Frineer snorted awake to his name on the vehicle of a pleading roar reverberating throughout his cave. Seeing a blurry Utiss canter inside with Kilena hugging her back, he peered quizzically at them before they took refuge behind him. An explanation to his unspoken question came when a dragon of charcoal scales followed them. The sight of the mountainous dragon, wearing a coat of icy blue scales, brought Ginroy skidding to a halt. His chin pointed up and his neck straightened before he met the bursting, pale blue scowl of Frineer. A violent shiver shook his body, as if the air around him turned arctic.
“You are cursed,” Frineer bellowed, a roar deafening in the tall cave. “A spawn of Ivna. Leave this place immediately.”
Utiss swayed side to side to retain balance while her head swam, and then her knees buckled. As her mount stumbled to one side, Kilena hopped down and hurried in front. Both hands occupied, the most she could do was study Utiss with overwhelming concern. “The toxin is making it difficult to focus, but I will live,” she explained through a few weary snorts. Head dropping to the ground, she closed her eyes. “You can do this, Kilena. You need to do this without me. He’s already wounded, finish him off.”
Kilena reaffirmed her grip on her sword and buckler, double tapping the toe of a boot on the ground as she mustered the will to turn and leave her dear friend. Fear once petrifying her cobalt blue eyes open wide dissolved, leaving a stern expression of determination that she aimed at Ginroy. “I will stop him,” she promised, tone emboldened by her conviction. Converting worry over Utiss’s wellbeing to unyielding courage, the knight raced toward her opponent.
Targath sprinted into the cave, footsteps nothing more than soft taps against the stone and strides swift, devouring the distance between him and the charcoal dragon. He lunged on to Ginroy’s back, and plunged a dagger hilt deep into one of the dragon’s jade eyes. He reared back, front paws swiping the air blindly and a howl tore from his long, curved throat. Ginroy dropped back to all fours and with desperate force he erratically flung his body around, sending the cursed elf into the air.
Kilena’s charge came to an abrupt halt, and she watched helplessly as he landed with a grunt. “Targath,” Kilena exclaimed.
Ginroy raked his claws across his face to remove the dagger from his eye, but only shoved it deeper, the tip digging around inside his skull with a grating scrape and deafening wail.
“Don’t kill him! I have questions,” Targath ordered, retreating toward the cave’s wall.
“As do I,” growled Frineer, before sucking in a long breath through flared nostrils.
Kilena retreated several steps away from the the target of Frineer’s assault into a crouch, and held the buckler in front of her for protection. Blue flames spewed from Frineer’s yawning open mouth and consumed Ginroy. From his snout up to his underbelly, he was scorched. The tips of his wings seared away to expose shiny bone, and leathery flesh stretched in between disintegrated to drifting dust. Scales shriveled and withered to ash. Ginroy collapsed before the flaming assault was over. He lay on the ground, mewling between weak, ragged breaths, with wisps of steam floating up from raw flesh. Kilena approached him, and Targath was soon at her shoulder to bark his interrogations. “How did Amodeus know where to find Kilena and Julian?”
Ginroy gave a frail, derisive chuckle. “A cursed elf fighting against Mother? Disgusting traitor.”
“He mocked you,” Kilena said, followed by a verbatim translation.
Gritting his teeth, Targath snatched one of the crooked horns on Ginroy’s head and yanked. “Tell me how Amodeus knew!”
Grunting, the cursed dragon wheezed, “Treants hear and know more than you might think. They gossip a lot, if you have the patience to listen.”
“He learned from treants,” she said.
Giving another jerk on his victim’s horn, Targath demanded, “Who has allied with Ivna?”
“Watch your back, dragonkin, and sleep with one eye open,” Ginroy warned out of arrogance, his words carried on every exhaled whine. Each one grew weaker than the last. “The hunt has begun to eliminate the last of your bloodline…”
Ivna’s child exhaled one last quivering breath, and then his remaining, jade eye stared vacantly into the distance.
“He has passed,” Kilena softy informed, voice tinged with a note of empathy.
Targath released the horn he held, and Ginroy’s head dropped lifelessly. He snatched the handle of his dagger, wriggling it free from the depths of the corpse’s eye socket. “I hope he made his last words worthwhile.”
