Page 33 of Sereis
The real battle was about to begin.
The shift happened between one heartbeat and the next, Sereis's human form dissolving into something that my transformed senses could barely comprehend as real. He didn't change—he revealed, as if his human shape had been a polite fiction he maintained for our comfort. What emerged made my understanding of dragons seem like a child's drawing compared to the actual sun.
His scales rippled with aurora colors that shouldn't exist in nature—not just the greens and blues I'd seen in northern skies, but colors that made my brain invent new names. Each scale was a prism that split light into spectrums human eyes weren't meant to see, creating halos of impossible beauty that hurt to perceive directly. He was massive but lean, built for speed ratherthan pure strength, with wings that seemed to exist in more dimensions than three. When they moved, they left traces in the air, afterimages that suggested he could fly through time as easily as space.
The confrontation erupted properly when Davoren lunged, his magma form moving with speed that something that massive shouldn't possess. They collided in the center of the ruined parlor like natural disasters given intent. Where Davoren's superheated claws raked across Sereis's flank, the aurora scales flickered and went dark, actual wounds that bled light instead of blood. The droplets froze before they could fall, becoming tiny stars that hung in the air for moments before shattering.
Sereis's tail came around in a sweep that caught Davoren's legs, the impact like glaciers colliding with volcanos. The Fire Lord went flying, his massive form crashing through three pillars of eternal ice that had stood for millennia. They shattered into fragments that sang as they fell, each piece holding a note of some cosmic song I couldn't understand. Davoren was already rising, magma blood dripping from his maw, when Caelus struck from above.
Lightning breath should have been white-hot electricity. What Caelus expelled was something else—pure storm given form, not just lightning but pure energy. It hit Sereis's raised wing and conducted through those impossible scales in patterns that made reality hiccup. For a moment, I saw Sereis in multiple positions simultaneously, as if the lightning had split him across possibilities.
He recovered by becoming winter incarnate. The temperature in the entire palace dropped so dramatically that frost formed on my eyelashes, made my transformed body shiver despite its new resilience. Caelus banked hard to avoid being frozen solid, but ice still formed on his silver wings, making his flight erratic.
I pressed myself against the black ice barrier Sereis had created for me, my hands flat against its surface, feeling the combat through vibrations that went soul-deep. Every instinct screamed at me to help, to do something, but what could I do against beings that treated physics as suggestion? My transformation had made me more than human, but this was warfare between gods. I could only watch and try not to let my terror show through the bond I shared with Sereis—he didn't need that distraction.
Garruk had been patient, waiting for his moment. When it came, the floor beneath Sereis suddenly wasn't floor anymore. It became liquid stone that reached up with fingers of granite to wrap around the Ice Lord's claws. Sereis tried to pull free, his wings beating hard enough to create a localized hurricane, but the stone followed him up, growing with intent, adding weight that even a dragon couldn't ignore.
"Hold him!" Davoren roared, already preparing another attack. This time he didn't just breathe fire—he became it, his entire form shifting to pure magma that flowed toward Sereis with the inevitability of a pyroclastic flow.
Sereis countered with an explosion of ice that went in all directions, a sphere of absolute zero that forced them all back momentarily. The eternal ice pillars throughout the room resonated with the power, singing in harmonics that made my teeth ache. For a moment, I thought he might actually fight them off, might manage to defend his domain against impossible odds.
Then Morgrith struck from shadow itself. He didn't attack Sereis's body but his shadow, somehow grasping it and pulling in directions shadows shouldn't go. Sereis stumbled, his concentration breaking for just a moment, and that was all the opening they needed.
Zephyron's winds held him in place. Garruk's stone trapped his claws completely. Davoren's heat began to overwhelm even Sereis's infinite cold. Caelus darted in and out, each pass leaving frozen wounds from paradoxical ice-lightning. They were coordinating now, five Dragon Lords working in concert for the first time in centuries, and Sereis—powerful as he was—couldn't match their combined fury.
That's when Kara moved.
I'd almost forgotten her in the chaos, this small human figure somehow balanced on Davoren's shoulder throughout the aerial combat. She'd been waiting, that spear of condensed flame held with the patience of a hunter. When she finally threw it, the motion was beautiful and terrible—a perfect arc that my merchant-trained mind recognized as mathematically flawless.
