James Maxey - Greatshadow

Aurora lunged, the Jagged Heart held above her head, aiming for the gap between Greatshadow’s eyes. The dragon pulled away, pressing down on the stone ledge with his massive claw. The volcanic rock cracked beneath his weight, creating a deep pit a yard wide just where Aurora’s oversized boot should have landed. She fell as the ground between her and Greatshadow gave way.

Greatshadow plunged into the magma lake once more. I ran to the hole where Aurora had vanished. She’d dropped about twenty feet; her heels were balanced on a six inch lip of stone. Fresh lava bubbled below her, fiery red.

I pulled off my cloak and dropped to my chest, my arms dangling over the edge to allow the hem to reach her.

“Climb up!” I shouted.

“Infidel thinks you’re dead, you bastard!” Aurora said as she grabbed the thick velvet cloth. “Why the hell are you still alive? What on earth are you doing here? For that matter, what the hell am I doing here?”

Zetetic looked over the edge as Aurora began to climb up the cloak. My arms felt like they’d be pulled from their sockets. Zetetic said, “The pyramid trapped you in an interstitial realm where time doesn’t exist as a dimension. I freed you.”

“And while you’re pondering that, you should know I’m a ghost, but turn solid when dragon blood gets on my knife,” I explained, my voice strained as I struggled not to drop her. “I may dematerialize at any second, so hurry.”

Aurora furrowed her brow as she climbed. “I can’t decide which of you is making less sense. Let me talk to someone sane. Where’s Infidel?”

“The spirit realm,” said Zetetic.

“She’s dead?”

The Deceiver stroked his chin as he contemplated the question, then said, “I don’t believe a word has been invented that describes her condition. She’s been split into physically manifested dual aspects of her psyche then thrust bodily into a non-material realm of souls.”

“You are not allowed to answer any more of my questions,” Aurora grumbled as she grabbed the rocky ledge next to my shoulder with her sausage-sized fingers. My teeth chattered as she clambered over me back onto the relative safety of the ledge. “Where’d the damn dragon get off to?”

Relic crawled from the tunnel toward the bone-handled knife. He answered Aurora through teeth clenched with pain: “Greatshadow is bathing in magma to cauterize his wounds.”

Aurora tensed as she saw the small dragon. She raised the Jagged Heart, looking ready to put him out of his misery.

“Wait!” said Zetetic, grabbing her arm. “He’s a friend.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

“He’s an enemy of our enemy,” said Zetetic.

Relic reached the knife and moved it from the vaporizing dark-brown pool it lay in, touching it to the sticky red blood coating his shoulder from his broken wing. The fresh fluid filled me with a surge of energy.

“So, can Greatshadow just wait us out?” I asked. “Could he stay under the magma forever?”

“Actually, no,” said Relic. “Despite the fact my father dwells in a volcano, the elemental force he’s merged with isn’t magma, it’s fire. His physical body and his internal flames both require air. He must surface soon.”

Zetetic looked around. “Soon may not be soon enough,” he said. “Tower’s armor is disappearing piece by piece.”

He was right. Tower’s chest plate was still there, along with various nuts, bolts, and gears, but the bulk of the armor had vanished. As I watched, the hip compartment that held the magic book flickered, then turned to smoke, leaving the leather-bound volume within sitting on the barren ground. Zetetic tore off a piece of his robes and fashioned them into impromptu mittens, lifting the book.

“Technically, I’m not touching it,” he said as he flipped through the book. He shook his head slowly as he studied the pages. “Not that having this will do me any good. Greatshadow is no doubt burning the monastery to the ground, killing everyone inside. When the last monk praying to keep my heart beating is slain I’ll be dead, permanently this time.”

“Greatshadow may have plucked that information from Stagger’s mind,” said Relic. “Perhaps he thinks if he waits long enough, he can face one less foe. Aurora is our best hope now. She can use the magic of the Jagged Heart to slay Greatshadow.”

“This still doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “Fire melts ice. Why is an icy fragment of Hush more powerful than a whole dragon?”

“Hush isn’t the dragon of ice,” said Aurora. “She’s the dragon of cold.”

“So?”

“To understand the true nature of reality, you need only look into the night sky. Darkness is the permanent state of things; light is merely a fleeting local phenomenon. The same is true of heat and fire. Flames can rage brightly for but a moment. Just as darkness will always win out over light, cold is the eternal backdrop that existed before fire, and will endure after. Flame can never win any permanent victory against cold.”

“The true power of the weapon lies in more than simply its elemental chill,” said Relic. “Greatshadow is the dragon who broke Hush’s heart. Its frosty bitterness embodies the seething hatred Hush feels toward Greatshadow. It can, and will, slay him.”

“I know a lot of dragon history, but I’ve never heard that,” said Zetetic.

Before Relic could provide us with a history lesson, Greatshadow burst from the surface of the bubbling magma, his neck rising up fifty feet, a hundred, as he drew a deep breath into his mighty lungs. He was wreathed in fresh flames, his skin aglow with his newly stoked energies. The ground beneath us trembled as the lava pool began to rise.

Relic shook his head, looking as if he might be about to cry. “He’s opened fresh lava vents beneath the surface! If the volcano erupts, we’ll all perish!”

Aurora craned her neck up, drawing the harpoon back. Greatshadow spread his enormous wings, beating them in a powerful downstroke. Globs of molten rock rained around us as a foundry wind nearly swept us from our feet.

“His head’s too far away!” Aurora shouted over the gale. “I can throw a harpoon a hundred yards on a good day, but not straight up!”

“You could if you were bigger!” Zetetic leapt in front of her. “Fortunately, I have the power to make you a giantess with an enchanted kiss!” He stood on his tip toes, grabbed her cheeks, and mashed his puckered lips between her tusks.

A wall of flame shot down toward us as Greatshadow exhaled once more. As before, the flame was thwarted by a shield of ice as Aurora grew rapidly, doubling to sixteen feet, then thirty, as Zetetic grabbed Relic by the tail and dragged him back toward the tunnel.

I lingered behind for half a second to watch as Aurora topped out close to ninety feet tall. The Jagged Heart had grown with her, taller than any tree. Her long black coat flapped as she leaned back to throw, the hem catching me like a sail, knocking me from my feet. Flat on my back, I watched as she let the harpoon fly, aiming toward Greatshadow’s open maw as the jet of flames died away.

The Jagged Heart flashed up like reverse lightning, trailing snow, entering the dragon’s cavernous jaws and punching into the roof of his mouth. His head tilted sideways as he shrieked in pain. The bright, crystalline tip of the harpoon jutted from the top of his skull. His eyes rolled up, as if trying to focus on it.

Finally, Greatshadow shuddered, his body wracked with a death spasm. Zetetic ran from the tunnel and grabbed my hand, dragging me back toward relative safety as the dragon began to fall. Magma splashed up in a raging tidal wave as his body collapsed. Aurora, no longer in possession of the Jagged Heart, dropped to her hands and knees and tried to squeeze her massive bulk into the tunnel.