest. His one remaining arm was clutching the spear as he gaped up at the asura.

The mountain shook from the force of the blow, and the edge of the road crumbled yet further.

The woman’s shouting turned into a scream as the rock gave way beneath her, and she was pulled into the dust-choked void beyond. The scream cut out a second later as I heard the wet impact of her body striking rock and tumbling down the steep slope.

The ground trembled again, and I realized the entire mountain was quaking. Rocks were raining down from above and bouncing over the path, and entire sections of the road were caving in and spilling down the mountainside.

Get up, I told myself, reaching for the strength to do so. You have to keep going…

Shaking violently, I used my injured hand to push myself to my feet, then froze when I realized the asura was striding toward me. All around her, the wreckage of her brief battle against the Wraith painted a dire portrait. The hairs rose up on my arms and neck as her bright yellow eyes moved straight through me.

“You’re supposed to protect us,” I said, my voice a wheezing gasp, no thought of what I was saying. “Help us!”

She barely took notice, her searching gaze skating over me as she strode past, leaving the few survivors of the surrounding carts to fend for themselves.

There weren’t many, only those whose mana beasts had stayed within their control or who had abandoned their vehicles. I could still hear the sounds of battle from farther up, but the asura moved with unrushed purpose, her gaze sure and confident.

Another survivor grabbed me, and suddenly I was being dragged along even as the road shook and threatened to give way beneath our feet. Over my shoulder, though, I was watching the dragon.

Gritting my teeth, I pulled free of the hands holding me up. I recognized faces, but names escaped my frazzled thoughts. Questions, pleading, but too much fear to force me or to stand and wait. Because, even as the survivors sprinted headlong down the road and away from the battlefield, I turned and followed the asura.

She must have sensed me, because she glanced back. “Go. I won’t be responsible for you, and there is nothing one of your kind can do here.”

I wiped blood from my eyes as I kept stumbling after her. “I’m responsible for these people. I need to help whoever I can. Not to fight, just…”

She shrugged. “You are free to choose your own death.”

Her steady strides carried her ahead of me even as I jogged to try and reach a crushed wagon that she passed by without a second glance. Each jarring step was pure torture on my hand. Conjuring a sort of gauntlet of cold water to ease the flesh, I firmly put the pain out of my mind—or I tried, at the very least.

Beside the wagon, which had been cracked open like an egg when the road collapsed, an older woman lay with a man pulled into her lap. Tears spilled down the crags in her aged face, and for a moment I feared the old man was dead. As I approached, his hand patted hers, and I realized he was speaking, but the words were too soft for me to hear.

Behind the elders’ broken cart, another man, brawny with deeply tanned skin, was attempting to get his family over the edge of the road and down the steep incline.

“Hey,” I said loudly, waving my uninjured hand to get his attention. “There are more people over here, they need—”

The brawny man looked right at me, shook his head, and began climbing down after his family.

Taking a steadying breath and trying not to blame the man, I instead kneeled down beside the elders. “Nevermind then. Let me help you up, we need to move—”

“He can’t walk,” the old woman said plainly. “Got a bad back. I think something broke when the road jumped…”

I flinched as mana burst somewhere ahead of us, shaking the ground again. I was afraid the mountain would come down around us. “Perhaps your mana beasts—” I cut myself off, realizing the moon ox connected to the wagon was lying broken in its harness, having been struck by a large stone. “Someone else’s then, there are so many…”

The woman was looking at me with such a heartbreaking combination of appreciation, understanding, and acceptance that I couldn’t continue.

“We’re not getting out of this, child,” she said, her tears now dry. “But you can. And don’t go trying anything silly. I’d rather not leave this life knowing there is blood on my hands, understand?”

I shook my head vehemently. “I’m a mage, I can…” I trailed off, biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, but I knew there was nothing I could do for them.

The old woman tried to give me a fierce and determined sort of look, but she couldn’t manage it. Instead, she looked away, leaned down, and kissed her husband on the forehead.

You are free to choose your own death, the dragon’s words echoed in my head, accompanied by the taste of blood.

Running footsteps were approaching, and so I stood, giving them a small bow as I prepared to address more survivors.

The mountainside behind me shattered in a burst of mana. A shard of stone cut the air so close that I felt my hair move with its passage, and I jerked and fell again, slamming my wounded hand hard on the ground.

One of the adventurers, a quiet boy younger than me, had just appeared out of the thick wall of dust, pelting as fast as he could down the treacherous path, a few others behind him. The force of the explosion lifted their bodies off the ground, a spray of stone shrapnel ripping them to tatters.

