The Heartstone Saga by Archibald Bradford (short novels in english .TXT) 📕

go for Evadne, for she has lived far too long!” The Dragon rumbled as she squatted down, preparing to take flight.

There was no response from the queens, though that was to be expected: they were far too busy directing their forces to mince words.

“Be careful!” Sadie called right as Xalanth took to the sky.

Only partially aware of what was happening, Nameless focused ever inwards, Volka doing likewise.

Tiny blue dots of light filled their mind as the Undines joined them, similar to how they had helped him heal the mental trauma that Juni had suffered from nearly being burned alive.

Remember girls, we need your water to touch all of their stones, wherever they are hidden, or this won’t work. Bring the rain!

A swelling chorus of voices echoed in his mind as the Undines combined their psyches to bring about his will.

Juni’s voice chirped above the others, as he knew her best.

It will be as you say Aegis, the Sacred Current shall guide us this day!

Gone were the silly gossip girls he was used to, instead he was surrounded by the raw elemental power of water and the majesty befitting it.

Meanwhile Xalanth exploded ever upwards, her roar shaking the ground at their feet as she called out their true enemy.

“Evadne! Last of the Chimera! Wretched whore of entropy! Your madness ends here! I am Xalanth! Flametongue and shaker of the earth, scourge of the very darkness you wield with such impunity! Come forth and die on my claws!”

Her roar actually caused the Tenebrae to hesitate for a moment, forgotten survival instincts overriding the hateful emotions that Jonathan had instilled in them in the face of the Dragon’s wrath.

But the overwhelming memory of their children crumbling into ashes in their arms quickly spurred them onwards.

Evadne’s eyes narrowed when she spotted the Dragon and heard her challenge, a predatory smile spreading across her face.

She was only too happy to oblige.

Her dark wings flapped to bring her high up in the air to where Xalanth hovered, a cloak of shadow surrounding her as the demon brought out every ounce of its power that it could.

“Ah, Dragons! Always so dramatic!” Evadne’s voice taunted from within the shadow.

A moment later she emerged from the darkness again, and she was terrible.

All but her face was now wreathed in armoured blackness, her snake tail hissing and whipping back and forth in a frenzied rage.

There was no preamble beyond that.

Xalanth breathed fire at her, and this time, far enough away from the humans and others fighting below, she held nothing back.

Evadne cast her arms forward and formed a shield of absolute darkness just before the inferno engulfed her. The whooshing roar of Dragon-fire lit the sky and everything below in an orange haze.

Even high in the air as it was it still warmed the battlefield considerably as one of the oldest monster girls in existence let loose with her power.

The furious Dragon breathed and breathed on the demonic Chimera, intent on ending her once and for all.

Once her fiery breath ended there was a long pause as the air crackled and snapped with hazy heat.

Evadne’s shield of darkness was not unscathed: shadows dripping down and off of it like melted candle wax.

But it held.

Her taunting voice cut through the crackling haze as her cold and shadowy miasma began to seep out to replace it.

“I told you Xalanth! You are not the strongest anymore!”

Evadne threw both arms forth, palms first, her remaining fingers curling into claws as she answered the Dragon’s breath with a beam of darkness that would have punched a hole through a mountain.

Her attack slammed into Xalanth as she crossed her scaled arms in front of herself defensively, absorbing the blow with a grunt.

The icy cold touch of nonexistence sought to claim her, but she was a match for it.

As Volka would be quick to point out, some things are meant to exist.

Once the shadows of entropy faded Xalanth uncrossed her arms and roared.

“WRETCH! You seek to unmake ME?! One whose bones were forged in the fiery heart of this world?!”

The Dragon lunged forwards and with a crackling boom her fist connected with Evadne’s armoured chest and cast her backwards.

But just as with her fire the Chimera shook it off quickly, her bat-like wings halting her freewheeling flight before she spat black blood to one side and snarled at her enemy.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to beat you to death you overgrown lizard!”

She was smiling again.

Chapter 49:The Folly of Yana Brael

Despite the magnitude of the conflict above, the one below continued, the circumstances growing more desperate by the minute, to the point that even the working medics were under threat as the Tenebrae rolled around the edges of their defensive line and inevitably out-flanking Tiana and Lilly’s teams.

But it wasn’t just the Amazons that Volka asked for help, and it wasn’t just the warrior breeds that answered.

While the Dryads and the medics were treating the wounded, their elfin cousins were covering them.

Dozens of Spriggin formed a short but effective ring around the triage center, firing their tiny arrows into the Tenebrae to hobble them and make it easier for others to subdue them.

Aiding their efforts was Paul Fletcher, moving faster than most of the people decades his junior; his Cockatrices paralyzing any Tenebrae that came too close to him as he covered the volunteers who were assigned to evacuate the wounded to the waiting medics.

And in the midst of this mess, Helen Loskins was wondering just what in the hell she had been thinking.

She had a bit of first-aid training from a midwife in Kettering, enough to know how to staunch bleeding and even to set a broken bone. And against her father’s wishes she was putting that training