Page 26 of Storm of Blood and Shadow (Merciless Dragons #3)

I know the limits of my own magic.

But my magic is twined with the power of the Mordvorren now, and I plan to take full advantage of that. Rahzien was partly right when he said that instead of clashing with it headlong, I should work alongside it. Except I’m not convincing it to align with me; I’m outright stealing its magic, just like it stole mine when it sent Jessiva off the cliff.

The Mordvorren has never been able to fully control my body for more than a few minutes. If I can keep my purpose clear and lock down my emotions, I should be able to triumph over it one last time.

“I don’t know how this will end,” I tell Jessiva as we mount higher and higher into the sky, above the split peak of the Twin Fangs.

“I’m prepared for whatever happens,” she says. “I know what’s at stake, and what we’re risking. This is something you need to do, and I’m with you.”

She doesn’t say anything else—no flowery words, last goodbyes, or further vows of love. That’s not who she is. Her confession to me earlier was more than enough, and I cherish those words in my heart as I flap my wings harder, climbing the wall of the dark sky.

I’m glad my wings are at their full size now, although flying in my human form, with its smaller wings, was an interesting experience. I’d like to replicate it sometime when we’re not about to die.

The Mordvorren is fighting me, clawing at my consciousness with guilt and self-hatred—but I let it rage. Now that I know where the ancestral voratrice is, I can set aside the emotions connected to my mother’s death, and I can focus everything on this singular goal—to avenge her. It feels strangely fitting that true vengeance isn’t fiery, after all—it is cold, cerebral, and vast as the void in my soul.

“That’s high enough,” says Jessiva faintly, and I dip a little lower, knowing she’s probably beyond her limits. That’s the kind of person she is—pushing herself to the edge for those she loves.

The Mordvorren batters the inside of my skull, but it’s weaker now. Pathetic , I tell it coolly.

Holding myself steady with rhythmic wingbeats, I stretch my neck down toward the island, aiming at the hollow I created when I was out of my mind. That’s my target, and I blast it, not with a single huge orb, but with a pulsing stream of void orbs, carefully timed. I shoot them one after another, and they barrel into the ground, sucking up earth and rock, each one penetrating deeper than the last.

A crater forms, widening and deepening as I continue to pelt the island with void magic, tunneling into its center. I can feel myself approaching the limits of my energy.

I’ve been focusing so hard on holding the Mordvorren inside, restraining it, and limiting its control of my thoughts, that I never tried releasing some of it. I was afraid if I tried, the entire storm would come pouring out of my throat. That risk still weighs on me, but in this hour of cold, unerring purpose, I am brave enough for the attempt.

Instead of repressing the Mordvorren, I turn on it, draw from it, and cannibalize its energy to fuel my own. The switch in my head, from holding it back to siphoning its power, is so swift that it has no time to stop me—not with our current altitude weakening its consciousness.

With its energy harnessed to my goals, I continue to pummel the island with void magic.

The forested slopes of East Fang are nearly gone, and in the island’s center is a round, deep hole. I’m careful not to break the edges of the island. I don’t want the ocean pouring in and ruining everything. I want to see the creature when I uncover it.

A voratrice den usually has telltale signs—openings in the earth, burrows from which its necks and mouths emerge every night. But if Jessiva and I are right, this great voratrice has no need for such openings. Its roots extend far beneath the ocean, running all the way to Ouroskelle and the surrounding islands. Every voratrice we’ve ever encountered, every core that has ever formed, is part of this one. They absorb the food they capture, but they also funnel nutrients back to this giant locus, this vast stomach, this malevolent brain that orchestrates it all.

If I destroy this one, all the voratrix will die. They will no longer take our prey, and no dragons will fall into their clutches, ever again.

But the hole in the island is below sea level now, sinking ever deeper, with no sign of any creature. It’s just a tunnel into the ground, its sides smoothed by the devouring magic of the void orbs.

I hesitate, but Jessiva says fiercely, “Don’t give up. Go deeper. Keep digging.”

My body shudders with the effort, but I manage to summon another void orb, and then another.

As the second one strikes, sucking in soil and rocks, its implosion exposes a huge, gnarled mound, like the shell of a gigantic nut, wreathed in bristly ridges. What’s left of the East Fang mountain trembles, and the ocean quakes as the creature rumbles in its hole, disturbed by the impact. My void orb wasn’t strong enough to dislodge it, even a little, but it’s exposed now. It’s real.