I stared at the bodies, my breath coming faster and faster. What am I supposed to do?

One small figure moved, shuffling and moaning in pain. I sprinted forward and scooped up a small boy into my arms. His face was covered with dust and blood, and he pulled back from my touch as I put pressure on his shoulder, which I thought might be dislocated. His eyes moved to me, his thin brows pinching together, but his expression was vacant.

I could recognize the signs of shock well enough, but my own mind was a disordered blur. Standing, I turned in a slow circle, searching for a way to help this poor child.

Ahead of us, a wide, flat cart had overturned, blocking my view of the road. When it exploded, I jumped so hard I nearly let the child slip out of my hands. So wholly was I startled that I barely registered the figure smashing through the cart, passing by a few feet in front of me, and slamming into the ground.

The impact shook the mountain, and the road beneath my feet slid away.

Gasping, I half ran, half jumped across the sliding rock and dirt, scrambling for solid ground. For a moment, every other sound was lost beneath tons of rock crashing down the mountainside. Unsure what else to do, I threw myself behind the elderly couple’s cart, which had miraculously remained on the road.

My stomach turned as the figure rose from the sinkhole, a wicked blade of black ice held in each hand. Varg, I remembered, the Wraith who had argued with Perhata. Gravel crunched behind me, and I spun: the asura. She advanced with her shield out in front of her, the longspear extended out over top.

“You went to all the trouble of hiding among this lot just for a scratch?” the dragon asked, and I noticed the faintest cut beneath her eye, barely more than a red line drawn across her pale skin. “If you are the best Agrona has managed in all these years, I find myself in wonder that this war still continues.”

Varg did not bother with a retort but flew out into the open air, keeping well back from solid ground. The dragon wasn’t bothered, of course, lifting up and floating out into the dusty void after him.

And as she did, I got a closer look at her face, her wound. Something was wrong with it. Already, green tendrils were expanding outward from the scratch, discoloring the flesh around it.

Moving with such sudden speed that I could not follow, she flashed across the space between them, her longspear a blur in the air as she lashed out in several entwined strikes. The Wraith didn’t attempt to fight, instead retreating and dodging so that her strikes always just barely missed. The speed of their conflict kicked up a wind that pushed back the dust, and I squinted down at the cloud’s edge. Beneath them, nothing more than a silhouette, a second figure waited, hidden.

The boy whimpered in my arms, and I shrank down and held him tight, my attention locked on the fight unfolding before me.

Each of the dragon’s attacks came faster than the last, lines of silver light following each movement, and pillars of dark ice formed to deflect the blows or cut off her momentum, but Varg was beginning to appear strained, his face a mask of dire concentration.

There was another tremor, and with a jolt of fear, I hurried up the road, picking my way through the wreckage. I didn’t dare to look back to see if the elders were still lying in the dirt beside their cart.

My vision wavered and my joints seared with every movement I made, the boy’s weight only adding to the pain. A cut on my side I didn’t remember receiving bled freely while the agonizing pain of my hand helped to blunt the pain from the rest of my injuries.

A massive shadow cut off the diffused glow of the sun, made blurry and orange by the dust rising from the mountainside. A beam of pure mana split the sky, so bright that I had to stop and look away. By the time I could start moving again, the black dragon was wheeling away again, five figures darting around it, spells striking with clockwork coordination.

Cart after cart had been left empty and abandoned. Some mana beasts lay dead, others had ripped free of their fittings and fled. Scattered throughout the devastation were dozens of bodies.

I quickly checked each one, looking for any survivors but only finding corpse after corpse. “One, just one,” I murmured to myself, my search becoming more and more desperate. Then, as my shadow crossed over the face of an armored woman, her eyes blinked open, and she stared up at me.

I gasped, reaching out a hand only to pull back when I saw the stake protruding from the side of her armor, the wood having hit her with enough force to twist steel.

Setting down the silent child, I took hold of the stake. “This is going to”—I jerked upward, unsure if the strength of my wounded hand would be enough—“hurt!”

The woman gasped with sudden pain, but the piece of wood pulled free. I tossed it aside, then conjured a spell to clean the wound of dirt and slivers. Withdrawing clean bandages from my dimension artifact, I did my best to stop the bleeding, then stepped back. By then, the child was beginning to whimper, and, although my body screamed in protest, I picked him back up.

