A New Home Afire [DotD]

[Warpath]

The meeting was an hour over already, but Bor and Flint sat talking still. Bor's criminal allies had long since gone their separate ways, slipping out of the otherwise empty cantina one at a time from different exits. The brute only remained because Bor did: the corpulent mastermind was slippery to the point of prescience, so Flint had little to fear from discovery in his presence. In any other city it wouldn't have mattered, but this was Radasanth, and Flint had important relationships on the right side of the law here.

"The Long Tooth Boys," Bor said around a mouthful of bread, "they are the real problem. Stubborn, those ones, and too disorganized to deal with all at once, always nip-nip-nibbling away at the edges of my operations. Stealing my nephina, the scamps."

Flint grunted. "Solved with more bruisers on the streets, working patrols and lavishly rewarded for punishing aggression from other gangs. The true threat comes from the dabblers in Wyrmtongue's tower. Magic is always the greatest threat."

Bor chuckled ponderously, patting his belly before he spoke. "Don't be offended, my good friend, but they only seem so to you because you fear the Arts. They were mad enough to brave Wyrmtongue's tower at all, no doubt the tower itself will see to them. I suppose if it makes you feel better I can send some boys to chase them off."

Flint shook his head. "If they fail, we will have curses on our heads and who knows what stalking our people at night. I will go tomorrow and kill them all."

Bor shrugged. "Always straight to murder, with you. You'll do what you'll do, I suppose, so here I wish you good luck." The big man realized he was completely out of bread and took the opportunity to stretch and yawn. "Now look, I've spent an entire night with a bunch of thugs when I could have been snuggled in tight with Little Miko. It is time for a nap, at least!"

Flint nodded. "Yes, I should get back to the library."

Bor smiled slyly. "The library, hmm? Not old Salvar? When were you last there, I wonder?"

"A month," Flint said dismissively.

Or had it been two?

"Three months since you were home, actually," Bor said, licking a fingertip and prodding the bread plate for crumbs. "Or what you call home, I think the definition changes in spite of you. You're a bit dense though, you'll catch up."

Flint pushed himself back away from the table and lifted himself to his feet with a grunt. "Fine. Then I am going home."

Bor smiled to himself, then stuck one crumb-speckled finger into his mouth.

[Warpath]

Flint squinted against the morning light as he stepped out onto the street, and frowned. It was later even than he had realized, ensconced in Bor's old tavern behind boarded and curtained windows. Luned would be up already and wondering after him, though perhaps not worrying. She knew him too well for that.

Bor's mockery came immediately to mind as Flint started down the street, and he grumbled. Home. The big man was more than a friend - he had become something of a spiritual advisor to Flint, and nothing he said could be brushed off as immaterial. Never one to discount wisdom, Flint thus ruminated as he walked.

He supposed Andvall had been home, before, even if his mission had prevented him from returning there more than four times in a decade. He had always imagined that if his personal war against Salvar's nobility didn't kill him, he would have retired in the cold wastes as his mother had before him - alone in isolation, but for his parents, kept at some distance.

He had believed that his mission in Salvar was all that stood between him and a hermit's peace, and so he had been disinclined to put his mission on hold even to visit the place he called home. He could, he had decided, rest when they were all dead.

But now...well. He hadn't been back to Salvar in over three months now, and it hadn't even occurred to him. He'd been dictating orders to his people in Rubble Town remotely, and he'd considered that a necessary annoyance - a distraction from the more important things here. Part of him felt guilty, but he'd always lived by simple philosophies - 'I don't want to' was a good enough reason. And he didn't want to go back to Salvar. Work was only permissible if the library was near enough to return back to at the end of it...

And so he supposed the library had become home.

Flint grunted, amused. Had he even had a home before now? He resolved to share his thoughts with Luned, and upon realizing the resolution he felt the matter was already decided. He had a home, and a family. Oddities stacked upon the unlikely.

But the brute was hungry. He knew a place not far, where an old widow ran a breakfast diner out of her spacious living room, and he developed a hankering for a couple goat cheese omelets. Something to carry him home.

[Warpath]

The early morning sunlight seemed to come down in waves of pleasant heat, washing up on the shores of Flint's scalp and neck and shoulders. He kept his head down, lost in thought. It wasn't silent. There were people everywhere, talking and running and moving, selling and laughing and hurrying. Living. Flint heard the fall of his own boots. Birds. Windows being thrown open two streets over. Cart wheels and the clap of horse shoes on cobblestone.

And then a hush, terrible in its abruptness.

It was so sudden and complete as to jar the senses down to the subconscious. There was a hesitation in Flint's gait before he realized why, and two more slowing steps before he thought to stop and listen. He looked up, and saw other people doing the same. Something had happened. Something had changed, and nobody knew what. Not yet.

Not until the screams started.

Flint knew panic. The sound of it - the feel of it - was familiar to him. He'd caused it countless times before. This was different. There was a tension in the city itself, though there was no apparent cause. There were no armed men in the streets, no angry shouts, no hurried hoof-beats or the song of unsheathed steel. There were only the screams, far, far off in the distance. Insistent, warning, primal. It was a sound that touched something deep inside the brute, a sound that keenly and incisively reminded him that he was human. The animal part of him said, run.

