Chapter 258 - The Dragon That Ate the Sun ( Part 1 )

The valley started to breathe.

Jennie Queens stood under the huge rib cage of some giant creature that died before the existence of the most ancient kingdoms. Dust fell from the cliffs like threads and pale bones started to rattle against each other making a strange melody reminding of the funeral bell. Jennie could feel this low trembling sound in her chest, in her bones and in the marrow of her life.

The Thousand-Blade Centipede dragged itself along the valley floor. Its legs scratched the stone of the ground.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

This sound echoed in the valley as if a blacksmith hammered his anvil in the empty cathedral.

Jennie looked back. Her hair was covered with blood and dust and her golden eyes showed a weary resignation of someone who is tired of impossible things.

"Listen, I understand that you try very hard to kill me, but I suggest we talk about our disagreements like civilized creatures."

The burning crimson eye of the centipede opened wider.

"Sure. You don’t look like a person who enjoys a conversation."

Jennie turned back and faced the valley.

The sound below her feet became louder. Something huge started to shift behind the bones. It slept for so many years that the Earth forgot to stay still near it.

Jennie saw a shadow falling on the distant cliffs. For a second, she thought that it belongs to the centipede, but this shadow was too big. It covered all the valley from top to bottom. It was swallowing the light that was coming from above through the clouds.

Then came the sound.

An inhalation.

The air started to move towards the far end of the valley. Stones moved across the valley. Dust raised and the bones of the ancient giants rattled as if somebody was moving them. Jennie’s hair was whipping her face and she pushed her left hand into a crack of the stone.

"What the hell is that?"

The shadow moved.

First, a head appeared between the cliffs.

It was an enormous head with two curving backwards horns on the skull that was covered with the black scales. Its long neck was surrounded by jagged ridges looking like the broken edges of a mountain. Four great limbs supported the body that looked too huge for the valley.

Wings unfolded.

There was no light under them. Not the darkness. Not some darkening of the light as Jennie knew it. There was just no light at all where those wings stretched out.

The sun disappeared behind the silhouette of the creature and the valley plunged into twilight that was colder than any winter.

A name appeared in the mind of Jennie, brought by the same ancient instinct that warned her about the previous trials.

Vorthal.

The Eclipse Devourer.

A primordial dragon swallowing the light and exhaling the darkness.

Jennie stared at the monster. Her heart beat slowly and deliberately understanding that panic can only worsen everything.

The dragon lowered its head. Its eyes did not glow. They were not even visible. Two dark holes were sitting under its brow like windows to the universe without stars.

It opened its mouth.

The darkness in it was deeper than the night sky.

Jennie took one step backwards.

"...I want to withdraw my application for this battlefield."

Vorthal inhaled.

The world went black.

Jennie fell down. Or maybe the ground started to rise. She could not understand that.

At one moment, she was standing under the shadow of the dragon. The next one, there was no valley, no sky, no horizon. Only a smothering darkness pressing to her face and crawling in her clothes like alive things.

She hit something hard. Pain stabbed her shoulder.

Jennie tried to roll, she hit another surface and finally stopped somewhere near what she supposed to be a rock.

She could not see anything. She lifted her left hand to her face. No. She could not see even her movement.

"Okay."

Her voice sounded unusually small in this huge darkness.

"Stay calm."

She took a breath. It smelled like cold ashes.

"You are in the shadow of the primordial dragon. Your right hand is useless. Your weapon is a broken dagger. And you have been chased here by the murderous centipede made of kitchen utensils."

She swallowed.

"And you can’t see."

A faint, humourless laugh escaped her throat.

"Honestly, I had worse mornings."

Something moved behind her.

Jennie spun around.

The attack came from the left.

She felt a splitting of the air near her head and pushed herself forward. A huge claw hit the ground, making shock waves moving through her body. The impact lifted her off the ground. She crashed on the stone and slid.

Her shoulder was shouting in pain.

Before she could do something, another attack came from above.

Jennie rolled instinctively. The claws torn apart the place where she was lying.

She jumped on her feet and started to run forward.

A wall smashed into her.

No. Not a wall.

The tail of the dragon.

It hit her ribs and threw through the air. She landed on the ground with such force that it drove her breath away.

For several seconds, she could not move. Then she coughed. Warm liquid flowed from the corner of her mouth.

Blood.

"Wonderful."

She pressed her left palm to the ground and pushed herself up.

"Blind, bruised and bleeding. At least the experience is consistent."

An unusual feeling touched her skin.

The air started moving again. Vorthal breathed.