The woman groaned as she stood, then she conjured stone around the damaged section of her armor. “Thank you.”

“Of course, I’m just glad—”.

A sudden sonic burst popped my right ear, and I wobbled, unbalanced. The child let out a cry, and the adventurer beside me winced and clutched the rock-covered wound.

Glancing out over the dusty void, I saw only the white-armored asura, her bright yellow eyes seeming to pierce the dust like spotlights as she searched for the Wraith, who had vanished. Suddenly the dragon winced and pressed the back of her spear arm against the cut on her face, which was now half green from whatever rot the Wraith had infected her with.

In that moment, Varg dove out of the dust, one blade cutting down from his right, the other thrusting up from the left.

The dragon was not caught off guard, and her spear slashed through the air, shattering first one sword, then carving through Varg from shoulder to rib cage, and finally crashing into the second blade, which exploded into a fine, glittering cloud.

But from the spray of blood, a dozen black metal spikes thrust out, growing rapidly. Most impacted harmlessly against the dragon’s shield, and one glanced off the side of her helmet. Another, however, pierced the inside of her spear arm, pushing through and out the other side, then expanding yet farther, so that in the blink of an eye, the arm was ripped free and sent spiraling, with her spear, down into the unseen depths below.

The dragon spun away from the attack, her shield sweeping like a blade and unleashing a crescent of white light, which carved into the dust in a circle around her. I fell to my knees, the boy pulled tight against my chest, just in time for the spell to part the air above me before slamming into the cliff face and carving the solid stone like so much soft winter snow.

Something hard hit the back of my head, and the world swam as the explosion of pain nearly ripped me free from the thread of consciousness I had been hanging onto. All I could do was blink as I pressed my head down onto the back of my arm and breathed through the nausea. Stay awake, I thought. Stay awake, stay awake…

Glancing blearily around, I saw a nearby cart and began dragging the boy and myself across the ground until I was lying beneath it.

As I rolled over onto my back, the child whimpering in the crook of my elbow, I saw the woman I had just saved.

She was lying almost exactly where had been when I first found her, severed cleaning in two by the asura’s spell.

I stared at her for a long time, unable to process what was going on around me.

Motion caught my pain-blurred eyes, and I watched through the spokes of a cart wheel as the second white-armored dragon woman flew out to the other. They looked nearly identical, though one was now missing an arm and had green tendrils spreading from her cut cheek so that nearly her entire face was sickly looking.

Despite the rumble of the mountain warning me that this section of the road might collapse at any moment, I couldn’t look away from the divine beings. Even taking the form of humans, there was still something otherworldly about them—transcendent, even. I wondered what such beings talked about. I could see their lips moving, but the distance and noise were far too great to hear.

Was she wondering what sort of creatures these Wraiths were, that they would sacrifice their own merely for the chance to wound her?

I swallowed hard. How much is my life worth to beings like the dragons and Wraiths? Or how little? To them, I knew perhaps the answer was nothing, but for myself, I couldn’t comprehend the value of the human lives lost in that battle. Just help…one more person.

As the ringing in my head began to subside into a steady but painful throb, I dragged my aching body out from under the cart and stood, painfully scooping up the boy once the stars behind my eyes faded. “It’s going to be all right,” I said, talking as much to myself as to the child.

Two people were standing at the edge of a collapsed section of road, staring down at the skree-strewn hole that had earlier been passable ground. They both jumped when they heard me scrambling out from under the cart, and the man spun and pointed the tip of a sword at me.

“The path’s fallen down,” I said, my tongue feeling numb and drunken. I gave a little shake of my head, which I instantly regretted when a lightning bolt of pain struck out from the knot growing on the back of my skull. “Sorry, that’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

“Lady Helstea,” the man said, lowering his sword. “By the abyss, everyone is…is…”

“There’s no time,” I cut in, sobering as I thought of Jarrod and the adventurer I had just helped only to see her cut down again. “You’ll have to climb. Shimmy along the cliffside there. That rim of ground should hold, but…grab onto the wall too.”

The woman pulled a bundle in her arms up to her chest, and it squirmed and gave a small cry.

A baby, I realized. She was carrying a baby.

Behind the family, I saw the black dragon sweep back around, having flown up over the high peaks. None of the Wraiths were in sight.

I glanced at the boy in my arms, his eyes unfocused, his mouth open with a bit of drool dribbling down as he regarded me nervously. “Down then,” I said.

