Chapter 51: Of Flame and Lightning (Patreon)

Her dagger sliced open skin, blood flowing out to coat the blade.

Melina knew nothing of its origins nor why it was bestowed upon her but there was precious in little in the world that could resist its edge. She’d never taken it to the hide of one of the ancient dragons but suspected they would be counted among the few, entire legends weaved around their stone scales.

Onyx, for all that he was, still fell within the majority.

“That’s…that’s an interesting look.” Onyx struggled out between slow breaths, his sliced left palm having stopped her blade in place. He stood between her and the dragon. “Angry, right?”

Steam rose up between them before Melina could find something to say. He released her blade and brought up his hand. Charred skin and burnt blood marred it. “Huh, that’s interesting.” He muttered, volume dropping with each word.

The last of his strength used up, Onyx’s hand fell and the rest of his body followed suit. She pulled back her dagger, hand shooting out for him but fell short. He’d have hit the water had the dragon not stepped up behind him, easily supporting him against her.

A strike of lightning hit her still raised glaive, the webs of sparks crackling over both of their bodies.

The heat within Melina roared, threatening to burst free.

“I suggest you attend to his wounds.” The dragon stated. “My power is not suited for healing any other than myself.”

Despite the inferno falling over her mind, Melina picked up on Onyx’s steadied breaths. He was alive, strengthened, not harmed by the crimson sparks.

The heat fell away, Melina bringing a hand to her chest as a breath escaped her. Gold, all that she could manage, more than she’d ever used, emerged from her and raced over to Onyx. Cuts and stabs were knitted together by the golden threads and lost blood replaced. Some remained no matter how hard she concentrated.

Crimson sparks escaped between those wounds, all products of the dragon’s glaive yet blood loss stemmed by that same energy.

The dragon shifted again, a roll of bandages pilfered from Onyx’s pouch and tossed over. A mix of their spilled blood still stained her but once again, Melina could find no trace of anything expected of an enemy or attacker in the dragon’s slitted eyes.

Melina stepped closer, dagger sheathed as she began to wrap Onyx’s wounds. Arms, chest, legs. She wrapped several before she grasped his left hand, cleaning away the burnt blood. The slash her dagger left had been fully closed.

The burn remained, forming the same web of marks that marred her own hands across his palm and parts of his fingers. She wrapped bandages around the injury for the time being, unsure of what to make of it.

The lingering wounds required proper care, but the bandages would do for now.

“I will return all of you to the site of communion you’ve established yourselves around.” The dragon stated, Onyx’s limp form thrown over her shoulder.

Melina stared up at her.

This dragon must’ve been watching them. More than likely drawn here by Onyx’s power. She’d shown no aggression upon arrival, prepared to speak. Respected Onyx’s wishes to send the other dragon fleeing. And was now lending them aid.

From the very beginning, however it ended, it’d been Onyx who incited the battle.

As…off putting as it was to know that it was his blood on her hands, the dragon, for one reason or another, harbored no clear ill will towards them.

Despite the flare of the heat within, there was little reason to deny her aid.

XOXO

Edgar shifted his spear, knocking the stab aimed at his midsection off course, then pulled back for a quick stab of his own, the tip hitting Boc’s center. The weapon’s blunt wooden end sent him to the ground, Boc’s spear dropped as he curled up in the grass beside the island’s ruins, hands reaching at the soon to be bruised skin.

Edgar stood straighter, the spear he’d fashioned for this training placed in a single hand.

He couldn’t say he understood Boc’s recent interest in combat.

Talent and temperament. With enough talent, even one with views and a personality that dragged down their potential could still get by as a fighter. With the right temperament, a total lack of talent could be overcome with dedicated training. It might take years, but a focused and disciplined mind was an invaluable tool to have.

Boc lacked any talent for combat and his gentle temperament did not lend him to the training needed to make up for that.

With a muffled whimper, Boc’s hand found his lost spear as he struggled up.

