Chương 45: 45 loop 1, Part 25

"I always wanted to use that spell," Thane said, mostly to himself. I barely heard him, and I was kicking myself for not having [Subtitle] active. Above the broken roof, through the ceiling, Eirkedross opened its mouth. I watched the darkness gather between its teeth, thick and oily. Just like when it had taken Finn apart. I'd hoped to never see it again. But I had [Wideview] active, because of course I did, so I saw the whole thing from every angle at once. The breath came down over Thane.

It took him apart patiently, bit by bit, like it had all the time in the world. The wand rolled out of his hand and clicked against the ground. He had been the professor my uncle had asked to force me to meditate for the first time. I had hated every second of it and called it the worst day of my life. Four hours of sitting still while he hummed and told me to listen to what the system wanted, as if the system had anything useful to say about naps.

But as I watched him die in front of me, with dawning horror, I didn't think I'd say that ever again. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Everyone, we need to move faster." We were practically crawling. The whole column moved at the pace of the slowest people we were pushing forward, and those were the four wounded. There was a first-year with a shredded shoulder. Two third-years, both with broken feet. And a girl being carried by Finn that had a leg bending the wrong way at the knee. I wondered why Finn hadn't healed them yet, but one look at him answered the question. His face had gone pale under the blood and soot.

His wand hand shook every few steps. His mana had been spent. These were not the people he had forgotten to heal. These were the least damaged people left after he had already done everything he could. Fuck my timing. Because every second they spent fighting their own ruined bodies was a second the dragon had to catch up. I pointed my wand at them and stopped caring about my mana, which was easier than I thought it would be." [Move]."

I cast it on the first-year's robes, and he lifted off the ground with a gasp, one hand clutching his shoulder like gravity might remember him any second. A small block of mana vanished. Nope. Wasn't going to look at that. I did my best to ignore my mana and kept casting." [Move]." I cast on the girl with the dislocated knee. Another block vanished, a little less than the first." [Move]."

" [Move]." The two third-years floated up together, wobbling badly until I pictured them steadier. And the fourth cast tripped [Cascade]. The bar in the corner of my vision had gone deep into the red. Fuck. But when I looked at the dragon, I knew I was making the right choice. Flag had been helping the two third-years, herding them towards the library, with that patient determination and excitement. He still had a look of wonder on his golem face.

The moment [Move] took the four injured off their feet, he turned and came back to me. Flag walked the way he always did—slamming each foot down, then overcorrecting. But he was learning how to walk faster. So I wasn't going to complain.

"Okay," he said.

"The wounded ones are flying now. That's very good. Can I fly, too?"

"Not right now. Probably later."

"Oh," Flag said.

"Later is good. I didn't have any later before. What can I help with next?" I sent Flag to hang out with the other golems until I inevitably needed his help again. We finally picked up the pace, which meant it was time for the next problem. Frost's plates were in ruin. My golems did a good job of holding them up, looking like broken peacock's feathers. And it hadn't helped that Eirkedross had hammered them again and again with shadowfire and claws. There were maybe a third of what we had started with.

And they looked about ready to crumble. But defense was defense. As if reading my thoughts, Frost flicked her wand behind her, and while she ran, she cast [Mass Plating]. Fresh glass snapped into the air around us. Dozens of new discs caught the late morning light. They were the same clear ash color. And they warped the Green as if I was looking through a dirty window. She wasn't done. She cast [Redirect]. zAnd the discs began to move on their own.

Each one bending and tilting against the next, climbing and stacking up in a long, curving arc that cast a weird shadow over all of us. Where the gaps had been, she cast again, creating new glass and slipping it in to fill the cracks. There were dozens of plates, each one leaning on the next. Each one depending on its neighbor not to fail. A metaphor, probably. I hated those when they applied to me. The only problem with a shell that size was the weight.

I wasn't sure my golems could distribute it without dropping it.

"Flag, grab the shell at the front," I said.

"Carefully."

"Oh, yes," Flag said.

"I can hold things. I'm very good at holding things." That was true. He had been a floor. Holding things was essentially his entire professional history. I sent the same order to the other golems and pictured them spreading themselves out beneath the shell. They obeyed, arms raised, stone feet thudding across the grass as they took the weight. It worked, and soon we were running across the Green under a ridiculous turtle shell of stacked glass. All of us were crammed beneath it like…

well, like a group of people trying to avoid a fucking dragon. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Every blast of Eirkedross's flame that struck the dome would bounce off the plates in a long, descending waterfall. I'm sure we looked absurd to other people, but it wasn't even the most absurd thing I had done that day. Out past our shell, the people who'd run early had no glass over their heads.

They'd scattered across the open Green in a loose, panicking spread, and Eirkedross worked them like a predator that had already won. It dropped onto a knot of them near the fountain, claws first. I tried hard to ignore it, but the image was ghastly. It came up with two of them and decided it only wanted one. The other, it let fall. The screams echoed against the shell. A boy maybe my age broke off from the group and sprinted for the library doors, arms pumping in a fruitless panic.

Eirkedross caught him in three wingbeats. There wasn't even a struggle. I kept my wand on the wounded and my eyes forward, and told myself the math was sound. Every person under our shell was a person it couldn't reach. And for now, it seemed to be avoiding us for easier prey. Eirkedross wailed overhead, deciding which of us looked softest. Ahead of our shell, the people who had fled earlier were screaming like maniacs, trying to figure out where to go. We were gaining on them, but not fast enough.

