Chapter 85: The Dragon Strikes.

The darkness came without warning. I saw it a fraction of a second before it hit, too fast for me to call it out. A pulse of dark mana radiated outward from the dragon’s body completely unlike any frost attack it had used. It moved through the air. My Gift saw it as a wall of black that swallowed everything it touched.

“Pull back!” I screamed. “All of you, pull back NOW!”

Vance hesitated at the order. He finally relayed it a second late and much of the expedition dropped back. The half a dozen men and women who didn’t were caught in that approaching wave of black. I had almost expected all of the men to drop dead on their feet. Instead, something inside of them went out. I watched it happen. The ambient mana around and inside each person winked out. A fire user’s flames guttered and went out while a woman who had been reinforcing her body with wind staggered and fell backwards. An archer behind them drew his bow and the lightning crawling along his arrow flickered, sputtered, and died.

They stumbled. They looked at their own hands in confusion and dawning horror. Everyone used mana to enhance themselves. Everyone. Without it, these people might as well have been naked. The dragon attacked again, shards of ice that slammed into now defenseless men and women. It made five red smears against the white snow.

“They can’t see it.” Violet hissed.

Damn it. One man -caught by the black but still alive- tried to rise even without mana. The cold took him in seconds. Without mana to reinforce his body, the air and the pressure alone were too much. He dropped to his knees, then to his side. The dark aura pulsed again, wider and more directed this time. It swept over a dozen men in a straight line.

Corrupted. Intent. Vaelin whispered, almost sadly. Demonic .

There was no time to think about what that meant. All I knew was that this was a corruption inside of the creature, one that it was now spewing out, and it was too dangerous. No amount of skill or coordination could counter something that simply unmade your ability to fight. We needed to run.

Estovan did not run. He pushed through the aura he couldn't see. I got the sense that he knew it was there, even if he couldn’t see it. His mana did not wink out, though it struggled against the dark that clawed at it. He reached forward and thrust out. His phantom blows still trailed his rapier -one, two, three thrusts that opened fresh wounds along the dragon’s throat. Nine punctures wept black blood. The gash he carved was deep, and for one moment I thought-

The aura pulsed again. Estovan’s next thrust was just steel. I saw the flame of his mana dim. For one blow, the First Sword of House Veyne was just a man, staring down a dragon. The dragon’s tail caught him across the ribs.

Estovan sailed backward, hit the stone, and skidded ten feet across the frozen ground. His rapier clattered away from him. He didn’t get up. His chest moved still but he did not rise. Violet made a sound beside me. She didn’t move from where she stood, but she was shaking. “You can’t expect me to stay back here.” She looked back at me and her eyes were fierce.

“What can you do against that, damn it?”

She met my gaze, bit her lower lip. Her entire body was shaking now. She took a deep breath and turned around. “Why aren’t they running?”

“They don’t know they have to.” I said distantly.

Simone had been one of the men caught in that black. He hadn’t been killed yet, but I could see Vance’s mark on him, or where it had been. It had faded completely. Vance was still shouting. His voice could only reach one of his lieutenants now. The men who could still use mana started to form a perimeter. Those who couldn’t were dragged behind it. It was awkward and slow.

The dragon pulsed again, this time covering almost the entire peak. It covered Marsh, the only person who could still relay orders. Alira moved from body to body and her hands pulsed with golden light. She was keeping people alive, but she couldn’t give them back what that darkness had taken.

The opening Estovan had created -the deep gash along the dragon’s throat- was right there. I could see it. A wound that went past scale and muscle. It was bleeding freely, the black blood steaming where it met the air. Nobody could reach it. Every fighter who got close enough would lose their Gift, and without a Gift, the cold alone would kill them before they could swing a sword.

The expedition had created the wound. They just couldn’t finish it. Damn it. We needed to r-

Draw. Vaelin’s presence pressed against my skull. Draw. Draw. Draw. I clenched my right hand until my fingers ached. My right hand kept twitching toward my hip. I had to hold it down with my left.

“Run! Back up! Protect each other and move back!” Vance shouted. His voice was loud, infused with mana. It was still hard to hear over the screaming of men. Few men moved, and those that did, moved lethargically.

Draw. Pulling the Godblade here meant every man and woman on this mountain would see it. Would see me. The rumors alone would spread through Aelheim like wildfire. Would spread through the Kingdom, maybe the world. Every man and woman would know that a fourteen-year-old girl carried a weapon of Gods. It might paint a target on my back so large that Julian Greenward’s assassin would look like a gentle warning by comparison.

Below me, another man fell. Caught by the aura’s edge, his reinforcement failed, and a chunk of ice thrown by the dragon’s thrashing tail struck him in the chest. He became another red smear across the white snow.

I could have helped. I could help right now. The guilt was a physical thing. It sat in my chest like a stone, growing heavier with each person who went down. My Gift had saved lives today. My warnings had kept people alive who should have died. That should have been enough. It wasn’t.

If I drew my Godblade here, then the course of my life would irrevocably change. I knew that. Felt it through the growing weight in my mind.

Damian was fighting at the aura’s fringe with just his sword. His mana was just as dim as anyone else’s. Right now, he was parrying chunks of frozen debris with steel and footwork alone. It was the stance I had often seen him work at with Estovan. At least he was pulling back. Thank God.

Violet was shaking beside me. Damn it all. Fine, I was going to-

The dragon shifted. Its massive head turned, the one working eye sweeping away from the expedition line and toward the shelf where I stood.