“He did, I promise you that,” Kilena responded hesitantly as she sheathed her sword.
Arching a silver eyebrow, Targath asked, “What did he say?” The dagger came loose, snapping free of clinging sinew with a deft twist.
“He warned me to watch my back and sleep with one eye open because the hunt has begun to eliminate my bloodline,” she said, her tone heavy with threat’s enormous weight.
“Don’t worry. He’s just trying to scare you,” Targath dismissively informed. He flipped the dagger to aim its point behind him, the handle gripped in his fingers. “Why’d you put your sword away?”
“The battle is over, my weapon is no longer needed,” she reasoned.
“No,” Targath admonished, sheathing the cleaned blade. “Take out his heart.”
Shocked, Kilena asked, “What? Why?”
His eyes narrowed, intensifying their golden glow. He gruffly asked, “Are you telling me you didn’t remove Marru’s heart?”
“Why does it matter?” she argued.
“These are god dragons, Kilena. Unless the heart is removed and destroyed they can recover,” Targath impatiently explained. “Utiss should’ve told you as much.”
Kilena uneasily glanced in Utiss’s direction, only to find she had fallen asleep to recover from Ginroy’s noxious fire. “Utiss was Edith’s captive from a very young age, if not from birth. We were chased away by the villagers who were upset with us for the battle that destroyed their homes. If she did know, there was no time.”
“Then unless the villagers somehow salvaged Marru’s parts, he could still be alive. Kilena, you need to do this,” he urgently insisted.
Saddened sapphire eyes fell upon the battered dragon’s body. All signs of life extinguished. She hesitated. “Truly? This is the only way?”
“Your companion is telling the truth, Kilena,” Frineer interjected on a gentle, rumbling hum of approval.
Targath read the dismayed expression on Kilena’s face; her dispirited eyes, the sinking of her mouth, the declined angle of her head. He stepped closer to stand directly in front of her and planted his hands on her shoulders. Tilting his head, he sought and captured her gaze. “I know we didn’t exactly have the best start as allies, but I promise I wouldn’t lead you astray,” he sincerely said in a firm voice. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to help you. Push you in the right direction.”
Chest heaving with every breath to collect her courage, Kilena inwardly warred to swallow the unwelcome truths her allies provided. “Ginroy was born cursed. He acted out of obedience to his mother. If our roles were reversed, I would have done the same.”
“It’s for that reason that your empathy and forgiveness is wasted on Ginroy,” Targath calmly elucidated. “I won’t say that everyone who’s born from darkness shouldn’t be given a chance, but Ginroy and the cursed dragons are different.”
“Did I- Did I leave Beckton to its doom? What if Marru lives again and he ruined the village I nearly died to protect?”
“We’ll go together and make sure the people of Beckton are safe, before I take you below ground,” he resolutely promised. His comment awarded him a direct look into Kilena’s eyes.
“I almost believe you mean that,” she thoughtfully said. “You were reluctant before. What has changed?”
“We should not ignore Ginroy’s warning entirely. He could mean that Ivna has already gathered her forces.” Targath gazed intently into Kilena’s eyes, holding them captive. “There’s no escaping the enemy. We have no choice but to take the initiative, and strike with every advantage we can gain,” he sagely advised.
Targath’s words held the weight of an entire kingdom’s salvation as they settled into Kilena’s bones, spurring a weary sensation that resonated throughout her entire body. She forced deep respirations to ward off the anxiety, doubt, and fear encroaching around her heart that longed to burn as bright as a star. “I may not have asked for this fate as a dragonkin, but I chose my destiny when I took an oath to defend and protect the weak. When I made that vow, it was not solely for Roselake, it was for all of Draconiam. I swore it on my own life, and I will not back down.”
“That’s the Kilena I know,” Targath said with a faint grin of approval, which elevated her expression into a smile. Lowering a hand from her shoulder, he grabbed the hilt of a dagger and slid it from her belt, then turned the handle toward her while carefully holding the blade crafted from dragon claw. “You must finish Ginroy, or he will rise again and harm the people you’ve sworn to protect.”