It was his civilized mind that wondered why, but that old wise beast tugged insistently at him and begged. Run, run, run away.

He looked around and saw people starting to back away. They didn't know why: there was nothing to see, not yet. The shouts and screams were so far away, but there were so many, and their fear so powerfully real.

The horses were beginning to panic, and would not obey commands to slow or stop. Ladies dropped their bags and hoisted their skirts, glancing over their shoulders as they hurried back toward home. They didn't offer excuses. They didn't need to. Niceties were for civilization and safety, not survival. Heads were appearing in every window, white-knuckled fingers on every sill.

There was a knot between Flint's shoulder blades, a high-frequency hum in his ears as he strained to hear everything and anything over or under those distant sounds of panic. His breathing was shallow, and growing heavier. The screams were spreading, he could tell, panic that stretched across his distant awareness like a horizon of fear.

"Luned," he whispered, the word leaving his lips before it had formed in the mind. It cut the line holding him still, and he began to run.

Not away from the screams, but toward them.

Toward the library.

Toward home.

[Warpath]

There were fires.

There were too many fires for them to be the cause of it, whatever "it" was. Flint had scaled the bell tower of an old church, savagely punching holes in the old brick to create his own handholds where he needed. The inhuman strength in his limbs, down to his fingertips, handled the rest. He was perched now at the highest point, one boot wedged between old bricks, the other hanging free, and has holding onto the crumbling eaves one-handed. He had his free hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, but all he could see were the broad, thick, tall black columns of smoke rising from multiple places on the southern side of the city.

Radasanth was panicking.

From up here, Flint could see people fleeing north everywhere. They were flooding the streets without knowing why, pushing and shoving, dragging children and sparse collections of their belongings with them, glancing constantly over their shoulders to the south. They didn't know why, but they could feel it.

A doom had come to the city.

It was faceless and nameless so far, but no less real for it. Flint could feel it too, as surely as he could feel a coming storm or unspoken tension between fighting friends or static electricity. It was wordless and instinctive. It told him to join the masses, that death was coming.

But that wasn't an option.

The Niema was south. The wall was south, and the assembly. The library was south. Luned was south, and if death had her in its jaws, in he would run.

He dropped, and grunted as his boots met the stones in a shadowed yard beside the old church, and then he shoved off. A quick hop took him over the wrought iron fence. Taking one of the main streets wasn't an option - he'd be going against the flow of ever-thickening traffic. He cut across instead, pushing his way from the east side of the street to the west while the crowd tried to carry him north. He ducked into an alley, and took a round-about path that zigzagged southward. Where the alleys ended, he bounded up walls and over houses, and took to the rooftops, catching glimpses of the clouds to the south. They were spreading, widening, darkening. The screams were getting louder.

He passed through a warehouse, dodging between giant old crates and pallets, shouldering double-barred doors open. He slipped around behind, taking a dockside path normally crowded with fishermen but now eerily empty.

Now he was back in an alleyway, rushing toward one of the main thoroughfares. His mind was rushing through the possibilities, but he needed to cross that road, as congested as it was. He sprinted toward it, watching the crowds pass by the mouth of the alley, tense but not rushing, until suddenly something changed. A scream came from Flint's left, far in the distance, and it was caught up and echoed, traveling toward him until the people crossing in front of the alley turned to look over their shoulders. He watched the panic dawn in their eyes, and they began to desperately push and shove and trample and swarm.

And then the temperature went up ten degrees, and then twenty, and then forty, and Flint stopped running. He slowed, eyes widening. He stopped, and watched a rush of smoke and ash overtake all view of the crowd. He watched a woman rush out of the smoke and into the alley, all on fire. He watched her rapidly dissolve inside the flames, her dress and her hair and her skin all going black in the space of microseconds. There was naught of her but bones by the time she'd collapsed to the ground. Her skull rolled even as pieces of it flaked off, cinders.

The screams were fading. There was only the roar of flame, deafening, and Flint had to back away deeper into the alley. He felt his skin reddening, and in an instant he was drenched in sweat. The smoke rose like a force of nature, all at once, and then he saw the street paved in black bones and washed in rolling flame. Hundreds had died in less than a second. Their screams were still dying on the wind, long after their lips had ceased to exist.

The sky was darkening as the smoke blotted out the sun, and flakes of blackened ash began to drift down like unholy snow. In a single heartbeat of flame and terror, Radasanth had become hell. For the first time in his life, Flint doubted his sanity.

It seemed easier than facing what he'd just witnessed.

[Warpath]

The air was full of drifting cinders and ash and shades of red and orange, and the roar of overfed flames. What it lacked was oxygen. Flint bounded up the red brick wall to his immediate right, the soles of his boots clapping against the stone as he rapidly ascended fifteen feet. Gravity beckoned him down again, but he reached out and caught a windowsill: just a narrow strip of rough-cut granite protruding from just under a window.

