Born of Fire: The Dawn of Legend (111 page)

Seeing him go after AnaSaya, LyCora pushed herself back up onto her feet, ignoring the shooting pain in her left leg, and began half hopping, half limping to intercept as fast as she could.

EeNox and ShinGaru did their best to shake off the shock of their own injuries and rushed over to stop DayKar from getting to their friend first.

The DraGon was now nearly upon AnaSaya, his shadow looming over her as she continued forward, unwilling to stop to even look back. He had launched forward open mouthed, when once again he felt ShinGaru coil around his leg, causing him to stumble and lose his balance. Slamming his chin into the ground, DayKar grunted, the wound in his neck re-opening from being scraped on the hard surface. He struggled to get back to his feet, only to feel EeNox slamming into his ribs, driving pieces of now pliable armor into his side. The DraGon fell over kicking at the air as LyCora leaped onto him and began tearing into him with her teeth. DayKar howled in pain before cocking his fist back and driving it into her, sending her slamming into the altar, where she tumbled down the steps.

“LyCora!” EeNox cried out. Igniting his flame, he charged forward but did not see that the DraGon’s tail had snaked its way beneath him, and he was taken by surprise when it suddenly slammed up into him. EeNox felt something crack in his right leg as he was sent flying into the air. Not wasting a moment, DayKar fired a blast from his mouth, scoring a direct hit. With a sense of satisfaction, he watched EeNox fall from the sky.

LyCora, who had only just regained consciousness from the shock of the blow she had been dealt, looked up just in time to see EeNox hit the ground only a few meters in front of her. With a shriek of surprise, she forced herself back on two legs with more effort than she ever had to muster and was trying to make her way over to him, until DayKar brought one of his hands down between them. “I don’t think so!” he said as he picked EeNox up and began crushing him in his grip. “You have all had your way long enough! It’s time you learn the meaning of loss. Starting with you!” He now applied immense pressure to EeNox, who had been feeling dazed and numb, but was immediately pulled back into the moment when he felt every bone in his body short of his head and tail crack under the immense pressure constricting them. Desperately he tried to ignite his flame, which pulsed in small bursts, but ultimately he found himself unable to do more due to the overwhelming amount of pain. Straining his head skyward, he parted his jaws wide and let out a horrific howl of agony that cut right through LyCora, whose heart broke.

DayKar bared his teeth and let out a savage growl as he felt the young TarBoranx begin to break in his hands. It was the wail he heard emanating from the rift, however, that made him look to the sky and bask in the otherworldly light shining down on him. “Yes,” he said in an exhausted voice. “That’s it…just keep coming. Can you hear them, my love?” He glanced over and saw that LemaRes’s eyes were now permanently open. Gritting his teeth, tears began to stream down his face before he clenched them shut and unleashed a mournful roar up to the gaping sky. He had lost everything he had ever loved in order to fulfill the mission he was given long ago, had sacrificed the one he had loved the most in the name of his faith. The scriptures told him he would now be guaranteed a place in paradise at the Nova Queen’s side. It was the dream of all DraGons, and yet none of it numbed his pain or brought his broken heart any sense of peace. Honor and faith were the furthest things from his mind.
What does that make me? For does that not make me just as bad as the heretic beasts whose flames I came here to extinguish?
Such questions would have troubled him right down to the very depths of his innermost self once, but now…
now I feel alone
.

With a deep sigh, he gazed back up at the sky and into the rift with his remaining good eye, and beheld what looked like a red burning ring. He saw a quick flash of light just below his peripheral vision and felt the ground beneath him shake. In that moment, he saw the beam of red fire disappear and the rift begin to close. “Wha…no! NO!” Looking back down, he saw AnaSaya standing at the base of the altar, looking up; faint lavender wisps of flame faded from her muzzle. The base of the altar was destroyed, blown apart by a blast of flame, the result of which had severed the link between the two TyRanx and the tower itself. “No…” DayKar whimpered as he watched all that he had worked towards, sacrificed for, disappear right in front of him.