“Yes!” screams Jessiva, bouncing on my back. Her excitement spurs my own, and with renewed resolve I send a series of smaller void orbs along the edges of the crater, digging the creature out a bit more.

I underestimated the scope of the monster. Judging by the curvature of the part I can see, ninety percent of its body remains hidden below the ocean floor.

“It’s like a huge round turnip buried in the earth, and we just brushed a bit of dirt off the very top of it,” says Jessiva.

“There’s no way to unearth the whole thing,” I reply.

“You don’t have to. Like I said, you just need to crack it open. It looks tough, but it’s been covered up and protected all these years. It’s not used to being attacked directly. Try the lightning.”

My void magic might be running dry, but thanks to the Mordvorren, I have access to plenty of lightning, and it’s the strongest kind that exists in this world—strong enough to pierce a dragon’s hide—or perhaps a voratrice’s shell.

I open the channel of my magic wider, deeper, into the heart of my personal darkness where the Mordvorren dwells.

Its consciousness is still linked to mine, but it’s unsettled now, fragmented, its voice coming in bursts of unintelligible nonsense. It has lost its power over me, its leverage. When I confessed to Jessiva and cried in her arms, when she told me she loved me and said my mother forgave me, that wound healed. There is a scar that will never vanish, but it is not deep enough to offer the entity a foothold.

The Mordvorren howls as I drag it forth, as I tear away its lightning, unspooling its winds and its thunder for my benefit. Shadows flow from my jaws and throat, a great column of pitch-black cloud streaming down into the crater on the island. At the center of that smoky column is a piercing beam of pure, searing light—lightning condensed into a ray sharper than any blade.

My sister Vylar wielded such rays of focused light. I have never produced one before, and my heart races at the sight. It’s as if she’s here, guiding me.

The beam cuts into the gnarled shell of the ancestral voratrix, slicing through its hardened layers. The creature has no lungs, and it cannot scream, but the ocean churns into a frenzy, rocks crack and tumble, and the second island quakes, splitting into multiple fragments. The beast can feel the damage I’m doing, and it is beginning to panic.

A great blunt head bursts out of West Fang, snaking upward on a long neck like a massive tentacle. At the end of that tentacle a giant maw opens, and hundreds of translucent barbed tongues shoot out of it, racing toward me.

The reach of this monster is far greater than any voratrice I’ve ever seen—perhaps ten or twenty times higher. It might be able to reach us. I need to fly higher, out of range. But that might threaten Jessiva’s ability to breathe.

I’m not sure I can summon this beam of concentrated lightning again. If I cut it off too soon, I might not be able to kill the monster. So I hold the magic steady, even as the wicked tongues streak toward us.

“Just a moment more,” Jessiva cries. “Keep going, keep going—”

The tip of a barbed tongue lashes against my wing, ripping the tough skin as if it’s a cobweb. Jessiva screams, but still I hold, beating my wings furiously to maintain my altitude.

At last I feel a yielding at the end of the searing beam of light. I see its piercing tip enter the shell of the giant voratrice. I shift the angle of the lightning, cutting a long slit, then carving it wider, into an eye-shaped wound. The edges of the wound glow with heat, and flames lick up from them as the exposed inner flesh of the creature begins to burn.

The Mordvorren revolts in a dying panic, and I gasp as it manages to cut off my access to its lightning. But the deed is done. We’ve broken into the husk of the creature.

“Varex!” Jessiva shrieks a warning. Without thinking I’ve dipped lower in the sky, and the tongues of the great monster are beginning to curl around my wings.

Swiveling my neck toward the tongues, I blast them with the remaining bits of void magic I can summon—little more than dots of black light, but it’s enough to drive them back so I can dart free. I streak down, toward the hole I carved in the husk of the voratrix.

As I lose altitude, the Mordvorren attempts to recapture my mind, but I shrug off its hold again and again, shoving its threats and accusations aside. My only thought is kill . Kill the beast, the eldritch thing, the monster whose offshoot swallowed my mother.

From this closer vantage point, I can see a few places where massive roots extend from the main voratrice ball into the ground. There’s no knowing how far its network extends.

I streak down and land on top of the voratrix husk, close to the flaming edges of the opening I created. I’m conscious of the terrible tongues closing in, aiming for me. I have only seconds in which to end this, or they will tear Jessiva off my back and rip us both to shreds.

I shove my jaws through the opening and pour everything I have left into the soft insides of the creature. I vomit wind and shadows, lightning and void, tearing its entrails to shreds, stirring its brains into a froth, searing everything with incandescent fire.

