But it quickly became clear that Zeus’s gambit had given some of us bigger, more ambitious ideas. To my surprise, it looked like someone else was going in to take a bite out of the ritual circle, almost literally. A huge blue dragon was approaching the witches, getting close enough that Bastion had to call another ceasefire to ensure her safety. Prudence swung her head at us, as if in gratitude, then turned back to the twelve Agathas, opening her great maw. But she stopped cold at the sight of a second dragon.
; I rubbed my eyes. I definitely wasn’t confusing them this time, and I wasn’t just seeing double, either. Prudence stood tall and terrifying over the witches in her shifted form, but the dragon that stretched its serpentine body far above us all was larger and more threatening still. My jaw dropped to the ground. I couldn’t believe it. Tiamat herself had come to help.
The great dragon-goddess reared her head, the membranes over her eyes sliding open and shut as she searched the sea of human faces for one she recognized. She stopped when she found me, locking gazes. I could have pissed myself. Tiamat extended one wicked, reptilian talon directly at me, her voice booming across the hilltop as she spoke.
“You cannot say that the Great Beasts were cowards, little speck of dust. I come for my brothers and sisters. I come to consume.”
I could feel the mages rushing away from me as a crowd, hear them chattering in hushed voices about me and the dragon. My feet were rooted to the spot, and I turned to them, shrugging. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I turned back to Tiamat, waving limply.
“Um, thanks, I guess,” I murmured, too quietly for her to hear, yet she understood anyway. The edges of Tiamat’s great maw pulled back, and she showed me her rows and rows of vicious teeth. I shuddered.
The voices of the twelve witches rose as one as they addressed the great dragon. “You have no quarrel with us, beast,” they shouted. “Why do you defy us? We are only doing the work you are too weak and lazy to finish.”
Tiamat threw her head back and roared, a grating, feral sound that I was sure they heard all the way in Valero. She shook her head, dangerous spines emerging down along her back, the wind shifting as her great wings unfurled. She poised herself above the ritual circle, her body curved into a giant S. Tiamat opened her mouth to speak again. I didn’t miss the familiar haze of bluish-green light forming in the back of her throat.
“We have very different desires, witch,” Tiamat hissed. “You will not take this away from us. The universe is ours to shatter.”
The great dragon reached down, its scales shimmering sea-green and blue under the dazzling fusillade of spells the witches threw at it. But no amount of magic could penetrate her hide. One of the witches shrieked as Tiamat pulled her out of the circle, flailing as she was lifted bodily into the air. The shrieking ended as Tiamat squeezed her talons, turning the witch into a twisted pulp. The wet noise Agatha’s body made as she exploded – that damp, crunching pop – will haunt me forever.
“Sick,” someone next to me said. It was one of the younger Hands, recording the grisly scene with his phone. I frowned at him disapprovingly, then turned back to Agatha Black as a shrill, layered screaming filled the night air.
The remaining witches wailed, as if the pain had reverberated through their own bodies. Empowered by their agony, Tiamat rose to her full height, running the claws of her bloodied hands against the hilltop, digging huge grooves, as if cleansing herself of the gore. But I knew there was another purpose to the motion, the same one that Prudence herself was mimicking. The exhalation of dragonfire comes with such impact and pressure that the dragon in question needs to reinforce itself, kind of like how guns and recoil work. And both our huge blue beasts were locked and loaded.
Tiamat’s flames lit up the night, bathing the ritual circle in a shower of blue-green sparks. Gouts of her dragonfire licked at the hilltop, singeing what was left of the grass. If the witches were screaming, I couldn’t hear over the outrageous roar and rush of fire. On a smaller, but no less impressive scale, Prudence swayed her neck from right to left and back, spraying the hill with her own brand of brilliant blue flames.
Then the fires cleared, the dragons spent of their gifts. Prudence lumbered away backwards, only stopping when she stumbled against a tree, where Gil was waiting. He patted her belly, and she lowered her head, which again received a fond, friendly pat. Tiamat, on the other hand, whipped her tail triumphantly through the vegetation, issued a rattling, reptilian laugh, then took off spiraling into the air, the great beating of her wings knocking down the smaller, lighter mages, and even flattening a couple of small trees in the process.
The wind of her wing-beats also put out the last of the fires still burning on the hilltop, and as the smoke cleared, it showed what was left of the witches. The majority of them had erected shields at the very last minute for protection. Two hadn’t been so lucky. Where there were originally thirteen, now there were only ten. I liked those odds better.
I heard a tutting at my side. Frau Helena shook her head at me, the lines of her face deep and disapproving, but something like hesitant awe was glimmering in her gray eyes. I scratched the back of my neck and shrugged.
“I, um. I have friends in low places, too.”
Chapter 30
And yet – and yet for all of the effort, even with two witches dead, we hadn’t done the one thing we’d set out to do: closing the great portal in the sky. It stared down at the world, burning and yellow, a ghastly reminder of what Agatha Black had in store for all of reality.
The onslaught of spells from the gathered mages continued in earnest, but even with reduced numbers – or maybe because of them – the remaining witches were defending themselves with increased fervor, pelting us with their own spells in between bouts of shielding. Every so often, one of the ten would lob an ethereal spear in our direction, glimmering and vicious. Most of our people were lucky, dodging or shielding in time. A few were not, and it was a gruesome, brief taste of Agatha Black’s power. A single strike, even a glancing one from a spear, was enough to kill a human. We’d lost a dozen lives already, at least. That was a dozen too many.
“We have to end this,” I shouted. “It’s not like we can count on more entities to show up tonight.”
There was only one thing left to do. I whirled in place, scanning the battlefield, finally finding Mason planted to one end of it, protecting a cluster of mages with a shield from the Vestments. I rushed to him, and I knew he saw me running, but his gaze was flitting away, like some last ditch effort for him to pretend not to see me.
“Ladies,” he said to the mages behind him. “I need to help some others. You think you’ve got this handled?”
“Oui,” said one of the mages, someone from the Hooded Council, as she chanted words to raise a force field around herself and her allies. Mason nodded at them as soon as he caught the gleam of magic in the air, then moved in the opposite direction from me. I glowered, then sprinted straight for him, my blood and muscles pumping from anger.
“Dude,” I shouted, slamming my palm against his shoulder.
“What the fuck?” he said, twisting away from me, pretending like he didn’t know that I’d caught up to him, his eyes wandering like he’d only just noticed it was me. “Quit shoving. What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” I said, reaching out an open hand. “The last sword. Give it to me. Otherwise more people are going to die. It’s the only way to stop this.”
His mouth opened, then closed when he saw something behind my back. I turned in place, the breath catching in my throat as I locked eyes with Herald. Carver was beside him. It was clear that they both knew exactly what Mason and I had been talking about.
Mason ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes creasing with frustration. “I’m not just going to help you kill yourself, Dust.”