AnaSaya managed to pull herself to her full standing height as she breathed heavily. “It’s always…the quiet ones…you need to keep an eye on.” Having used up her last bit of energy, she collapsed down the altar steps, where she lay, breathing slow, ragged breaths. All her life she had watched it drift quietly by from the edge, always on the outside looking in. Close enough to touch but never daring to. She doubted even her mother suspected, but her greatest fear was that she would never be able to leave any lasting mark, not have any impact on the lives of others. Now, she lay dying on an altar from another world, and for the first time in her life, knew that she mattered.

“You!” DayKar hissed venomously. “After a war that destroyed a whole world, another condemned my people to a cold, dark sleep and me an endless existence, it’s
you
who undoes all that we have strived for…what I have strived for.” He walked to the small form of AnaSaya, who did not even have the strength to look up. The shock of seeing his dream vanish right before him had left him feeling numb, detached from everything around him. “I thought I had planned it all so perfectly, thought of every contingency. I knew you had returned—all six of you—but I was so sure it was only the Doom Bringer who posed a threat. Not even that other TyRanx was to be feared. Not…you.” Towering over her, he bared his teeth as flame flared from his nostrils and mouth. “The quiet ones, indeed; a lesson well learned, and never to be repeated.”

AnaSaya, barely conscious, could feel the heat of the DraGon’s flame as it grew in intensity, preparing to consume her in its searing ferocity, condemning her to oblivion. She had made peace with herself and regretted nothing. Now it was her time to pay the ultimate price for protecting those she loved. DayKar’s flame was at its height when she felt the sudden rising of another flame, followed quickly by the disappearance of his. Opening her eyes, she saw her field of view clear of DayKar’s menacing face, and a sky now whole once more. Then she sensed it, a shadow stopping over her. Shifting her gaze, she saw the silhouette of two DyVorians against the setting sun, and immediately recognized the two flames burning within them.

LyCora pushed her head under EeNox and helped him to his feet, while ShinGaru stayed close to her side in case her leg gave out.

“The sky,” he said in surprise. “It’s back to normal.”

“It was AnaSaya,” LyCora declared with a sense of personal realization. “She…saved us all.”

“So wait…what happened to…”

Two low guttural roars filled their ears and forced them to look towards the ruined altar. It was then that EeNox had his answer.

DayKar lay on his back, his sternum smashed in. With a groan, he reared his head up and immediately saw something that made his heart stop and his blood run cold. Standing with the ruined altar, in the perfect image of destruction as their backdrop, were Rex and DiNiya: two warriors from an ancient time when the world lived in awe and terror of the red flame. Holding a hand over the terrible wound on his chest, the once mighty knight staggered to his feet and let out a defiant roar in their direction. Half-crazed by the loss of everything he had worked so hard to hold on to, he no longer cared about anything. No more grand plans, no more personal ambitions. What was the point of any of it, now that he was truly marooned in hell? Worse yet, he was alone. The guilt he had felt for the death of his mate, however, had carved a deep hole in him, which was now overflowing with a seething hatred.

The two TyRanx fixed their enemy with a predator’s gaze as they slowly and methodically walked down the steps, moving on opposite sides of AnaSaya and putting themselves between DayKar and her. The tension in the air seemed almost tangible. Below, the sounds of the battle raging could be heard, drawing nearer, rising closer to the top. DayKar knew that not only had he failed to bring down the army, which had been trapped in the interdimensional space between their two worlds, but had essentially condemned the DraGons left on EeNara to death.
The DyVorians will in time hunt every last one of us down. They will never let us live in this world…the world that should have been ours. Still, it can’t end like this. Not after all we’ve been through!
No…I will not let it end here!
With a burst of flame, DayKar unleashed a massive blast of fire directly at the two TyRanx, who leapt out of the way just as it rushed by, and traveled several hundred meters behind. Exploding against the canyon, the sky lit up as a massive explosion roared behind them, showering them with falling rock debris.

“Has he lost his mind?” EeNox exclaimed. “If that had hit anywhere in this tower, it would have destroyed the entire platform. Is he trying to get himself killed?”