The tongues reach me and begin to slash at my wings, but within seconds they fall away, limp and helpless. That’s how I know I’ve succeeded. That’s how I know that the eldritch voratrice is dead.

Shuddering, heaving ragged breaths, I back away from the wound in the creature’s husk. Steam and acrid smoke issue from the opening.

“Jessiva,” I say breathlessly. “Jessiva, are you alive? Are you injured?”

“I’m here.” She pats my neck. Her voice is shaky, but I can tell her spirit is still strong. “I’m alright.”

I start to speak again, but she exclaims, “Varex, look!”

From the interior of the voratrice, wispy shapes are rising, slithering upward through the smoke. They are small and indistinct, but each one bears the form of a dragon.

When dragons die, their spirits rise and return to the air. The souls of all the dragons ever captured by this titanic monster have been languishing inside its original core. Perhaps that’s what it wanted all along—perhaps that’s the reason it created so many secondary and tertiary cores on Ouroskelle and the neighboring islands. Perhaps its true sustenance and purpose was the eternal torment of dragon souls.

And now all those souls are free.

Scarcely daring to breathe, I watch the spirits rise, searching for the one I most desire to see.

And there she is. I would know her anywhere—black as the night, with white freckles on her wings like the stars above. A dragon made for midnight hunts, born of beautiful darkness.

“There,” I say brokenly to Jessiva. “There, do you see her? The black one with wings made of stars. The Bone-Queen Zemua. My mother.”

“I see her,” Jessiva replies. Her hand presses comfortingly against my neck.

My mother’s spirit does not come to me. I didn’t expect her to. She is not aware of this world in the same way anymore. But I don’t need her to see me or speak to me. It is enough to know that after all these years, I have avenged her. She will no longer suffer in the belly of the monster, but will rejoin the Bone-Builder as part of the universe.

The voices of the Mordvorren fall utterly silent, and I know, with complete certainty, that it cannot take hold of me now.

Jessiva and I watch the dragon souls ascend until they have all passed on to their peace. Then I rise on damaged wings, struggling a little against the wind, until I can survey both of the twin islands. They are mostly wrecked, but part of West Fang is intact despite the long tentacle-neck that burst out of it.

I fly to a grassy hilltop dotted with trees and land there, beneath the rustling fronds.

“Wait for me here,” I tell Jessiva. “I have something to do.”

“No.” She doesn’t budge from my back. “No more mysterious declarations, remember? You tell me everything.”

“Fine.” I release a hoarse chuckle. My throat was designed to channel lightning and void magic, but after tonight, even its resilience has been tested, and it’s sore. “I intend to fly as high as I can without passing out, and release what is left of the Mordvorren into the highest arches of the sky. If I’m right, it won’t be able to survive at that altitude, and in its weakened state, it will dissipate and be gone forever.”

Jessiva shifts on my back, and the ropes holding her there slacken and fall. “Now that’s a good plan.”

She slides off my back and waits for me while I fight my way upward. My wings have several tears along the edges, and doing this could make them worse—but dragons have great powers of healing. If I can accomplish this final task, I will be able to rest, and my wings will recover.

Some of the wind eddying above the Twin Fangs is the remainder of what I tore away from the Mordvorren. I use the currents to buoy myself up and up, until I’m as high as I’ve ever flown. Still I beat my wings, striving against my body’s exhaustion, its need to cease the exertion and rest. I push myself past the limits of my endurance until all my bones ache and my wings tremble with every laborious beat.

When I’m this far above the world, my lungs can barely function in the cold, thin air. It will have to be high enough.

Groaning with the effort of maintaining this altitude, I open my throat again and widen the channel inside me, the pathway to the void. I force the Mordvorren out of me through a violent spasm of my whole body and a fierce push of my will against what remains of its consciousness.

It was right to fear me. Perhaps it descended upon Ouroskelle because it craved a challenge, lusted for conquest. But I proved to be too much for it—not solely by my own strength, but because of the love and support of Jessiva and my brother.

In their names I expel the storm from my body, watching it gush out in a roiling mass of turbulent cloud. For a moment, the Mordvorren struggles to condense itself, to take form—but it is already unspooling, fading, clouds drifting apart and winds scattering. Whatever combination of magic and weather held it together and gave it consciousness, that locus has been damaged beyond repair.

