The Forsaken Hero

My three companions threw themselves at the unbound dragon. Elaine led the charge, soaking the dragon’s fire breath with a defensive magical technique. Fable followed on her heels, biting down on the dragon’s wrist. His weight threw the monster off-balance, and it roared, swiping at him with its other claw.

Fyren struck like lightning, revealing himself from the thick fur hidden behind Fable’s massive horns. His sword bit deep into the dragon’s hand-like appendage, infernal mana seeping past the scales into the exposed wound. The ensuing explosion blasted him away, but Fable dislodged and caught him, landing on a mound of rubble that had once been a mansion.

The dragon roared, the wound gaping wide, refusing to mend. It opened its jaws and released a torrent of fire at the grounded pair, but Elaine intercepted it with a wave of her sword, sending an arc of mana into the heart of the attack and detonating it prematurely.

Furious, the dragon rounded on her, but Fable and Fyren had returned to the sky, attacking its hindquarters. Elaine slipped away as it roared in pain, readying her next move.

The fight that unfolded next was unlike anything I’d experienced in the flesh before. Shockwaves, errant blasts of magic, and chunks of terrain torn from the spire smashed across the vast spire, obliterating everything but a narrow space directly around me. There was nothing special about this location, but by pure chance, it remained untouched for the majority of the fight. It’d taken me hundreds of visions to find, but I’d made my way here the moment Fyren and I were reunited.

As the fight wore on, I began guiding my companions. The dragon’s soul overflowed with mana, telegraphing its intentions a full second in advance. That wasn’t much time, barely a blink, yet a panicked thought was all it took to let them know something was amiss. With their superior reaction times, a second was more than enough to respond to the danger. They could reposition and work together to figure it out themselves.

Elaine and Fyren coordinated perfectly in this regard, and even Fable, despite not using language, kept up. I could feel the thoughts racing through the conduits of Mind Link, yet the unfinished spell meant I wasn’t privy to anything not directly meant for me. It left me with half a picture of the fight, made worse by my severely limited senses.

As the battle drew out, the intensity escalated. Everything moved faster and faster, causing more explosions and kicking up great plumes of smoke. Even something as simple as Fable lunging at the dragon released shockwaves, not to mention anything Elaine or the dragon itself did.

Soon, the velocity and acceleration became too much. Fyren was the slowest of them all, and I had the help of my predictions, yet there was no following his movements. It was different in the visions, when everything was tuned to my perspective. More and more, I found myself reacting to the effects of their attacks rather than the actions themselves, forced to intuit why a crater had suddenly appeared or where the long cut on the dragon’s flank had come from.

A jagged spire exploded behind me, causing me to scream. Debris rained around me, chunks larger than mansions, cracking my wards. I whirled just in time to see Fable force himself out of the rubble and leap back at the dragon.

”Already?” I whispered, clutching my staff.

Things were moving too quickly. It had taken fifteen minutes to reach this point in vision, yet barely five had passed.

”Xiviyah, it’s growing stronger,” Elaine’s voice echoed in my mind.

I nodded, tail twitching. ”I-it’s mana is starting to awaken. There isn’t much time before it’s fully free of the seal.”

”And the other dragon?”

A glance at the bound dragon confirmed her fears. Its soul glowed bright as the sun; its muscles bulged against the ribbons of Avant’s spell.

Three minutes — no, one. You have to kill it now!” I cried.

The dragon’s claws slammed into Elaine, sending her spinning into a ruined tower. It collapsed, burying her. My heart leaped in my throat as the fiery shockwave from the dragon’s claws reached me, rippling over my wards. Adaptive Resistance struggled to absorb it all. That was a lot of mana.

”Elaine?” I called hesitantly. More than half the time, she’d been critically injured and couldn’t–

”Still here, if barely,” she grunted.

The rubble shifted, and she staggered out, breaking a wagon-sized boulder in half with a casual flick of her wrist. A thick cut laced her side, blood tainting the dusty steel of her armor.

