He didn’t get over fifty feet off the ground before he slammed into a barrier. The dragon must’ve conjured it to keep them from rushing back to warn their army. With no other options they’d run along as fast as possible and hoped for the best.
They took a moment to catch their breath then the squad turned north. Damien didn’t know how the dragon managed it, but it had raised a sheer wall of ice, blocking them from making a direct run to the central pass. The wall forced them to travel miles out of their way, delaying and exhausting them.
Damien didn’t know what difference a handful of warlords and a single sorcerer would make, but they were determined to make the effort. The squad hadn’t gone more than a hundred paces when a wide-eyed soldier came running towards them as fast as the deep snow would allow. Every few seconds he glanced back over his shoulder, as though he expected to find an ogre on his tail.
Jen raised her hand. “Hey, what’s going on?”
The soldier turned his terrified gaze their way. “A dragon! A bloody big dragon appeared out of nowhere.”
They surrounded the trembling soldier. “Slow down. Just tell us what happened.” Jen rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “A third army arrived just before dawn. Thousands of monsters came howling down the pass. We was ready for them though. The sorcerers hammered the first wave, broke their line, and left the stragglers for us to clean up. We was winning, ’til that dragon rose out of the ground. It sent a blast of ice across our line, froze better than a hundred of our boys solid. The commanders shouted orders, but we’d had it. Last I saw that damn dragon was stomping on the stragglers. Looked like it was having fun too.”
Jen let the soldier go. They couldn’t blame him for running. “We’re too late.”
“Maybe not.” Damien gathered his power. Since they were clear of the Ice Queen’s territory the barrier should be clear. It was probably a suicide mission, but if he couldn’t kill the dragon a lot of soldiers would die. “At the very least I’ve got to try.”
“Damien!” She shouted after him, but he’d already leapt into the air and turned toward the battle.
Damien raced through the sky. The central pass lay a couple of miles from the army camp. Below him tiny figures of fleeing soldiers raced away from the battlefield.
The army had routed, pure and simple. No discipline or direction influenced the men, just a need to escape the horror of the dragon.
Damien understood, he’d felt the beast’s power in its unfocused state and it dwarfed the demon he killed last summer. The plain truth was Damien doubted he could kill the dragon. He’d probably hit it with everything he had and get a laugh for his trouble. But what choice did he have? If all those people died and he did nothing he’d never be able to face himself again.
It took less than a minute to reach the pass. The dragon’s forces had blocked the retreat of the majority of the kingdom’s soldiers. Towering over everything was a horror of icy spikes, horns, and fangs. The dragon had to measure over fifty yards, not counting its sinuous tail. Beside and behind it thousands of ogres and trolls watched it slaughter the trapped humans.
Damien gathered his soul force. Golden energy rushed out of his center and collected in a seething ball in front of him. Any moment he expected the dragon to sense his power and look up, but it was having too much fun to spare Damien a glance. As his power grew the dragon raised a taloned foot and brought it crashing down on half a dozen men, crushing and slashing them to ribbons.
Bastard!
He drew deeper, pulling the power out in a river.
When he’d drawn every drop of energy he had, Damien loosed the blast at the dragon in a single focused lightning bolt.
He fell.
The world went black and the ground rushed to meet him.
Damien hoped he’d pass out before he struck. Hitting the ground from this height would hurt, for a moment at least.
Chapter 36
“Damien!” Jen shouted after her brother again. He ignored her, racing off to do something very brave and stupid.
She drew on her depleted soul force and sprinted after him. Despite her speed Damien pulled away from her.
She dodged spruce trees that seemed to appear from nowhere, her accelerated senses allowing her to make decisions ten times faster than a normal person. What was he thinking, trying to take on a dragon on his own? They should gather reinforcements, especially more sorcerers, and make a proper counterattack.
Jen leapt an eight-foot boulder. But if they did that they’d lose the forces fighting in the central pass along with General Kord, who almost certainly had led the soldiers himself. Damien must have realized that as well.
Idiot!
A tear froze on her cheek. If anything happened to him… No, she wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him. She was his big sister and it was her job to keep him safe, even if he didn’t think he needed to be kept safe anymore.
A line of retreating soldiers streamed past her. She was moving so fast most of them didn’t even notice her. In the sky above, Damien had come to a stop. He floated, facing toward the pass, still a mile away. In front of him golden energy gathered. He wasted no effort disguising his conjuring.
She clenched her teeth and ran faster. She had to get to him before he released his power. If Damien gave it everything he had there’d be nothing left to hold him up
She was still a hundred yards short of her brother when a thunderous explosion shook the ground. The energy he’d summoned crackled like
