Chương 85: Chapter 83: The Dragon.

The path ahead was black. The ground itself was stained. It pooled at the top of the slope, getting thinner as it rolled down. Something had been seeping down the mountainside for some time now. It shone faintly where the pale light caught it. I stepped closer. The smell hit me before my boots reached the edge of the slowly growing stain. It was metallic and sharp. No, if it had just been that, it would have been fine. This scent was sweet. Most of the column stayed frozen at the bend.

A few of the more grizzled expeditioners crouched at the boundary where clean snow met black, muttering to each other in low voices. One scraped at the surface with a knife. Another touched the ground and then sniffed his fingers and grimaced, shaking his head. I stepped onto the black snow. There was no crunch. Neither was there the splash of stepping into something wet. Instead it felt… fragile. Like the ground was just waiting for the chance to open and swallow me whole. It didn't.

I crouched and pressed my fingers flat against the snow. They came away dark and slick. This was blood. Everyone knew that, I imagined. Nobody had said the word yet, though it hung over our heads like an executioner's axe. The dragon was wounded. It should have been a good sign. Somehow, this was not. Violet was the only one who followed me without hesitation. She looked down at the black ground beneath her boots, then back at the frozen column behind us, then at me.

"Bunch of cowards," she muttered and not quietly. That got a few men moving. Pride, it seemed, still worked even here. Count Vance pushed forward to join us. He crouched where I had crouched, and examined the stain. His face went tight. He stood, turned to the column, and gave the order to move. The column lurched forward, reluctantly. The men who had been crouching and muttering were among the last to stand. The blood-soaked ground was unstable. Sections crumbled or shifted underfoot.

Where the blood had pooled deepest, the earth was soft. Everyone was taking very tentative steps. One of the expeditioners -a stocky man with an earth Gift- was working ahead of everyone else, pressing his hands flat to the path and trying to shore it up. He was struggling, judging from the way he was visibly sweating and straining.

"Damn stuff won't stick," the man growled to no one in particular. He pressed harder. The ground shifted beneath his hands.

"The mana just slides off." Damian moved forward without being asked. He knelt beside the man, put his own hands on the stone.

"I'll help." He said.

"There are two more, right? Come." Two more expeditioners did reluctantly step out ahead of the column to join him. The stocky man looked at Damian and then grudgingly nodded. They all fell into a rhythm without speaking -the older man identifying the worst sections, Damian and the others reinforcing them with layers of stone. The expeditioners muttered complaints the entire time. Something about the cold. Something about the blood making their Gifts feel sluggish.

Something about the mana feeling off, even more than it had before. I watched from a few paces back. Damian didn't complain even once. A part of me felt proud, and an equal part felt guilty. He hadn't asked me before he'd started, not that I would have refused him. Maybe it was for the best. I told myself that, at least. For now, it had to be enough. The expedition pushed upward. The black stain deepened as we climbed. It thickened until breathing through my mouth seemed like the wiser option.

The path curved against the mountainside. In places, the blood had eaten into the ground so deeply that the surface was pockmarked and uneven. Every now and then, there would be an impassable hole. That's where Damian and the others focused most of their efforts to keep us moving. Vaelin stirred as we walked. The blade didn't speak, but I felt its pull. For the first time, for the very first time, it was trying to pull me away from something. What are you doing? It didn't reply, merely kept tugging.

My feet slowed against my will. I had to consciously force each step forward. This was new. It had pushed me toward things before. Once, it had asked me to break my own body to kill a man. I didn't think it could be afraid, though I was equally unsure if this was something as simple as fear. I pushed through it. At least the path was wide enough that Sere and Violet could walk beside me. There was some comfort in that. Sere stopped. Her notepad was open but her pen wasn't moving.

She was staring at the black-stained rock with an expression I hadn't seen on her before. It wasn't her earlier fascination, and I did not think it was fear either. She caught me watching and slowly closed the notepad, before she tucked it away. Then, she nodded. Sere didn't need to write a thing. I understood just fine from her expression. The path narrowed again and the column was compressed. I found myself close enough to the front to overhear Estovan and Count Vance speaking in low voices.

"When we reach it, I go first." Estovan's voice was level. Count Vance didn't answer immediately. I heard the crunch of his boots slow."You always bloody say that, my friend." Count Vance answered. There was something in his voice I had never heard before and had certainly never expected. It was warmth. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Because it's always true." Estovan said.

"I'm the strongest here. We both know that. There's no sense in wasting men when I can hold its attention."

"Hold its attention." Vance repeated.

"That what you called it at the Blackmire? Holding its attention?" There was a pause. The wind pressed down between them.

"That was different."

"Was it? Because I remember carrying you back to camp with half your ribs caved in. I remember Alira telling me you had an hour, maybe two." Vance's voice had dropped. It was quieter now.

"You had that same damn look on your face then, too. Right before you charged the thing."

"I was younger."

"You were stupid."

"I was a Lord, Casser," Estovan said.

"All young Lords are at least somewhat stupid." That got a laugh out of Count Vance. It also made me pause. I did not know much about Estovan. Not nearly as much as I should. He had been a Lord? Now…wasn't the time to ask.

"Just don't make me carry you again," Vance said.

"My back isn't what it was." Estovan sighed.

