32
DEVEN
My breath snags on nettles of terror. Every soldier experiences setbacks in battle, but never have I felt more vulnerable. Surrounded by my family, I have more to lose than my life. I could lose the people who make my life worth living.
Udug’s and his siblings’ jubilant screeches abruptly stop. Splashing fills the darkness, and then deep, resonant thuds vibrate up from the ground.
Something has risen out of the water. And it is big.
“Gods, Deven.” Kali strangles my forearm, but I am grateful for our connection. More whispers of shock and horror resound around us in the impenetrable dark.
“What . . . what’s out there?” Natesa whispers.
Booms approach our front line. The trembling ground knocks Kali and me back a step.
“I don’t think you want to know,” replies Opal. Her amplified hearing can detect what is coming our way through the obsidian night.
Brac tosses a heatwave at the forest across the way. His fire ignites the stubby alpine evergreens and strips back the darkness.
The biggest dragon mankind has ever beheld towers over us. Taller than what was once the north tower of the temple, the dragon’s blue-black serpentine body glistens and drips icy water. His front feet and talons curl into the wet lakeshore. He drags his thick shape out of the water and roars, a gut-shaking bellow. Kali covers her ears, and I shrink down in my general’s jacket. The dragon twists his neck, turning his long snout with pointed, wiry whiskers away from the firelight.
Kali lowers her hands and whispers, “I saw this war once in a mural in Ki’s ancient underground temple. Kur was battling an army of men in the mountaintops.”
“How did it look for us?” I ask.
“He burned the army to ashy silhouettes with his fiery breath.”
Brac’s fire gradually extinguishes. The snowy trees are poor kindling, so Opal feeds the flames with her winds. Fire brightens the area once more.
Kur hisses and narrows his gold eyes at the blaze. “I do not like the light.” His guttural voice rumbles through me. I lock down my courage before it wriggles away.
“Kur!” Kali shouts. The dragon turns his head toward our troops. “Return to the Void and take your underlings with you!”
“Do you know what happened to the last mortal who threatened the First-Ever Dragon?” His talons claw ditches into the wet dirt. “I disemboweled him, splattered his entrails all over his friends, and picked my teeth with his spine.” The god of the demons leans down so we can see our reflections in his gold eye. “I existed before these mountains were a pile of pebbles, before mankind was a grouping of stars Anu pilfered from the heavens for his gain. I am born of Tiamat, the saltwater-goddess, filled with fiery venom to avenge her and destroy all who worship her traitorous son Anu.”
“Anu left this world to mankind and bhutas,” Ashwin calls out.
Kur blinks at him. “You reek of fear, boy.”
Ashwin raises his sword. Of all the times he could exhibit courage, this is not it. I edge in front of him, garnering Kur’s notice.
He sniffs the air and his throaty voice hardens. “You . . . you smell of sacrifice. Your saccharine scent curdles my stomach.” Kur sniffs again, and his glowing eye focuses on Kali. “You are mine. And another,” he says of Brac. “Why do you stand with weaklings, children of the evernight?”
“My fate is my own,” Kali says, boosting her chin.
Brac points to Udug and the other demons. “And who wants to look like them?”
The demon Kur hisses a breath that smells of decaying bodies. “I could drag you into the Void and teach you the way of the shadows.” Kali hoists her dagger to him, gripping it crosswise in front of her, and Brac readies his axes. “No? Then you are finished.”
Kur lifts his massive head, stretching until his whole height looms over us. Smoke billows from his nostrils.
“General,” Admiral Rimba says, “your order?”
“Hold to the plan. Keep your ranks tight and push them back toward the gate.”
“Delightful.” Brac widens his stance and grips his axes.
Kur crooks one of his talons, and his underlings charge. The demons run at us, but Kur crouches like a snow leopard, opens his jaw wide, and blows a ribbon of fire at our ranks. I dive away from the heat, and Kali goes the opposite direction. She lands with Brac on the other side of the inferno. Ashwin lies beside me, his shirt on fire. He bats at it helplessly. I strip off my jacket and use it to beat out the flames.
