Page 353 of Of Empires and Dust

Our Duty Above All

22ndDay of the Blood Moon

Firnin Mountains – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom

The moment Calenemerged through the other side of the portal, Valerys was in the air, Avandeer and Varthear close behind.

Calen looked back as the portal collapsed, the white light along its rim vanishing. Voices called around him, but all he could hear was the beating of his heart and Rist’s voice.“I can’t leave them. I’m sorry.”

Rist was alive. All this time, he had been alive… and Calen had given up looking. Guilt warred with anger in his heart. Rist had just walked away. He could have come, but instead he had chosen to stand by the people who had killed Vars and Freis, the people who had tortured Elia and Lasch to the point of breaking.

Valerys’s mind crashed into his, swarming over his thoughts. In that same breath, their souls wrapped around each other,and Calen was looking through the dragon’s eyes and hearing through his ears as a deep, booming voice thundered, “Calen Bryer. We wish only to talk.”

Valerys and Avandeer dropped from the sky above, wings spreading wide.

Calen looked to Ella, her eyes shimmering gold, her face covered in blood. “Go. Find the others at the sally port. Move towards the Burnt Lands. Tivar and I will take Valerys and Avandeer and keep the Dragonguard occupied. We?—”

A rush of air swept past Calen, causing him to stagger. A dense grey fog swept over him, and he could barely see his own hands in front of his face. Valerys’s roar thundered in the grey, echoed by that of Avandeer and Varthear.

“Ella!”

“Calen?” As Ella’s voice rang out, the grey fog pulled away in all directions, clearing an open space of almost fifty feet.

Fenryr, Kaygan, Ella, and all the others stood in the open, grass beneath them, soft, diffused light drifting through a wall of swirling grey that surrounded them.

At the centre of it all stood Boud, the woman who had appeared as if stepping from the shadows themselves only the day before. A ‘Stormcaller’ Kaygan had called her. Fenryr had spoken of Stormcallers that night in the Eyrie. “Our people were mighty. Our Stormcallers struck the dragons from the sky with lightning.”

The woman’s eyes were bone white, and she stood with her hands thrust in the air, palms open.

“I told you that you would need her,” Kaygan said, stepping between Boud and Calen. “The fog stretches for miles in all directions. Only around us is it clear.”

A low rumble resonated in the air, and Valerys stepped through the fog behind Calen, eyes glowing with anincandescent purple light, Avandeer and Varthear emerging beside him.

Valerys moved so he stood over Calen, lowering his head, eyes fixed on Kaygan. The dragon trusted the god even less than Calen did, and he remembered the fear in Kaygan’s eyes at the mention of dragonfire.

“The fog will obscure us for now,” Kaygan said, narrowing his eyes at Valerys. “But the Lorians know we are few within here. If I sat astride Helios, I would burn everything.”

“What good is it then?” The anger came upon Calen without warning, Rist still swirling in his mind, fire boiling in Valerys’s veins.

“It will buy them and the others time,” Tivar said, lowering her hand from the scales on Avandeer’s jaw. She limped slightly as she walked towards Calen. “If Eltoar had meant us harm, he and the others would have fallen upon Valerys, Avandeer, and Varthear the moment they arrived. He wants to talk.”

“And you trust him?” Calen spat, immediately regretting the venom in his voice. “And what if I choose to run? Will he tear me from the sky like he has all the others?”

“I make no excuses for Eltoar’s deeds, just as I do not for mine. But beneath everything is a soul that aches. He does not want for more death. His heart is empty, and his soul wanders, him and Helios both. He does not want to see more of our kind slaughtered.”

“Does he not?” The Narvonan woman that Calen had seen in the mountain had been silent until that moment, but now he could see a rage in her eyes to rival that of any dragon. She strode towards Tivar and slammed a fist into her face with enough force to send blood spraying and Tivar sprawling to the ground, her helmet coming free.

Avandeer roared as the woman leapt atop Tivar and wrapped her hands around the collar of Tivar’s breastplate. But with asudden shift, the dragon’s roar turned to a whimper as the woman slammed her fist down into Tivar’s face again and again. Tivar made no effort to defend herself. She just lay there, staring up at her attacker as knuckles crunched into bone.

Calen leapt forwards, grabbed the woman by the shoulders, and threw her to the ground. In a heartbeat, his níthral was in his hand, purple light glistening in the sweat that streaked the woman’s face. “Lay a hand on her again,” he said, a dragon’s fury burning within him, “and it will be the last thing you do. I swear by the bond.”

The woman stared at Calen, unflinching, the light gleaming in her eyes.

“Who are you?”

She leaned forwards, the flickering edge of Calen’s níthral a finger’s width from her throat. She spoke clear and true. “I am Coren Valmar, Daughter of the Sea, Soulkin to Aldryn, and I watched my whole world burn at her hands and the hands of those she stood beside. And now she speaks of empty hearts and wandering souls. She brings shame to everything that we are. And she owes me a debt of blood that can never be paid.”

Calen released his níthral. He stared down at Coren Valmar and pushed away the rage that bubbled within. He knew that name. Chora had spoken of Coren Valmar. “Uvrín mír, Rakina. La’valkanet vidim.”

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