"You will never let that go, will you? Adrian brings it up enough. I don't need you to as well." Vance just snorted. There was a brief silence between them, the comfortable kind. I had intruded on a moment I shouldn't have been privy too. It made me stop in place, make some distance between them and myself. I hadn't known they were that close. We rounded another bend and the temperature fell. A wall of cold hit us like stepping into deep, frozen water.

Even with the fur cloak, even with mana reinforcing my chest and throat, my breath hitched. I felt the cold in my teeth, and in my eyes. Violet staggered beside me. She recovered fast as she forced her way through the worst of it.

"Now what?" She grumbled. Her breath did not create those white plumes. It simply…froze. Tiny crystals formed in the air in front of her mouth and fell like dust.

"Frost dragon," I said. My voice was tight against the pull tugging me in the opposite direction.

"Guess it just makes sense. They didn't write this part in the stories I've read." Violet processed this for about two seconds. Then she grinned.

"Bet they died before they could." For some reason, that made me feel better. Violet stepped closer to my side, warhammer in hand, and didn't move away.

"Why don't you write this in some damn book yourself when we get back?" Men behind us were obviously struggling now. Count Vance barked orders but some of the expeditioners without strong enough reserves were flagging visibly. Dorothy was, surprisingly, doing better than most because Sere was dragging her arm forward and up the slope. This wasn't just the cold, I closed my eyes. Click Click. Even reaching for the knobs felt sluggish. My vision sharpened and I layered it over Mana sight.

I saw waves of dark blue mana, filling the air, covering the sky. They pushed on us from above, a giant hand that threatened to crush us underneath. No wonder it felt so heavy. I wonder if I could…. I let some of my own mana radiate outward. I focused it forward, to meet that wall of dark blue just in front of us. Mine was weaker -that much was clear. It didn't lift the suffocating weight. Perhaps nothing could. It still made some space. Stopped some of the cold. Lifted some of the pressure.

A few men walked straighter, looking around in obvious confusion. Perhaps there had been some point to trying to learn my Edict after all. An impression came to me, as my mana pushed against this force. An impression of pain. It was a distant thing, and yet I felt it. It felt like one of Vaelin's impressions, but this one came from the outside instead. Never had I felt such a thing. It was hard to keep my face steady, harder not to let my mind race.

I didn't even know this was possible, and could not guess at what it meant. Violet bumped my shoulder.

"You can lean. Don't know how to make it subtle." The Godblade's pull grew. I had to stop walking. I braced one hand against the stone on my left, fought for control of my own legs. Vaelin flooded my mind. It did not speak. Images came in broken fragments, gone before I could think too deeply about any of them. A flash of blue scales beneath a red sky. A voice that wasn't a voice, calling a name I couldn't hear. A woman, so beautiful, her face the color of snow. She was smiling at the viewer.

Not at me, and yet I felt her gaze all the same. Grief came at that last image, so overpowering I felt the pressure behind my eyes. Saw my vision blur. Then one clear word, softer than any Vaelin had ever spoken: Eira. My eyes stung. These weren't my feelings and I forced them down. I would have reached for the Gift, if I'd thought Vaelin might let me. I kept walking as I forced my feet against the pull. I don't know what this is about, Vaelin. But… what you're doing right now, is not Defiance.

The pressure in my mind stirred and seemed to shift slightly. The Godblade relented. The pressure stopped so suddenly I almost tripped and fell on my face.

"Hey," Violet said, low enough for only the two of us to hear.

"You okay?"

"I think I'm okay now." I murmured. She put a hand on my shoulder anyway, and we kept walking. The path opened onto a broad plateau near the peak. The column spread out. Every man and woman fell silent. The dragon lay in a crater of its own making. The impact site was large, almost three times the size of the dragon itself, ending two dozen feet away from us. It wasn't nearly deep enough to hide the creature itself. The black blood was everywhere here.

It pooled around the creature in dark, steaming lakes that hissed where they met the snow. Behind the dragon, the mountain itself had been split open. There was a hole, one carved directly into the peak. It was small. Only barely enough room for a person. More mana radiated from inside there, stronger even than what the dragon was giving off. No, perhaps that had been giving off most of the cold all this while. The dragon itself was enormous. Bigger than any creature I had ever seen.

Bigger than the Farstep Circles. Large enough that I suspected I would hardly compare with one of its long nails. Its scales were the color of deep winter sky and where the faint light caught them, they shimmered. One wing was folded beneath it, crushed against the stone. The other stretched out at what could only be a wrong angle. That wing was the source of most of the blood. The edges of the wound were ragged. The blood oozed thick and dark, and it had not stopped. Perhaps it couldn't. One eye was caked shut.

It was crusted over with frozen blood and something darker that had dried in layers. The other was hidden against the ground. Rings of mana radiated outward from its body in circular patterns across the stone. They looked almost deliberate. Almost beautiful. I could see them with my eyes. It was dying. Anyone could see that. Count Vance had been right. This was a creature on its last legs. And yet. It stirred. There was an odd cracking as the dragon's body stirred. There was a long moment of absolute silence.

Nobody in our expedition moved. Perhaps nobody even breathed. Then the dragon's caked eye cracked open. Our expedition was almost fifty people, and I was somewhere in the middle of the column. In front of me were plenty of men and women. I still felt the dragon look at me.