Sunday, September 24, 2017

Paths of Damnation - The Final Chapter (never got to the parts between)

We were gathered in the rooms above the inn. Rooms we had spent so many days, evenings and nights in talking with those gone and those still with us. I had come too late to change the battle's outcome. Five survivors. Of twenty six rash young fools, only five had lived, and we may still lose Billenius. Her breath had burnt him badly as he tried to reach Nonia to save her. Arms, legs, chest, face, all burnt. He had inhaled her breath and thus scorched his lungs and throat as well. And unless the gods would grant healing to him, or the great healer come soon, nothing would save him. 

The local priests of his kind are trying valiantly to save him, and failing. Only the gods could save them. Or that servant of my sire, if he could be found. I could feel the old lizard, even across all that expanse of sand to my east, flying here himself. He had told to guard this elf, but I had failed. I was certain that the rage I felt was more at me than the bitch of our kine up that mountain. She had withdrawn not because of my presence, I knew now. One of those upon my back was who she had feared in that moment. Rutilius was not the fool we had all thought, and his rage had surpassed mine on that ridge below her lair. 

And now, I had to play the waiting game. To see who would come first, the death god of his folk to take his spirit from his flesh, or father and his healer. Had I the knowledge of how to call him, I would break the rules of all and call upon the rider of the ass to come to his aid. 

The fear of the blue ones screamed across the leagues of desert, as my sire roared by them, I could sense them all, seeking the deepest pits of sand to hide from the rage of the heir of the Lord of the Arbitrations. And it was a terrifying rage, one that was causing fear even in the heights above this town, where the Queen of Flame lay trying to heal her own wounds, dealt more by the ones she had maimed and slain than we who came in rescue. I knew I would taste some piece of that rage, even if it were only words. 

The dwarf beside him with the arm so chewed up by servants of the beast was crying as the dwarven chirugeon sawed off the arm above the elbow. But the tears were not for himself, but his dead twin still up there on the mountain's foothills, where ever the creatures of flame had taken his body to toss aside or consume with their inner flames.

Still I feel my sire, there is no cooling in his rage, or his determination to be here in time to save those he can. This is not the beast that others think he is, but the one I know of, who does have a heart, and it is as red and loving as all think it is black and cold. Billenius was my friend, and for that father had spoken with him several times over the years. Then something else had grown between them, a respect for each other, or what they were to me. I know not still. 

There is the displacement of air outside and the rage is here, but contained more closely of the sudden. I hear the howling winds raging out from where he has teleported to, like the storms of the desert that often assail this town on the benches that rise from the desert floor. He is here, there is hope. Doors burst apart before the healer as he enters, giving commands to bring him supplies for healing and surgery. All know who Zotikos is, the great healer who serves my sire. 

None know the whole truth, and if they had, he would have been slain in that moment, out of fear he had come to ally with the bitch. The door opens, and he strides in with a pace that is nearly a run. He bypasses the three the local healers had thought to save, and approaches Billenius. He stops and hisses loudly. 

"Bahai-Luthna-Naish." With that naming, my own mind exploded. She had forged her own fate, created the thing that we dragons feared the most. Sees-Without-Eyes" that my sire's sire's sire had prophesied of. The bane who would slay the great dragons of the day and choose from those he left alive to be the next Lords of the Arbitraitions to take back our ancient homeland.

Now I knew the respect of mine sire for mine friend. 

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