The dragon swooped down and grabbed the old professor who had led them out. His robes snapped in the wind as Eirkedross lifted him clear off the ground. Then it ripped him in half. I gagged hard enough that my throat burned, but there wasn't time for that, either. There wasn't time for anything. There was only the library ahead of us, the dragon above us, and a growing list of things I was going to see every time I closed my eyes.

And then one of the fourth-years, Auroka, stepped out from under the shell's front lip and into the open. I wanted to grab her and pull her back. But she planted her feet, centered her wand, and spoke a word I didn't catch. A hand took shape above the Green, formed out of nothing in a churn of packed earth and raw stone, grain by grain, until it hung in the air. It was a single colossal limb of gray rock and pressed soil, with fingers as long as I was tall and a wrist as thick as a door.

It was an earth-elemental version of [Third Arm] —the one I had cast in the library, except hers looked like it could punch through a building. But she didn't send it in bare. She flicked her wand a second time, and shouted so loud I could hear, " [Holy Light]!" A golden light poured down the length of the arm, sheathing the gray stone from shoulder to fingertip in a brilliant sheen. I understood what she had done the moment I saw it. Bare stone would have passed right through.

The dragon was made from souls, and it was clearly shadow element. So it had been the right call. She'd wrapped the arm in the only thing that could touch the dragon. And unlike my usual solutions, which mostly involved making somebody trip and humiliate themselves, hers looked like something people would actually put in a textbook. The hand swung up and clamped around Eirkedross's neck mid-wheel, fingers closing through the shadow until it met something solid underneath.

The dragon's flight stopped like it had hit a wall. And she dragged it down out of the sky and slammed it against the ground. It hit the Green hard enough that I felt the vibrations in my feet. The dragon thrashed against it, but the arm held, shadow boiling off its scales where the fingers dug in. Auroka grinned, and I didn't blame her. It was a badass spell. Twenty minutes ago, I'd written her and Craston off as liabilities I'd have to drag to the library.

I had thought they'd be two fourth-years who'd freeze the moment something with teeth looked at them. But I was wrong, and for once, being wrong didn't immediately make my life worse. People kept turning out to be more competent than I'd thought—which was odd, now that I considered it. I needed to be more careful in my people-watching. I swore I had never seen this kind of capability out of them before. I expected Craston to hang back—either to conserve mana or just to not put himself in harm's way.

I was grateful for what Auroka had done, because it meant more people could get to safety. But the smart play was for Craston to stay safe. Instead, he ran straight out from under the shell to stand beside her in the open. His wand was already up. And he grinned at Auroka. It was like the two of them had agreed years ago that if one of them was going to die, the other would, too.

"Holding it isn't enough," he shouted, looking back at all of us.

"If any of you really do have something planned, now's the time for it." He leveled his wand at the arm and cast [Triplicate]. The single colossal limb split apart into three. Where one hand had gripped the throat, now there were three identical arms: two hovering in the air above Eirkedross, and one still grabbing the throat. The new ones went for the wings. The second hand caught the left wing against the joint. It wrenched it down and back, folding the great shadow membrane against the dragon's own spine.

The third clamped the right wing the same way. Eirkedross screamed and tried to breathe smoke, but the clamp on its throat prevented anything from happening. The dragon was pinned, three arms holding everything back. Its wings were locked against its spine, its throat was crushed in a glowing fist, and for one brief stretch of time, Eirkedross looked less like the end of the world and more like something that could bleed if people were stubborn enough. But knowing what I did, it wouldn't last.

Craston was already shaking, his mana clearly low. Auroka's grin had vanished into clenched teeth. Frost's plates were still moving above us, but her arm sagged lower every time she cast. Everyone on this Green was giving everything they had for the hope of a handful of seconds. But it was all I needed. I pushed through the crowd to Flag at the front of the group. He still had the mana battery gripped in one of his arms.

"Flag. I need you to do something, and please don't argue."

"Oh, I don't think I know how to argue yet. Is it like standing? Because I'm getting better at standing."

"No. Different thing. Look, I should have told you earlier, but the thing you're holding is a bomb. And I think it'll kill the dragon." Flag looked down at the battery in his arms.

"Oh. A bomb. Isn't that bad?"

"Yes."

"Will it hurt me?"

"I don't know, buddy. Probably. I'm sorry I have to ask you to do this, but if you don't, a lot of people are going to die."

"Oh." That was all Flag said at first, which was somehow worse than if he had kept talking. The tether between us felt warm and steady and horribly trusting. I hated that. I hated all of it. Then Flag hugged the battery tighter against his chest.

"Then I'll be fast. Besides, it'll be fine. It's very hard to break stone." I tried to run the numbers on that. But I wasn't sure what this bomb would do. I just hoped the turtle shell would be enough to protect us. I should have said something better. Maybe there was something better to say. Maybe Finn would have found it. I didn't. Flag turned and ran. Then he stopped and looked back.

"How do I make it go?"

"I really think all you need to do is crush it in your hand. It's pretty fragile."

"Oh," Flag said.

"I can crush things." Through [Wideview], I watched my friend cross the grass with the battery glowing in his arms. He ran badly, heavily, beautifully. Every step slammed into the Green. Auroka screamed something as her spell faltered. Craston dropped to one knee. The golden arms started to dissipate. Flag dove into the dragon, his whole body consumed by the shadowy black.