Chapter 68: Chapter 64: Final Form

I turned away from the gurgling ex-count and slowly forced myself to stand up. My limbs felt heavy and it was hard to focus, but the cloudy edges of my vision were slowly sharpening. Otto’s ‘divine’ blade had done a number on me, but thankfully its effects were temporary at best. I hurried over to Sally and Anastasia as best I could, stumbling along. Sally was already sitting up. Her wounds had stopped bleeding and she seemed to be doing better already. Her sturdiness kept pleasantly surprising me. That left Anastasia, who was panting heavily. 

 

“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Are you okay?” She looked up at me with a mixture of emotions so intense and changing so rapidly they were hard to place. The clothing she wore wasn’t nearly as royal as what I’d seen her display before, and I had to wonder just how well they’d been treating her, especially if the ever-vindictive Otto had been around the palace for a while. 

 

“I--” she began and she straightened up and in an instant she turned from the woman-upset-with-valid-reason Anastasia to the Queen-with-a-fury-like-which-hell-hath-no. Suddenly, she was furious, righteous and stately. She managed to look down on the room despite being barely upright, her back straight but her legs shaking. “I am not, okay, Queen Eliza! Why do you think anything would be even remotely in order?! I was deposed in a coup, I was viciously slandered and my reputation was destroyed, and now apparently the roof of my palace has been blown off! I. Am. Not. Okay.”

 

“Okay,” I said. “Valid. I meant like, do you need medical assistance?”

 

“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Uh… no, no I do not.” She glanced over my shoulder. “Your handmaiden might, though.” Kazumi slithered over to us, clutching her stomach. She was clearly having some trouble breathing. I hurried over to her and urged her to lie down. Sally joined us, looking worried. 

 

“I thought you told him that’s not where your organs were,” Sally said with a frown. Kazumi seemed to be in dire straits and losing a lot of blood. 

 

“I was still stabbed through and through, Sally,” she coughed, but managed a faint smile. I was trying to find the part of me that could fix her, tried to summon the magic, but whether it was the divine blade or my own silencing from earlier, the power inside me wasn’t coming. I tried to focus again, which is why the small fireball that hit me in the back wounded me as much as it did. I yelped out in pain and spun around. Several of the mages had gotten back up, and clearly my spell had been wearing off, because they’d weakly started casting their magic again. 

 

“You,” I began and raised my hands. “Bastards.” A weak shield appeared between us, but I knew it wouldn’t hold longer. If they could use magic, I could too, but I was tired, exhausted even, and more than a little hurt. I was about to collapse, but I needed to protect them, protect her. I barely managed to get a foot underneath me. My arms were so heavy. I tried to stand up, but impacts on the shield forced me back down. I wasn’t going to give up here. Then, I heard the doors behind me open and I knew it was over. If the guards swarmed us right now, there would be nothing I could do. I sighed deeply and felt the weariness overtake me. A part of me wanted to lower the shield, have it over quickly. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t--

 

An arrow whistled past me. It must have been an arrow because it was small and it moved fast and one of the mages practically did a backflip, landing on the ground with a loud smack and baffling the other mages, who momentarily stopped their barrage to look at their fallen comrade in stunned silence. Then another arrow went up and the second one barely got his shield up in time before the impact knocked him prone. A third arrow kept him there. 

 

I looked over my shoulder and saw Melamira, bless her soul, nocking another arrow and loosing it at the now frantically defending mages. I heard a soft hum to my flank, like a chorus of cellos all playing the same note, and saw Lillian bent over Kazumi, her hands glowing white. When she got up, the wound was gone, and both of them smiled at me. 

 

“I -- How?” I asked in confusion.

 

“Well,” Mellie said as she fired arrow after arrow, “the rendezvous point was on fire.”

 

Right, we had been responsible for that.

 

“And then,” Tilly continued as she appeared from the doorway, a young maiden with an overly large sword, “We arrived in the capital and the palace was blowing up, so we took a wild stab at it.” She paused for a second. “Speaking of wild stabs,” she said, and yanked off the magical stone. Instead of a human girl, there was again a small Kobold wielding a sword twice her size with exactly zero effort, and she grinned happily. 

