Page 35

O rnix

I place our brother in the crypt, where he will be tended to by the priests. I bow my head over his body and utter a silent prayer for his soul, along with an apology for what he suffered. No dragon should be dead today.

Melissa is up in our room. She did not have to be told to go there, and I hope I will not have to address any discipline issues with her anytime soon.

I go to the dungeons, and find the cause of the problem.

Equinox.

Always Equinox.

He is lounging in his cell as if he finds it comfortable, smirking even before I open my mouth. He clearly knows what happened, and believes he has won some victory.

“Portals opened up across the plains today, and humans poured through into our realm. I think you know why.”

He snorts with smug laughter, the sound of an idiot child who thinks he has bested his betters because he has no sense of consequence. I have failed this creature.

“You should know Erastos has been killed by the human invasion.”

A brief expression of pain passes over Nox’s face. Of course he never considered that there would be losses that did not include me. He thinks that there is a world in which only he and I exist, locked in a battle of wills with no collateral damage. This is the thinking of a petulant child.

“That is too bad,” he says. “But unfortunately, Uncle, the deadline passed.”

“The deadline for what?”

“I had a failsafe. If you were to kill me, I had portals set up to open to the human world. Ninety-nine of them. All linked to coordinates shared on the message boards for my little game. That would ensure a blend of chaos coming through that I knew you would not be able to handle.”

“You are alive, and those portals are open.”

“Yes. Well. Yes. Sorry about that.”

“Sorry? For revealing our world to humanity? Sorry for putting everything we hold sacred at risk of being tainted by these little primates who cannot help but destroy everything they touch?”

He gives a little shrug. “I may not be dead, but being in this cell is pretty close, Uncle.”

I draw in a breath, calming myself. Anger will not solve this in the moment. I need to understand what he has done, and why.

“How did you do this? You don’t have the seal. You don’t have the internal resources for something like this. This is a significant working of magic.”

If he had any sense, he would not speak a word to me. But Nox does not have a great deal of sense. Instead what he has is a great deal of hubris.

He smirks, satisfied, proud of himself. He is going to tell me because he wants the satisfaction of showing me just how much better than me he thinks he is.

“I don’t need the seal. I needed the resonances. All our magic can be repeated with tech. You’ve never understood that. You’ve always thought it was something special and unreproducible just because you didn’t really try. Everything is atomic, even here.”

I nod, slowly. He’s babbling really. He has made a facsimile of magic, a set of tools and toys that don’t really do what he thinks they do. Yes, he’s opened portals, but that in itself is not a feat. Even Melissa can open portals.

“Well, my boy,” I say. “I suppose I should not be surprised that you endeavored to make the magical mundane. You have no appreciation for the depth of it, for the true source of power. You will be stopped. I hope you know that.”

He deserves to continue to rot down here in this dungeon until his mind dulls and his body softens and he realizes that his might has never and will never be a match for mine.

Our kind does not degenerate with age. We evolve with it, our magic deepening, our power growing.

Nox has been thoroughly poisoned by human values and experiences.

He has allowed himself to believe that his youth is a virtue, when in reality it is nothing but inexperience and arrogance lying to itself.

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s all too late. Everything is in motion. My plans cannot be stopped.”

“Every single one of your plans has already been stopped.”

“Has it?” Nox smiles at me in that smug way that makes me want to wipe it off his face. “I can’t wait for you to see how the rest of this plays out, Uncle. You’re going to understand what a mistake you’ve made and you are going to be astounded at what I am capable of.”

“Nox, you are not hurting me. You are hurting your friends. You are hurting those who do not deserve to be hurt. You’ve gotten at least a hundred humans burned to death.

And all to get at me? You should have had the nerve to challenge me directly.

It would have ended the same way, but others would have been unaffected. ”

“I don’t care about the humans,” Nox says. “And anybody who continues to support your tyranny deserves to die. I am not sorry for what I have done, or what I will do. That is how tyrants operate, isn’t it?”

“Foolish boy. Do you want me to kill you? I will not give you the satisfaction. You will suffer. You will attend the funerals of those who fall. You will collect the bodies of humans. You will feel the consequences of your actions.” I swing the door of his cell open.

“Now get out of that cell and go and wash the body of the dragon soul you destroyed.”

I see him tremor as he realizes this will not go entirely to his plan.

The problem with most bad leaders capable of evil is that they never see what they do.

