Chapter 216: Familiar Seal [BONUS]

Encrid saw the light leave its jaws.

There was no time to think. There was no time to plan.

There was only time to know.

He knew he could not dodge it. It was too wide and too fast, and his legs could barely hold him up.

He knew he could not block it. He was an Ascendant again. One Star. His sword was a sword.

He knew what was behind him.

The Span. And on the far side of the Span, eight thousand people. Gus, with his letters. Zuri. Gareth. Ysolde. Rael and Hask and Ilse. Wren, counting. Tam, with his wooden sword. Corr, with his tally board. Merta, with the evacuation order folded under her arm.

The light would go through him and down the length of the bridge and reach them all.

There was only one thing he had left.

The Pillow of the Sleeping God was empty. He had emptied it himself when he let Ysolde’s strike out through himself.

Which meant the Pillow was ready again.

It meant he could defer one thing. A single consequence. Any consequence. The Pillow would not prevent it. It would only delay it. One day, it would still have to be faced.

But not today.

Encrid did not know whether the Pillow could hold something like this. He did not know whether anything could.

He reached back with his mind and touched it.

The light hit him.

? ? ?

[ Pillow of the Sleeping God ]

[ Deferring consequence: Dragon’s Breath]

[ Warning: Consequence exceeds capacity. ]

[ Deferring... ]

[ Deferring... ]

[ Deferred. ]

There was no sound.

The light came out of the creatures jaws, white and endless, and it reached him, and it touched him.

And it went into him.

All of it.

Encrid felt it pass into his body like a river pouring into a hole in the ground. It went into his chest and through his spine and into the small grey cushion strapped beneath his coat.

And the Pillow took it.

He felt the Pillow swell against his back, impossibly, like a sack being filled with something far heavier than itself.

Then the light was gone.

The sky went dark.

The bridge was still there.

Behind him, the eight thousand were still there.

The breath of a Dragon had touched one man at the end of the Darwen Span and gone nowhere else.

Encrid’s legs gave out.

He did not feel himself fall. He was standing, and then he was on his knees on the cold stone, with his sword lying beside him.

The Pillow had taken the breath. It had not taken the pressure. That came down on him all at once, like the sky falling. He could not lift his arms. Blood was running from his nose, warm and salt on his lip.

His vision was going grey at the edges.

He made his head move, a fraction of an inch at a time, until he could see across the chasm.

? ? ?

The Dragon had collapsed.

It lay on the road at the edge of the chasm, its sides heaving. Its jaws hung open. Smoke drifted from between its small sharp teeth. The wounds along its spine had opened again, and something dark was running from them down its scales.

The breath had cost it everything it had.

For a moment, nothing pulled at it.

Encrid could feel that. Through the haze, through the pressure, he could feel the thin cold thread that ran into the Dragon from somewhere far away. It had gone slack. Whatever held it had spent itself in the breath, the same as the Dragon had.

The crimson sheen slid off the Dragon’s eyes.

It turned its head on the stone, slowly, and looked at Encrid.

Its dull gold eyes found his across the chasm.

They were clear.

And in them, for the first time, Encrid saw something he had a word for.

It was not pride. It was not anger.

It was pain.

Encrid didn’t know why but he immediately thought of the reward he had just received.

Familiar Seal.

The words came out of nowhere. Out of the grey haze filling his head.

Its description said that he could bind one creature to his soul as a familiar and the success would depend on the target’s strength of will and its condition at the moment of binding.

Its condition at the moment of binding.

The Dragon had just poured everything it had into a single breath. It was lying on the road, too weak to stand.

And its will was not its own.

Encrid did not know what a binding to his soul would do against something like that. He did not know if one bond could break another. He did not know if he would live long enough to find out.

He knew only that he would never have another chance.

He lifted his hand off the stone. It shook. He held it out across the chasm, palm open.

[ Use: Familiar Seal (Unique)? ]

[ Target: ??????????? ]

[ Warning: Target is under an existing binding. Success rate: ??? ]

[ Confirm? ]

"Yes," Encrid whispered.

A circle of pale light, no bigger than a coin, left his palm. Fine lines turned slowly inside it, like the workings of a clock. It drifted out over the chasm.

The thread in the Dragon snapped tight.

Encrid felt it. Something far away had noticed. The crimson flooded back across the Dragon’s eyes, and its head began to turn away.

But the circle of light reached it first.

It settled on its forehead, between the two small horns.

The Dragon thrashed as the two forces seemed to collide inside it, and a window appeared in front of Encrid.

[ Binding... ]

The crimson in the Dragon’s eyes flickered.

[ Binding... ]

The Dragon’s eyes widened.

[ Binding resul.... ]

Encrid’s vision blurred.

Grey crept in from the edges of his sight. The Dragon’s dark shape smeared and doubled, while its golden eyes ran together into a single, dull glow.

He tried to read the window. He forced his eyes to stay open.

But he could not.

The darkness swallowed his vision, and Encrid collapsed.

? ? ?