Instead, my leap ended on their outstretched spears. Before they could withdraw, I danced from one haft to the next, driving the weapons to the stone floor. My serpents pierced my attackers’ auras in the same instant, sucking away their strength and draining the jinsei from their techniques. The stolen energy rushed into my core, and I forced it out into my channels to prepare myself for the attacks of more powerful foes.
I slammed the flat of my blade down on top of the skull of the nearest spearman, and he crumpled to the stone. The others backed away, fear stamped into their faces. They were no longer a threat to me.
Aesgir and Trulissinangoth circled me, coordinating their movements so I could only watch one of them at a time. The sounds of battle between the humans and the dragon team were nerve-wracking, but we couldn’t spare attention for anything but one another. The first one of us to lose concentration was likely to die.
“This is your chance to kill a dragon,” I taunted Aesgir. “Unless you’re more comfortable taking orders from one. I’m sure your ancestors would be proud to see you bending the knee to a wyrm.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Trulissinangoth snarled. “Your forebears were practical men and women. They would not fight the inevitable.”
“Shut your snout,” Aesgir snapped back. “I’ll finish this puny boy. Then I’ll have your head, dragon.”
The towering warrior hefted his maul and rushed at me. Streamers of black smoke billowed from his horns and left a churning trail behind him. Aesgir’s eyes glowed like a wolf’s under the moonlight, and a technique unfolded from his core to cover his enormous weapon with the shadows of wolves on the hunt. It was an unnerving, impressive sight.
Aesgir’s maul crashed down, a meteoric strike that would have pounded me into a greasy smear on the arena’s floor if it had landed.
But strength meant nothing against my speed. I sidestepped the attack, and it slammed down harmlessly next to me. Before the warrior could recover, I hammered my fusion blade directly into the maul’s shadowed head. Aesgir’s weapon shattered with a concussive explosion that threw him away from me like a rag doll in a windstorm while I stood my ground in the center of a cloud of stone shards.
Trulissinangoth charged through the shrapnel, accepting wounds from the flying stones to strike at me when she thought I’d least expect it. Golden fire boiled out of her mouth, a cone of destruction that she believed would finish the fight.
She was wrong.
My serpents plucked the fire aspects from her attack, and my Thief’s Shield technique drained its jinsei. All that remained of Trulissinangoth’s deadly assault was a cloud of smoke that hid my counterattack from her.
My hand shot out and caught Trulissinangoth by the throat. The instant our auras touched, the Thief’s Shield drained her strength aspects and leeched the sacred energy from her core.
The sudden rush of jinsei slammed into my new core like a falling star. The power flooded my channels and rushed out into my serpents. I was stronger than I’d ever been before, and a new power blossomed within me: the Vision of the Design.
Flickers of what was to come burst through my thoughts. Aesgir charging in on my blind side to bury his teeth in my throat. A dragon’s blade hacking through Clem’s face. Tochi consumed by a cloud of green fire.
No, that was only a future that might be.
I would decide what the future would be.
My newfound strength made Trulissinangoth light as a feather. I whipped her around at the end of my arm and slammed her body into Aesgir’s charge. The high-speed collision sent the horned warrior sailing into the last of the Bright Lodge’s members like a wrecking ball. Armored bodies scattered in every direction, helmets and weapons bouncing across the floor like thrown dice.
The dragon warriors had pushed in hard against the students from of the Jinsei Institute and the School of Swords and Serpents. Their fusion blades hummed with power, and they breathed blue, green, and white flames that forced my allies to cover their faces with their hands. My friends were defenseless, and I knew the dragons would unleash a flurry of attacks that would kill many of them.
With a roar, I hurled Trulissinangoth into the back of a white-scaled dragon youngling who was a split second away from cleaving through Clem’s skull. The two fighters crashed into Clem, and the trio collided with the green-scaled dragon in front of Tochi. The four of them went down together, and I let out a sigh of relief. I’d saved my friend and our potential ally.
Tochi took advantage of my surprise attack to sweep the legs out from under the blue-scaled dragon. The downed youngling tried to rise, but a savage kick from the Jinsei Institute’s team leader put his lights out.
Hagar had already seized the last standing dragon with her bloodweaver technique. My handler’s eyes were ringed by scarlet circles, and she licked her lips in anticipation of finishing her foe. The dragon hung limp in the coil of Hagar’s serpent, eyes rolled up to show their whites, breath shallow.
“No.” I shook my head. “No one else dies today.”
For a moment, I thought Hagar would finish the dragon despite what I’d said. Her eyes had gone bloodred and her mouth hung open to reveal the tips of a pair of glistening mandibles. Then, with a disgusted cry, she flung the hanging dragon away from her.
I crossed to Trulissinangoth and yanked her off Clem by the collar of her robes, then shoved the white-scaled dragon off my friend. Abi and Eric helped Clem to her feet, and I raised the dragon team’s leader over my head.
“This is over.” I forced jinsei into my words, and everyone in the arena froze. “I am not your enemy. The real threats are those who pitted all of
