There were many fanciful tales about vampires, dark and horrid stories that spoke of wicked plots and depraved acts to topple morally bereft houses. The sun supposedly burned vampires, as they were unable to exist in the light. The creatures lived in shadow, and they only needed to turn sideways to vanish from sight.
Fear was a similar beast. It lurked on the periphery of the mind, always there if not always known. And then, it turned sideways, appeared before you, and made it clear that you were already within reach of its fangs. You always had been. Fear reigned eternal.
So it had been when Saveen had scuttled as a mouse beneath Trell's and Elise's feet. Their attention was occupied by Lady Starra's illusion, but one look downward would have betrayed Saveen's presence. As she put herself in position and sought a weapon to use against Trell, the fear had been there. It was only turned sideways.
She then became her human form, plunged a filched dagger into Trell's back, and snatched Krayson. Saveen now fled, her wings beating with frantic, desperate power.
Krayson dangled beneath her. She clutched him to her chest, expecting him to shout and curse about heights. He was quiet— didn't move, didn't speak. He barely seemed to breathe. Krayson was catatonic, and it made Saveen afraid. She'd only known him for a few days, but in all that time, he'd never shut up unless it was to brood. This wasn't a brooding silence. It was as if his soul had died.
Like wasps emerging from a nest, dragons poured out from the broken hole in the Sanguine Tower's roof. They unfurled their wings and leapt into the air in pursuit. Saveen didn't have to look to know that half of them carried riders.
Fifth to emerge was the ivory dragon, her massive tusks unmistakable. Cardin clung to her back, unharnessed and riding bareback in his haste to give chase. Seeing him again brought back a shadow of the pain Saveen felt upon learning his connection to Elise. She'd thought Cardin was a better person than this.
Saveen was tired of being disappointed by humans.
After Cardin and Draxa came a pink-scaled dragon with a small girl riding her. Then came Garret astride Trell. Then, Elise. The empress rode Kimpo.
Saveen had felt a deep relief when she saw the Huntress, but it had been short-lived and replaced by a gnawing ache in her heart. What Saveen saw, it wasn't the Huntress she knew. Elise had shattered her and forged what remained into something wrong. Kimpo was gone. Perhaps forever. It was worse than death.
Elise followed Saveen's flight with her eyes. Even from this distance, Saveen could feel her glare like hateful, icy pinpricks. Elise shouted for Kimpo to take flight. The mighty formed up around her, guarding their empress with their spellcraft and bodies.
These dragons were far older than Saveen. None of them were younger than two centuries, and a fair number were nearing five hundred years. Kimpo and Trell were both Eldest of their kind. Draxa was older than even the Storyteller. Full-grown and in control of their magic, any one of Elise's dragons could overtake Saveen in a matter of seconds.
Luckily, or perhaps ironically, Saveen wasn't alone.
She banked and wheeled back towards the tower. Her instinct screamed at her to point south and never stop until she reached Ecclesia, but she found herself trusting Starra. Elise's flight of arcanist knights dived to chase after her.
Follow the plan, Saveen told herself.
Her swooping path brought her to pass beneath a broken section of wall on the story beneath the Blood Council chamber. Saveen jostled as a pair of weights landed on her back, but she managed to keep her wingbeats steady. She could feel hands clinging to her dorsal scales and heard a disbelieving grunt from one of her passengers.
"Not how I thought the day would go when I woke up this morning," Josy muttered.
Maya snorted.
Saveen grimaced. "This is weird for me, too, you know."
"It's a girl dragon," Josy exclaimed.
"Most of us are. Obviously. The mighty are in something of a population crisis, if you didn't know, so of course we incubate eggs on low flames to get females."
There was a crack of sound like thunder directly overhead. Saveen flinched but managed to keep herself from veering off-course. Starra had warned her to expect it.
A fluttering of a silk gown preceded a third weight landing on her back. Starra balanced effortlessly and sat with her legs on either side of Saveen's neck.
Saveen beat her wings harder, and the effort to stay aloft was getting taxing. Three women and a runt of a mortal boy weren't all that heavy on their own, but together they were more than Saveen could keep in the air for long.
"What did you do?" Josy demanded of Lady Starra.
"Hmm? Oh, just a little thing I learned from a fellow apprentice."
"That was teleportation!"
"Was it?"
Josy made a frustrated sound. "That's lost magic, vampire."
"And Lady Renoit has made the study of lost schools her life's work. Are you really that surprised she got results, or like most of the magocracy, think an aged dowager was thrown a pittance to occupy her final years and would never actually produce anything?"
"Why the song and dance with the dragon, then? If you could just teleport in and out..."
