“Percy!” I yelled out. “Get your men off this ship into lifeboats! Once this dragon unfurls her wings, it’ll rip this ship in half!”
“Aye aye, Cap’n Chauzec!” he yelled back. “We’ll abandon ship and see you on the beaches. My boys and I will land our lifeboats and charge those Blood Demon bastards alongside your undead troops!”
“Good luck, Percy! I’ll see you on the other side!”
“Come, Vance,” Yumo-Rezu said, filled with awe. “We have an ancient god to destroy.”
She climbed onto the dragon’s shoulders, and I followed her, sitting in front of her. With the bond that had been forged with the dragon’s soul, via the Dragon Gauntlets, I could control the dragon in much the same way as I did my undead creatures, although the dragon, unlike my minions, retained much of a will of her own, and could refuse to obey my unspoken commands if she wanted. With Friya’s soul in there, though, I was sure that the gargantuan beast would cooperate.
The dragon unfurled her mighty wings, and since her huge body already took up the entirety of the ship’s hold, this action split the whole ship wide open, as I’d predicted. The beast beat her wings, and we rose up out of the sinking wreckage, while Percy and his pirates cheered us on from their lifeboats.
I’d experienced flight many times before with my harpies, but this was on another level. The speed and power of the dragon made the harpies seem like clumsy flying beetles bumbling hopelessly around. In mere seconds, we were among the clouds, looking down on the battle below from such a height that it was as if the opposing forces were two different armies of ants from rival anthills.
The Blood God was stomping across the battlefield, using his multiple arms to blast out dozens of thick torrents of red lightning. Each of his magical attacks tore up a town-sized crater in the earth and blew thousands of my undead troops away simultaneously. The Lord of Light and everyone in my party was hitting him hard with all of their powers, but even the Lord of Light’s intense sun rays were barely doing anything more than scorching him.
My Jotunn smashed Blood Demons left, right, and center. My other undead troops swarmed across the plains and crashed into the ranks of the Blood Army. The demons were immensely hard to kill, though, and my skeletons and zombies were being ripped apart by the Blood Demons.
“Let’s give the fuckers a taste of dragon fire, shall we?” I directed the dragon into a downward swoop, to make a low pass over the Blood Army.
We hurtled downward, tearing toward the ground at an impossible speed, yet flying with as much precision and control as an eagle. The ground rushed up to meet us, and for a heart-stopping second, it seemed as if we would crash into it. At the last second, the dragon pulled up, to make a low pass over the Blood Army. The speed and momentum of the mighty beast was so great that it hit the Blood Army like a hurricane wind, bowling troops over as we swooped a mere few yards above their heads.
Then I commanded the dragon to unleash her fire, and a gushing river of pitch-black flame blasted out of her jaws. The heat of the black flames tore a passage of total destruction through the Blood Army, not only incinerating every Blood Demon in its path, but burning a furrow in the ground dozens of yards deep.
In a few seconds, we’d swooped over the whole army and burned thousands of Blood Demons to a crisp …
And now we had the Blood God’s attention.
He roared in fury and hatred and shot out multiple veins of red lighting at us. I controlled the dragon as if it were me flying through the air. I tumbled and dived and ducked and rolled with the kind of fluid grace that would put even the most majestic eagle to shame. We dodged every one of the lightning bolts, then I pulled the dragon up into a soaring loop in the air.
“All right, fuckstick,” I said. “Now it’s my turn.”
“Destroy him, Vance!” Yumo-Rezu cried out behind me, her arms wrapped around my waist.
I commanded the dragon to dive at full speed at the Blood God. We dodged another series of lightning blasts as we hurtled toward him faster than an arrow loosed from a war bow. The dragon breathed out a river of black fire, and the flames shot through the air at an impossible speed, taking the Blood God in his chest. Then, as we raced closer, they seared up his body and took one, then two of his heads off. Where the flames hit, they blasted straight through his body, incinerating a passage clean through it. When we swooped upward just in front of him, his gigantic torso had been ripped in two.
He still had a few heads left, though, and many arms. While he was badly injured, he fought on. Red lighting came at us, and we ducked and dived and swooped around it at a blur. Some bolts came so close that they singed my armor and scorched the dragon’s scales.
I climbed higher and higher into the sky, racing upward, feeling exhilarated and alive with the potency of riding the last living dragon. We came so high above the earth that the clouds below us were barely visible. It felt almost as if I’d physically reached the Sea of Stars.
The red sky darkened, then we were above it, and we truly were floating among the stars. I could see below us that Prand and Yeng were two green blobs on a huge blue ball. It was magnificent, and