Her gauntlet gloved fingers curled around the dagger’s handle, becoming the fixation of her focus. Stooped beside the carcass of the charred dragon, she sheathed her shield to have one free hand that took purchase on its shoulder. Arm raised, she aimed the dagger in a trembling hand toward the dragon’s chest. Each time she told her arm to move, her muscles resisted. “Ginroy is dead. I should be burying his remains to honor his life, praying for the god dragons to show mercy. To mutilate a corpse – any corpse – feels dishonorable. I- never had the chance to bury Edith, and I should-.” Kilena’s words were cut off when charcoal fingers extending from a fingerless glove encompassed her trembling hand.
“You shouldn’t waste your grief and remorse on people who don’t deserve it,” Targath sternly said from over her shoulder. His arm was extended to run parallel with hers and act as a guide as he helped her sink the dagger into Ginroy’s chest. The dragon claw blade cut smoothly through scorched scales and sinew alike.
Kilena gasped, her fingers losing strength, but she felt Targath squeeze her hand and pin her fingers to the handle.
“After the numerous tortures Edith made Utiss suffer, has she truly earned enough of your respect to be granted an honorable burial by a real knight?” Targath questioned in challenge to Kilena’s views. His hand, firmly holding hers around the handle, skillfully carved through Ginroy’s chest to the faintly beating heart.
Images of Cadence’s final act that exemplified his desire for redemption played through her mind, followed by his agonizing and grotesque end at Edith’s hands. “She hurt so many more, not only Utiss,” Kilena breathlessly confessed, watching as putrid black ichor poured out of the corpse’s new orifice. Inside, the heart of many chambers twitched, arties filled with inky blood, and a sickly green energy shimmered through the muscular organ. Kilena opened her mouth to breathe, sparing her lurching stomach as much of the awful stench as possible.
“Steel your heart, Kilena. And in this case your stomach, too. Ivna and her brood, Edith, Amodeus, they aren’t weak, and yet they choose to use their power to harm people. They don’t need your protection or your sympathy. The only thing they have earned is your righteous wrath to make the world a better place.”
Kilena swallowed back the bile rising up her throat, gaze never leaving the dissection directly in front of her.
“Ready?”
The single word was whispered closely to her ear, overwhelming her senses and thoughts. A tremor shook her entire body before she closed her mouth and swallowed again. Kilena steadied her nerves and nodded.
Targath’s hand relaxed control when Kilena’s fingers firmed their grip on the dagger’s handle. Together, they thrust forward. A flood of viscous blood drained from the skewered heart, and the glow of energy flickered out.
Kilena’s narrowed focus expanded to her surroundings and the cave’s occupants, recalling the time and place of the present. The deed complete, she and Targath rose in silence and stepped apart. He studied her contemplative expression, longing to understand the turbulent thoughts occupying her mind while she intensly stared at the dragon claw dagger.
“What does that mean for you?” Kilena’s voice emerged as a dying whisper. Her gaze lifted to him, drowning him in her own revelations. “You need no protection, yet you have harmed those less fortunate and weaker than you.”
“Not all of them,” he quietly rebuttaled, rotating in place to turn away from Kilena. “I walk a fine line of morality. Consider this a temporary reprieve from my typical deeds, and a temporary alliance should you choose to avenge those that I’ve harmed once we’ve won.” He deliberately paused, but only silence remained. “Meet me outside when you’re ready to leave.”
Targath gave no further opportunity for Kilena to argue when he stepped away, leaving through the cave’s only opening.
She stared after him, speechless. Frineer’s reverberating hum jolted her. “Quite an unusual character, that one. He speaks less than what he thinks and feels, but his actions tell all. Pragmatic to a fault.”
Staring at the blood dripping from the end of her dagger, Kilena asked, “Does this mean the only way to end Ivna once and for all is to destroy her heart?”
“A god dragon can recover any injury, no matter how severe, as long as the heart remains. The older they are, the more severe the injury they can survive. The dragon kin who fought Ivna before wounded her heart, but it was not destroyed. Our hearts hold the most potent reserve of magic, more than any other part of us. Now you understand the challenge you face in confronting Ivna. Are you prepared?”
“No, not at all,” she honestly admitted as she sheathed the dagger at her belt. “I begin to doubt whether I am capable of the strength needed for this battle.”
“Trust your own instincts, and those you choose as allies and friends will never lead you astray.”
Kilena Shrelack 