I struggled to channel mana through the fog still muddying my thoughts and had to set the child down to focus. After a moment, a wave condensed out of the air to hammer into the cart I had hidden under. Already half broken, the bed of the cart rolled off its axle, coming to rest at the very edge of the road.

“Go on, get in.”

“W-what?” the man asked, his face pale. “You can’t expect—we’ll be crushed to paste.”

The mountain quaked yet again, and high above, a peak collapsed as a stray spell lanced through it.

“You won’t,” I assured him, “but if you don’t get out of here, this mountain might come down on all of us.” Not waiting for a reply, I knelt beside the now isolated cart bed, gently pulling the boy with me. Without its wheels and harness, the vehicle looked not unlike a small raft.

Focusing on the point where the road had collapsed, I felt for the distant atmospheric mana trapped within the stone. There wasn’t enough by itself, but with the help of a competent water-attribute conjurer…

Slowly at first, then faster, water began bubbling up from the cracks in the stone. Soon it was gushing, then finally the stone broke open, releasing a flood that ran down the steep ramp created by the rock slide like a rushing river. Tentacle-like protrusions reached out from the water and wrapped around the cart.

I met the woman’s eye, then looked pointedly at the squirming bundle in her arms. “I can control the flow until you reach a safe place below. But only if you go now.”

She gazed at her baby for a few very long seconds, her face pale as death, then took a step toward the broken cart. The man grabbed her arm, and she leaned forward and rested her head against his chest. “What other choice do we have?”

He stared at me with raw, bloodshot eyes. “Please…don’t let us die. Don’t let our baby…”

I nodded, all my concentration on the huge quantity of water I was attempting to control. The couple finally got up into the cart, sitting on the floor and wedging themselves between the two benches, their arms around each other and their precious cargo.

“And…I need you to watch after this little one,” I said, lifting the boy with my good arm while my ruined hand stretched out in front of me to help focus the spell.

The boy yelled out as I set him in the cart, and the man, despite his fear, pulled the boy close, wrapping his arms around them all.

“It’s going to be okay,” I assured the child as he began to cry, squirming in the man’s arms. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I’m Lilia. And I’m going to get you out of here safely, okay?”

The boy was too deep in shock to process what I was saying, but the man understood. “Thank you, Lilia.”

The watery arms dragged the cart into the little waterfall. I nudged the water so that it pulled the cart into itself, keeping it in the center and preventing it from just plunging to its doom. Still, the flow was fast, and the cart took off with such sudden speed that the woman gave a short, sharp scream. The cart wobbled, catching air and being pulled off course, but I held it in position with the flowing water itself, so the makeshift raft was carried rapidly but controlled down the steep slope.

In an instant, they vanished into the dust, which was so thick now that I couldn’t see more than thirty feet down the mountainside.

The battle, which had for a few moments calmed, erupted again in a wave of black fire that spiraled through the sky above. I couldn’t be sure where it was coming from or who the target was. An instant later, there was a countering flash as the black dragon swept down from nowhere, unleashing a deadly breath of silver flames. Light and darkness danced against each other, swallowing up the sky.

Closing my eyes, I put all my mind and energy into the water itself, feeling its course, keeping the raft tucked into it. Somewhere below, a fireball impacted the mountainside. I felt the river buck as the couple’s screams drifted up out of the valley, but I pulled the raft down tight against the water and held on for dear life. After a few seconds, the water began to slow and spread out. That was the edge of my strength, and with a gasp, I released the spell. Instantly, the river slowed to a trickle.

My skin was warm. Eyes still closed, I turned my face to the sky; it felt like a midsummer sun was beaming down on me.

“Just help…one more person,” I whispered, hoping beyond hope that the family had made it, because that hope was all that I had.

My eyes blinked open. The sky was nothing but fire, and the heat had pushed back some of the dust. All up and down the line of carts, fireballs were raining. Rocks were tumbling down and dragging away entire swaths of the road with them. The air was so hot my lungs felt as if they were burning.

The ceiling of fire rippled, giving way from the center out, the flames untangling and then sputtering and coming apart. A dark, humanoid shape fell through. Even from a distance, I knew it was a Wraith, though I couldn’t be sure which one. The black dragon’s huge head followed, appearing from the center of the dying vortex as if from a portal to the abyss. The jaws opened wide, and the Wraith vanished with them.

I heard the snap of their closing even from where I kneeled.

Suddenly the air cleared, a blast of icy wind sending an enormous cloud of dust out over the dense, marshy forests that grew along the base of the Grand Mountains in Sapin. With flame and dust both gone, the full scope of the battle was visible to me.

