The streets below us were a mess of sheer pandemonium as the citizens of Luminescent Spires, whose homes and businesses were also collapsing in the apocalyptic earthquake, ran screaming in panicked crowds, trampling each other in their haste to escape the widespread destruction.
The horrendous citywide earthquake wasn’t the only things they were fleeing, though. The gates of the palace were wide open, and from these gates legions of Blood Demons were marching, slaughtering all in their path in an orgy of killing and bloodlust.
“The usurper Elandriel has finally revealed his true nature to the people of Luminescent Spires.” The Lord of Light stared in horror at the mass death and destruction happening below us, all over the city.
“And he no longer gives a fuck about anything but winning this battle,” I said, “at whatever cost to Prand and every living thing in this world.”
“We must resurrect the dragon, right now!” Yumo-Rezu said.
“Yes, there is no more time,” Friya added. “I’m ready, Vance, to meet my destiny and become the last dragon … the Dragon of Death!”
The Dragon Heart, still in its gigantic jar of embalming fluid, was caught in some of the lower branches of the tree. We’d need to get the heart, Yumo-Rezu, and Friya to the dragon skeleton, which was on my ship with Percy a few miles off the coast. For this, I needed my harpies, but they were still many miles away. Even though the undead creatures were flying at full speed, it would still take them a day to get here … and we no longer had days to prepare for the upcoming battle, we had hours.
Thinking fast, I shot my spirit into the actor’s body. He, along with the rest of my party, was being transported across Prand by the harpies. Speaking through him, I turned and yelled out to Rami-Xayon.
“Rami-Xayon! Call up as powerful a hurricane as you can muster! You need to get to Luminescent Spires as fast as you can, because the battle has begun! Use the hurricane to propel the harpies forward!”
“If I call up a hurricane strong enough to get us there in an hour or two, I won’t have any power left for the battle itself!” she yelled back.
“I don’t care! You are still an enjarta. And you can use those skills in the battle. If you don’t get yourself and my harpies to Luminescent Spires in the next hour, there won’t be a battle—there’ll only be a slaughter, on the part of Elandriel and his minions!”
“All right, I’ll do it!” she shouted back. “I’ll call up the strongest hurricane I’ve ever mustered, and I promise you I’ll get us to Luminescent Spires in an hour!”
I yanked my spirit back into my own body. “They’ll be here in an hour, hopefully,” I said to everyone. “That still leaves us with a little problem, though…” I pointed at the palace, which was already half demolished, and more rubble and dust than structure now. From the top of it, the spiked point of a red pyramid was starting to emerge. This earthquake wouldn’t stop until the Blood Pyramid had sloughed the entire city of Luminescent Spires off of it. If we hung around here, we would get buried under a landslide of demolished buildings, uprooted trees, and collapsing earth.
“It’s all collapsing, the entire city,” the Lord of Light said, his tone one of disbelief.
“No shit, Sun Boy,” I said. “If we hang around here on the slopes, your bald yellow head is gonna get popped like a rotten egg by a tumbling chunk of masonry. The Blood Temple is shaking this city off its back like a dog shaking off fleas. We have to get out of the city onto the safety of the plains.”
“It’s not going to be as simple a matter as climbing down from this tree and running for the city gates,” Rhuz said. “The whole city is falling apart, and our assassins’ pathways are being destroyed; we can no longer use the secret routes. We’ll have to make our way through the streets, navigating through the crowds of panicking people, and fighting a running battle against the army of Blood Demons that’s pouring out of the collapsing palace. And from what I can see, the number of fresh enemy troops is only increasing, and we’re already outnumbered by a factor of many hundreds to one.”
“We’ve got three deities here,” I said, “some super-strong warriors of Light, the best assassins in the city, and a werewolf. I don’t mind those odds too much.”
“Wait a second,” Friya said, then she cupped her hands around her mouth and let out a long, protracted wolf howl that rang out over the rumbling and crashing of the collapsing city and echoed through its streets.
Seconds later, the howl was answered by an identical howl from a few hundred yards away, and then another, and another, until werewolf howls were ringing out all over Luminescent Spires.
“Not just one werewolf,” Friya said, grinning. “Every werewolf in this city will come to our aid!”
“There’s more than one werewolf in Luminescent Spires?” I asked.
“The city has had a problem with werewolves for many years now,” the Lord of Light admitted. “All my extermination programs were for naught. They seem to thrive under my light.”
“It’s not a problem now, if they’re all coming to fight for us!” I said, chuckling. “Let’s get out of this tree and fight our way out of the city before this whole place implodes!”
The tree had now reached a height of over a hundred yards, and it towered above the collapsing city, an incongruous image of sturdiness and stability against the background of everything falling apart all around it. We clambered down out of the branches, with me trying to balance the massive container with the Dragon Heart on one hand. I figured it would help to have the lone harpy I’d left on my warship, just in case I needed to fly out of here fast,
