Page 65 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

The black dragon looks at me with boundless love shining in his amber eyes, and then he leaps out of the cave into the storm.

19

Jessiva screams when I launch myself into the Mordvorren. I don’t have time to explain my plan to her, nor am I certain that it will work. But I have to try.

I suspect that the Mordvorren has been whispering in my head for a reason—because it’s bent on destroying me. Because it senses that I am a threat to its very existence, or at least its freedom. It senses the presence of the great void inside my body—a void that might be large enough and powerful enough to encompass a cosmic, ancient force.

The winds of the storm are so strong that if I attempt to combat them, they will immediately break my wings or even tear them off, so I don’t try to fight. I let one of the air currents push me against the mountainside, and then I sink in my claws, clinging to the rocks with all my might, pinning my wings tight against my body.

Upward I crawl, claws digging into stone with every step. I have the strange feeling that I need to be up higher before I try this. I need to reach the top of the mountain.

The Mordvorren is hammering and screaming at my consciousness:Fool, coward, stupid dragon, this is madness, turn back! You’re too weak, too hungry, too ravaged with lust… go back and eat the girl, fuck the girl, fuck kill eat…

I don’t fight the thoughts this time. I let the storm roar in my brain. It can shriek all it wants, as long as I keep moving up. Slowly, purposefully, unerringlyup.

The gale heightens, nearly tearing me free of the mountainside, so I turn my head and release several void orbs into the roiling darkness. I know exactly how many void orbs I can create before my energy needs to recharge. I understand the limits of my magic, the size of the largest orb I can produce and its sucking power. I can’t launch enough orbs to destroy the storm, but I can destabilize its winds for a minute or two.

Sure enough, as my void orbs implode on themselves, the currents whirling around me slacken slightly, allowing me just enough grace to make headway. But the wind still batters my body and rips at my wings. I can barely suck in enough of the screaming air to fill my lungs. Rain dashes against me, violent as hail.

Yet still I climb, jaws clenched, muscles straining. I drag myself higher, higher, up the mountainside, until I am closer to the sky.

It occurs to me that however wide the Mordvorren may spread, it never rises above a certain point in the sky. When Kyreagan and I saw it today, it was a wall of cloud, flat on top, like a table. Like there’s a limit to how much it can rise, like its power diminishes with height. Its winds are thinner here, on the topmost slope of the mountain. But dark, heavy clouds still churn above me, and the Mordvorren’s thunderous voice roars around me.

I sense the lightning half a second before it strikes, and I swerve aside, a quick serpentine maneuver. Lightning stabs the rock so close to my body that I can feel the crackling heat of the bolt.

As dragons, we are immune to each other’s powers, but the Mordvorren’s lightning can pierce a dragon’s hide. Any other member of the clan would be easy prey, but I am more slender than most, not such a large target. Besides which, my magic involves the emission of lightning, which doesn’t make me immune, but gives me an additional level of resistance.

I slither upward, dodging two more bolts.

You’re going to die,howls the Mordvorren in my head.Death, destruction, the end of your pitiful life.

So far, its primary strategy has been to bombard me with impulses, instincts, and vicious words. There are clever arguments it could use to dissuade me from doing this, but sentient though the entity is, it’s still a storm—not a living, breathing creature. Its understanding of the way I think is limited, rudimentary.

Perhaps it can see only the darkest parts of my nature, the doubts, fears, and guilt. It doesn’t seem capable of perceiving the love, the light, and the joy I carry inside me, alongside the darkness. The duality of a soul is something it cannot comprehend.

Right now, my entire being is locked on one selfless purpose. With that purpose as my guide, the storm cannot trick me. I’ve found a place in my head that’s cold and focused, free of emotion or animal instinct.

I wrap my tail and all four clawed feet around the spur of rock at the mountain’s peak, stretch out my neck, and open my jaws.

This time I don’t attempt to encapsulate the void with my lightning or to contain it within orbs. I open a channel instead—a pathway to the infinite emptiness inside me.

The void responds with ravenous eagerness, with a sucking force beyond anything I’ve felt before. For once, I’m not fighting or restraining it. The void’s intent and mine are synchronized, and together we focus on one goal—swallowing the Mordvorren.

Clouds, wind, rain, darkness, lightning, thunder, and voices—all of it flows into my jaws, down my throat, into the belly of the void.

It feels like death. It feels like swallowing the world.

I can feel the Mordvorren’s consciousness rushing into my body. I sense its panic, its struggle, its impotence against the sucking force of the void.

Failure, the storm howls, even as it gushes down my throat.The one who loses everyone. The one who watches others die. The pitiful fool, the useless prop for a dying race. We will destroy you from the inside.

Perhaps you will, I reply in my thoughts.But for today, I have won.

The sky is lightening gradually as the storm unwinds, funneling into the endless maw of my magic. Soon all will be clear. The Mordvorren’s reign over Ouroskelle will end. The dragons and the women will be able to come out of their caves. There will be food again. Jessiva will not starve.

I’m not sure how long I will be able to contain the storm, but the voices of the Mordvorren are quieting, at least for now. And once I can assuage my physical hunger, some of the unrest in my mind will settle.

If the voices begin to overtake my sanity again, I can leave Ouroskelle, for everyone’s sake. Jessiva will be safe in the care of the clan. Her life and her happiness are my only concern.

---