“I don’t think he cares either way, anymore,” LyCora replied. “Look at his body!” They watched as his flame now burned so uncontrollably that it burned through his flesh and armor. “He’s pushing his flame to its critical mass. At this rate, he’ll explode!”

“He has failed in his mission,” ShinGaru declared. “Meaning he has become the most dangerous kind of adversary: one who feels they no longer have anything to lose.”

“No…that bastard!” EeNox stammered in a stunned voice. “He’s turning himself into a bomb. He’s going to kill himself and take us all with him!”

“The others right below…” AnaSaya said in a weak voice. “We can’t let him do it…they’ll all be killed!”

“She’s right,” EeNox said. “We have to stop him before he reaches his limit!”

Suddenly there was another familiar sound, prompting them to turn back to where DayKar had been approaching the TyRanx, who he was now blindly fixated on. To their surprise, the both of them had locked onto him and were in the process of using their powerful jaws to sink their teeth through his armor and flesh. “Whoa! Look at them go!”

DayKar spun wildly as he desperately tried to shake the two of them off before reaching around with his neck and biting down on the back of DiNiya, who, rather than release her grip, only tightened it, which prompted him to shriek in pain before spinning around and slamming into the ground on his back.

DiNiya felt the full force of the impact, but the pain seemed far away. In fact, her whole body felt detached from everything else around her. Everything except the feeling of her teeth sinking into warm flesh and the burning desire to continue doing so until her jaws closed fully. It was a pull unlike anything she had ever experienced before. The desire to bring something down at all costs.

Rex could feel her bloodlust, and found himself being driven to fight all the harder because of it. At last he sensed one like him, someone who was fueled by the same passion, the same flame. Together they would bring down their enemy: their prey.

DayKar could feel darkness closing in on him as blood poured from his body, taking his strength with him.
Is this really it
?
Is this how I am to die
?
After everything, this is how I fall
? The realization that he had survived a war ten thousand years prior only to have the very same enemy stalk him across the great expanse of time to tear him from the mortal coil here and now, filled him with such a mad rush of anger, that he pulled from the last reserve of power he had and emitted a powerful pulse, sending Rex and DiNiya flying in two directions.

“Hurry!” EeNox said as he and the others mustered what little power they had left and charged the DraGon, who lashed out with both sets of wings, sending them all sprawling to the ground.

“Fools!” DayKar roared. “Do any of you truly believe you have the power to kill me? You? Mere children, against the Grand Marshal of the Nova Queen’s Holy Order? If it is my fate to die here, then I will see to it that I take every last living thing in this world with me!”

“What are you talking about?” asked LyCora. “You’ll succeed at killing everyone on the tower, but that’s it!”

“Poor little LyCora,” he laughed. “You never were as smart as you allowed yourself to believe. How do you think this tower is able to open something as massive as a rift between two worlds?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care!”

“No? You should, because it’s what is going to turn this entire tower and all the others across EeNara into weapons that will annihilate this entire planet!”

“Liar!” EeNox cried out. “You don’t have that kind of power! No one does!”

“And how would you know one way or the other, EeNox? You, the boy who has spent the better part of his life as a source of ridicule from those around him! Always running his mouth when he should have always kept it shut! I’m impressed you have been able to tolerate him as long as you have, LyCora. Then again, who are you to judge? Not when you yourself are so emotionally destitute that the mere thought of making real emotional connections with anyone other than your overbearing mother fills you with waves of panic. You, however, are still a shining light of well adjustment compared to those two.” He looked over at AnaSaya and ShinGaru. “The two of you living on the fringes of society, always outside looking in but never daring to truly open yourselves to anyone. Yes, I know you all. I should, after all. I’ve watched you all since your flames took root in the flesh of those whores who spawned you from their vile wombs, back into this world and into my life, where you now ruin it all over again!”

“Poor little DraGon,” came a cold and condescending voice. DayKar turned and saw Rex slowly approaching from the left. “How difficult it must have been to have left it all behind with only the promise of tomorrow to give you hope. Was it that thought that kept you sane during all those years of waiting?”

“Do not speak as if you know me, boy,” DayKar hissed.