Edgar would admit that Boc did have a respectable drive, however. He’d adjusted his training to match the basic drills that those on their way to become knights were expected to endure. He seen many men, all far stronger than Boc, bow out after only a few days but he was keeping at it day after day.

“Why are you doing this?” Edgar questioned as Boc made it to a shaky kneel.

“I-I have to. Lord Onyx gifted me a sword.” He forced out. “If I don’t prove myself worthy of it, I’ll be…he’ll-“  Spear grasped with both hands and used for a support, Boc made it to his feet and looked up from the ground. His eyes shined with yet to spill tears. “I have to be useful to him.”

Edgar had not pried into Boc’s past but Irina’s attempts to speak with them had shed light on his steadfast loyalty to Onyx. To be cast out from one’s own people only to end up in the company of their slaughter. It was an odd set of circumstances.

Fear that the one he looked up to would abandon him if he failed to please him in some way was natural. It was nothing new to Edgar either. Plenty of knights shared such doubts, expecting their commander to hold some insightful piece of advice.

He hadn’t.

“Perhaps you should ask why it was that he gave the blade to you.” Edgar said. Atypical of him but these were atypical circumstances.

While he never bought into any of the propaganda the Order sprouted about the many races spurred by Grace, having spent far too much time traveling before he found himself in its service, he could not say he would’ve entrusted a demihumans with a weapon. Nor would he have bothered speaking with, let alone advising, one, their aggression a very real thing especially against the humans that so often slaughtered tribes of them.

Demihumans, as Boc continued to prove, weren’t particularly different than them.

“Otherwise, you can never be sure what he thinks on the matter.” Edgar finished. Perhaps Onyx’s advice would serve Boc the same way it’d been helping him in recent days.

From idle strumming of instruments and retellings of his travels before her birth, he never would’ve thought Irina interested in passing the time with him through such activities had he not followed Onyx’s simple advice and asked.

How could he have known when sparse greetings and shared silence surmised most of their time together before their departure from Fort Morne? For it to have taken a mass slaughter and the words of another to change that…

No deed could compare to his unforgivable failure as a father, but he’d dedicate the rest of his life to making up for it.

Edgar shook, his sense of balance stolen away. He managed to steady himself as he stumbled forward but Boc wasn’t so lucky, spear giving out and leaving him with a face full of dirt. Irina, seated on a stump not far from them, yelped but managed to keep her place on it.

“Father?”

“Stay here.” Edgar ordered the both of them, wooden spear tossed aside for his nearby halberd. He stuck close to walls of the ruins as he headed towards it rear. The sudden tremor felt like it had come from the back of the island. Whatever it was he-

Edgar froze as he peeked around the end of the wall, eyes rising upwards.

The jagged maul of dragon stared down at him. It kept low, its massive form kept from towering over their surroundings as if lying in wait for any prey to stumble across it.

He was that unfortunate prey.

Edgar stilled his shaking limbs, ignoring the rapid thumps against his chest and cold sweat breaking out across his body. He wasn’t prepared for a battle like this, but it’d already seen him. The most he could do was make some hopeless effort to distract it while Irina got to the tunnels below.

“Ru-“ His yell died as the dragon lowered its head, Melina and Sellen dropping off the creature’s neck and landing beside the pair of baskets it set down. The two riding a dragon made up only one half of his bewilderment. The jagged maw opened fully, tongue extending out.

Onyx, unconscious and covered in bloodied bandages, laid on it.

First, he brought back a sorceress claiming to have been labeled a witch by the Academy of Raya Lucaria and those dangerous marionettes. And now he returned in the apparently willing company of the largest dragon Edgar had ever laid eyes on.

“Don’t help us or anything.” Sellen sarcastically called out through a grunt as she and Melina lifted Onyx up.

Edgar shook off his shock, taking careful steps towards them. Years of battle demanded that he do the exact opposite, approaching such a creature, especially with its dangerous gaze on him, unfathomable.