Flint was heavy, and it was never easy to move his considerable bulk against gravity. The heat and the thin air did much to further rob him of strength, and so by the time he hoisted himself up onto the roof, the brute was dripping with sweat and panting heavily. He rolled onto his back and gulped down air, and relished the relative cool of sunlight.

If not for the transformation wrought upon him by swaysong, he knew it would have taken scant seconds to die in that alley. The realization further chilled him: if it was so easy to die just by being near one of these attacks, what hope did anyone else in the city have?

Flint forced himself to sit up, and sent himself coughing. His legs quivered as he stood up, and he looked out over what he could see.

The smoke was rising from everywhere, obscuring the roofs and towers and distant walls of Radasanth. A hellish glow pierced the smoke from the main streets - they were rivers of flame now, splitting the city's main thoroughfares, which would force the survivors to travel by the narrow side streets and back alleys. The oppressive heat trapped between the buildings would kill hundreds, which would cause the rest to panic. The young and the old and the weak would be trampled.

Flint felt his face contort before he could bury the emotion. Part of him admired the efficiency of it, but a larger part burned with fury. He was being outplayed. He was being made impotent. Worst of all, he cared. Civilization was burning, and Flint both couldn't stop it and wanted to.

And then he caught sight of motion, a blur that passed low over the inferno on leathery wings.

[Warpath]

The drake emerged from the smoke like a dark god.

It landed heavily upon a rooftop, its claws scoring into the shingles and sending hundreds of pounds of shattered stone and detritus crumbling down into the street below. It had to adjust its considerable weight a few times as the roof sagged and collapsed under it, but soon it had a momentarily dependable perch from which to look over the hellscape that Radasanth had become.

Its unfeeling, crocodilian eyes flicked this way and that, and it cocked its head one way and then another. It huffed a cloud of steam, which dissipated wetly twenty feet away from its head. Suddenly, it snapped its head to the right, and the scaly ridges on its back quivered with anticipation.

It had caught sight of a white, soot-stained face peering out at it for but a fraction of a second. Mortals, it mused to itself, had such pathetic reaction times, despite being so insectile. A dragon might not move as quickly, but so little escaped one's notice. The drake heaved itself off of its perch and let the heat rising off the street catch its wings, carrying it over to the tall structure in which the little white mouse hid.

The drake reached out with all four limbs, and when it collided with the side of the building, the whole thing swayed. The drake dug into the stone and rode the motion, amused, waiting to see if the whole thing would go down. It didn't. So the drake pulled itself up and peeked into the window.

There were six humans inside, it saw instantly: two larger, and the rest all small and loud. When they saw it, the larger pair began herding the rest into another room. The drake lunged forward, plunged its head through the flimsy brick. Its horns scored through the wood of the ceiling, the ridges on its lower jaw cut furrows in the floorboards and exposed support beams.

The biggest human was the last through the door, and the drake caught him delicately by the ankle. Before he could so much as scream, the drake had him out in the open air, and with a twist of its long neck it sent the little body spiraling over the rooftops. The sheer force with which the human had been tossed killed him, the drake knew, but it was amused to see how far it could throw the tiny body. Curiosity, fear, greed, so many sins, all bubbling up in the little thing, all contributing to him risking a glance out at the god in its midst. Now he was dead, and all that he loved was soon to follow.

The drake lifted itself to look into the room again. It was empty now, but of course they hadn't gone far. The drake adjusted itself on the side of the building, stretching its stout limbs to the left, to peek into another window, where it knew the rest of the little family hid.

There they were, all huddled in a corner, clinging to one another and shrieking. Such a pointless noise, so insignificant.

The drake adjusted itself, prepared to lunge in at them, but something made it hesitate. Something...

And then the wall beside the little family burst apart from the far side, and a figure exploded outward. It charged across the little room, and exploded through the window. The drake pushed itself backward, but the new little figure collided with its middle in midair, and somehow...against all possibility, against all logic, against all that was right...the pair tumbled and fell.

[Warpath]

The dragon landed back-first on the rooftop on the opposite side of the street, and it immediately sank. The supports all failed beneath it and the building partially imploded. Clouds of dust shattered the windows outward from within, and the outward walls buckled and leaned to one side, but it held.

Flint scrambled over the dragon as it struggled to right itself, more for dignity's sake than out of fear. It didn't realize what had attacked it, not yet.

It slashed at him, but he hugged himself to its belly. The tremendous claws of it passed overhead with a deafening whoosh, and its scales scalded his skin. No time to worry about that now. Flint forced himself up again, steadying himself as the dragon tried and failed to roll to one side, and then sprinted along its body toward its head.

"DIE!" he roared, leaping forward with grasping hands outstretched. He couldn't strangle it, couldn't pummel it, but he could rip its eyes out. That would be a start.

But the dragon was fast. It twisted toward him, lashed out, and caught him in midair. The force of its turn dislodged it from the roof and it fell into the space between the scrunched building and the taller one beside it. With three limbs, the dragon caught itself between the two structures, climbed a ways, and then threw itself out into the open air over the wide, burning street below.

