Page 45 of Fortune's Blade

And then it accelerated, with sounds rushing at me like speeding bullets from all sides: the liquid from someone’s spilled wineskin glugging away over the sand; the yip, yip, yip of a small dog, confused about what, exactly, was going on; the banners around the top of the arena snapping; the sudden shocked, indrawn breath of hundreds of people, almost in unison; and a screech from one of the dragonkind that sounded like human screaming.

I looked down at my arm, and all consciousness of my surroundings ceased. Something was happening to me; something strange and potentially very bad. And new—in five hundred years, I had never encountered anything like it.

Fear of the unknown caused a red haze to descend over my vision again and for me to grab the creature who had spelled me.

“What is this?” I heard myself snarl in a voice not my own. “What have you done?”

But he either didn’t understand or did not deign to reply, because he started struggling in my grasp, and screeching something in a language I did not know, and trying to back away with his eyes blown wide and alien in his face. He had started to change, but seemed to be doing it very slowly. Or perhaps the time-distortion was mine.

Either way, I saw when scales cascaded down his arms; when his color shaded from peach to lavender to iridescent purple; when his body blew up and then apart, reforming itself into a different and much larger shape; when his shoulder blades erupted with massive black wings, now healed from the damage I had inflicted; and when the no longer human face turned on me with a maw of huge teeth, bared and snarling.

And were met by my own, along with a burst of fire out of my no-longer-recognizable mouth, as my own now huge body came off of the sands in a lunge and tore at his throat before the flames had ended.

I felt scales crushing under the weight of my new maw, felt fangs sinking deep, felt blood filling my mouth and then vaporizing immediately under the heat generated by both our fires. He was trying to incinerate me, with flames rushing all over my body. And sloughing off as easily and harmlessly as raindrops, blackening the sand around us but leaving me untouched.

Because I had scales now, too, rivers of them stretching over a form easily as large as his. Indeed, it seemed to be his, or a copy of it, with hugely powerful black claws on the ends of my arms, thrashing black wings in the air above me, and everywhere I looked, deep, dark, iridescent scales, all in the rich purple I had so admired.

And had just stolen, I realized, as I finally understood what Ray had done.

Because this had happened to me once before, or to be more accurate, it had happened to Dory. The flower known as Dragon’s Claw allowed someone to absorb certain aspects of another creature for a short time. Normally, the changes were minor, as had been the case with the children eating the candy in the marketplace. Or with Ray, suddenly becoming far more hirsute than before.

But he had had a reason for thinking that he might get more than that; that he might take on our guard’s complete form, giving him an equal chance in a fight against him. Because he’d seen it happen before. He’d seen it happen to Dory.

She and I seemed to have an affinity for the plant far greater than what was normal. Enough that she’d once taken on the form of an Irin, better known as a fallen angel on Earth, long enough to defeat a powerful demon lord. And enough that I had now mirrored the form of my opponent, giving me a brief chance against him.

One I had better use, because I did not think that this would last for long.

And when it failed . . ..

I did not think it would be a good idea to be here when it failed.

I renewed my efforts, ignoring the flames, the claws that raked harmlessly off of my scales, and the creature’s desperate thrashing. I had him by the neck, my powerful jaws clamped tight on the smaller, more flexible, and more vulnerable scales there. And I discovered that there was one thing that could hurt a dragon: another dragon.

But he knew that, too, and tried everything to get a grip on me. Including grasping me hard by all four limbs and dragging me off the ground, his massive wings shredding the air as they fought to carry both of us skyward. I heard Ray curse as he was tossed head over heels by the gale-force winds, saw the sands underneath us recede as the creature took to the heavens; felt my huge tail whip about uselessly beneath me, like my legs, which were suddenly scrabbling for purchase on absolutely nothing.

But I did not let go. I did not know this body and could not afford to lose the advantage that surprise had given me. I had one chance to defeat him, one brief moment in which to snatch victory from defeat and death. And I was taking it.

So, I ignored his flailing, his fire, his claws. I wrapped my useless tail around him instead, squeezing the great body as hard as I could and making sure that I could not fall away. It was like an extra arm, one far larger than the other ones I had, increasing my grip considerably.

And allowing me to savage him.

I tore at the great neck, mauled it, shredded it. Felt the scales come away in my mouth, enough to threaten to choke me, but still I held on. I used fire to blast them, activating it with a thought, and blowing them out of my throat like ash. And sank my teeth ever deeper, into meat unprotected by any armor, into flesh that gave and gave and gave under my assault, into blood that gushed and spurted and filled my mouth with something far more delicious than scales.

And then we were falling again, with no warning from my suddenly weakly moving companion except for the ground rushing up to meet us. We hit with a terrible crash, thudding my bones and almost making me lose my grip. But if that had been the plan, it failed.

My jaws felt like they were locked in place; I wasn’t sure I could have let go had I wanted to. And I did not want to. I wanted to rend, to tear, to bite through the great throat entirely and watch the head bounce away onto the sand. I wanted blood, more and more of it, drinking it down now as if I could never get enough. I wanted everything.

I had heard of the blood lust of vampires all my life but had never felt it. I was feeling it now, only this went far beyond that. It was a blood frenzy, such as the old legends spoke of; when masters became crazed in battle from the carnage being wrought and the blood being absorbed by them and their families. Until it was all they could see, feel, smell, or want.

Until it became their whole world, and they would continue until the battle ended or they were dead. Nothing else could stop them. And nothing was stopping me.

I felt my opponent fall from my lips, whether in one piece or two I didn’t know and no longer cared. For he was dead and there was other prey to be had. Half a dozen of them had come with him, and were now looking at each other, and screeching in their strange voices as a blood covered savage with a dripping maw charged at them from across the arena. And called out a mind-numbing cry as she did so, the master power I possessed.

The one that froze my prey in place for a long moment while I brutalized them.

And brutalize I did.

One got away, one who had already taken off before I reached them, one who spiraled into the sky in a limping sort of flight, as if the call had almost caught him, too.

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