They do not feel the pain. They separate themselves from it, make it an intellectual endeavor.

We will see how he feels once he has assembled the bodies of the humans now scattered across the field.

“You are the servant of every entity in this place and beyond, do you understand?” I cuff him over the back of the head, sending him stumbling forward.

He will earn no overreaction from me. He will not be the villain in my play.

He is a spoiled whelp who refuses to process his emotions around the loss of his parents and instead projects all his pain onto me. I will not allow it.

“Take him up to the crypt,” I order the guards. “Stay with him while he washes the body. Ensure he does it with respect. If he steps out of line, says a single word that might be interpreted as disrespect, beat him to within an inch of his miserable life.”

They drag Equinox away, leaving me with the lingering sense that not all is well. He has more planned, and we may not be able to dismantle his entire network in time.

As I reach the main floor of the keep, Melissa rushes to me, her wings trailing behind her, flapping just a little, making her skim rather than walk.

It’s actually quite an impressive feat of controlled flight, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She grasps my arm and looks up at me with those pretty, pleading eyes that have become all too familiar because she is forever in one form of trouble or another.

“Someone died today,” she says. “Was that my fault?”

“No,” I tell her immediately. “It was Nox. He opened portals; he’s been planning this in the same way he planned to capture me—badly.”

There are tears in her eyes as she tries to come to terms with what she saw.

“And then the dragons, and the burning…”

Terrible sights I wish she had never seen, and that I wish had not happened. It was all so unnecessary and so brutal, but I tried to allow them to escape. Only the ones who stayed paid with their lives.”

“The humans out there… if there are any left. Please don’t kill them. They’re stupid, but they don’t deserve to die.”

“Stupidity does indeed mean one deserves to die. It is one of Mother Nature’s most rigid rules. She punishes stupidity more relentlessly than almost any other sin.”

Her face crumples. “But they’re just people. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

She did not hear what Equinox revealed to me in the dungeon, so she does not yet understand what we are up against. She thinks that the people on the plains are harmless, aside from the one with the crossbow, presumably, because they seem soft, foppish, directionless, because they were wandering in circles and occasionally attacking one another.

“They’re not just people, Melissa. They’re gamers .”

Her eyes widen. “They are?”

“Yes. Equinox has set his army upon me. This is his revenge.”

“What a shit revenge.”

I chuckle in spite of the darkness of the situation. “Indeed.”

“Do you think there are any left?”

“I doubt it. They scattered, but they had a long way to run and my dragons are not merciful. We cannot tolerate loose humans, especially not those who came with the sole intention of attacking us.”

“Please. They’re just idiots. They’re gamers. They don’t know any better. One time they all got riled up to attack a military base because they thought aliens were inside. They didn’t come with proper weapons. They didn’t come here with any kinda armor. They were in cosplay and t-shirts.”

“Maybe, but a stray bolt has cost one of us his life. I’m sorry. No mercy will be shown. They do not deserve it. And pawns are always sacrificed.”

Her lower lip trembles and her eyes mist with emotion, but she does not argue. What is there to argue about? The humans were given a chance to unmake their mistakes and they chose to double down on them.

“I’m sorry, Melissa. I’m sorry you saw what you saw. These things change us. But we cannot allow invasions. Now I will have to send a team to the human world to completely eradicate every bit of technology Nox ever set up. The game will be removed. The buildings will be brought down.”

“Is that going to be enough?”

“I don’t know. He has made it clear that humans now have access to technology that can penetrate our realm.”

“So you’ve got to find out how they’re doing it and stop that too. Knocking down buildings won’t make a difference. It will make a mess.”

She’s right. My young human mate is quite wise at times.

“I can help,” Melissa says.

“How?”

“Well, for one, I’m a hot girl who knows other hot girls.”

“I fail to see how that helps.”

“And that is why you’re losing,” she says.

I raise a brow at her. “Melissa, tell me what you are thinking before I whip it out of you.”

“He’s not doing this secretly. Maybe it’s secret to you, but it’s not secret to the people who are doing the work. Tech bros love hot girls. Tempest and I could throw a party with everybody who has the capability or likelihood of being involved. We could lure them in, try to get some intel.”

“You want me to send you to the human realm to dress in scanty clothing and talk to men?”

“Okay, when you put it like that, it sounds bad. But you don’t know what’s going on.”

“I have my own connections.”

“And they’re not working. Please, Ornix. We have to try.”