It held one claw covetously to its body, and once it had the sky, it bellowed.

[Warpath]

The world lurched and whirled, and within the beast's grasp Flint was blind. His bones were a little too flexible to snap, though the pressure to do so was great, and his thews ached in the effort to hold his insides in place. He would not fall to a beast, he told himself. He would not die to an opponent unworthy.

Radasanth couldn't afford it.

It was a struggle, but Flint pulled his knees up to his chest, took the deepest breath he could, and then he pushed with every ounce of strength his body could muster. He could not tell if he faced the dragon's "palm," or if he was oriented outward, but the result was the same: the dragon's grasp began to part. He could feel fresh air whipping in around him.

The dragon tried to resist. He felt it crush its claw to its own scalding chest, but Flint squirmed and struggled, and pulled himself free, and shoved himself out into the open air. He didn't know what he was doing or where he was going, only that it was away. First there was unbearable pressure and heat and unyielding, bone-like flesh all around him, and black dominated his vision, and now the wind roared in his ears and everything was blue. Blue.

Flint twisted in freefall, forcing himself to find some mental serenity. Die with your mind at peace, he told himself, not in a futile panic. In what direction are you falling? And at that he decided upon the direction of the ground, but not yet the distance. A more pressing concern: where is the dragon?

He put his back to the oncoming earth, and now saw the dragon above him, chasing him, diving straight down after him with alarming speed. Now he turned himself around, and saw the city arrayed beneath him. Impossible to orient himself now - there was no time - but he saw water and wood below. Ships. Wide, low roofs - warehouses? Yes.

It had carried him south, to the Niema.

He was still so high up, and the dragon was coming down on him fast. It would catch up before he would reach the water, and could he survive the impact? He didn't know.

Flint adjusted his body in the air so that he was parallel to the earth below, or as close to it as he could be. He threw his limbs outward and made himself as large as physically possible, and let the air resist him. It didn't slow him much, but it was enough. At that moment the dragon was upon him, but the sudden change in his speed had confounded it. It thundered past him toward the earth, its claws and jaws never finding purchase.

He watched from above as its head snapped one way and the other, searching for him. He remained just above and behind it, following in the turbulent wake of displaced air behind it. The distance grew steadily between them, and the Niema grew larger and larger, sparkling in the far peripherals of Flint's vision.

The dragon threw its wings outward to slow its descent, so close to the ground now. Flint threw his head back and brought his legs up so that his body came perpendicular to the ground. And then he made himself straight as a pin, boots aimed directly down on the dragon.

He couldn't tell if he was falling into it or if it was rising up into him, but the distance between the brute and the beast narrowed until it was nothing. Flint's boots struck it in the red leather of its wing, hard, and the two were sent tumbling away from one another, their falls utterly without control.

[Warpath]

Flint hit brick.

He must have been tossed away from the dragon at an angle, because he hit the ground rolling. He felt the impact, brutal, on the back of his left shoulder. The momentum sent him spinning and skipping. His back burned, and he felt blood everywhere. The wind was knocked out of him, and when he finally lurched to a stop he coughed and wheezed, and feared that it was suffocation he'd die from, somehow, and not having his brains immediately and summarily liquefied inside his skull.

But he caught his breath, and slowly, tentatively, he began to test his limbs. Nothing was broken. Nothing.

He lifted himself onto his knees and spat blood, and could not keep the smile from growing on his face. He looked back at the stretch of brick where he'd landed and saw a series of long, thick smears of blood: the places he'd slid and bounced. Groaning, he peeled his shirt up and off over his head - what was left of it. He didn't like the way material clung to his skin when it was saturated with blood, and he liked less how much it hurt to remove when the blood dried.

Large swaths of skin were gone from his back, shoulders, scalp, and upper arms, but the pain couldn't ruin happy facts newly learned: Flint could apparently survive his terminal velocity without major injury. He thought about it, and imagined if he'd landed on his feet, the damage would have been minimal. It wouldn't have felt good, but...

The glee faded when Flint realized that the dragon was alive.

It, too, had collided with the ground, apparently sent tumbling when he'd struck its wing. Still, it had had one stable wing to further resist its descent. It must have tumbled, landed heavy, and rolled, for now it laid upon one side with one wing unfurled awkwardly in the air. Flint hoped at least something was broken, and was disappointed.

The dragon rolled with some effort and found its feet, shook its tremendous head, and then seemed to suddenly remember what had brought it here.

It snapped its head to the side, and narrowed its reptilian gaze at him directly.

[Warpath]

Beast and brute stood staring for a moment, tense and still, each secretly testing his own state and wondering at that of the other. The city burned some ways away, and screams echoed on the wind, but the Niema splashed and sloshed away as it always had, oblivious.

They were on the busiest part of the docks, or what should have been. Now it was empty but for half-packed crates and abandoned pulleys, open nets of fish only an hour dead, and tools of every description left strewn everywhere. In the distance, one could see myriad ships passing by one another too-slowly, fishermen and merchants eagerly escaping the city amidst navy ships struggling to approach and save her, all without guidance from the shore. Some were closer than others. Some were close enough that Flint could hear their crews shouting.

