The next hall had normal lighting still. The change in lighting slowed them down as it was just as confusing as the random strobe lights had been and had the added effect of stinging their eyes that had finally grown used to the darkness. As they ran around yet another corner some men in livery spotted their frenzied escape and followed after them.
Once they'd been spotted their pursuers activated the security for this wing of the palace, and soon the bright lights of the previous hall were obscured by putrid smoke pouring out of vents in the next one. Still they went forward, lungs burning from the exertion as much as from the stench assaulting them. "Run, run, run," they insisted to each other as they burst into the main hall. The palace guards were summoned and began to dash after the escapees.
"Run!" The Alchemists screamed at each other as the guards started closing in on the slowest, their members graced with vampiric speed or charmed boots or their own natural wings slowly letting them overtake the speed of the humans regardless of their own magics.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Battle
The council stretched on through that day and crept forward into the next. The delegates were still divided on the issue, and neither side was willing to move on from discussion of their territories and problems in trade to focus on the pressing cause they had been brought here for.
A crash could be heard echoing in the hall, but the council continued their discussion with a few absent snaps at footmen to go check on the commotion. Both princes looked undisturbed, but they still sent some members of their personal guard, dressed as plainclothes palace workers, to look into the situation. Aeron's man, Elodair, was Alabastor's right-hand man from the Blue Crows and had plenty of experience preventing disturbances from becoming battles, and the crown prince was certain that whether the disturbance was as insignificant as a maid breaking some crockery or as extreme as the rebels choosing now to cause a commotion, that it would be promptly and properly resolved with the man's usual efficiency.
The council chambers stood quiet as the security spent their time in the halls looking for trouble makers. Still, the council bickered on and many of the representatives became distracted by trying to gain more power or prestige for their region or to complain about the rule of the dragons. One impertinent pixie even dared to try to take the podium to complain about Aeron, but he was quickly sent out of the room with a daemon to hassle him and singe off his body hair once he'd been kicked out of the palace grounds.
More rumbles came and the delegates stopped to look at each other in concern. The room shook and the chandelier started swinging on its chain, casting the light in all directions so it became as disorienting as a strobe light. Another rumble came and swung it more. The delegates stood up in surprise. A woman shrieked and raised a shaking hand forward to point as they were all staring at the huge dragon-sized doors that were rattling in their frame.
A guard hopped up on the meeting table. "Get the royals to safety!" The Red Guard and Blue Crows huddled around the king and Aeron and started ushering them away from the room. The Perse Patrol was not far behind bringing Richard to safety.
They had not gone very far when the far side of the wall collapsed inwards from the force of a bomb. The royals started moving towards the wall in between the broken one and the rattling doors when the doors were forced in as well by giants and shifters alike. The draconic family dared not spread their wings in their human forms here and risk getting them slashed by arrows or claws. Going into their full draconic forms posed risks as well to potentially squish their protectors. Even if they did take their natural forms as dragons, they might as well have painted giant bullseye targets on their backs. Their guards saw the problem in an instant and elected to take hold of their monarchy by the waist and fly each of them up as passengers.
Hawthorne broke through the ceiling first with the king in tow. His sons soon got there behind him and stopped in horror at the scene before them. There was their father, pinned on the ground with dragonsbane stuffed into his mouth. The monarch had grown grey and the tips of his ears and fingers had blackened. The necrosis was rapidly spreading up his arms and legs. Hawthorne saw he had an audience, and he grinned as he stabbed the king in the skull. "Death to the dragons," he spat at them. Richard cried out in distress and rushed forward to yank the poison out of his father's mouth. In the process the knife fell out of his head. Blood trickled out of the wound site. He ripped off his shirt and pressed it down to slow the bleeding.
Hawthorne smiled at Aeron and the guards and jumped through the hole in the floor to rejoin the battle down below. Aeron shrieked the first war cry he'd ever used in a true battle and followed after him.
Aeron and Hawthorne faced off on the long wooden conference table, the papers from the council meeting becoming scattered by their dancing feet. The area was wide enough for the two of them to fight and not harm any others, but Aeron needn't have worried about that because all the delegates in the room had either run out to the transport portal room non draconian species had to resort to for instant transport or they were standing on the floor, engaged in their own fights.
Hawthorne threw off his dark cloak and revealed that he had eschewed his uniform in the prince's colors to be instead clothed in a black tunic and long, tight-fitting tan pants, bound together with a rope at
