Chapter 47
They met with a great crash of thunder, above the clearing in The vale of Sorrow’s Heart. Burnished gold clinging, clawing, clashing with mottled black. Together, they dove with screams only the throats of a dragon could make. Fire ripped the underbelly of the clouds. Any rain that might have fallen withered in them.
The mottled black dragon, fangs dripping poison and eyes glowing with the same bloody crimson as Sangryl, swept under Ymarii, banked to the left and rolled. His legs stretched out, claws reaching for her belly.
She pumped her wings, using her experience, and strength to put distance between them before she turned. With a roar, the black struggled to stay airborne as he overcompensated for his thwarted attack. His inexperience evident in the clumsy recovery.
The elemental air guardian took advantage of the opening. Flames streamed out of her mouth as anger for the perversion performed upon her seed spilled out onto that very seed. She could smell the crisping flesh and knew it was the membranes between his toes and the tender wing flaps. Those took time to dry. Even this perverted growth would leave them vulnerable for a handful of sunrises.
Her heart cried out, knowing the pain she inflicted on what would have been one of her beloved hatchlings. Into that hesitation and through the pain, he closed with her. His teeth tried to find entrance on her neck. They rolled together, crashing down into the clearing.
Ymarii righted herself, taking stock of her injuries. She grasped the tattered edges of her strength. Venom streaked her scales along her shoulder and neck. She felt the miasma’s heat as it etched its way through the scale.
But she was not dead yet. With a deep breath, she drew in the wind’s essence and the power of the storm. She stood on her hind feet. Her back arched, her sinuous neck stretched toward the sky. Her bugling call, a primal cry, demanding a cognate answer.
The black dragon pulled himself from the rubble of the prison shacks. His tale swept through the refuse of the dead and dying captives as he twisted to face his mother. His answering roar thundering into the night.
Through the fight, he continued to grow. His sheer girth surpassed Ymarii’s. He now rivaled her in height. Not waiting to see what she would do, he charged, head-on, fangs dripping.
Ymarii pulled the essence she drew deep within to mix with her own essence.
She felt the venom etch through the first layer of her scales along her neck, where she took the brunt of his attack. Knowing her time was limited, she had to do something. She knew if he still lived upon her death, he would steal her purest essence and keep her from her place in the Atheryl Realm.
As he closed with her, she drew in the poison already seeping into her system. And it became just another essence to mix into her deadly brew. His claws hooked into the folds of her wings. She pulled back, twisting to her left and then to her right. His claws wedged into the cartilage of her wings.
Her claws snapped out, piercing his wings. They stood there in a bitter mortal hug. Ymarii opened her mouth, spewing the volatile mix ignited in her belly. Where it hit, it clung and spread and split and spread again until it covered them both in a web of elemental energy. When the web was complete, night turned into day for the space of a double-handful of heartbeats. Then, both Ymarii and her son were no more.
Waves of elemental energy boiled across the clearing. Marley watched Thysl drop when his song stopped. And hoped if he still lived, he’d stay down and that would be enough to pass him by.
He grabbed Glyf as she cried out and started toward what remained of her mother and the black dragon. He spun her around. “Get going,” he snapped as he tried to shield her with his body from the fallout. He shoved her toward Chayse and Jayf.
The hair on Marley’s arms stood on end as the first waves of released elemental energies rushed across the area. “Lay upon the ground,” he shouted to his friends.
He drew upon his own essence and cast the last rune in his pouch, the tear-drop dragon rune. Chayse, Glyf, and Jayf crumpled and disappeared into the rubble. He fell to the ground and a thick crystal-like shield spread across the area, covering him and his three companions just before the energy passed them. He hoped as he concentrated; the shield was large enough to also cover Thysl.
Marley looked back toward the altar as the wave hit the outer woods. He would not swear to it, but he thought he saw a figure disappear just before the dais crumpled.
The power passed and the trees twisted and writhed and withstood and survived. For they had stood thus since the Time of Desolation. It would take more than the elemental echo of the two dragons to break the curse that gave this vale its name.
Glyf stood amongst the rubble as the last echoes of Ymarii’s essence passed through the clearing. Her face soot streaked, her lip bloodied, her hair a jagged amber spike above her topknot, she hissed, “I must get home.” Her eyes swirled with emotion. “The wind has spoken my name.”