Page 15 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

LUCIAN

I t took a moment to understand what I’d walked into, between the thick fog of smoke, the various screams coming from different directions, and—was that a child bawling their eyes out?

Well, I hadn’t expected a stroll in the park after Gideon’s emergency beacon was activated, especially given the nature of his current mission, but this was a mess. I was glad I’d talked Kleos into staying behind.

Rather than attempting to use my vision in the gray mist, I let my power feel the strands of life around me. No children. Kids had a distinctive taste, restless, unsettled, and full of life. I’d say it: children were probably a succulent prey to drain, objectively. Not that I’d ever tried.

I couldn’t differentiate life forces by gender or age; what stood out to me was the level of power.

With time, I could grow familiar with specific presences.

Gideon, I recognized instantly, somewhere to my left.

Silver was also easy to identify, because of her specific lack of power.

In the street of a mortal city, she would be impossible to distinguish from a regular human. Here, she stood out.

Both were alive.

My mind scanned the rest. Two attempting to leave, and another two nearby, one of them hurt.

And then there were the dragons.

Had I not known what I was walking into, my first guess would have been that we were facing the magical equivalent of a sumo wrestler. The energy evoked enormity. Not an endless, powerful pool like Kleos’s, shielded and mysterious, but an honestly humongous amount of normal energy.

I could sense everyone’s rough positions, but that didn’t give me much of an idea about the current situation. I looked through my breast pocket, wishing I’d had more time to prepare.

I always packed the essentials, of course, but my regular kit wasn’t specialized for dragon hunts.

By luck, I found what I was after, though I rarely bothered with the vial of golden liquid. I threw it to the ground and cracked it under my heel, turning away first.

Sunlight burst out of the broken glass, illuminating the foggy view.

We were on a mountain by the looks of it, so my guess was that we’d left the Alps.

The Pyrenees, perhaps? The peaks surrounding us seemed both greener and less frigid, which suggested a lower altitude.

I was too used to living on top of a high chain of mountains to feel a difference in my breathing, but there was something unfamiliar in the area.

As I’d already gleaned, two guys dressed in Guard uniforms were running away.

The valley gave a clear view of their progress, so they’d be easy picking for any enemy.

A man I’d seen once or twice was checking on a girl, unconscious on the ground.

Before last week, I would have found the trickle of healing magic adequate, maybe even impressive, as I was so unused to that craft; but after witnessing Kleos in action, it was barely passable.

Silver was running upon the dorsal of a gigantic beast, reddish brown, with eyes taller than the minuscule girl. I would have been surprised, had I not seen the insane chick launch herself at Python literally yesterday. What was a dragon after a god?

Stillwater, one of the elder protectors, alternated between hopping out of the way of gigantic feet and talons, and shouting, “We don’t want any trouble! Really. Hell, we can help you catch elk, or mountain lions, or whatever you’re after!”

Gideon, for his part, assisted Silver in her endeavor to royally piss off the magnificent beast. While she played hopscotch on his back, he proceeded to stab his foot with his daggers, in order to distract it when the meter-long teeth seemed to get too close to the pink-haired idiot.

Thankfully, Gideon seemed to understand that the only way to handle this was to actually attack. The two others had adopted evasive maneuvers.

The liquid light was already fading, but I still managed to catch the shadows of more magnificent beasts flying overhead, circling some distance away.

They’d no doubt spotted this mess and decided the dragon could handle it alone, or they would have approached.

Everything I’d read was adamant that dragons were both protective of their hordes and thoroughly disgusted with individual weakness.

In short, if Red couldn’t handle three annoying ants, he deserved a bit of humiliation.

But the moment they thought he was in danger, they’d switch gears.

“Are you honestly playing with it?” I mused, genuinely confused by the strategy.

“Speak for yourself!” Silver screamed, narrowly escaping the ridges on the tail the creature flicked to get her off its back.

“Daddy!” Gideon said, finally noticing my arrival. “Did you bring snacks?”

I couldn’t quite recall who had come up with the asinine nickname first, but I needed to add murdering them to my to do list.

“What the hell are you trying to accomplish? Other than annoying the fuck out of a bloody dragon?”

“We are opening communication!” Alden announced, before shouting another desperate, “Really, we have wonderful curly haired sheep up in Scotland. I know a guy. Say the word, and we’ll relocate you to a much better, supervised hunt!”

The dragon roared in annoyance before reeling back to spit waves of fire again. More ashes and fog clouded the air, soaking into my every pore.

All right, that was it.

Aiming for Silver, still visible, as high as she was on the dragon’s back, I started to race up the dorsal ridges. Easier said than done. The thing wouldn’t stop moving, determined to throw off the annoying bugs on its back.

When I reached her, I knelt, grabbing hold of two scales. “Keep the talons and fangs off me!” I demanded, not bothering to wait and see if she complied.

And then I feasted.