"In sight of an Aleesh sorceress? And who knows how many of her minions have ethersight. Forgive me, Duchess, but this isn't the sort of spell you want them learning how to manifest. I'm reluctant as it is to use it in front of you two. Pleased as I am to have you, House Algara has a poor reputation in my circle."
Josy huffed. "Your vampire circle or the Merovech's secret cabal of... demon hunters?"
"Take your pick."
There was another loud crack to split the air, as well as a flash of light that almost blinded Saveen. She yelped at the sudden blast of lightning and shut her eyes against the bolts that followed. Maya now stood on Saveen's hips, a hand on Josy to steady herself. Again and again, she used astramancy to fire lightning bolts at the pursuing arcanist knights.
Saveen heard the knights shouting warnings to each other to spread out and the ringing of wards deflecting the lightning. Maya loosed spells even faster. She let go of Josy and began casting with either hand. The air around them shook with successive cracks of thunder.
"Above us!" Josy shouted.
Maya turned her lightning upwards. There was a startled cry of pain from a yellow dragon. She and her Amber Knight fell behind. Nineteen others continued the chase.
"Wards," Maya rasped. "Now!"
Josy put up a barrier just in time to block a dozen different spells. Some of it had been dragon fire. The ward was too wide and interfered with Saveen's wingbeats. Their altitude dropped sharply, but everyone managed to hold on until Josy rectified the error. It ended up working to their advantage, as the drop put a little more distance between Saveen and pursuit.
Starra lay herself down on Saveen's neck to speak in her ears. "Left. Follow the skybridge east."
Saveen complied but spoke her mind as she did. "East takes us deeper into the city."
"I know. Do you see the Home Legion? They must be mobilized by now to quell the riot."
The mists hid the walkways, so Saveen couldn't see much. Her nose, however, detected a strong scent of horses, armor polish, and crossbow oil. "I think they're gathering on the far end of the skybridge. There's a lot of them."
Starra exhaled. "Ready to show Cathis that the mighty are alive and well?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"Always, dear one. I'll get you and your master safely out of Althandor, but this is merely the easiest way."
"I'm not afraid," Saveen lied. "Tell me what to do."
"Hold on to Krayson tight and fly low. Be swift when you make your pass. We want to get their attention, but don't give them enough time to aim crossbows at you."
"And Elise gets to fly over them just as they're prepared to launch a volley?"
"Then it becomes her choice. Start her war early and die, or flee." Starra patted Saveen's neck as if she were a horse. "Have faith in the cowardice of tyrants. Dive to the lower levels as soon as you pass over the legion. We'll make our way south from there."
Saveen felt rather than saw the approaching span of the skybridge. She eased the angle of her descent. Josy maintained the barrier ward. Saveen lurched with each impact against it. The ward was taking a beating, and Saveen could feel Josy flagging as the strikes drained more and more of her ether.
"Coming in from the north," Josy shouted.
Maya began firing lightning that way. Out of the corner of her eye, Saveen saw the astramancy strike against a ward. A dark shaped moved through the mists, and Saveen caught Trell's scent. The wound she'd given him was already healed, and he was coming.
"Almost there," Starra murmured as they approached the Althandi soldiers. "Get ready to roar."
Saveen's breath caught in her throat. Roar? She never roared. That would mean revealing herself. She could never. Trell had warned against it. Always, he warned against it. Never show yourself. Never let the mortals know of us. The humans will kill us if they know where to look. Trell even began putting restrictions on Saveen's visits to the ogres once he learned they traded with the Teulites. Through all of that, Saveen had learned— been conditioned— to equate a dragon's roar with being exposed. Exposure was death.
"Steady, dear one," Starra said. Her voice was calm and soothing. It brought to mind a distant memory she could barely remember.
Focus, Saveen told herself. Eyes front. Flames save me, this is madness.
Garret and Trell were gaining. They approached from Saveen's left, banking from the flank to intercept her. Maya's lightning wasn't doing much against Garret's wards. Any second, and they'd be close enough for Trell to snatch Saveen in his claws. She'd be his again, trapped and enslaved, forced to his will above her own.
"We'll get through this," Starra said. "Be free. Be mighty."
Starra held on to Saveen's neck. Josy and Maya braced themselves and clung to her scales. Saveen clutched Krayson tight.
She broke through a wall of mist and saw startled Althandi faces looking up at her from the skybridge. Men and women in chain hauberks and legion tabards stumbled and gaped as she swooped overhead.
"This is it," Starra said. "Now!"
Saveen filled her lungs and roared. As she had never dreamed of. Never to be kept behind closed doors ever again. Free to fly. Free to roar. Unfettered and limitless.
Soldiers cried out. Some fell to their knees. Others fled.
"Hold fast!" a woman's voice cried out from below. "Archers, arcanists, ready!"
