Page 39 of Thorulf
Loki kept throwing magic and eyeing the sky with anticipation. Dagr’s and Maya’s dragons roared Helheim magic at those unfortunate enough to already be discombobulated by Estrid’s ethereal warriors. Entities they couldn’t see but felt attacking them.
When the purple female swooped over, trees bent, and wind gusted heavily, yet she didn’t attack or blow fire. Not yet. She was fighting on a different level, luring his inner dragon to the surface. Trying to goad him into shifting in one of these storms so he’d be weakened.
“Don’t do it,” Loki warned not just him but Jade, and with good reason. Her dragon eyes were flaring, and a low but constant growl came from her as she fought. It seemed her dragon was even closer to the surface than his. “Don’t let your emotions get the better of you. They’re your weakness right now, and the enemy’s counting on that.”
“Maybe,” Jade spat. She ducked under the swing of her opponent’s blade, spun around, and kicked him hard in the lower back. There was no missing her rage. Her pure fury. “But I bet she wasn’t counting on Thor’s power over me.”
They might be fighting, but they were covering good ground and nearly to his lair.
“What power...” Loki began only to trail off and narrow his eyes before chuckling. “Ah, how clever of him.”
Dagr swept a group of incoming warriors away from them with his spiked tail, and Maya doused them with a solid stream of fire.
“Thor’s repressing Jade’s dragon,” Thorulf realized, shocked when he felt it struggling to break free. Struggling to launch into the air and finally confront the purple dragon who toyed with them. When she flew over again, lower this time, it took almost more than he had not to shift and launch after her. To seek her out and understand their connection. What had she done to him? Why did he both loathe and crave her?
“I thought gods didn’t have that kind of power over dragons?”Maya said to Loki. She blew another round of golden fire, its flames sizzling and smoking in the driving rain.“You told me that on my adventure when I couldn’t shift back to my human half.”
“Usually, we don’t.”Loki shrugged and took down another line of warriors with a Midgard-shaking godly roar.“But it sounds like the connection Jade shares with Thor is most unusual.”
“Because he was there at her birth in Ireland,”Vicar deduced, seeing it clearly enough.“That connected them in a way gods and dragons are not usually connected, did it not?”
“It did,”Loki confirmed, impressed with what he saw as cleverness on Thor’s part. “It seems my brother-in-arms has been playing his own unique role in this war since the beginning. One that coincided with my Forge.”
While it certainly seemed it, Thorulf got the distinct impression it might not have been that premeditated. At least not when it came to Jade being born in Ireland. That had been all her and her curious, adventuresome spirit. Adlin and Thor had simply come to her rescue then made sure she continued the journey Loki and his Forge had started.
A journey, as it happened when they finally reached his lair, that was only going to get more interesting.