 

Lillian stood up, put a hand on my shoulder and raised the other. Out of white light, a shield appeared in her hand and my barrier was joined by a golden white one behind it. Gratefully, I dropped mine. “I’d heal you,” she said, “but I’m afraid Sally’s nature and your own are… resistant to miracles.”

 

I waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I said softly. “We’ll be fine.” As if to prove my point, Sally got up and stretched. She was already smiling again. I envied her her energy, but I was hoping she’d take it easy. “Don’t,” I began, but she shook her head.

 

“Don’t worry. I’m not stupid enough to go in there,” she waved at the center of the room where Mellie and Lillian were trading blows, magical and otherwise, with the mages. “I do have an idea though.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Hey, Tilly,” Sally said. “Have you ever heard of a fastball special?”

 

Tilly shook her head, confused. Sally picked her up without effort, causing the little Kobold to blush furiously, which was only exacerbated by the little kiss Sally planted on her snout. Then, she turned around, raised her leg like a practiced pitcher. A second later, a gleefully cackling Kobold sailed through the room, spinning with sword and all towards the terrified mages, who knew how to fight a magical duel but had no idea how to deal with a chop-happy Tilly. I didn’t envy them.

 

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Kazumi propped herself up, cringing. “Ow,” she enunciated. I softly kissed her forehead and she laid back down. 

 

“Take it easy, love,” I said. “It’ll be okay.” I looked up and realized that it wouldn’t. The massive army outside the capital gates had advanced, a sea of torches moving forward. And then I realized that the reason there’d been no guards rushing in, no soldiers to stop Kazumi, Sally and myself. An entire regiment of the Wydonian military stood between the freed slaves and the city wall, fires in front of them, their armour gleaming in the night. 

 

“No,” I mumbled in horror. Sally was in no condition to fight, and there was no way for us to get Anastasia down to the wall in time before the slaughter started. “No,” I repeated. This wasn’t going to happen. We hadn’t come all this way for thousands of people to die. That’s what we’d been here to prevent. Whether it was the lives of my own subjects or of those who’d recently freed themselves, I wasn’t going to have no more innocent blood shed. 

 

“No,” one more time, as I got up and walked to the edge of the room, where the crumbling edge led down all the way to the river. It was a steep drop, and I didn’t care. I felt the creature, the magic inside me snarl, and was surprised to find that it was there. I thought I’d been completely drained, but it seemed there was something still there. I looked out at where the battle was soon to take place, and shook my head. I needed to do something, and the thing in my chest told me that I could. 

 

I inhaled deeply and took off with a single beat of my wings. I don’t know why we’d been worried about this before. While Sally had taken a long time to get used to her own wings, flying came as the most natural thing in the world to me. As I flew up, the world became smaller and all of the politics and the scheming looked incredibly insignificant from up there. It wasn’t relevant, not anymore. The world had become a lot simpler, and perhaps it had to be. I was Liz, the Demon Dragon Queen, and I could fix things. 

 

One of the first things I’d learned was how to be a Queen, with the help of Kazumi. She’d taught me how to reign and consider the bigger picture, and I was intimately grateful to her for that.

The next thing I’d discovered, with the help of the old Queen, now-Lisa, was that I was allowed to be Liz. That I could be myself, that I could be a woman, and that I was good at it once I’d finally accepted that part of myself.

 

The Unnamed Dragonborn Matriarch of the Steppes had explained to me why I was a Demon, and what significance that held. Through her relationship to me, I’d discovered why there were Demons at all. 

 

“No,” I said one final time, but it didn’t come out as a spoken word. I opened my throat and I roared, set the sky on fire as I breathed flame across the night sky. My wings beat powerfully and there was an absolute freedom to every movement I made. My scales were impenetrable and yet sensitive to the currents, my talons sharp and ready to protect those I loved, and as I bellowed in triumph at fitting the missing puzzle piece of my being into place, I finally understood what it meant to be a Dragon.

