Soul Blaze (28 page)

That night, I lay in my empty bed, tossing and turning.
The storm had broken about an hour ago, thunder and
lightning flashing overhead. I felt my magic pulse in my
blood with every flash of lightning, and so sleep proved
impossible.

I swung my legs out of the enormous bed, wondering if
I could request a different room to be made up. This one
was haunted by my ex-fiancé. I dressed in breeches and a
clean shirt, watching the rain stream down the windows.
My heart thudded in my chest as thunder boomed
overhead.

There was a knock at my door. I paused in the act of
pulling my boots on, just long enough that the person on
the other side knocked again, and there was no mistaking
the urgency.

“Come in.” I commanded, tucking my hair behind my
ears.

Dustin entered, and I realised this was the first I’d seen
him since my coronation. He and Raven had continued
their studies in the city, and so I never saw them around
the palace.

“Your Majesty... Sky,” he began, apparently not fazed
that I was already up and dressed. “The city...”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“It came with the storm, from the sea... please, hurry.”

He watched as I grabbed up my swords, swinging them
onto my back. I noticed he had his scythe with him, as I
fastened a sheathed dagger onto each hip.

“Tell me what you know,” I said, as we marched down
the hall.

“It’s some kind of sea serpent,” his voice was shaking.
“It was first spotted in the harbour, and when the storm
really began, came up onto land. It hasn’t attacked
anything yet, but... you’ll see.”

The palace was on a slight rise above the rest of the
city, affording us an uninterrupted view of the capital as
far as the west wall on a good day. Tonight, in flashes of
lightning, I could see a tall dark figure, looming over even
the tallest clock tower. I felt fear beginning to creep into
my veins.

“What is it?” I asked Jett, who strode up the terrace to
meet us.

“A legend,” he responded, his voice almost lost in a
boom of thunder. “Only a few sightings of these have been
reported, mostly by sailors around the Tsalski Islands.
They were thought to be a myth only.”

We all watched the tall figure sway and lurch about. I
couldn’t even begin to estimate how tall it was.
“Why has it come here?” I asked my father.
He shrugged.

“I honestly have no idea. It could be a result of the
world shifting balance. I suspect the Du’rangors of a few
years ago were the beginning of the shift.”
“Does it have a name?”

“The Tsalskinese call it Ularair, which loosely translates
to ‘water snake’.”

‘Water snake’ was an understatement. We watched the
serpent loom over the buildings closest to the docks, and
in another flash of lightning, I saw it bare its teeth.

Every window in the city rattled as the thing
screeched. Even this far away, I felt the sound reverberate
through my body.

“Gather the city guards,” I instructed Dustin. “Dad,
we’re going down to meet it.”
“It can’t be reasoned with,” he told me, trotting down
the slope next to me.
“I’m not going to reason with it. I’m going to kill it if it
so much as looks at a building wrong.”

He didn’t respond to that, and so we continued out of
the palace gates. Luckily the rain had driven everyone
inside, but even so, we could see people pressed against
their windows, having heard the Ularair scream. I could
feel adrenaline beginning to pump through my veins, and
the lightning flashed overhead, responding to it.

We emerged at the docks, only a short distance from
the Ularair. Griffin and some of the other guards had
beaten us there.

“What shall we do about this, Your Majesty?” Griffin
asked me, his eyes on the serpent.

“Be ready to take it down,” I told him, my voice loud
enough that it carried to the other guards. “I’ll not have it
threaten the city.”

The Ularair shrieked again, and then lurched forwards.
We watched for a moment, stunned into silence, as the
beast began to move into the city, holding its upper body
aloft as the rest of it emerged from the harbour. This thing
was enormous. I blinked rain from my eyes and then drew
my swords.

“Begin evacuating people from their houses,” I yelled to
Griffin over the thunder. “Alert the palace to let them
know that refugees will be arrived.”

I heard a small shriek, and then Morri landed heavily
on my shoulder, buffeted by the storm.
“Morri, fetch Petre, Sojaya and anyone else you think
can help. Tell Dena to prepare the hospital.”