The two white dragons remained in their humanoid forms. The injured asura was wielding her shield to defend her twin, who focused on sending bright, silvery attacks at the Wraiths harrying her. Both were now spotted with green discoloration.

Three more Wraiths still swarmed the black dragon, each one attacking in concert with the others, keeping the dragon’s attention divided between them at all times. The black dragon flew low, banking so his back and wings were facing me, and I saw for the first time the network of dark green veins lacing through the black scales. Something has poisoned the dragons, and yet they survive while three Wraiths are dead, I thought, but I was too battered and weak to take any comfort in the thought.

Shifting, I looked around, again taking in the wreckage of the mountain and feeling the rumbling of the rockslides. A war of attrition, I realized. The Wraiths can’t overpower the dragons. But if they sacrifice a few of themselves to land a poison-laced blow, then they can keep their distance until the dragons are too weak to finish them. And the dragons get no closer to finding this Sovereign they’re searching for…

As I watched the black dragon closely, I saw how it wobbled as it banked tightly and snapped at a Wraith, and how, when it missed, the silver flames of its breath gleamed less brightly as they chased their target through the air.

“Just one more…” I muttered, my feet slowly starting to move again as they took me up the road.

I had to navigate around another slide that had wiped out fifty feet or more of the road. On the other side, I nearly tripped over a prone body. Leaning down, I felt the face of a young woman I had only met briefly. There was no sign of breath in her body.

Moving on, I found another corpse, then several more, and came to a place where a circle of black iron spikes had stabbed up from the ground. More corpses were pinned to them.

I stopped, growing momentarily woozy, and my gaze returned to the sky.

Spell after spell shattered against the black dragon’s scales as it chased after the Wraiths, unleashing its deadly breath at intervals. The two asuran twins seemed to be arguing, but as I watched, they suddenly separated.

The wounded asura pulled away from the other and flew toward where I had stopped. At the same time, her twin lunged at Perhata, the longspear thrusting with blurring speed. A beam of pure mana erupted from the spear’s head, carving through the air just past Perhata’s horns.

One of the Wraiths broke off and followed the wounded dragon. A dark cyclone was blowing around the Wraith, and from it issued missile after missile of ash-gray mana, each one pelting the asura’s back with a low hum.

She spun to face him, catching the last few missiles with her shield.

The cyclone grew, and as it did, more and more missiles poured from it, dozens at a time.

Through the nimbus of swirling magic that was now crashing into her from every direction, I saw the dragon lift her shield. It was glowing brightly, and getting brighter with every attack it blocked. Feeling a sudden knife of panic in my ribs, I dropped to the ground, closed my eyes, and shielded my head.

Even so, the flash that followed nearly blinded me, burning right through my eyelids.

Peeking out from under my elbow, I just saw as the Wraith’s spell came undone, the cyclone tearing itself apart as the mana spilled away in every direction. The Wraith reeled, and the asura lunged forward.

Mana formed a softly shimmering silver arm where her missing limb was. This conjured fist wrapped around the stunned Wraith’s throat and erupted into red gore. Spinning, she hurled the Wraith back against the cliffs, his body cratering stone and triggering yet more collapses all along the road.

A beam of white light channeled through the shield and poured into the crater after the Wraith until all hint of his lingering mana signature snuffed out.

Above, the remaining Wraiths fell back to regroup, allowing the wounded asura to drift to the road, where she collapsed onto her knees. Her twin and the black dragon seemed satisfied to watch the Wraiths from a distance, biding their time as well.

Uncertain, I stood and approached the asura. Somewhere ahead, someone was shouting…

There are still survivors, I thought, no particular emotion springing to the forefront of my fatigued brain.

“So, you have not chosen your death yet,” the asura said, her voice creaking with wariness. “I am…almost impressed.”

“No one here chose death,” I said through clenched teeth, my lips curling back into a grimace. “To say otherwise is an insult to all those who survived the hellish war only to become collateral damage here today.” Biting my tongue, I took a deep breath to steady myself before continuing. “Was it worth it? Have you even found what you wanted?”

Letting out a pained moan, the dragon forced herself to stand. She was a full head taller than me, and her bright yellow eyes seemed to burn right through to my core as she looked down on me.

“The fate of worlds outweighs the lives of a couple hundred lessers.” She cocked her head, turning to look westward over the steep incline to where her companions were hovering between us and the Wraiths. “Or even three dragons.”