That One Time I Went on a Quest

Absolute pandemonium. They come in waves; first the small ones, then the agile ones that easily dodge around Kaishen’s fire with graceful mid-air pirouettes, then the small ones again, then the hulking mountains that blot out the sun.

Never knew there were so many dragons in the world. The Endless Ranges must be empty by now, with the parade of thousands churning up the earth and the sky all around our lonely coach. There hadn’t been nearly as many to begin with; the Thralls drew them to us, as Kathanhiel knew they would.

On the first day, the Thralls decimate the brood more effectively than any weapon. Unlike those miserly humans who had their brains burnt out, they have quite the different effect on the creatures they imitate. In their presence the dragons turn on each other, with teeth and claw and fire. Mingled in the rain is a red mist that sticks to the skin; vile screeching and the tearing of limbs soak through the clouds, as bolts of lightning cast upon them writhing, snarling shadows.

Hours and hours and hours pass.

No idea why the Thralls work this way and frankly I don’t care. Don’t care to ask either. Don’t care to look up. Don’t care to move a toe. Biting on my tongue stops the screaming, and putting hands over ears gets rid of about a third of the noise; these are the things I can do. There’s no room for thinking, reacting, or displaying great heroism and courage.

If only the same expectations could be applied to Kathanhiel; for her there is no reprieve.

From morning to sunset she stands on the roof holding Kaishen and the Thralls at the fore. At first she was shaking all over and barely standing, but now…now the redness of Kaishen’s fire has crept up to her shoulder, and the rain can no longer linger on her skin for more than a second before turning to vapour.

Shrouded in bellowing steam, she is now statue-still, her crystalline greaves shining like bottled stars; if not for them her feet would undoubtedly be sinking into the roof.

With nightfall comes a violent wind descending from the north, dragging a herd of rainclouds from the mountains, but the deluge that follows can rage on forever – drown the entire world even – and still the cry of the dragons would rise above it.

In the darkness, the light of Kaishen makes the distant shadows impenetrable…which is what catches Kathanhiel off-guard.

Another horn-headed dragon charges out of the gloom – not from the sky but in a full sprint from the field – and rams into the coach before either of us could react. Crunch; amidst shattering steel its neck crumples like a stack of paper.

While airborne and comically flailing, I see that its eye sockets are empty and bleeding. Those are claw marks on its face.

Oon’Shang, bless her heart, catches me as one would a falling child. Still unable to stand up straight, she half-crawls into a dark grove on the side of the highway, outside the reach of Kaishen’s light.

Here, even though we’re not exactly hidden, none of the dragons pay us any mind; they seem to only care about one thing.

As Kathanhiel falls from the broken roof the Thralls disperse into nothing. The moment she lands on her feet, dozens of bull-sized silhouettes materialise from the dark fields, growling like starved hounds and surrounding her on all sides. Their wings are small and sickly yellow like broken cocoons, but the forearms to which they’re attached are as thick as their hind legs.

As they close in, prowling like wolves, the one in front begins to seizure: mouth foaming, chest heaving, legs bucking with such force that its spine snaps in two. With its last breath comes the ecstatic laughter of Rutherford, echoing as if across a great chasm.

‘Games, games we shall play, ere the herald comes!’

As one the rest charge forward, half-leaping half-sprinting and closing thirty paces with a single bound.

Kathanhiel pivots on the spot, Kaishen rising in a timid arc from left to right. As blade meets iron snout there is a bang like hot steel struck on an anvil; blinding white flares crack open their faces, sending the dragons flying with their heads turned to bloody holes.

The tip of her sword snakes out with inhuman speed, and the banging goes off like fireworks: twenty-two in five seconds, all in one pirouette. A third of the dragons fall headless in a ring around her, more with limbs missing, but there’s also a cape of red on her left shoulder, courtesy of a pair of claws that had slipped through.

The corner of her mouth lifts up in an impatience tsk. Normally composed to the point of emotionlessness, that one subtle expression might as well be a silent scream.

The dragons come again, feigning and dodging with terrifying speed, but it makes no difference. The moment they lunge Kaishen is there to greet them, always one step ahead, and upon its glowing edge they crush their own necks.

After the second round they all lay dead.

It doesn’t end.

After that it’s the swarming little ones descending in shrieking clouds, and after that the burrowing ones that burst from the fields with drill-like claws, and after that it’s the contest of fire between Kaishen and an inexhaustible line of Apex candidates, each lasting for hours.

