Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

A blast of fire erupted behind them, and the giant dove beneath a mound of torn earth. The dragon, injured and angry, was flying in great circles now, bleeding acidic gore onto the earth, raining her furious breath down on them.

Rhapsody’s blood boiled.

“Enough of this,” she said, angrily brushing the clods of earth and brambles from her tattered dress. “Where’s Achmed?”

“Behind you,” came the sandy voice. “As I always will be.”

Rhapsody turned to see the Firbolg king coming to her side. She opened her arms and embraced him quickly, then pointed to a broken rise at the edge of the Moot.

“Come,” she said to her two friends, scanning the sky angrily. “We’ve got one more bloody prophecy to fulfill, damn it all.”

“ Hrekin ,” said Achmed sullenly. “This had better be the last one.”

The sounds of battle strife rent the air as the Three crawled over the broken chasms that had once been the smooth green fields of the steppes leading to the Krevensfield Plain. Bodies of the long-dead and those more newly in the state littered the ground. The light from the sun was gone now, obliterated by the fall of night and the death that hung, like bitter earth, in the air and on the wind that swept the battlefield.

Rhapsody had found her sword by its glow not far from where she fell and sheathed it; now the Three crept in darkness through the ruins of the Great Moot, the broken symbol of Gwylliam’s dream of peace, the place where a once-great nation had met in Council, planning and building an empire that had stood for a moment, shining brightly in the history of man, only to fade and crumble like sand beneath the selfish lust for power and dominion.

Within the Moot Ashe still stood, fending off the remains of the fallen, holding back the tide of death while his people escaped. He was surrounded and alone, as he had been that day on the Krevensfield Plain when he stood to defend Shrike.

Achmed slung the cwellan and sighted it on the grisly remains of soldiers that were attacking the Lord Cymrian.

“Ashe!” he shouted across the Bowl of the Moot. Ashe turned and looked at him. “Want help this time?”

Between swings of the sword, the Lord Cymrian nodded.

Achmed fired. The bright disks whirled like firesparks through the air, slicing across the gusts of wind and into the tattered necks of the corpses on Ashe. In the wink of an eye Achmed had reloaded again, and again, sending a hailstorm of cwellan disks whizzing around Ashe, causing the bodies to fall like chaff to the ground.

Then the Three hurried back behind a rocky outcropping as the dragon strafed through, bleeding and spinning, roaring in anger that shook the base of the mountains. The sky blazed with orange light as the fire from her breath struck the ground, blasting shards of rock and dust into the night. Rhapsody stamped out Grunthor’s greatcloak, which had ignited in the blast.

“Ashe!” she shouted as they climbed toward the Summoner’s Rise. “Get out of the Moot!”

She followed the Bolg up the rock ledges, over the rubble that had once been seats carved into the earth, scraping her bare knees and the tatters of her gown on the boulders that still supported the long, flat ledge of granite from which she had called the Council into being.

When they reached the top Rhapsody stared in dismay at the distant fields, roiling still in battle. The Firbolg army had joined forces with the soldiers of Roland, and they, along with every living Cymrian soul, were still battling, still dodging the dragon’s wrath, still holding the land that had been in their blood for centuries, beating back the nightmares of the Past.

She looked down into the fractured Moot, split in twain from the emergence of the fallen. A great rift bisected the floor of the gathering place where only this morning the Cymrians had been celebrating the dawn of their new era. She turned to Achmed and Grunthor.

“There?” she asked.

The two Bolg nodded in answer.

Behind her she heard the crumbling of stone, the rushing of panting breath. Achmed swung the cwellan and pointed into the shadows. A moment later Ashe appeared, bloody and torn, with the black earth of the grave smeared on him. Rhapsody’s eyes filled with tears; tattered as he was, he was every inch the Lord they had named him.

He took her into his arms, but she pushed away quickly, her eyes still scanning the sky for the dragon. She could see Anwyn, circling in the distance, raining fiery death down on the fields at the Bolg, searching for her, and anger began to burn furiously behind her eyes.

She drew Daystar Clarion, its flame burning bright as a brand in a black night, roaring with righteous fury, ringing like a chime, swallowing all other sound.

“Anwyn!” she shouted. Her voice rocked the earth, causing shale to slide and the echo to rumble over the Teeth and the plain below them. “Anwyn, you coward! Here I am!”

In the distant sky the dragon turned, hovering in a haze of bloody fire for a moment, then streaked toward the Moot.

Rhapsody held the sword aloft; Grunthor and Achmed grasped the hilt together, helping her hold it even higher. She searched the sky for a star, finding after a moment Carendrill, the tiny, blue-white star beneath which the Lirin signed peace accords.

“Are you ready?” she asked, struggling to keep the sword steady. “This is the moment that has been awaited since the end of the First Age. Our words will carry power—we must use them carefully.” The two Bolg looked off into the sky at the approaching dragon and nodded.

Over the billowing flames of the sword Achmed could hear silence fall, and the beating of his heart begin to echo, thudding heavily in his ears. Within his veins his blood ran hot, humming with life, with portent, the blood that had been tied in the old life to that of his kinsmen, the refugees of Serendair. All of those kinsmen that remained in this world huddled on the fields below, seeking shelter from the dragon’s wrath. He could feel their terror in his veins, their blood united in common history, in hope for the future. The closest thing to a prayer he had ever uttered came forth from his lips.

“Not one more drop of blood will be shed here,” he said simply.

Child of Blood.

The amber eyes of the giant who stood silently beside him were filled with tears of sorrow. Those eyes were no stranger to the tragedies of war or mass destruction; they had looked unblinkingly on the death of nations, on the ravages of the deepest depravity without flinching, but this moment was somehow different. From deep within his soul, through the bond that had formed long ago as he traveled along the Axis Mundi, Grunthor felt the pain of the Earth, the abject horror that so many fallen had been dragged from the peace they had found within Her arms, ripped from their rest, unwillingly rallied by a soulless woman to the madness that was now rending fallow fields asunder. Tears streamed down his cheeks, not for those who were cowering from death, but for those who had embraced it centuries ago, and now, through no fault of their own, were being forced to brave the agony of the sun, of battle, after so long at rest in the peaceful darkness of their Mother’s embrace.

“Open, Earth, an’ take back your children,” he said.

Child of Earth.

Alone among the Three, Rhapsody was fighting back anger. Her body, aching a moment before from the shock of falling, of the injuries she had sustained, was whole again for the time being, sustained by the power of the sword, the fire and the stars to which it was tied. Enough , she thought bitterly, trying to rein in her hatred as the beast roared closer. You despoil the Sky. It is meant to shelter the world, not to ruin destruction down upon it. The Sky is the collective soul of the universe, and, as you’ve said, you have no soul . She inhaled and let her breath out slowly, watching the dragon’s approach.