Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (31 page)

"Remember
Requiem!" Elory cried.

"Remember
Requiem!" called her father and brother.

The crowd chanted
together, spreading across Shayeen. "Requiem! Requiem!"

Elory knew that Requiem
was not merely a place. It was not merely a kingdom. It was a nation. An idea.
A prayer. It was a home for the lost, a haven for a cursed people, a light in
the darkness. Requiem was hope.

She left her brother
and father, and she climbed onto a statue of a seraph, a towering deity of
limestone and gold. She was on the idol's shoulder, chanting for Requiem, when
the fire rained from the sky.

Elory stared up,
frozen, her voice dying on her lips.

Light.

Flames.

Death.

Death fell from the
sky.

The chariots of fire
flew out from the ziggurat, from fortresses, from temples. Their flaming wakes
covered the sky like dragonfire. Thousands of them flew above, their firehorses
rearing in the air, burning wings spread wide. In the chariots they rode—the
seraphim, soldiers of the empire, lances rising, shields blazing like suns. The
hosts of war. Hosts of heaven.

It's what Requiem
saw,
Elory thought, staring above, frozen in fear.
It's what our people
saw that day five hundred years ago. Death. They saw death in fire.

The chanting below
died.

The chariots swooped.

And the screaming
began.

Elory knew that in
Requiem's tales, great events were remembered forever—King Aeternum defeating
the demons of the Abyss, Issari Seran rising into the sky to form a star in
Draco's eye, the fall of Requiem to Dies Irae's griffins, the heroine Queen
Gloriae raising Requiem from ruin, the rebirth of Requiem under King Elethor,
and the great Queen Fidelity who had saved the lost magic of dragons. Some
stories of great heroism, of strength, of holiness. Others stories of
destruction, memories to mourn. All great suns of light or holes of darkness,
chapters that would forever fill Requiem's song.

This day, here in this
distant land, was another day to shatter Requiem, another note in her undying
song, another chapter in her endless tale. Another stain of blood upon a broken
nation.

"Requiem
falls," Elory whispered.

The blood of Requiem
spilled across the City of Kings that day. Under the simmering sun, they died.
The chariots flew everywhere, plowing into their ranks, and the seraphim thrust
their spears, every soldier commanded to slay a soul. The firehorses, demons of
sunfire, plowed through the ranks of slaves, hooves of brimstone shattering
bones. The chariots rolled over fleeing children, and everywhere the spears
lashed. Everywhere the seraphim swung their swords, cutting men, women,
children, elders. Everywhere the bodies fell.

Elory ran.

They all ran.

They fled down the
streets, hobbled, falling, slamming into one another. Too many of them. Too
many. The chains between their legs too short. They fell. They rose, pushed
forward, stumbling into alleyways, desperately seeking the city gates. They
were too slow. Too many. Too many.

And still the fire
rained.

And still the spears
lashed.

Blood painted the city,
and bodies piled up around temples and statues of silver.

Requiem dies today
,
Elory thought.

"Elory!" Vale
cried, reaching out to her. "Elory!"

"Vale!" she
shouted, trying to reach him, but countless slaves separated them, a great
maelstrom, flowing through the streets, crashing down.

"Father!" she
cried, trying to reach him, but the priest vanished into the crowd.
"Vale!"

They ran, stumbling,
dying. A spear flew from the sky, impaling a girl before her. Elory ran over
the corpse. A chariot swooped down before her, and more Vir Requis fell, and a
seraph's lance thrust into an old man.

Elory growled.

If Requiem dies
today, then we die fighting.

The old man fell before
her, pierced. Elory leaped forth, grabbed the lance's shaft, and tugged back
with all her might. The seraph, leaning from his chariot, lost his grip.

With strength gained in
the bitumen mines, Elory spun the lance around, thrust, and pierced the
seraph's neck.

The soldier couldn't
even scream.

Elory yanked back,
tearing out his throat, and snarled, a wild animal, lance in hand.

I slew a man.
She growled.
I will slay more for Requiem.

"Elory!" Vale
cried ahead. "Elory, run!"