All this time I keep expecting her to loose Kaishen like an arrow and nail one through the skull…but it doesn’t happen again.

At one point she attempts it, levelling her obsidian bow at one descending right on top of her. Kaishen is notched, loosed, and between the dragon’s eyes it lands, but without the brilliant white fire there is only a great explosion as Kaishen shatters its skull into a hundred pieces. As Kaishen returns to her through that strange pull she almost misses it, her fingers fumbling off the pommel.

Instead of incinerating the little ones in a great inferno she strikes them one at a time; instead of instantly overpowering the Apex candidates she engages them in lengthy tugs of war. That whole night her sword doesn’t stop, not even for a moment, and as the red fire gradually blanket her body she begins to slow down.

From one second to ten, then to thirty, the dragons are living longer and longer before being struck down.

On the dawn of the second day there is no more room on the highway for fresh corpses, and as a new wave of grounded dragons claw aside the bodies of their fallen brethren to get at Kathanhiel, the inevitable happens.

A second after sending a fiery arc into yet another swarm of little dragons, she spins around, ready to face the two great ones prowling up behind her...and her own momentum knocks her down. Comical, it looks, like slipping on a banana peel.

The pair of dragons – just your average run-of-the-mill house-sized types – dive in instantly, clawing and snapping at each other in a race to get to her first.

There’s no time to think ’typical Kastor, useless as always’ or ’so much for helping her, don’t make me laugh!’ There’s no time to think anything at all.

What happens next leaves no room for thought.

She rises. No, not standing up – that would imply being under her own power. She is dragged to her feet, as if an invisible giant is pulling her up by the sword and against her will. In her hand Kaishen is bursting with energy; sparks, streams of fire, beams of white light, they ricochet off the blade in all directions, igniting whatever they touched, be it stone, flesh, or cold steel.

The two dragons, as one, lunge with their mouths gaping in an attempt to swallow her whole…but they’re not the scary thing here.

It’s the way she moves.

Usually she’s fluid, disciplined, and lightning-fast, a stoic dancer performing a difficult routine and making it look easy. This time, she flings herself forward in an ugly tumble: shoulders askew, body twisted sideways and not facing the way she’s going. With a great and clumsy leap that looks like a human-size doll being thrown, she hurls herself into the dragon’s jaws.

I catch a glimpse of her face the split second before it disappears behind three gleaming rows of teeth. Her eyes are wide open, but they’re not lost in some far off place.

They’re empty.

Two agonising heartbeats later, the belly of the dragon bursts open, and what at first appears to be a ball of lava splashes down beneath it. From the smoking pile Kathanhiel rises – not stands, rises – covered in unspeakable entrails that are literally cooking on her skin, and levels Kaishen at her next target.

No, that’s not quite right either. She doesn’t point Kaishen; Kaishen points her, dragging her body around in an awkward arc with all the grace of a one-armed puppeteer.

With a ferocious lunge she tears into the next in line. And the next. And the next.

There’s a nonsensical noise echoing in my head, and in it swims a sickening thought:

She lied.

She didn’t mean it when she said she would cut them all down. She only pretended to get upset at Haylis for questioning her ability. They were lies she told herself; in her heart of hearts, she knew it couldn’t be done.

But what choice did she have? The hero of the Realms couldn’t possibly give up – it’s not allowed. She’s here to save the world, and what is the point of a hero if not the solver of every problem in existence?

So with that peace of mind everyone proceeded to offer up their own burdens as gifts. Take them, my lady, they said. Help everyone, everywhere, all at once, and her pride, adamant its resolve, had agreed.

This is why Kaishen has taken over.

Kaishen does not break. Kaishen does not despair. The blade of Ush’Ra is propping up its wielder’s exhausted hand and pouring all its fire into her body.

A body of steel can fight forever.

Soon after that I fall asleep – like a rock – which is ridiculous considering, well, everything, but the body doesn’t listen to the silly and juvenile demands of the brain. It does what it wants.

I’m standing on a hilltop with the dawn at my back. To my left, with one foot upon a conveniently-placed tree stump, is Kathanhiel decked out in her ceremonial cuirass. Her face is half-turned to me, and it is perfect, more beautiful than any work of art, nobler than all the kings of the Realms put together. The way her lips slightly part, as if on the verge of speaking or, Maker wills it, giving a kiss – it’s impossible to look away from.

