Page 148 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

“Even the Sadda-Vale isn’t remote enough, AuRon. The trolls will clear it out eventually.”

“I think it shall be my summer palace,” Imfamnia said. AuRon had trouble thinking of a hominid spirit—soul, whatever one wished to call it—in the body of a dragon. No wonder she’d lost weight—probably still had a hominid’s appetite.

The sand smelled like the place had been used to store rotten potatoes. Vermin had the run of it, judging from the slightly sweet, dead-mouse smell coming from the piles of crates. Like much else in the Lavadome these days, the old dueling pit was half empty and going decrepit. He looked up and the glint of a bat eye peering at him from the darkness of a crack in the ceiling twinkled back like a star.

In his time, they’d held public debates in this space. Now the only squabbles settled were by bats looking to take a more comfortable perch.

“Whoever wins gets to have their mate live,” Rayg said.

“A little battie told me you two have never much liked each other,” Imfamnia added.

Trolls, answering a hooted call blatted out from a short brassy horn Rayg carried, brought in Nilrasha and Natasatch. They were muzzled and hobbled, back left saa to front right sii.

The Copper sidestepped, circling to his right to keep his injured limb away from AuRon. For an instant, AuRon’s posture seemed to be the same as when he was on the egg shelf at their hatching: Charge, charge and push him over. . . .

His brother made no move to grapple, though his tail lashed angrily. Tail—AuRon noticed that his brother, at the longest extent of the lash, briefly pointed at the high perch where Imfamnia rested with Rayg beside her, beyond their wall of troll-flesh.

Me above, you below, came the mindspeech. Just like on the egg shelf.

No. The trolls will have us.

They’ll have us anyway. Eventually. Rayg is the key. He directs the trolls somehow. If he can be distracted . . .

AuRon made a feint, snapped where the Copper’s throat had been a moment before. That would impress the watchers in the stands—a good bite always did. The problem was, as Father pointed out all those years ago, a dragon’s mouth isn’t powerful enough to kill anything but smaller, hominid-sized quarry. When fighting something your own size, you let the saa, with their thick claws, do the ripping and killing.

The Copper charged in return, rearing up and raining blows on him. AuRon backed up, blocking with griff and his wings. The Copper backed up, let out a snarl to get the blood up, and sprang forward in two great bounds.

On the third he leaped for AuRon’s back. AuRon had to find it in his hearts to trust his brother not to dig in and sever his spine at the neck. He braced himself.

Instead of landing with claws digging in, the Copper gathered himself for another bound off AuRon’s back between his wings. AuRon threw his body up with all his might, giving what leverage he could to the Copper’s leap, before turning himself.

He watched the Copper extend, striving to reach the shelf holding Rayg and Imfamnia.

The wizard and the self-proclaimed Queen of the Hosts recoiled in fear. The Copper landed just short of their shelf, his sii extended and holding on, keeping him from falling back into the fighting pit.

Had he only been able to spread both wings—

A troll reached up and grabbed his brother by the tail. They fell together, messily, into the sand.

AuRon rushed to his brother’s aid, ignoring the shrieks of Imfamnia—something about Rayg hiding behind her, as always—and Rayg’s frantic hooting amplified through a speaking tube.

He tore into a troll with frustrated fury. An elf would appreciate the irony of dying next to his brother, after all the years and all the distance they’d traveled separately. But every dragon meets his end, death being even more certain than the rising of the sun, and if this was to be his, so be it. He didn’t care to live to see what sort of world Rayg and Imfamnia would fashion, full of declawed, flightless dragons.

Remarkably, he brought down the troll that he’d been fighting. It continually raised its head to hear Rayg’s frantic hoots, and AuRon managed to get a saa up and popped it off its stalk like a grapefruit loosed from a tree.

The troll picked itself up and charged off in a frantic search for its sense-organ cluster.

His brother was beneath another troll. Both were bloody, but his brother seemed to be getting the worst of it.

He moved to help, but one of the trolls from the balcony bounded down and landed squarely on his back. He heard a bone in his wing snap.

We tried. Proud to be teamed up with you, brother. We should have tried this sooner, the Copper thought to him.

AuRon heard the reed-cutting sound of cartilage snapping in the troll’s grip, and his brother’s head dropped. The troll released its grip when the Copper’s eyes ceased whirling and bulging and went glassy-still. A mechanical death rattle escaped his brother and no breath followed.

The troll placed his hand on the Copper’s chest, felt around, then turned away, kicking sand upon the corpse with those ridiculous back limbs.

“It appears you win again, AuRon,” Rayg said. “Though by default. Your amazing string of luck in single combat—”

---