She ran onward, spear
in hand. More chariots charged through the crowd, trampling more slaves. Three
seraphim flew above, laughing, children skewered upon their spears. The living
ran over the dead. Vale managed to grab a spear too, managed to slay a seraph,
but the enemies were too many, their chariots too fast, their lances too swift.

If we could remove
our collars, we could rise as dragons,
Elory thought, thrusting her spear,
running onward.
We could hope to live, to defeat them.

But they wore their
collars, and they died.

With a handful of
spears, crying out to their stars, they died.

And above the carnage,
laughing, covered in blood, he flew. The god of light. The god of wrath. The
tyrant. The destroyer of Requiem, the bane of slaves. Ishtafel.

"Flee to your holes!"
the King of Saraph cried. "Flee to Tofet, slaves! Flee and cower. Any who
sets foot in this city again shall die in agony. Flee! Flee and remember my
gift of life, and remember my punishment of blood."

It was hours before the
people of Requiem managed to flee the city. Myriads died before they limped,
bloody and weeping, into the land of Tofet.

That night, the spears
rose across Tofet, sixty thousand strong, and upon each spear the seraphim
placed the corpse of a slave. The forest of the dead rose across Tofet, a
decaying army, a memory of Requiem's blood and Saraph's eternal shame.

 
 
MELIORA

She lay in darkness.

She lay in blood.

She lay alone.

Her wings kept beating.
Missing. Flaring with pain every movement. Every feather was a dagger. Every
flap a sword into her back. Her wings—gone. Still there, phantoms, demons,
tugging at her innards. A thousand cuts covered her, the wounds of Ishtafel's
spears, but all that pain was as a caress, drowning under the agony that spread
out from her back. Two wings woven of pain itself.

"Requiem,"
she whispered, cheek pressed to the stone floor. "Req . . ."

She tasted ash, rock,
copper. She couldn't speak. She couldn't weep. All there was—shadow. All that
remained—nothing.

Shadows, dancing.

Fire crackling around
her head.

Demons in the dark.

Dragons.

Dragons under constellations,
and stars exploding, and skies falling.

Fire. Fire haloing her
brow, hallowing her body, coursing through her veins, tiny creatures, burning,
rivers of dragonfire inside her. Her sweat dripped from her spine, into her
eyes, into her mouth, onto the floor.

She melted. She melted
into sweat and blood and tears.

I must live.

She was dead already.

I must live!

Nothing of her
remained.

I must . . . I must
. . . Requiem. For Requiem. For Elory. For my family. I must . . . live . . .

She flew upon clouds,
and her wings beat, and she screamed, she screamed in pain, she screamed and
screamed, but her wings were no longer the wings of seraphim. She flew on
dragon wings. Leathern. Silver with golden claws, curtains of starlight and
dawn.

She flew toward
them—the halls of Requiem, woven of the stars themselves, celestial and rising
from an astral forest.

The song of harps
played on the wind, and her pain melted like the rain, and here was a place of
goodness. Of peace. Here was Requiem reborn, the Requiem that had always been,
the Requiem that awaited her. That awaited them all.

The halls of eternal
rest, she knew. The halls of afterlife, the halls of the endless song of
dragons. The song of harps welcomed her home.

Requiem! I found
your sky.

She flew between marble
columns, a silver dragon so small by their majesty. Beams of light fell between
the pillars, illuminating the white trees and marble tiles, and in the
distance, silver mountains soared. Meliora kept flying, feeling so light, free
of all the weariness of the world, all the pain, all the worry, all the weight.
A feather gliding on the wind, at home.

She kept flying between
the columns and beams of light, and ahead of her she saw a throne rise in a
pale hall. It was not a throne of gold, silver, or ivory like the thrones of
Saraph. Here was a chair of twisting branches and roots, carved from an oak,
polished and very old. A figure sat on the throne, cloaked in light.

Meliora flew down and
landed on the marble tiles, and she shifted back into human form. As she
approached the throne, no pain filled her. No more wings grew from her back,
but her shoulder blades were healed, and she was whole—a woman like any other
of Requiem, her true wings hidden within her. She approached the throne slowly,
birch leaves scuttling across the marble tiles beneath her feet.