‘I have to give,’ she says.

I try to shake my head but it won’t budge. The dream doesn’t let me speak, only watch on in mounting panic as her words echo across the hilltop, understood by no one.

She holds her hand to her chest and, with compulsive fingers, claws at it as if her heart has stopped beating. Little wells of light bubble up around her fingertips, all fiery red and yellow and white, as she digs into herself with the manic desperation of one who has let go of the most precious thing in the world. Three bright pillars, curved inward like sharpened claws, rise around her wrist like a flaming pedestal.

No. Stop.

She pulls. Her hand reappears as an abomination, a mangled pile of squirming flesh held together by the glue of ember. Red lines have dug into her skin, each writhing like an open wound festering with maggots. In her grip is an ornate grip seemingly wrought out of static flames; its light is so brilliant that her deformed hand almost looks beautiful in its shadow.

The hilltop shatters like a mirage. From the blackening earth rises great pillars of frozen fire. To the sky they grow, caving inward like clutching talons around Kathanhiel’s body, obscuring from her the dying sun, and through the thinning gap between them I see a sword of fire emerging from her heart, a blade so brilliantly white its light pierces through the pillars as if they’re glass.

I jerk awake to the gentle prodding of Oon’Shang. Somehow it is dawn again; this despicable human being had managed to sleep through the second day of the apocalypse.

The battle has become one of attrition. Instead of recklessly charging in wave after wave the dragons are now watching, waiting on the edge of Kaishen’s reach, ready to pounce the moment this dogged herald of fire shows the slightest weakness. Meanwhile, Kaishen’s (energy? corruption?) has completely overwhelmed her body; in the sunlight her skin glows like a statue of bronze, and there is no distinguishing where the sword ends and her arm begins.

Her arm...if you could still call it that.

Tendrils of what looks like solidified flames, with the texture of burning coal, have encrusted it all the way to her shoulder. Flakes of skin – for what else could they be – are shedding like autumn leaves with the breeze. The wounds on her shoulder, arm, back, head...she’s amassed quite a number, but instead of bleeding they’re all pulsating with the orange fire of molten metal.

So far she has lasted three days without food, water, rest, or even a full minute of sitting down, and it’s about to get worse: the rainclouds are leaving. If using Kaishen for a single night made her sit in water for an entire day, then…without the rain…

She’s standing in low guard now, Kaishen pointed at the ground next to her right foot. Her bow had been discarded, its obsidian grip a melted blob. That pick she uses to detach her sword is nowhere to be seen; she didn’t even bother taking it. There is no sense of calm or readiness in her posture; instead, it’s as if she’s frozen in place.

She speaks: ‘Come to me, Rutherford, if you so desire death. Hiding avails you neither peace nor sanctuary from my vengeance.’ Her voice resembles the sigh a great organ, polytonal and metallic.

A great dragon falls from the sky and lands in a twisted heap not two steps before her, its scar-riddled face trembling violently. Its jaws move but the voice comes from elsewhere.

’Slay us all, herald of fire. Only then will the Dark be banished.’

‘Then stop making it difficult.’

All the dragons – in the sky, on the ground, and those breathing their last – utter as one a single, shrill cry. Clapping down on my ears help with nothing; the noise is a hammer blow to the head.

’But what fun we’re having!’

From that point on it’s all dodges and feints. The dragons box her in from all sides, snarling, thrashing against one another to get a better spot, but not one attempts to take her head on. It is not all hopeless however; their numbers have dwindled by the hundreds, of which Kathanhiel’s death-dealing only accounts for a minority.

They must be getting hungry.

While rain has kept away the thirst, neither dragon nor human or giant have eaten, and even though I’ve done nothing except lying in this ditch with Oon’Shang, peeking out at the bloodbath like a jumpy groundhog, my stomach insists on being stuffed.

The dragons, meanwhile, have flew, screamed, and fought all this time.

Even now dozens are breaking off the encirclement and flying north. The will of Rutherford, so adamantly imposed upon the dragons and driving them to suicidal ferocity, is being overpowered by what could only be the most basic instinct of them all.

Empty stomachs, more powerful than the Bane of Dragons.

A pair of Apex candidates casually snaps up a mouthful of dragonlings from the horde. Cannibalism at its most effective; the largest and most powerful show no sign of leaving.