The dragon hissed, not at all unlike the horrific roach of unholy size he'd fought in Ettermire's sewers, and it raised the middle of its ridged back like a cat. With its neck twisted up in a tight S, the beast approached cautiously, body turned slightly to the side. Flint set his mouth in a grim line and lurched to his feet, flexed his fists, and circled the beast in the opposite direction. His beard was heavy with droplets of blood, and when he growled his teeth were red.

[Warpath]

The dragon made the first move.

It scrambled forward, stepping high and light, broadside. Against all human instinct, Flint charged to meet it halfway. It slashed with one forelimb, but Flint dropped into a roll, and left a fresh smear of blood on the ground before he came up again. He let his momentum carry him forward, and used it to collide with the dragon's other forelimb. That scaly arm buckled and the dragon dropped, narrowly catching itself with the limb it had used to attack previously. With his tremendous foe thus unbalanced, Flint changed direction and shot back the way he'd come from, and this time he shoved his shoulder into the beast's chest.

Their bodies collided with a deep thud, and the dragon swayed backward and exhaled sharply, but did not fall. Flint stepped away from the monster, then began to charge again, but the dragon lashed out with its claw and shoved him into the air and away.

Flint took to the air and hit the ground rolling some twenty yards away, toward the riverside. He remained in plank position for a long moment coughing and struggling to catch his breath, but when he heard the dragon charging again he forced himself up and ready with a sharp groan.

By the time he was up, the monster was already on him. It twisted its body and swung its tail, but Flint couched down and hustled over to a wagon. He threw his shoulder into the base of it, a bracing motion, so that when the dragon's tail struck the wagon it went spiraling end-over-end overhead, but the brute himself was not directly impacted.

He was on his feet again in a hurry, sprinting, and he threw himself into the air and twisted. He brought his feet up, and then shoved them outward into the dragon's exposed hindquarter. The impact was intense, so much so that the dragon stumbled away with a pained hiss. Flint hit the ground on his back with a growl, and rolled away just in time to avoid the beast's claw as it brought it down on the dock to crush him.

Flint found his feet again in a crouch, and he couldn't help himself. He smiled a wide, red smile, and then he roared in the beast's face.

No, he didn't appear to be doing a lot of damage, but he was fighting a dragon.

[Warpath]

The dragon soon realized it had a significant size advantage, and that Flint presented a minimal threat with some distance between them. Thus it danced away from him now, beating its wings shallowly to carry it away, and then it twisted and swung its tail in a wide, destructive arc. Flint threw himself belly-first to the ground, and then endured the shattered debris that rained down on him.

He tried throwing things, but that was getting him nowhere. The monster's hide was so tough that sharp objects would not pierce it, and he couldn't throw heavy blunt objects with enough force to do significant damage. Speed and mobility were his advantages, which was sustaining his survival for now, but without the ability to do damage he was merely delaying the inevitable. This, he mused, must be how people felt fighting him.

It was in that moment of thoughtful quiet that Flint became, at last, aware of his surroundings. He could not fell the dragon on his own, he knew, but of course he wasn't alone.

So as the dragon reared up in preparation to swing its tail at him again, he turned and ran. He heard the cacophony of destruction behind him, but he did not risk a glance over his shoulder. He needed as much space between himself and the dragon as he could manage. Even a moment's hesitation could cost him everything, and so it was worth the risk.

When the dragon realized it hadn't crushed him - that in fact he was escaping - it released a bone-rattling bellow and charged after him, beating its wings once to supply it with a burst of forward momentum. Still, Flint did not risk a glance. He trusted his ears to gauge its distance behind him, each thundering footfall louder than the next, each vibration a little more intense than the last.

The brute sprinted for the docks, for the river...and for the ships upon it. He ran past stalls and wagons, vaulted over crates and slid under carriages, all things the dragon needed to plow through, all things that slowed its pursuit even if only momentarily. The docks ended soon, dropped away to the river waiting blow, and Flint put on another burst of speed. It was becoming clear that he'd reach the water before the dragon could stop him - that he was going to leap, and disappear beneath the waves.

The dragon would not let its prey go so easily. It flung itself into the air and beat its wings once, and then dived. It would catch him before he could escape. It must. And then he dropped to a sudden slide so close to the dock's edge, slid to a painful stop on one leg, and the dragon's momentum carried it past him and over the water.

Only the air was not completely open: there were a series of pulleys and cranes mounted to the dockside, used to lift cargo up out of ships. As the dragon glided over Flint's head, it struck a spider's web of ropes and chains and jerked to a sudden stop, and then tumbled into the water below roaring its frustration, and sank.

[Warpath]

The cranes bent with the horrific sounds of cracking, splintering wood and shrieking metal. Flint had to act fast. First, he locked the mechanisms that fed rope and chain into the pulleys. They groaned and shuddered under the dragon's underwater lashings, but held for the moment. Next, Flint reinforced one of the cranes with a thick and immensely heavy beam of wood, placing it upright between the dock and the top of the crane. Now there was some hope it wouldn't snap in half.