Trell came through the mists, talons extended. His eyes took in the sight of an entire Althandi legion massing at the skybridge's mouth and grew fearful. Garret moaned a curse that would make a Southron blush.
"Ignore the scout!" the officer shouted. "Target the big bastard and fire!"
Crossbow bolts and spellfire broke against Garret and Trell's wards, and some pierced through and tore at the membranes of Trell's wings. The Watchman leaned back and beat his wings frantically to hover in place. He answered the Althandi legion by spewing dragon fire down upon them. Hurried wards repelled some of it, but the screams of dying soldiers echoed through the mist.
Maya stood back up and fired lightning along with the legion's attacks. She howled as she cast, enraged at the deaths of Althandor's soldiers.
Draxa and Kimpo arrived, breathing out fire of their own. More Althandi died. The legion brought forward more crossbows and a squad of marksman with clockwork powered longbows. Elise and her knights found themselves caught in a pitched battle on a skybridge.
Elise's voice carried over the screams and battle cries. "Withdraw! Knights of Shan Alee, withdraw!"
Saveen and those she carried flew on. The battle behind them became enshrouded in mist. They were out of sight, but had not yet escaped.
"Pity," Josy snarled. "That was Falar giving orders, so Uncle Cathis must have sent the royal guard. If the Aleesh stuck around, the captain would have lopped their empress' head off."
Maya growled deep in her throat. It managed to communicate both her skepticism of that statement and her reluctance to leave. The scents coming off the princess were confused. More beast than mortal. Saveen had thought so since she and Starra came across the assassins in the tower, but Princess Maya was terrifying.
Her magic also. She'd launched enough lightning to ethershock a company of wizards, but Maya hadn't broken a sweat. Even a magically inept dragonet could tell the princess was a cut above other arcanists.
"Dive, but gently," Starra said in Saveen's ear. "And hand up the boy. I need to see to that apotheosis of his."
Saveen reached over her shoulder to deposit Krayson on her back. Starra and Maya took hold of him. Josy crawled up Saveen's back and moved awkwardly to switch places with Starra and give her room to work.
"I told you that I was on your side, Blood Runner," Starra scolded Krayson. She received no response.
Saveen leveled off her dive. By her estimation, she was skimming the ground level, but the dratted mist was too thick to get more than a vague impression. At least she couldn't go very fast with all this weight, or she'd be liable to slam right into a spire she never saw until it was too late.
Josy gasped. "Is that...?"
"A Dekaam spike," Starra confirmed. "And be grateful. I used it to detach the apotheosis from his imprint. They won't be able to track us by it. Now, to put a ward over Ambrose's bloodsong."
"You're a mage slayer," Josy pressed. "Like Elise. That's an Aleesh tool."
Starra scoffed. "Even in the last age, the Aleesh used Dekaam like cudgels, and that Elise creature shows they haven't improved in the last six hundred years. No, Duchess, the first mage slayers were shifters."
Josy shuddered. Whether for shifters or Dekaam was difficult to say.
Saveen chanced a quick peek over her shoulder. She hadn't heard anything from Krayson since Cardin hit him. He hadn't fallen unconscious as she feared. Krayson was sitting on his own, avoiding the eyes of the others, and he wouldn't look anywhere near to Saveen's face.
Flames take me, Saveen thought, horrified. But what Elise did to him— what she made him watch. Krayson, I'm so sorry.
Josy caught her looking. The assassin startled and got wide-eyed. Flames, but she had such strange eyes for a mortal. They almost didn't look like human eyes at all.
"Um, dragon?" Josy said.
Saveen looked ahead. "My name is Saveen the Bastion."
"Alright. Saveen." Josy shifted her weight to sit on her shoulders as Starra had before. "You... I mean to say..."
Saveen braced for it. Dragons and royal assassins weren't known for their ability to coexist.
Josy chewed her lip. "Thank you. I don't know why you turned on your empress, but thank you."
Oh. Well, I suppose a little bit of gratitude isn't so out of place. I was rather daring.
"Elise isn't my empress," Saveen said firmly, though she had to speak between gasps for air. Her wings felt ready to fall off from exertion. "She never was."
"In that case... Good on you."
"My empress is Enfri the Yora."
Josy made a curious noise. Something hanging between an "ah" and an "eww".
"Turn left ahead, dear one," Starra called. "Don't worry. I won't ask you to fly us all the way to Ecclesia. I'm sure these ladies won't mind taking a train."
Maya grunted.
"Oh drat," Starra sighed. "It seems I've left my coin purse in the tower. How to purchase five tickets? Four, if dear Saveen can be a mouse again. If only I had access to a line of credit from the royal treasury."
Maya grunted again in vexation.