The figure of light
left the throne and stepped toward her. As it stepped closer, the beams of
light dispersed, and Meliora saw a king with a grizzled beard and warm brown
eyes. No crown rested on his head, and he bore no sword and wore no armor, only
green and silver robes, but she knew that he was a great warrior, the greatest
in Requiem, the first king of her people.

"Aeternum,"
she whispered and knelt before him.

He smiled and held out
wide callused hands, the hands of a woodsman. She rose, and he took her hands
in his.

"I sinned,
Aeternum, my king." Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I served Saraph.
The blood of that cruel empire flows through my veins."

King Aeternum's smile
was warm, his eyes soft. Kind eyes. The kindest, wisest eyes she had ever seen.

"Many of Requiem's
greatest lights were not kindled in our land, my child. Queen Laira, my wife,
Mother of Requiem, was born to a king in the cruel land of Eteer. Issari Seran,
our greatest light, the eye of the Draco constellation, was once a princess of
an empire that sought our fall. Queen Gloriae, the great heroine who rebuilt
Requiem from ruin, was a child of Osanna, a dark land that toppled our halls.
You too are a great heroine of Requiem, child. You are a pure daughter of
starlight. The magic is yours, and the light of Requiem's stars will forever shine
upon you, no less than it shines upon any other son or daughter of dragons. You
will never be torn. In Requiem's halls, you are one. You are whole."

Meliora couldn't stop
the tears. "But my family is torn. My sister. My brother. My father. The
blood of Requiem calls out to me, a people in chains. I could not live in
wealth while Requiem suffered. I cannot stay in this light while they still
call to me. I can hear them. Even here, I can hear them cry out—for a savior,
for mercy, for freedom. For me, Aeternum."

The king's eyes
softened, and she saw the pain in her own heart reflected in them. His hands
were warm around hers. "There is rest here for the weary. Would you
abandon it?"

"I would. I would
doom my soul to the Abyss itself, to an eternity of pain, if I could save but a
single soul of Requiem. For five hundred years our people have called out for
mercy, chained, forgotten. I must save them, my king. I must lead them home. I
would give up the light of Requiem itself to deliver my people from
darkness."

Aeternum lowered his
head, and suddenly the great king—the founder of Requiem, the builder of
King's Column, the father of the Vir Requis—knelt before her, and he kissed
her hand.

The light blinded her.

She cried out in pain.

The agony dug into her
back, and her phantom wings beat, and again she lay in darkness, her face
against the hard floor. She drew a ragged breath, and the air sawed at her
lungs. Her eyelids fluttered open. She saw shadows, craggy bricks, rusty
chains. Her halo no longer cast its golden glow but red, angry light. The light
of dragonfire. Meliora reached above her head, expecting to feel the warm
softness of her halo. She winced and pulled her fingers back; they were burnt
with fire. She felt trapped again in the bronze bull, a sacrifice to Malok.

Once more she lived.
Once more she was imprisoned in the ziggurat, this palace where she had once
lived in innocence, where she was now entombed.

She thought back to
those celestial halls. Had she died and returned to this world, no longer a
seraph but a fallen being of fire? Had she merely dreamed? Had she seen a
vision of Requiem in its past or the Requiem beyond the stars? Meliora did not
know.

But I know this,
Requiem. I will fight for you. Always. So long as I can cling to life, I fight
for your marble halls, for your great heroes, for all who need your magic.
Requiem is hope. Requiem will rise again.

 
 
ELORY

It was ten days before the
overseers allowed the survivors to bury their dead.

All that night they
labored, and the night after that, and a third night too, pulling their dead
off the lances like plucking rotten fruit off trees. The vultures cawed
angrily, bellies full but still ravenous. No more dragons labored in Tofet; all
now wore collars, the Keeper's Key gone. They did not dig graves but burned the
dead in great pyres. Sixty thousand stars gone from the sky. Sixty thousand
songs silenced.

The living no longer
chanted as they worked, no longer sang, no longer looked toward the stars.
Something inside them died too. Every Vir Requis lost a soul—brothers,
sisters, parents, children. Every Vir Requis knew—a shadow fell that would
never be lifted, a sadness that no light could ever cast aside.