The cries from out over the Niema were getting louder, more intense. Flint tied and retied ropes to the thick links of chain that fed into the crane, and then created a quick, crude harness out of them. The ropes were soon slick with his blood, but the pain couldn't stop him, not now. He'd only infuriated Radasanth's would-be destroyer. If he couldn't finish it, his efforts would have only ensured the monster's fury. If he died, the rest of the city would suffer before it followed him. Everything - everything - was up to him now.

He could only pray that he'd found the dragon soon enough. That it hadn't found Luned first.

Flint dragged his bloodied palms over this thighs and left smears of red on his pants, and then he grasped the chain, braced himself, and began to pull. His arms strained. His back bulged and thin freshets of scarlet dribbled over the slick red ropes tied around him. Veins stood out bold and black and thick all over his arms and shoulders. The ancient wood of the dock groaned under his feet, and bent. He huffed, and tugged the chains, and the crane creaked and bent and slowly, step by agonizing step, the struggling dragon was hoisted up out of the water.

One wing was pinned to its side, and the other stuck out at a high and awkward angle. Its forelegs were tied to the base of its neck, and its hind legs kicked and lashed in midair, too low to reach the ropes, and it was not yet lifted high enough to strike the edge of the dock. As Flint raised it, however, gallon upon gallon of water rushed off of the dragon's hide, and with the weight abated the beast began to struggle to bite at the roped and chains that bound it. Time was short.

Still, the brute struggled, yanking and dragging at the chain, each breath a small agony. His boots slid, so he angled the toe of his boots into the grooves between boards for purchase. The dragon swayed in its flimsy prison, twisting and struggling, and the cranes drooped to either side of it. It finally bit into one rope and chewed determinedly, and in a few scant seconds the rope - thick as a man at the shoulder - snapped, and the ropes began to loosen around the beast's neck, and it began to work one claw free, and...

And despite the monster's struggle, despite the snap of failing wood and the shriek of twisting metal and his own heart beating like thunder in his ears, he heard someone's voice carried from out from over the Niema.

Steady...! Steady....! Steady now...!

FIRE!

[Warpath]

There were a dozen sharp pop-cracks that echoed off the cliff faces on the south side of the river. When the first cannonball struck a warehouse a hundred yards behind Flint, the sound was so overwhelming as to blind him with tears. From then on, though, every impact was muffled.

He braced his legs, and watched as the world slowed down around him. The dragon was poised, trapped, so close to freedom but not close enough. And in the background, beyond it, a single ship turned parallel to the docks, bristling with exposed cannons. Row upon row of lit fuses illuminated dozens of sailor's faces hundreds of feet out, but Flint could almost see the tense expectation in their eyes.

It was a look he shared.

Cannonballs rained down on the docks. Flint could see them coming, feel the impact, but the whine they made as they fell was muffled, the explosions of wood and smoke and dust and red hot steel tearing the dockside asunder in near-silence. It was wondrous and surreal and chaotic and somehow, the noiseless of it all kept Flint from realizing how close he was to death. The world was collapsing around him, and he watched, detached, intent only upon holding the dragon aloft.

For the monster was a relatively small target, and a broadside is meant to hit a large target at close range. And so it seemed as if the cannonballs would ravage everything but the dragon, that they'd rain down infinitely until the dock collapsed under them, until there was nothing but flames and dust and ash, and the dragon would emerge laughing from the destruction.

And then the first ball struck home, and Flint heard the distinct crack of bone somehow, over the rest of the chaos he was deaf to, and the dragon threw its head back and bellowed in pain and rage. Another cannonball struck, and then another, rocking that reptilian body with every impact, sending shudders down the ropes, sending the monster's body swaying and shuddering.

The right crane suddenly collapsed, a handful of ropes failing all at once and unraveling. One slid cruelly across Flint's shoulder, cutting deep into the flesh, and he fell forward on one knee as it whipped free, and when he raised his head the dragon was gone amidst clouds of dust and smoke.

[Warpath]

Flint grimaced, reaching up to gingerly press against the deep furrow that had been cut into his shoulder. His palm came away bright red and wet, but the pain was dull, distant. He tried to look at the wound, but it was close to his neck. The cut was deep, he could see that much, and something large glinted in the smoke-dulled light of the sun. Something metal? He shook his head, unable to piece it together. There would be time later.

He was unsure on his feet, and the docks were equally unsteady. There were holes and trenches and massive gaps in the wood and stone, impact points. A thick cloud of mingled smoke and dust hung over everything, turning the world grey. One of the warehouses behind him had collapsed, kicking up who knows what. He'd been coughing for what seemed like an hour, but it was dissipating now.

He dragged himself out to the river side, but couldn't see anything beneath the calming waves - not even a shadow. The beast had been swallowed up, along with all the ammunition that had struck home and bounced off of its impenetrable hide. One does not cut plate mail, after all, but pounds away at it with a good hammer so that the impact shatters the bones inside.

