Thrall - Christie Golden [12]
It was an incongruously beautiful violence. Dozens of powerful forms in hues of ruby and emerald and sapphire wheeled and turned in midair. Their foe was all the shades of day turning into night—purple, violet, indigo—and grace and brutality combined into a bloody battle.
As they clashed, a voice seemed to echo in their very ears.
“How kind of so many of you to gather together in a single place, that I might destroy more of you weak creatures so readily.”
Alexstrasza flew directly toward a cluster of three dragons, diving out of the way of their deadly breath, colored as purple as they were. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the blues hover for a moment, casting a spell and then folding his wings and diving straight down. She swerved quickly and avoided the sudden storm of what looked to be icicles. One of the twilights managed to turn herself incorporeal, but the other two were too slow. Seizing the opportunity, Alexstrasza darted upward to clamp her massive jaws into the sinuous throat of one of them. Caught in his corporeal form with insufficient strength to transform, the twilight dragon let out a strangled scream and frantically beat the air with his indigo wings, trying to tear away from her. His black claws raked at her belly. Her scales blunted the damage from the attack, but white-hot pain still rippled across her stomach. She bit deeper, and the pain stopped. She opened her jaws and released the limp body, not sparing it a second glance as it tumbled downward.
“Who are you?” she cried, her own voice amplified and carrying on the cold, clear air. “Show yourself, name yourself, or be known for the coward and braggart that you are!”
“Neither braggart nor coward I,” the voice came again. “I am known to my followers as the Twilight Father. They are my children, and I love them.”
A chill rippled through the great Life-Binder, though she did not know why. If the name was true, and he was the patriarch of these beings—
“Then come forth and protect your children, Twilight Father, or sit back and behold as we slaughter them one by one!”
Two of them dove at her from opposite directions. So intent was she on locating the source of the voice she almost did not sense them in time. With barely a tail’s breadth to spare, she folded her wings in and dropped like a stone, turning over as she did so. Directly above her the two twilight dragons shifted into their shadowy forms an instant before their collision, their two bodies passing harmlessly through one another.
Laughter, harsh and smug, enveloped her. “You are as a foolish little girl, for all that you are the great Life-Binder. It will be delightful to watch you crumble to pieces beneath what is to come.”
A roar shattered her ears, and Alexstrasza’s heart ached as one of her own fell in battle, great red wings still trying to bear him aloft although one of those wings had been ripped to ribbons. She dove toward her comrade’s killers, bellowing and screaming fire. One of them immediately shifted from solid flesh and threw himself out of the path of flames. The other, either braver or more foolish, turned and hurled sharp daggers of dark magic at Alexstrasza before opting to shift. The arrogance cost him his life. She opened her jaws and breathed a sheet of flame along the full length of his body before the transformation was entirely complete. More powerful than the breath of an ordinary red dragon, the fire seemed to almost melt the bruise-colored scales, making them curl up as the flesh beneath them was burned to the bone. One side of his body scorched beyond recognition, the dragon fell, half in and half out of physical existence, but wholly in agony.
Out of the corner of her eye, Alexstrasza saw her normally gentle sister, Ysera, also fighting fiercely. Her jaws were opening, exhaling air that could be as sweet as summer flowers but had now turned sickly green and toxic. Two twilight dragons recoiled, gasping for breath, their wing beats faltering and their