The spear moved through magical defenses like they didn't exist. Dragon magic, human will, and something else—something new that came from the combination—gave it properties that bypassed natural protections. It pierced Sereis's shoulder with a sound like reality tearing, driving deep into aurora scales that should have been impervious.
Sereis's roar of pain made the entire palace shudder. Windows throughout the structure exploded outward, unable to contain that frequency of anguish. The black ice barrier protecting me cracked but held, though I felt the sympathetic agony through our partial bond like my own shoulder had been pierced. He thrashed, his tail taking out what remained of the Amber Parlor's walls, his wings beating with desperate fury.
Ice exploded outward from him in a final desperate defense—not an attack but a barrier, a sphere of compressed winter that forced all five Dragon Lords back. They could have pressed through it, but something in that roar had changed the situation. This wasn't the sound of an enemy being defeated—this wasthe sound of someone who might have been innocent being tortured.
In the sudden stillness that followed, Sereis hung in the air for a moment, Kara's spear still burning through his shoulder, before crashing to what remained of the floor. The impact sent cracks running through the ice for hundreds of feet in all directions, and I felt something fundamental in the palace's structure shift, as if the building itself was wounded by its master's pain.
Aurora blood—if that's what it could be called—pooled beneath him, freezing and refreezing in patterns that looked like stellar maps. Each drop that fell seemed to carry a memory of winter, a moment of perfect cold that would never come again.
The five Dragon Lords surrounded him, their forms still combat-ready but no longer actively attacking. They were waiting, watching, perhaps finally questioning what they'd come here to do.
The shift back to human form shouldn't have been possible with that spear still burning through his shoulder, but Sereis managed it with the kind of control that made me realize how much power he kept leashed even in combat. His dragon shape collapsed inward like winter retreating, scales becoming skin, wings folding into nothing, until he knelt on the shattered floor in human form with Kara's spear still piercing him. The weapon looked even more wrong now—a bar of condensed flame running through flesh that had gone pale as fresh snow, his white robes already soaking crimson where the wound wept.
He didn't cry out. Didn't even wince. Just reached into his robes with his good arm and withdrew the contract the young trader had produced, holding it up like a talisman against the five Dragon Lords who still surrounded him in their true forms. Solmar's seal caught what light remained in the ruined parlor, the wax gleaming with an oily sheen that suggested corruption.
"Varek Solmar," he said, and his voice carried despite the blood I could see on his lips. Each word came with visible effort, but also with the kind of precision that turned accusation into proof. "The same merchant who tried to claim Lady Kara before her bonding. The same one who lost a fortune when that claim was denied."
The silence that followed felt like the space between lightning and thunder—charged, waiting, inevitable. I saw Davoren's massive head tilt, those molten eyes focusing on the contract with an intensity that made the air around him shimmer.
"The Ghost Monks of the Eastern Wastes," Sereis continued, his free hand pressing against the wound to slow the bleeding. The gesture was futile—dragon weapons weren't meant to be survivable—but he needed time to speak his truth. "They taught him to replicate dragon signatures. Three years he spent in those ruins, learning the old magics that let humans forge our marks. The traders were quite detailed in their admiration once the wine loosened their tongues."
He gestured weakly toward where the traders still cowered, though two had fainted entirely and the third was curled in a ball, rocking and whimpering. They looked pathetic now, these men who'd been so proud of their employer's cleverness, reduced to quivering flesh by the proximity to dragon warfare.
Davoren's reaction was volcanic—literal steam rising from his scales as his rage shifted targets. The magma that composed his form brightened from red to white-hot, and when he spoke, his voice made the ruined palace shudder.
"Solmar." The name came out like a curse, like a promise of destruction. "He was contracted to marry Kara. I took her from him, broke his claim with the Caretaker Pact." His massive head swung toward Kara, still perched on his shoulder despite his dragon form. "This is revenge. He's using dragon magic against us because he lost his human prize."
The recognition rippled through the other Dragon Lords. Zephyron's lightning dimmed to thoughtful sparks. Garruk's stone form settled, no longer poised to attack. Morgrith emerged more fully from shadow, his attention fixed on the testimonial crystals that continued their playback. Even Caelus had stopped his restless circling, his silver form solidifying as he processed this new information.