Saveen felt Starra lean closer to the princess. "Don't think I can't tell you're glaring at me from behind that cowl, Your Highness. I promise to be a cheap date."
Maya's annoyed growl was worthy of a dragon.
Saveen was grateful that her claws were free. It allowed her to cover her mouth to stifle a fit. She decided, once and for all, that she liked Lady Starra.
Josy lay down over Saveen's neck and pressed her face against scales. "Winds and storms," she grumbled. "A lush, a wolf, and whatever he is. I think you and I are the only sane ones on this train ride."
The mist around them turned white, and the world went silent. An instant of blinding light and shadow.
The explosion threw Saveen hurtling head over tail through the air. She felt Josy, Maya, and Starra get thrown from her back. Her hind legs snatched desperately and caught Krayson before he was ripped from her as well. Holding Krayson in her feet, she flapped her wings in a frantic bid to regain control of herself.
She screamed, in pain and terror. Heat burned her scales, and the mists were blown away.
No time to think. Go!
Saveen roared as she dove straight down. She wasn't very high up. The ground-level streets of Westrun were less than fifty feet beneath her. Her keen eyes caught sight of three figures spinning and tumbling in free fall.
She reached Starra first. Saveen snatched her by the waist in a single claw. Maya second in the other. Josy was further away, and she'd gone limp. Unconscious. Saveen would never reach her before she hit the ground.
Furling her wings over her back, Saveen dove to try anyway. She raced towards the broken cobblestone streets like a comet. Her thick neck strained to reach forward, and Saveen opened her mouth to try to catch Josy. The assassin was just inches away, but it might as well have been leagues for all the difference it made.
I can't reach, she thought, panicked. I'm too low. Too fast. I need wind. Wind!
"Lothya!"
A gale threw Josy towards Saveen's mouth. She bit down over Josy's torso as gently as she dared, trying not to harm her badly with her fangs. Saveen's wings unfurled wide to take the blowing wind into them, and she strained to pull up. The scales along her underbelly scraped against the street. She let go of Krayson with one hind claw to kick off from the cobblestones. The awkward maneuver bent her ankle in the wrong direction, snapping the bone. Saveen cried out, muffled by the young woman in her maw, and her wingbeats carried her upwards.
Maya and Starra were panting heavily. Even Krayson was squirming in her grip. Saveen carried them to one of the pasture overhangs of Westrun and landed in tall grass amongst a herd of sheep. The fuzzy, little morsels bleated in fright and scattered.
Saveen released Josy and the others, then collapsed breathless on the grass. Her ankle throbbed, and she could feel blood flowing down her talons. The bone was splintered and pierced out through her flesh.
Maya went to Josy, checking her over for injuries. Other than a half-circle of bleeding tooth marks on her chest and abdomen, she seemed whole. At least, Josy was breathing. Starra wavered as she got to her feet, and Krayson...
The blood runner knelt by her head. He held Saveen's face in his hands and looked into her eyes.
"Saveen," he whispered. "That was amazing."
"You saved us," Saveen said, shaking her head. "Your wind spell..."
"My Bastion," he said, pressing his forehead to her snout. "That was you. You're a witch."
Flames. Krayson was... crying. He sagged against her, his shoulders shaking as he wept.
"Damnation," Starra murmured. She stood straight and looked northward. The mists, banished by the heat and force of the explosion, no longer hid the cityscape from sight. Starra sank to her knees, dumbstruck.
Saveen turned her head to see. Josy groaned and sat up, then covered her mouth to stifle a horrified gasp. Maya watched, silent and grim.
And Saveen could feel it. Like a harp string reverberating deep in the back of her mind, she felt the apotheosis. And she saw. Flames take her, but she would give anything not to see it, but she saw.
The Sanguine Tower fell. Its height so great that it appeared to collapse by torturous degrees, fires and black clouds of debris erupting from its sides, it fell.
"Pyromantic flare," Starra whispered. "Unison link, with all her knights and dragons in concert. That monster. The Order, the mob, the legion... That monster."
"How many?" Josy asked in a hushed voice. "How many people would still be inside?"
Maya removed her cowl, eyes unblinking. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
It was Krayson who answered. He hadn't turned to look, until now. His red eyes leaked tears, but as he watched the Sanguine Tower fall to ruin, his answer was cold. Emotionless. Inhuman.
"Thousands."
The pain in Saveen's leg was such a trifling thing. She hardly noticed when Josy touched her blood and used osteomancy to set the bone, nor did Saveen give much thought when Krayson ordered her to draw healing for the rest. She could only watch as the majestic spire descended into a black cloud of smoke and dust.
From all directions, they heard the goodfolk of the Spired City screaming.
END OF ACT TWO