Oon’Shang, who has barely moved an inch for the past few days, stands up. She gestures to me. Walk? To where?

Picking me up by the armpits like a wayward baby, she backs all the way into the fields until Kathanhiel is no bigger than a yellow dot on smoking canvas.

‘What-what are you doing? We can’t leave!’ She couldn’t hear me.

With her other hand she digs into the dirt and, as if by magic, uncovers a slab of rock big enough to shadow even her. She puts me down and I, like a great warrior, fall over into a mouthful of ashy earth; cotton are my legs and a fat soap bubble my head, courtesy of not eating.

Oon’Shang kneels and tilts the great slab onto her back so that it blocks everything from view. The act is so obviously painful – no way has she healed enough to allow this kind of exertion.

But what could I do – give her a hand?

Suddenly there’s a great rush of wings, and from a chipped corner I catch a glimpse of hundreds of shapes fleeing into the sky. Yes, they’re really fleeing now; you can tell by the collisions, the infighting, and the sizable number dropping out of the flock for no reason. Their shadows are small though; all the big ones are still on the ground – seven Apex candidates by my last count. The departure of the great flock leaves an eerie silence. The rain, the wind, all things have stopped; even the sun hangs unmoving at the centre of the sky.

I look at Oon’Shang and she at me. She’s gesturing again. Down. Get down.

No need to ask twice.

The very second I finish burying myself in the slippery mud, the world breaks.

When I was younger and fonder of the world, I used to spend whole days in the Moon Canyons, that crack in the earth two day’s walk from the city. The sound of the wind charging through it at daybreak, that awe-inspiring howl of pure power, had felt like the beating of dragon wings. During the last days of winter, however, the winds became violent. Chunks of rock, withered seedlings, bones of dead things…ripped from the canyon floors, they stampeded along the narrow paths, pulverising everything in their way. In the spring, scavenger crows breed like flies in the canyon, for the carcasses of dead animals number in the thousands, and would keep them fed for months.

The sound of seven Apex candidates belching fire all at once is the winter wind of a thousand canyons, all directed toward the jut of rock upon which I stand naked and alone, facing the stampede.

And it is hotter than the sun.

An enormous orange plume roars into the sky. The earth groans, buckling under the sudden force, as the echo of ten thousand deep fractures gallop to the surface in a great shockwave.

The slab on Oon’Shang’s back is peeling, layer by layer, holding at bay a blinded world dominated by a tower of flame. She staggers, almost falling over, but the air rushing inexplicably towards the fire holds her up with violent strength.

Surely this is the end of everything; the quest, the Realms, the world, burning up in one great explosion.

Seconds pass. I count them like steps to the gallows. It’ll be over in ten. No? Fifteen, then. Twenty? Thirty?

Fifty?

Two minutes pass.

Five.

Ten.

Somewhere between twenty and thirty (minutes, not seconds) I close my eyes. The light is too bright, even with Oon’Shang shielding us; the inferno has become the sky itself, risen too high to be blocked by anything.

Under the howling gale, under the cascade of rocks splintering, bursting, and under my own insufferable screams, the roar of the great dragons persists without end, an ocean in turmoil. When I sleep now I’ll hear it. When I walk now in a quiet forest it’ll fill my ears. It will never go away.

At some vague point I start laughing, and it’s the sound people make just before going insane: shallow, out of breath, obnoxiously loud and will only end at suffocation and never before. Doesn’t matter though. Can’t even hear it.

At another vague point the ground begins sinking. Oon’Shang, who has bravely held up the slab of rock for all this time, leans forward, putting weight on her knees. The earth is tilting toward the fire, as if emptying dirt into it would make it stop.

The mud, baked stiff, their moisture long lost, holds my useless body in place as bits of rock and dead things tumble down the fracturing slope. Goodbye, pebble number one, pebble number two, number three...

I lose count. I lose track of everything, even breathing. More than once I’ve fainted – this I know, because that stalk of dead grass in front of my right eye has turned from tired green to dead brown. Now it’s black and breaking apart.

...

...

Nightfall.

Nothing gives it away, not the temperature, certainly not the brightness. It has to be that inexplicable rhythm inside the body of living things that tells them when to sleep and when to just roll over and be done with living.

The inferno shows no sign of abating. This persistence could mean only one thing.

Kathanhiel is still standing.