He’d seen much but none prepared him for everything being acquainted with Onyx was exposing him to.

XOXO

Melina undid the bandages around Onyx’s cold arm.

The slashes and stabs from the dragon’s claws. The bruises left by her tail. Those injuries were already healed, not a trace of them left on his skin. The deep gashes, still housing occasional sparks days later, all left behind by that glaive the dragon wielded at the end of their fight, had required stitching to fully close up but their healing was slow going even with her incantations to quicken the process.

“I…do you…” Irina, seated at the end of his bed, began only to stop short. She was unable to do much of anything, both the remnants of that crimson lightning and the abnormally low temperature of Onyx’s body too dangerous for her. Despite that, she was here every day after their return. “I know he won’t listen but you’re always by his side. Can you try to stop him from throwing himself into danger?”

“I cannot.” Melina answered, the answer coming to her instantly. She was in no position to dictate what he did and didn’t do. To agree to that request would be nothing more than a lie. Still, Irina spoke some truth. “But I will try my best to ensure his survival.”

Queen Marika chose him so that much was a given, but he’d threatened another for no other reason than the bloodlust aimed at her. A gesture she imagined came with them being friends. It only seemed fair to return it.

“Of course. Its selfish of me to ask that of you in the first place.” A heavy exhale left Irina. She was calmer now, but she’d been distraught to learn of his injuries. Knowing that it was the product of a battle he himself asked for hadn’t helped. “Do you think…no I shouldn’t ask that either.”

Whatever question she intended to drop was left a mystery, Irina leaving as Melina finished up changing the rest of his bandages.

Most of his bandages.

As the cabin door closed behind Irina, Melina raised her left arm, doing away with the fastenings of her leather bracer. She set it on the end table between their beds and reached over him, raising his left hand into her now fully bare one.

Much like the wounds from that ancient dragon’s glaive, the burn left by her dagger remained.

No.

The burn left by her.

A web of wrinkled and ugly skin that was both deadened yet held the faintest orange glow within the damaged flesh below. Like the embers of a fledging flame, prepared to erupt into a furious blaze yet just as liable to be snuffed out and darkened.

A perfect match to the burns that marked her hands.

She’d always assumed the burns that marked her played a role in the death that likely preceded her current state. If the heat, the power that rested within her, were what inflicted such strange wounds did that not mean it played a major role in that death?

Just one mystery the mark she left upon him brought about.

Not once in this uncertain existence of hers did she struggle against or control that heat within her. It burned hotter at times but always settled, no action on her end truly seeming to influence it.

For it to react so violently…

Onyx held Queen Marika. It made sense that any power within her would respond to serious danger posed to them.

Melina changed her hold on his hand, running her fingers across his icy knuckles.

Love. A powerful emotion. It seemed contradictory that she would be capable of such a thing when she experience so little, yet the others were convinced she felt such a thing, or at least some form of it, for Onyx.

She couldn’t say which was the cause. Perhaps both played a role.

Either way, that power was dangerous and unpredictable. Not something to be used lightly.

Melina blinked, a sudden sense of invigorating coolness enveloping her.

Onyx’s neutral expression twisted, frown etching its way across his face as the same translucent aura took shape around him. She’d have thought it a good sign had it not been for the blood leaking out of his closed eyes and nose.

Something was happening.

The energy gently rising out of him flickered, bits of the flame taking on a pale gold outline.

And it involved Queen Marika.

XOXO

(A/N: Big things happening. Deeper explanation on Onyx and Lansseax's battle postponed till the next chapter or two. Didn't expect the subplot concerning Boc as well as Edgar's relationship with Irina to take up so much. Whether or not its sad or healthy, our former knight is finding purpose in his guilt.

Not going to lie, don't think we're hitting it but don't forget, 200 powerstones by the end of the day on webnovel and there will be a chapter over the weekend.)