Unsurprisingly, the Pirate King did not strike first; cowardice was a disease that always showed the same symptoms.
Calamity whipped up, cobra-fast for all the sword’s tremendous weight, and caught the descending edge of a curving scimitar. The smaller blade skittered off towards Delyth’s hand but caught instead on the black guard. She twisted, and the scimitar went flying so that Calamity might find its owner’s unprotected heart.
After that, time ceased to have any meaning.
Delyth was death itself, swift and merciless. She cleaved a man’s spear arm from his body and kicked him away, to bleed in the dirt. Her next opponent lost his head on the reversal, too slow to raise his weapon in parry. A third she carved a split in, slicing down from his shoulder until his lungs parted ways and blood misted in the night air.
It was not long before the pirates ceased to come after her, but Delyth let none escape alive. She flew after them, Calamity streaming blood behind her to sink its blade in backs and necks and skulls. By the time only the King and his stolen innocents remained living, the warrior was bathed in blood, as filthy as the men she had been sent to kill.
She turned to face the quaking leader, at last, her chest heaving. He didn’t run, lent courage by sheer desperation. She had proven that flight was not an option. Instead, he raised his great ax and sent it crashing down towards her face.
Only to be turned away with almost laughable ease, the ax head skipping off the flat of Calamity’s blade. Delyth kicked him to his knees, reached forward with her left hand, and gripped the haft of the ax. She placed one booted foot on the Pirate King’s chest and pulled. His strength failed, made soft by liquor and laziness. Pathetic.
His weapon in her possession, the pirate raised his arms to protect his face, pale and quaking, but Delyth wasted no mercy upon him, scavenger, and slaver, and rapist that he was. She sent Calamity slicing through the air and took his head and hands in one fell swoop.
The women left in the wake of the pirate’s massacre would have to find their own way home. Delyth had a dragon waiting on the Pirate King’s severed skull.
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
The following dusk, Delyth again stood before the cave, rain flattening her dark braids as she waited. Within, scales rustled against the stone floor, and there came the tinkling of gold coins and crowns sent skittering.
Llu’draig was rising.
When the great, black dragon reached the cave entrance, her wings were already half-lifted from her back in preparation for flight, but she took a moment to peer at Delyth through molten copper and fire eyes, letting the torrent drum against her sparkling hide.
“My sister and I might speak for moments each day, precious seconds when we both lie half in this world and half in the Dream Realm ruled by Ruyaa. Today she has spent them telling me of a warrior looking to prove herself worthy of a bargain. Well, warrior? Are you worthy?”
Delyth bowed her head to the Black Dragon Goddess and held up a single iridescent scale, as long as her palm but tapering. “I have passed Ral’draig’s test and will take on whatever trial you present to me.”
Llu’draig snarled viciously, shoving her great head forward. Every one of her long teeth was visible, and her talons dug into the earth.
The warrior only just managed to keep herself from flinching back.
You should never flinch from a dragon.
“You did not answer my question, human.” The last word came out like an insult, dark and dirty.
Delyth looked up and filled her lungs with sulfur-tainted air. She had dipped her hands into so much blood, so much darkness. She had chosen to take that oath in service to a Goddess she hated. Was she worthy to speak to these fearsome creatures? To stand as their equals?
Alphonse would have thought so. But Alphonse was gone.
The warrior gritted her teeth and met the red-gold eyes. “I am worthy, Dusk Dragon. And I will prove it by any means necessary.”
Llu’draig gave an approving nod, the motion bringing her great dagger-toothed jaw inches from Delyth’s eyes.“You are full of anger, little sister. So am I. Even the sky above us rages tonight. We will lose ourselves in it. Come. You will fly with me.”
The black dragon spread her wings and leaped into the air, her belly narrowing above Delyth’s head in a ripple from chest to tail, and then she was away, graceful as a dancer in flight. The warrior droppedher bag and threw herself after the dragon, trying to mimic the fluid power of her wingbeats.
The rain was a constant nuisance, driving into her eyes and soaking her clothes. Delyth wiped her face again and again, trying to make out the dragon against the clouds. Her hide was so dark, and there was less light in the sky every moment.
The wind was picking up as well. One moment Delyth was flying through it; the next, it had caught her wings and thrown her backward, tumbling like a field mouse tossed by a cat. The earth and sky merged around her, made detail-less by darkness, but she stopped herself with a flair of wings and strained to gain height once more.
Only, Llu’draig was gone, her black hide invisible against the clouds.
Delyth scanned the skies around her, but the rain blurred her vision, made it impossible to see. The wind sent her plummeting again, the ground rising up to meet her.
No.
She would not be defeated by a single storm. She couldn’t fail. Not for Enyo. The compulsion to keep her oath to the Goddess was a tiny thing compared to her real desire. Almost inconsequential. Both dragons of Dusk and Dawn had named her little sister.
And Delyth would prove herself worthy of