When every last bit of the storm has left my body, I feel as if I’ve been wiped clean. I let myself fall, watching the shreds of cloud dissipate, feeling the wind rush past my battered wings. As I spin through the air, I notice a bright orange haze from the crater of the island where I spent so many days in misery. The interior of the ancestral voratrice, which was smoking before, is blazing in earnest now, and it illuminates the night with a glow that feels brilliantly festive to me.

As I approach the broken peaks of the twin islands I catch myself out of the freefall and glide toward the hilltop where Jessiva waits. I transform as I land, as weary of my dragon form as I am grateful to it.

In human shape, with my magic sealed away to replenish itself and the pain of my injured wings abated, I find myself somewhat less exhausted. A buzz of triumphant energy stirs in my blood as I walk toward Jessiva on my two human legs.

She marches up to me and slaps my cheek. “That’s for making me think you had died and that you were falling!” Her voice is fractured, strained. By the glow from the burning voratrice, I can see tears glistening on her cheeks. “I was going out of my mind watching you plummet down—” She breaks off with a tight sob, struggling to hold back the evidence of her terror.

“Fuck, I didn’t realize you would think that.” I reach for her, but she jerks away from me.

I wait patiently, knowing how strong she has been tonight—how strong she has been ever since I met her. She holds her emotions inside, repressing the ones that she views as weak, maintaining the outward calm and steadiness that she wants to feel on the inside, too. She and I are so different, and yet so alike.

“Bastard,” she hisses at me.

“I’m sorry for making you worry.”

“Fuck you,” she says viciously, but when I advance, she doesn’t recoil. I move in behind her and slowly fold my arms around her body, her back against my chest.

Jessiva stays rigid at first, resistant, but after several seconds she relaxes against me. I kiss her hair and set my chin on top of her head.

“It’s over,” she whispers.

“Yes.” The word is an exhale, a deep sigh from my weary lungs.

When I was descending from the sky, I detected the burning stench of the voratrice, but in my human form it’s less noticeable. Tiny flowers dot the grass on the hilltop, and their scent surrounds us, masking the smell of the distant smoke. Woven with the flowers’ fragrance is another scent, sweetly familiar… my darling’s reaction to the way I’m clasping her my arms.

My right hand slides lower. She’s still wearing her revealing dance costume, and I can’t stop thinking about how very thin the soft material is that separates her smooth flesh from my hand. I can’t resist shifting it up and cupping the warm, supple curve of her breast.

Jessiva inhales and tenses against me. I sway my hips forward, letting her feel the hardness of my cock against her ass. Since her body is giving off the fragrance of arousal, she might be amenable to the idea of coupling.

“It’s strange,” I murmur. “I should be tired—I am tired—but I find myself wanting to fuck.”

“I used to become very lustful after a successful performance,” she admits. “Something to do with the intensity, the excitement, the achievement—oh,” she moans softly as my left hand slips into her clothing, between her legs. I massage her clit and then curl my hand, slipping three fingers into her pussy.

“Another little river flowing for me,” I whisper, my mouth at her ear. “I’ve missed the scent of you, darling. The way you melt on my fingers.” I shift the angle of my hand, stroking her clit with my thumb while my three central fingers remain tucked into her slick warmth.

Jessiva’s body flexes in my arms as she tries to take me deeper, tries to pleasure herself on my hand. “Stop playing with me, Varex,” she breathes. “It’s been weeks. Throw me down and rut me into the fucking ground.”

The primal side of me, the part that was never quite satisfied during the mating frenzy, pounces on the idea with feral delight. I take my fingers out of her, spin her around, and cup her chin, forcing her to look at me while I lick her wetness from my other hand. Her pupils dilate and her lips part as color rises in her cheeks.

“Take that costume off if you don’t want it ruined,” I warn her.

She discards the bits of clothing quickly while I take her bag and pull out the thin blanket I saw her stuff into it earlier. I spread the blanket over the grass.

The second she’s naked, I pick her up and fling her across the blanket on her belly. I leap onto her, sliding my cock between her ass cheeks before taking myself in hand and guiding the head of my cock between her soaked, shining lips.

Braced on my arms, I force myself to pause with just the tip of my length inside her. The soft, wet suction of her cunt teases me unbearably, but I refuse to come too quickly. I know she appreciates careful timing.

I look down at her lovely shoulders, half-covered by the swirling locks of her crimson hair; at her smooth back and tapered waist, at the two round, perfect ovals of her ass.

“Tell me how many times you want to come,” I say.

“Three,” she says.

“We’ll make it four.”