I let myself absorb wave after wave of that creature’s energy, taking in more power than I had at any point in my life in one setting—even with Kleos’s rune. It wasn’t nice. It felt like ingesting too much fast food. If such a thing were possible, I’d likely get magical indigestion.

“Dude, your eyes are glowing red,” Gideon said with a delighted chuckle.

That was my first clue that the air was somewhat less stale. The dragon had stopped trampling all over the ground, and breathing out the gas it needed to fill the air with before spitting fire.

Of course the first thing Gideon noted was my eyes, rather than the fact that the dragon was banging its head on the ground, desperately bucking to get us off.

Silver parried every swipe, every sharp claw and tooth and tail coming for us, with well, herself .

There were crossed daggers at her back, and she’d brought her bow, but she used neither.

She grasped whatever came for us with her bare hands, like a bloody savage.

Whatever worked.

“ Switch ,” I demanded.

“I don’t think they speak English! I’ve been trying to talk for half an hour,” the fae bellowed. “I tried a bunch of languages.”

“It’s a dragon ,” I shouted, feeling, as was often the case, that I was the only person in the universe who’d ever opened a book. “It understands every language. Shift,” I asked again. “Or die.”

The roar coming out of his throat made the ground tremble. Shit . The horde overhead changed direction, all moving straight for us. They were done with their circling and searching.

“Lucian—”

I sucked in more, more, more, seeing red mist conglomerate around us instead of the gray fog. “I give you thirty seconds, max. Yes, your horde might tear us to pieces after. But you’ll be dead.”

It was a risky gamble, counting on its survival instinct to be stronger than its pride.

But a shiver contracted the creature’s entire body, and I could feel its ridges smoothing out, talons and tail slithering back under its skin.

Silver hopped to the ground, but I remained on its neck, adjusting my grip, until I was no longer holding on to two scales the size of my face, but a stout neck.

There was very little impressive about the short man I held onto. Closer to Silver’s height than mine, balding, and a little pudgy, he was unfortunately completely naked, proving than his utter commonness extended absolutely everywhere.

He’d only changed back for one instant when the horde touched down. I was fairly certain everyone would feel it within a five-thousand-mile radius, and probably an avalanche or two caused by the sound of a dozen dragon hitting the ground.

“Is there someone with the authority to treat with me for your brethren’s life?” I called as loud as I could.

Stillwater walked to my side, wincing. “You’re sure that’s a good strategy? We don’t want to piss off dragons.”

I did my best not to roll my eyes. “Dragons don’t treat with ants, no matter how much the ants yap at them.”

The short man I was still holding by the neck shrugged. “True,” he growled in their strange and yet completely understandable universal tongue. “But you?” he twisted his neck to narrow his eyes at Silver. “You should have been born with scales.”

She beamed.

The humongous creatures barely moved, their massive heads swaying to indicate they were communicating wordlessly with each other.

There was a fair chance they’d all decide to spit fire and call it a day, but dragons supposedly valued even the least of their horde.

Now he’d shifted to a human form, it’d take a simple twist of my wrist to end him.

The largest beast, who’d landed ahead of the others, growled low, and started to convulse, shortly morphing into the shape of a woman, this one dressed in a unitard entirely made of black scale, covering smooth green skin.

“Why isn’t that one naked?” Gideon whined.

“Status,” our prisoner offered. “The only thing that can remain during shifts is dead dragon scales, and the only ones allowed to wear them are those who killed them. One scale per enemy. Our leader is clad in hundreds.” He lifted his head. “She’ll wear your skin, too, soon enough.”

That was slightly disturbing.

The woman uncoiled like a cat, moving with too much grace, like a predator, as she advanced towards us.

“You would not dare,” she hissed, each word reverberating through the air like drums.

I tried not to wince. “You’re trespassing in this world and disturbing it. It is our duty to handle threats. You have dared,” I countered.

Never mind the fact that I wasn’t technically a protector. I doubted she’d ask to see my badge.

Her lips curled over sharp teeth. “What brings us here is our business.”

“Not while you burn our forests, our towns, and the odd skiing resort.” Did they know what skiing was? Irrelevant. “State your business, and we might allow it, with the understanding that you’re to depart immediately after it’s concluded and without causing further damage.”

Long seconds passed. Again, I was certain the dragons were speaking wordlessly amongst themselves, feeling a current, a wave, flying between each member of the pack—even the one I held by the throat.

“There is a youth who sullied the horde. It was chosen for the great honor of being sacrificed to Ba-elar,” she said with pomp and reverence, slightly bowing as the name crossed her lips.

A god of sort, ten. “It further besmirched us all by running. It infects your world now. It’s ours to retrieve. ”

“For sacrifice?” I clarified.

She lifted her head higher yet.

“And it’s a child you’re hunting?” Gideon added.

Again, no response other than a prideful, disdainful glare.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.” I let go of Red, pushing him toward Gideon before reaching for the bitch’s neck instead. “Let’s renegotiate.”