He flew off into the storm, riding a squall until he
disappeared over the rooves. Griffin was watching me,
waiting for me to decide how we were going to handle
this. He’d sent runners to the palace with my message, but
I didn’t know how fast we were going to be able to
evacuate this section of the city.

“Follow it,” I ordered. “Don’t let it approach citizens.”
He nodded.
“What are you going to do?” he yelled to me over the
storm.
I looked to where the Ularair had disappeared amongst
the buildings.
“I’m going to climb it.” I said.

As the guards began to follow it, I made for the nearest
house. It was one very similar to what Eleanora had lived
in prior to joining the guard barracks. Finding the front
door unlocked, I started running up the inside stairwell.
As I passed doors, residents began poking their heads out,
then quickly disappeared back inside as the Ularair
shrieked somewhere out in the storm.

Finally, I reached the rooftop. I approached the edge,
the wind plucking at my clothes as the rain stung my eyes.

I could see the Ularair only a few buildings down from
me. I quickly leapt to the next building, rolling as I landed,
my swords cutting into my back. Getting closer now, I
could see flashes of magic, as the guards began to battle it.
The serpent screamed in rage, then spat venom towards
the ground. I couldn’t see what happened, but spirals of
green smoke rose from where it hit.

I crossed a few more rooves until I was facing the
Ularair’s body. Now that I was running along the edge of
the building, I could see what was happening on the
ground.

Sojaya, Petre, Yasmin and Eleanora had joined the
fight. Bits of the pavement had been eaten away beneath
their feet by the Ularair’s venom. I watched, unable to
move, as the serpent suddenly swooped down and snapped
its teeth, trying to clasp a guard in its jaws. The man yelled
in fear, and fuelled by the sudden rage that took over me, I
pulled my daggers from their sheaths and jumped.

My knives bit deep into the serpent’s scaly body. The
creature roared in pain and I struggled to gain my footing.
The Ularair bucked, and I almost lost my grip on the
knives, but suddenly I felt something reverberate through
its body. Glancing down, I saw two arrows in the perfect
place for a foothold. I glanced down and saw Eleanora
fitting two more arrows to her string.

I swung my foot onto the arrows and then hoisted
myself up and over. The Ularair had long spines down its
back, which made the perfect hand holds. It was slimy and
wet, having slithered from the ocean. The serpent reared
again, and I hung onto a spine desperately. It thrashed
about, trying to dislodge me. I watched my knives fall
from its body, clattering to the ground far below. Setting
my sights on the creature’s head, I began to climb.

Those on the ground had managed to distract it, but
nothing they were doing seemed to have any effect on its
health. If anything, the thing seemed to be getting
stronger and stronger as it got angrier.

Over the sound of the thunder, I heard a loud crash. I
struggled to look over my shoulder, and saw that the
Ularair had started using its tail to smash through
buildings. Hoping that Griffin and the others had
evacuated this section, I continued my climb up its back,
even more desperate now to stop it.

I reached the head of the serpent, and clung to the last
spine as I tried to locate a weak spot. The obvious one was
its narrow eyes, but from this angle I’d had to stab back
towards myself, and if the thing lunged again I’d probably
impale myself. It didn’t seem to have ears, but large fanlike fins on either side of its head twitched occasionally,
and it seemed to follow sound. I drew one of my swords,
but then hesitated.

I didn’t know if stabbing its ears would kill it. As angry
as I was that it was smashing up my city and threatening
my friends, I didn’t want to cause the thing any
unnecessary pain.

As I stood there holding my sword, contemplating what
to do next, I heard a scream from below. My body realised
who it was before my mind did, and my stomach pitched.

The Ularair had used its tail to destroy another
building. It was such an immense creature that I hadn't
even felt the movement. As the building collapsed, Griffin
had been pinned under a roof beam. Now the Ularair was
using the guard’s distraction to its advantage.

I needed to kill it.

As lightning flashed in the distance, I was struck by
inspiration. I let go of the spine I was clinging to and drew
my second sword. Looping them once to gain moment, I
then drove them into the top of the Ularair’s skull.