There was a tremendous uproar from out over the water, and Flint raised his eyes and watched the smoke clear. There was the ship that had saved Radasanth, her crew jubilant on deck, and the brute could see a dozen white hats being thrown into the air, caught and thrown again. Dozens more floated on the water around the ship. He realized they were cheering because they'd just caught sight of him, and he grinned.

Of course. They thought he'd died in the bombardment. Any mortal man should have. They saw a hero, triumphant, emerging from the smoke and disaster.

A shadow passed over the sun, and Flint raised his good arm in victory.

[Warpath]

Flint turned to walk away, but something put a chill down his spine.

He turned back just in time to watch a horrifyingly familiar shape drop down on the ship from on high, wings spread wide. It spun in midair, claws splayed wide, and dropped toward the deck. The mast bent off at an awkward angle, pushed aside in its descent, and the sails twisted and fluttered in the breeze as they failed. The dragon landed heavily on deck, sending bodies flying in every direction. The ship leaned alarmingly to one side and bobbed on the water, pushing a series of tremendous waves outward.

"NO!" Flint roared.

The ship rocked unsteadily as the dragon lifted one leg to swipe at the sailors that remained aboard. There were a number struggling to unleash a cannon from its moorings to turn it inward, but the beast saw them early in their efforts and scoured them from the deck, along with a vast cloud of splinters.

Flint paced along the dock hollering Salvic curses and challenges, impotent. If the beast heard him, it paid him no mind. Still, he screamed his throat raw.

Impossible. It was impossible.

And then the docks shuddered beneath his feet as a tremendous claw emerged from the river below to grasp the edge of land, and the only logical possibility occurred to Flint now, too late.

[Warpath]

There were two.

Flint stepped slowly backward as the first of the drakes pulled itself up out of the water, snuffing water and leering balefully down at him. There were still screams from out over the river, but quieter now, fewer. The ship was capsizing even as it sank, and smoke was beginning to rise from the depths of it. The sails stretched out wide on the water beside it, amid a hundred white hats. The second dragon was gleefully punching holes in the ship, then leaning in to breathe fire on whatever it found on the other side.

The first was quivering. There were large black marks on its scales: burns or bruises where the cannonballs had struck home. Even so, it furled and unfurled its wings as the water poured endlessly off of it, and it walked without hitch. It was unbroken, only its significant pride hurt.

Flint whirled just in time to watch the second land lightly on the dock, its head raised high and imperious. He risked a glance out to the river, and saw that all that remained of the ship was a wooden dome, floating low. If there were any survivors in the water, he couldn't see them.

There were two, and he was alone.

[Warpath]

Formulating the plan was quick. The dragons were cumbersome, their attacks imprecise. Flint only needed to get them close together, to encourage them to try and attack him at the same time. They'd get in one another's way. He held no hope they'd injure one another, but it would buy him time to come up with another plan.

Enacting the plan, however, was difficult.

Flint was injured. One of his arms was useless, and he'd lost a lot of blood. He was still quick, but more sluggish than he needed to be. And, he soon realized, the dragons worked well as a team.

He charged the second, expecting the first to lunge after him in its fury. Instead, the second took suddenly to the air, and whipped its tail forward and beneath it. Flint tried, but he was too slow to dodge. The dragon's tail collided with him and sent him tumbling end-over-end in midair, senseless. The first twisted, brought its own tail to bear, and swatted the airborne brute back in its sibling's direction. The game ended there: the second caught Flint in one claw as it fell back to the ground, and it drove him down into the wood beneath its considerable weight.

The ancient boards of the dockside groaned under the dragon. Flint felt his bones bend, and the pressure was incredible: everything inside him, every ounce of remaining blood, his eyes, his organs, all pushing to get out of him. Red dominated his vision, and then black from the outside, and the air was completely gone.

And then, blessedly, the dock gave in. Flint fell, and plunged into the waters of the Niema.

He was vaguely distantly aware that the temperature shifted rapidly. Somehow he knew that the dragons had spent some time breathing fire on the surface of the water to superheat it - to boil him alive. And he knew after that they'd dived in after him, lashing everywhere as they hunted for him.

But the air was out of his lungs utterly, and he sank like a stone, far from the heat, far from their lashing tails and seeking claws. He sank into the blackest water, until his back hit sediment. And there he waited to die.

[Warpath]

It wasn't that Flint woke up.

He was already awake. Life was already in him. It was awareness that came back, like a switch was flipped, unbidden and unannounced.

He blinked his eyes and fell to one knee, not because he was dizzy but because it was as if he'd awakened from a dreamless sleep already on his feet. Everything that didn't ache instead burned. He tasted salt and grime, and he was soaked to the core. His wounds were raw and closed with crusted blood, despite the water.

But somehow, he was alive.

He shuddered and looked back over his shoulder. A beach, and a single set of footprints in a long trail that led to where he knelt. The waves lapped at the tracks, callously eating away at the evidence of his passing. He got to his feet again, swayed, and went back to the waves. As they receded he could see small furrows coming from the deepest point of the oncoming tide. There were only one set of tracks, always. Somehow, despite being unmindful, he'd walked out of the river under his own power, without help.