 

I landed in the river with a clap of thunder and the water exploded high. It barely came up to my ankles as I waded through it, my eyes fixed on the two opposing armies. For some reason, despite my distance, my height, my size, I was able to see every confounded face individually. I could see myself reflected in their eyes, a giant dragon walking through the river Dergow towards them, wings folded up on my back. I was beautiful, powerful, infinitely majestic. On the outside, at least, a smug little voice in my head said. 

 

Trying to keep up the appearance of the Dragon, I finally set a foot on shore between the two armies and stretched, literally and figuratively flexing as my giant leather wings over both armies, and then stopped. When I finally spoke, my voice was one of ages, like rolling thunder and avalanches and erupting volcanoes, older than the first languages. 

 

“This war is over,” I said, simply, but every word rolled over the battlefield as people who had previously thought themselves to be dreaming were suddenly snapped back to reality. I turned to the Wydonian military. “Generals,” I said calmly, trying to sound as imposing as I felt. “Your Queen demands your attention. Stand down.” Several men looked around, terrified and confused as they realized I was addressing them. 

 

I turned to the army of slaves. “Your chains will stay broken. You’ll be repaid for your suffering,” I said, thinking quickly. “But not in blood. Stand down. Wait out here and you’ll be fed and sheltered before the night is over.” I raised my head high and roared, because it felt right, and the wall of sound knocked over all but the sturdiest of them, in both armies. “Now lay down your arms. All of you.”

 

Most did so out of fear, and as I turned back to the river -- simply because I was less likely to step on someone there -- I saw both armies build a pile of steel. I looked at the Wydonian army. “Disperse, or I will do it for you.”

 

I spread my wings again and lifted off, the blast of wind knocking over nearby trees and any last wannabe soldiers who had been left standing. To be in the sky again was exhilarating, and I waited up until I was in the clouds to relax. I felt inside me the desire to be like this, certainly. It had been with me since I’d first arrived here. But I was relieved to find that I was still, well, me. No animalistic desire to feed on the flesh of my enemies or widdle on trees, and no Draconic impetus to subjugate the lesser races. I was still me, just bigger. 

 

I knew I had to go back, of course, but I wanted this moment to last a bit longer. I closed my eyes and felt the wind rush past me, that feeling of rising and falling with every beat of my massive wings, as if the whole world was a pool for me to swim in, clouds like foam to play with while the moon reflected gently on my scales. I was, for all intents and purposes, larger than I’d ever been, and I’d hardly been the epitome of grace at 9 feet tall, let alone at who knew how many hundreds long I was now. And yet, as I sailed the currents on giant leather wings, seeing my massive shadow on the ocean below me, I felt oddly graceful. 

 

I took a breath. The magic seemed… satisfied? It was in my chest, where it felt like it was almost dormant, now. The Dragon inside me had finally been let out, and it seemed like I’d satisfied some primal need. It was good. I turned around. As much as I wanted to spend the rest of the night simply floating on the sky, some things still needed to be done. The capital came in view again and I landed beside the palace as softly as I could and carefully waded through the river until I was face to face with where I’d taken off. I saw the small faces of Kazumi, Anastasia and the others, and exhaled. 

 

The world became its regular old size as I pulled myself up and within, and then I was small again. Well, smaller. I was, technically, as large as I’d always thought I was able to be. I descended towards the palace and landed with my more common level of grace, creating a small crater in the marble tiling. 

 

Everyone stared at me with wide eyes and open mouths. I would probably be doing the same thing if I’d been in their place. The regents had been rounded up by Tilly and Mellie and the mages who hadn’t fled were crumpled piles of misery on the floor. Queen Anastasia’s veneer of composure had all but shattered. I didn’t want to give up the momentum I had, so I stood tall and released my larger form as well, my wings collapsing in on themselves.

 

“Queen Anastasia,” I said and briefly looked aside to the two dissolving armies below us. “I think we need to talk.”