On each intake, the darkness grew. The tiny remnants of magical energy remaining around Jennie’s body drained towards the dragon as if pulled to the source by some magnet.

She tried to make the wind appear.

A weak breeze stirred around her fingers. And disappeared.

Jennie blinked in the darkness. She tried again. With no result.

The dragon’s breath had erased her spell before it could be performed.

Her stomach tensed.

Without magic, she was weaker, slower and almost blind. Even using only left hand normally she couldn’t fight effectively. Here even finding her position was difficult.

A rumbling sound went across the valley. Jennie heard the dragon moving.

A scraping noise. A pause. Silence.

She held her breath.

The next attack took place right in front of her.

She dodged. A claw passed overhead, leaving behind a trail of air strong enough to blow back her hair. Jennie fell backwards, scratching the stone surface with her boots.

The creature moved silently after its first attack. It was as if Vorthal vanished between hits.

It didn’t need to see her. It didn’t need to chase her.

In its shadow, whole world belonged to Vorthal.

Jennie clenched her teeth.

"All right. Think."

She remembered the Gravemantle Turtles and their gravity. She remembered the Thousand-Blade Centipede and its changing armour. Everything in this place punished her for her old habits and skills.

The battlefield wasn’t interested if she could defeat its monsters.

It wanted to know if she could comprehend them.

What guided Vorthal?

Sound? No. It attacked her despite the silence.

Movement? Maybe, but she couldn’t see anything that would react to it.

Magic? The dragon had drained the rest of her magic, but continued attacking.

Then what?

Jennie forced herself to stop.

The silence pressed against her ears. She could hear only her breathing, the faint beating of her heart, the scratching of her boots as she changed her position.

And something else.

The faint hissing noise.

The dragon was breathing around her. She felt currents of air touching her left cheek, and then her neck.

Vorthal was moving. But it attacked not where she stood.

Where she was warm.

Jennie froze.

The thought fell in her brain like a stone in still water.

Heat.

The dragon tracked heat.

Maybe its eyes were blind in the shadow. Maybe light was useless for a creature that ate it up. But heat remained a living thing in the darkness, a constant presence that marked everything around it.

She was a lighthouse.

Each breath she took, each move she made told the dragon her position.

Jennie slowly looked down, but still couldn’t see herself.

"Of course."

She almost smiled.

"Why should anything here have normal weakness?"

The ground quivered. Vorthal came closer.

She needed something hotter than herself. Something that would distract the dragon. And she needed to find it without seeing.

She carefully moved along the uneven surface, tracing the slope of the valley. Each few steps she stopped to listen.

The bones overhead squeaked from the wind. Stones fell off the cliffs. In the distance, somewhere, the Thousand-Blade Centipede continued making its scraping sound in the valley.

Jennie hoped these two monsters would meet. Hoped that they would hate each other. Hoped that one of them would defeat another.

Above all she hoped that none of them would remember her.

The faint orange glow appeared beneath her feet. Jennie stopped.

The darkness began to disappear around a cluster of black stones. Red veins were visible inside their surface, trembling like veins beneath the burned skin.

Minerals. Heat was shining above them.

She squatted and touched one of the stones with her left fingertips. They were hot. Too hot.

The mineral vein was burning underneath the ground, sending heat out through its cracks. Shadow had hidden the glowing of the minerals, but hadn’t hidden the heat.

Jennie’s eyes became sharp.

The idea formed in her mind. It was a terrible idea.

Naturally, it was the first good idea she’d got in several minutes.

She tore the strip of fabric from her coat and attached a piece of mineral to it. Then she hit the stone against the ground until a shower of sparks fell on the fabric.

The fabric ignited. Tiny flames appeared in the darkness.

Jennie looked at them.

"Hello, little friend."

The flame shivered in the wind.

"You’re going to save my life. No pressure."

She attached the burning fabric to a broken bone and raised it. The orange light illuminated a narrow part of the valley.

For the first time since entering the dragon’s shadow, Jennie saw the ground beneath her feet.

And the enormous claw that descended upon her.

"Oh, come on!"

She threw the burning bone as far as she could. It flew to the other side of the valley.

The dragon’s head turned instantly. The claw turned to another direction.

The beast rushed towards the flame, breaking through a cluster of old bones. Its jaws closed upon the burning object.

The light disappeared. Darkness ate everything up again.

Jennie stood frozen. Then she let out a shaky breath.

"It worked."

The dragon followed the heat. Not her voice. Not her moves. Not her magic.

Heat.

She had found the weakness.

Unfortunately, she had also learned that one burning stick wouldn’t help much in fighting the primordial dragon.