And he remembered nothing after he hit the sediment.

The sun was setting. The city was to the west of him, a thousand black spires interlaced with red, burning veins of fire and napalm. He couldn't hear the screams from here. He couldn't hear anything but the waves lapping the shore, erasing his footprints and the mystery of his revival.

He set himself walking toward the city. His boots were heavy, and not just for the water that saturated them. At first he hoped there were still screams there, screams he couldn't hear...and then he feared that Luned's voice was among them.

[Warpath]

A hot, consistent breeze rolled over Radasanth, carrying ash with it. It was difficult to tell if it was a natural breeze or the result of the fires still burning everywhere. It didn't matter, in the end: it would spread the blazes, feed them. The screams were fewer now, sporadic, distant. The CAF and capable volunteers were still going out in waves, in the dark, baring lamps and torches. They always brought someone back.

Luned stood in the street with bare arms wrapped around herself. Her hair was dark and limp with soot, her dress so filthy that it felt heavy. It had to be past midnight, but how far past she couldn't say. The dry heat of the day hadn't abated. The mercury showed over 100, and the scribe longed for goosebumps and a chill breeze off the Niema, or even humidity. At the same time, the lack of change seemed safer. The library was quiet now, hushed, but everyone was awake and wondering aloud the same question.

Would the dragons return with the sun?

Luned sniffed, staring into the dark. Every few moments she'd sway on her feet and her vision would blur as she'd track drifting cinders or half-burnt papers caught in the breeze. How long since she'd slept? She didn't know. She'd worked her magic until she couldn't anymore - physically couldn't without her mind and body giving out on her - and then she'd helped in more mundane ways. Wrapping bandages, applying salves, pairing lost children with relatives, converting the library into a shelter.

She blinked her eyes open, and realized she wasn't alone. She glanced back, then hunched her shoulders and held herself tighter. A little bit of old anger helped to reinvigorate her, even if her heart wasn't in it anymore.

Resolve kept back, scuffing her feet on the blackened stones like a scolded child. She didn't leave though. She was too stubborn for that.

"I don't like him," she blurted out. When Luned turned to look back at her with incredulous fury, Resolve's eyes widened and she quickly added the rest: "But he's tough. Really, really tough."

Luned searched her friend's face in the gloom, her own eyes dull and bloodshot, and after a long moment she nodded very slightly and turned back to watch the dark.

[Warpath]

Flint walked ruins he only sporadically recognized. The street lamps were all dark, the windows all empty. Sometimes he thought he was on this street or that, but entire buildings would be missing. Just that. Gone. Here was a shop he recognized, and there another, but the three-hundred-year-old workhouse between them was now just an empty gap in the black. An empty lot full of shattered bricks.

It was like finding the mangled corpse of a newly earned friend.

Even if the city had been whole, traversing it in the utter dark would have been difficult. But the city was not whole. Streets he meant to use were impassible, full of rubble, or collapsed entirely, or full of smoldering napalm. Often he found himself emerging from a side street and would realize he was completely lost. Nothing looked familiar. Everything had been rearranged. Radasanth had always been massive, but only now did he realize the sheer mad scale of it - the complexity, the fine details that had all added up to the city proper, unnoticed until they'd been broken down.

He saw no one alive, and the roar of fires and distant, collapsing buildings dominated all other sounds. If people were screaming, he couldn't discern it from the rest. He was numbly sure that he was effectively alone in a ruin. Oh, there would be a few others, but the devastation was...difficult to comprehend. It would be a small number. An insignificant number.

But he needed to see it with his own eyes. The library, or what was left of it. He needed to bury the hope before it killed him.

So he pushed on south, pausing as things slowly became more familiar despite the obliteration. There were smoldering husks here he recognized by their absence, like his memory of the place formed an outline that reality was failing to fill. They'd neighbored the library, once.

He ascended a stout hill, braced for the worst.

He emerged from the dark limping, and saw a ghost standing alone in the center of the street.

[Warpath]

Luned reached out, and then hesitated. If he was an illusion, a figment born of her exhausted mind, she didn't want to shatter it by proving him so.

"Are you real?" she asked, more exasperated than anything.

Flint grinned ever-so-slightly, and reached out with his own hand to entwine his fingers in hers. When he didn't pop out of existence on contact, the scribe leapt onto him, throwing her arms around his neck and clinging tight to him.

She disappeared into his tremendous embrace and he sighed with immense, wordless relief, eyes closed.

He pressed his cheek against the side of her head. "I am so sorry," he murmured against her hair.

"No," she said. She was too exhausted to put the intricacies of her sentiment into words, but her tone said everything. She leaned herself back and pressed her palms to his cheeks, locking her eyes on his. "We're going to find them, Flint. All of them."

Flint nodded very slightly. "I only need food. I can join the search parties now."

She shook her head slightly. "I mean the dragons," she said coldly, evenly. "We're going to find them. I need to know why they did this. We need to do whatever we have to so that they don't do this again. And if we can't..."

His brows dropped and his mouth set in a grim line, and her voice softened.

"If we can't, we're going to kill them. All of them."