The noise it emitted was the worse I’d ever heard. I’ll
take that sound with me to the grave. Windows shattered
in the buildings closest to us and those fighting on the
ground below covered their ears in a desperate attempt to
shield themselves from its cry. But the Ularair wasn’t
finished, and neither was I.

I raised both hands to the sky, calling the lightning to
me. It struck my hands with a boom of thunder and I felt
the power leap through my body. Grasping the hilts of the
swords, I channelled the power of the storm directly into
the Ularair’s body.

I’m not sure when it died, but I hope for its sake that it
was as soon as the lightning scrambled its brain. I held the
lightning for as long as I could, but the bolt ran out and
the serpent began to teeter. It began to fall, slowly at first,
but then gained momentum. I grasped the closest spine on
its body for support, but as it slammed into the ground
with an earth-shattering rumble, I was thrown to the
cobbles.

I felt the impact bruise several limbs immediately, but I
barely felt it. Two objects clattered towards me, and I
picked them up numbly. The hilts of my swords were
charred almost beyond recognition, the blades melted by
the heat of the lightning.

My swords, my two faithful companions, remnants of
my past lives, were destroyed.

A cry distracted me from my loss. The guards had
managed to move the rubble off of Griffin, moving their
captain out into the open. Sojaya was leaning over him,
her magic glowing maroon in the dim light.

“He needs to be taken to your friend,” she said as I
approached. “I can heal, but not as well as her.”
I nodded, still holding the hilts of my ruined swords.
“Is anyone else injured?” I asked the guards.

Some had a few superficial cuts and bruises, but Griffin
was by far the worse off. His leg had been mangled by the
wood and glass that he had been pinned under. I knelt
down beside him, ignoring the distance that I’d kept
between us since the engagement party.

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” he gasped. “Thought I could do a
better job than that.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said, putting the hilts beside him so
I could support his head. “We took it down, didn’t we?”
He leaned back into my embrace, trembling with the
effort.

“You brought it down, Sky. No one else. Just you.” His
eyes met mine with such intensity that I looked away,
towards the fallen Ularair.

Somehow, it looked even larger on the ground than it
did upright above the buildings. As Sojaya helped them
load Griffin into a hospital cart, I approached the dead
serpent. Its head was taller than I, a mottled dark green
that would make it invisible in the depths of the ocean. I
hesitated, and then reached out and touched its nose,
running my hand along its scales until I got to its eye. It
was closed, and I was grateful. I didn’t want to look into
the unseeing depths.

The Ularair might have been one of the biggest threats
my city had ever faced, but it was magnificent.
“What would you like us to do with the body, milady?”
one of the guards asked from behind me.

I mulled it over, remembering what my father had said.
The Tsalskinese were the ones most familiar with it, if
only in legend.

“Arrange for it to be sent to the Tsalski Islands,” I said
finally. “As a gift to the Emperor. But if it’s no trouble, I’d
like one of the scales.”

“Of course, milady.” The guard hurried off to make the
arrangements.
“You fought bravely, my daughter,” Jett joined me at
the Ularair’s head. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Wordlessly, I showed him the hilts of my swords. He
took them gently, examining them.

“Can they be fixed?” I asked dully.
“The blades seem to have melted away,” Jett cast a
dubious look at the top of the Ularair’s skull. “Unless you
want to go fishing around in this thing’s skull for the
metal, I don’t think it’s possible.”

I accepted the hilts back mutely. I’d suspected as much,
but it didn’t make the loss any easier to bear. I’d start my
training with a regular sword as soon as possible. In this
turbulent time, I didn’t want to be caught without a
weapon.

~Chapter Twenty-Six~

A few days after the Ularair had been packed off to the
Tsalski Islands, news from Norrimoor arrived. I’d spent
the morning with the non-magi, converting more of them
into mages. The throne room glowed with the light of new
magic, turning it into a sparkling rainbow of colours. It
was a beautiful sight to behold, one I’d been quite
enjoying until Theresa had stepped up onto the dais.

I hadn’t seen her in a few days, and it was so rare for
her to seek me out that I’d been rendered mute when she
asked to speak to me privately. I followed her into a small
chamber off the throne room, leaving behind the new
mages with their magic.