Ashwin droops in relief. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
I haul him up. Across the way, Kali dashes into the fray, headed for Kur. I try to keep sight of her, but she disappears behind a line of Aquifiers, who draw water from the lake and shoot it at Lilu. The fishlike demon duels back, spraying her own streams of frigid water at them. Yatin and Natesa intercept Edimmu, the reptilian one, and Princess Gemi and Captain Loc go after the lumbering rock demon, Asag.
Suddenly I see Opal, opposing Udug on her own. Her brother’s killer has trapped her against a high embankment over the ice-riddled lake.
I run to help her, dragging Ashwin after me, and push him behind a boulder. “Stay here!”
Opal is backed over the edge of the embankment, her heels meeting the drop-off. Udug gathers blue fire in his clawed hands. I sprint, khanda raised over my shoulder, and slice through his wing.
Udug yowls high and loud. Opal slides between his legs and jams her machete up through his thin-skinned belly. Black sludge oozes out. He retaliates with a burning sphere of cold-fire, blasting her.
She wrenches back and crumples.
Udug flies off with one fully functioning wing, cradling his injury.
The stench of charred flesh and seared muscle accosts me as I lean over the Galer. Burns cover more than half of her body, her skin completely gone along one arm and part of her neck.
I hold her unwounded hand. Her return grip loosens, her breaths wrenching gasps. Her suffering drags up my sorrow over Rohan’s death. Once again, I can do nothing.
“Opal,” I scratch out. “I’m sorry.”
Her pained whimpers lessen, and her focus turns inward with startling intensity. The battlefield drifts off to another world. “I can hear them calling.”
“Who?”
“My mother and Rohan. They’re waiting for me.”
I press her hand over my heart. “You should go to them.”
“Yes . . .” Opal’s torso jolts wildly, one final protest of her physical anguish, and her gaze empties of life.
My chin drops to my chest. Anu, let her family receive her. I grant myself a moment of grief and let her go.
The battle continues at my back, but my hearing still rings with Opal’s final breaths. I will not leave her out in the open for our enemies to revel over. I carry her to Ashwin and set her behind the boulder. He lays my jacket over her middle, covering her wound.
Flashing flames draw my attention to the front line. Kali and Brac exchange fire blasts with Kur. The First-Ever Dragon will wear them out. Bhuta powers are limited. His are eternal.
A rock crashes into our boulder. I crouch over Ashwin as rubble pelts our backs. Asag pummels us with more splintering rocks. The boulder shielding us cracks from his repeated hits.
“Can you swim?” I ask Ashwin.
“Yes. Why?”
I grab a stone and toss it at Asag. It pings off the brute’s chest. He extends his huge chest and growls.
“I don’t think he likes that,” Ashwin says.
“Run for the lake!”
We take off for the shore. I stay right behind the prince as a buffer between him and the demon. We pull ahead of the lumbering Asag, and I am knocked off my feet by a flying rock.
I fall forward, my bones jarring, and roll onto my back. Asag stomps on my chest and leaves his foot there. Something snaps inside me and releases pain. My spine presses into the ground and seals off my breath.
Ashwin runs into my side vision and swings his khanda at Asag. The blade clangs against the rock giant. Asag shoves the prince away, then removes his foot from my chest, only to aim his next stomp at my head.
A hand shoots through the demon’s thick middle.
Princess Gemi yanks out a fistful of rocks. Asag tips backward in a slow-motion fall. Gemi sweeps him up in a wave of summoned dirt and heaves him into the lake. He smacks the surface and sinks underwater.
“So that’s how you vanquish a demon,” Princess Gemi pants, hands on her hips.
“Evidently,” I croak, clutching my torso. Asag broke at least one of my ribs.
Gemi lifts Ashwin and hangs on to him. He will be safe with her. We need to vanquish three more demons, and I am not losing another soldier tonight.
“Stay together,” I tell them as I fetch my sword and take off for the main battleground.