‘Elemen-dyan tel feliamor!’
The words somehow rose above the deafening roars, piercing the confusion like a sudden shaft of sunlight. Drutheira snapped her head back up and what she saw took her breath away.
The red mage was standing – standing – on her steed’s back, bracing herself with one hand while the other whirled her staff around her head. Her poise and balance were incredible, as if she could somehow anticipate every movement her mount was making and adjust for it ahead of time.
Drutheira tried to drag herself into an attacking posture, to kindle her staff and summon up some kind of response, but Bloodfang’s violent movements made it impossible and she fell back heavily against a bulge of heaving wing-muscles.
Then the world exploded around her. The red mage launched her magic: a coruscating bloom that blistered the air and ripped into the glimmering world of the aethyr beyond. Drutheira heard a sudden clap, followed by a howl of wind and the tart stink of burning. Bloodfang, agonised by a sudden burst of aethyr-brilliance, twisted its massive head over to bite at the source.
‘No!’ cried Drutheira, hauling on the beast’s chains. ‘Do not–’
It was too late. Bloodfang’s massive, sore-encrusted jowls closed on the mage’s incandescent staff-tip even as she thrust it out. Its point drove up through the roof of the creature’s mouth cavity, searing clean through flesh, gristle and bone.
The red dragon spun away, breaking free of Bloodfang’s throttling embrace and powering back into the open sky, leaving the mage’s flaming staff embedded in the black dragon’s maw.
Drutheira tried to clamber up towards her steed’s head to retrieve the lodged staff, but it was hopeless – she had no command of such work, and Bloodfang had been driven into a frenzy of spasms.
The length of spell-wound ash kept burning away, crackling like lit blackpowder. Bloodfang’s mouth was now smoking, and not from the creature’s native fire-breath. It arched, clawing at its own face, lost in a hell of pain and confusion as the staff worked its way in towards the brain.
Drutheira clung on, hoping against hope to find some way to pull things back from the brink. The scarlet dragon made no attempt to come at them again – Drutheira caught a fragmentary glimpse of it limping through the air, bleeding profusely, head lolling with exhaustion.
That was the last she saw of it, for Bloodfang plummeted further, losing height with every jerking wingbeat. Its neck thrashed about, its head shook back and forth, its limbs extended rigidly, stiff with pain.
‘Fight it!’ screamed Drutheira, seeing how fast the world below was racing up to meet them. Now it was clear where they were – out over a wide strand of water that glittered in the sun. Bloodfang was heading right for it, perhaps unable to gain loft, perhaps somehow aiming to douse the agonising fire that raged in its skull.
Drutheira watched helplessly as the dragon’s eyes turned from silver to gold before exploding in a splatter of flaming liquid. The skin around its jaws broke open, exposing taut cords of sinew within. Bloodfang’s own furnace-like innards now worked against it, feeding the inferno that raged down its neck and into its lungs, hollowing it out, purging the ancient sorcery that had sustained it and turning it into a flesh-bound caldera.
Drutheira had seen enough. Struggling still against the dragon’s tumbling flight, she pushed herself out over a shoulder-spur, almost losing her staff in the process. With a sickening lurch she saw how far she had to fall – over sixty feet, though dropping fast.
Bloodfang seemed to sense that she was abandoning it and twisted its blind head round a final time. Even amid its anguish the dragon managed a final burst of fireborn hatred. Drutheira pushed herself clear, leaping from her steed as the flames screamed over her. The heat was intense, sweeping across her back and shoulders, but mercifully brief. For a terrifying moment she felt the world open up below her and the whistling surge of the air racing past her cartwheeling limbs.
Then came the splash and booming rush of impact. She plunged deep below the surface, her robes billowing around her, bubbles swarming into her face and making her gag. She had a sudden terrible fear of hitting the bottom and tried to kick against her momentum. Something snagged against her left ankle and her heart-rate spiked, driven by panic.
Somehow, though, she managed to push up again. She thrashed her way to the surface and her head broke through. She drew in a desperate breath before ducking under again, gulping and spluttering, then pushed back up, her cheeks puffing.
As she emerged she saw Bloodfang go down. The creature was howling, wailing in abject degradation as its face melted away from the bone. Its wings had gone limp, fluttering like a shroud as its chained body rolled earthwards.
The dragon hit the water a hundred feet from her, crashing down with a gargling roar and sending out waves like the wake of a warship. Foam surged up around it, vapourising instantly as its sorcerous flames were finally doused. Its huge tail whipped out a final time, sending spray flying high, before it too was dragged under.
Drutheira caught a final glimpse of the dragon’s ruined head, gasping for air, before the hissing waves closed over it, then all was lost in a welter of steam and bloody froth.
The waves from the impact hit her next, nearly swamping her and sending her back under. Her limbs felt like lead weights and her flame-seared flesh smarted – it was all she could do to flail away, blundering towards where she supposed the shore must be.
The sky above her remained empty, with no sign nor sound of the red mage. She swam on, doggedly pulling into calmer waters. Soon she