With my Gift, I could see it clearly. Its eyes fixed on me. A part of me knew that it had been watching me. Since the very beginning. It had known, somehow. Known where the warnings were coming from. Known who was reading its every movement before it happened. It had adjusted its attacks to counter my predictions after all.

Mana pooled in the dragon’s chest. I saw the buildup through my Gift, and my blood went cold. This attack was not like the others. The knot of mana forming in its body was as enormous as it was dark. It built fast, far faster than anything that had come before. “Count Vance!” I screamed. “The shelf!”

Count Vance stared at the dragon. There wasn’t anything he could do. Not when none of the men could hear us.

The dragon’s jaw opened. The inside of its mouth was the deep, impossible blue of a winter sky at its darkest, and the mana that gathered there was darker still.

Draw . I couldn't. My Gift was active. It would take me a heartbeat to drop my Gift first. I did not have a heartbeat. It would take me time and concentration to use the Flicker. I did not have that either. I tried reaching for it anyway. My mental fingers were shaking.

This would get me killed. No, it would get everyone killed. So I did the only thing I could. I stopped thinking and pushed.

As much of my mana I could pull from my core, I threw outward. It was not shaped. It was barely even directed. I hurled what I could towards the Dragon. I had never done this before. I didn't know if it would work. The breath came. A wall of frost, mixed with that black wrongness.

The impact nearly drove me off the shelf. My boots scraped against the stone as the black frost slammed into the blue barrier that had just went up. No, it wasn’t a barrier -any more than a wall of water was actually a wall. It still resisted.

I saw the black corruption spread. It ate through my mana the way it had eaten through all the mana on this mountain. I could see it so clearly -threads of black chewing through the blue wall I had built, rotting it from the inside. I poured more in but the barrier cracked. I poured more and the cracks spread wider.

"Esra!" Violet's voice, somewhere behind me.

I couldn't answer. Every shred of focus I had was holding this thing together. My arms were shaking. My vision was swimming. The barrier was crumbling faster than I could feed it, and the breath hadn't stopped. My body was screaming at me. I was forcing mana through it as fast as I possibly could, hurling it forward.

The air was screaming and warping where my mana met this attack. The attack punched through. The barrier caught most of the force but a column of black frost tore through the center of the wall and struck the shelf behind me. There was no bang . There was hardly any sound at all. Where there had been solid rock before, there was now only an absence.

Everything went white, just for a moment. Then, I was back.

My body shuddered violently. Violet dragged was dragging me across what remained of the shellf. It was half the size it had been. Violet hauled me upright, her eyes wide and angry. Sere was behind her. I did not know where Dorothy went. "What the hell was that?!" Violet demanded.

I couldn't answer. My hands were trembling. My mana reserves had dropped by nearly a fourth in the span of a few seconds. I could feel the absence like a missing limb, but we were alive. The dragon was already drawing another breath.

I saw the mana gathering again. My Gift showed me exactly how much power was building. I could guess how long we had now. There was no time to climb down. No time to run. “Run!” I screamed anyway.

I raised my hands and moved past them. I pushed again. The blue barrier reformed -thinner and weaker. I could already see the cracks forming before the breath even came. The corruption had left something behind in the air itself, something that gnawed at the edges of everything I built. It wasn't going to hold this time. Sere and Violet were behind me. I needed to make this hold. Every part of me burned and screamed. The barrier wasn't going to hold.

The black frost shattered my mana like glass. Someone behind me moved. I knew who it was. It was Violet. Of course she would move.

It wasn’t Violet.

A small body slamming into my side with everything she had. I hit the ground. The impact drove the air from my lungs. My skull slammed against frozen stone and the world lurched sideways. The breath passed over me. I felt the cold of it even pressed flat against the rock.

It did not pass over Sere. I stared up at her, wide-eyed and horrified. The edge of the breath caught her. Just the edge. If it had been the full force, there would have been nothing left. The edge, the outermost curl of that black frost, struck her across the back and shoulder as she threw herself over me.

The sound she made was small. A choked gasp, nothing more. She hit the stone beside me and did not get up.

I was on my knees before I knew I had moved. My hands found her shoulders. She was breathing in shallow, ragged breaths that came too fast. Her mana hadn’t faded, but it had dimmed. Frost crawled up her left arm in branching patterns, spreading across her shoulder and onto her neck. Where it touched her skin, the flesh beneath had gone white, almost frozen.

Even as I watched, black lines crept up her arm, slowly. Sere’s reserves were vast, second only to my own. Her mana was fighting. I could see that, her flames trying to fight whatever this was.

Her eyes were open and unfocused. They found me, and for one moment they sharpened. Her lips moved. No sound came out. Never could have come out. I understood anyway.

Okay.

She was telling me she was okay. She was lying.

Violet was at my side an instant later. She’d screamed. It had been a small thing next to what was growing inside of me.

The dragon finally paused. Its great mouth finally closed. That attack, it seemed it couldn’t use it three times in a row. Some part of me was still thinking. Still analyzing. I hated that part.

Something inside of me broke. Something that had been pulling tighter and tighter since we'd left the city snapped. I stopped thinking. Or rather, I wish that I had. That was my curse -that I couldn’t stop, even now.

Instead, I stopped caring. About appearances. About the future. About anything but the here and now. My hand reached for the switch. One I had only used a handful of times.

My Gift turned off. On. Off. On.

In that briefest of moments, I reached my hand to the side. Vaelin settled into my hand. The mountain’s peak glowed crimson, and the air bled.

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