”Regeneration,” I whispered, flooding the Nexus with Life Magic.

”Thanks,” Fyren said, dodging a claw swipe. ”It got me good there.”

”It wasn’t for-ah, um, you’re welcome,” I fumbled the words. Fyren shouldn’t have been hit in the next few seconds. We were starting to slip, and at such a critical moment.

Fortunately, we weren’t the only ones weakening. The dragon was covered in bloody scores, one of its limbs hanging uselessly by a thread. Blood poured from its body in rivers with every pulse of its heart, and its movements were growing clumsy.

”Should I use that now?” Elaine asked as she rejoined the battle.

I took a shallow breath. ”You have to kill it. Now.”

One of the chains snapped, allowing the dragon’s mouth to open in a roar. The dragon in the sky echoed it, marked with a hint of triumph. It knew, as well as I did, that the battle would be open once its comrade was free. All the hard work and damage we’d done would be gone the moment they bathed each other in their healing flames.

”I can’t hold on!” Avant cried, his voice wafting over the roar of the battle. He’d used some sort of amplification magic, desperate to convey the message.

”I need a second,” Elaine said.

The warrior dropped to the ground and held her sword in both hands. Her mana poured into the blade, transcending the limits of the eighth, growing even stronger than the pressure of her fully unleashed aura.

The dragon, sensing the blossoming power, turned toward it, but Fable and Fyren met it head-on. Both were sent flying almost instantly, but broke its momentum.

Elaine gritted her teeth, knuckles white on the hilt of her sword. The air shivered, the temperature intensifying beyond the dragon’s unbearable auras. Her blade shone brightly, sending waves of scorching heat across the spire. I jumped onto a rock as the softer bits of debris and dust underfoot glowed faintly with molten heat, flowing in small, viscous rivers.

More chains snapped as the dragon broke one of its arms free. It started tearing at the other ones, snapping and clawing with wild abandon.

”Die, monster,” Elaine’s voice echoed through both my ears and mind.

The dragon in the sky roared and continued its charge, blazing like a comet toward her. Its mana gathered in a Ninth-level technique with power just shy of her own. Given another half-second, or without the power of Celestial Grace, it might have matched or surpassed hers.

Avant’s aura abruptly dissipated, his presence fading to nearly nothing in the Nexus. The dragon roared as it tore free of the last of its chains and threw itself into the air. All three Ninth-level auras clashed in a confluence, forming a shockwave filled with the power of an eighth-level spell. It blasted Fable and Fyren away, scouring the ground and throwing everything from dust to entire buildings ahead of it.

Elaine and the skybound born dragon vanished behind the incoming wall of destruction. The other dragon opened its Jaws and let out a jet of fire, intending to strike its companion at the moment of conflict.

”No...” I whispered, heart dropping. This had happened every single time in every single vision where we got this far. Theoretically, Elaine had enough power to kill the wounded dragon, but this small, hastily mustered fire breath would tip the scales. Nothing any of us did in the dozens of visions that led to this point ever changed that. This was now a battle beyond the ability of Fyren, Fable, or myself to interfere in.

But I couldn’t do nothing. Fate had taken us down the only path where we ever stood a chance of killing even one of the dragons, and that chance wasn’t gone until we were all dead.

I did the only thing I could think to do when I was out of time and activated the Oracle of Eternity.

Time slowed to a stop. I glanced nervously at the dragons, but they and Elaine were much too invested to respond to the shift in time.

Just as I breathed a sigh of relief, the wind left my lungs, and I doubled over, coughing blood. The weight of Fate wetted on my soul, devouring what little strength I had left.

Fable appeared by my side, licking the blood from my cheek. I blinked away tears, choking down sobs, and peered at him. A vast chasm cleaved through his shoulder, exposing bone. His eyes were tight with pain, but he offered his neck to help me stand.

”We’re not running,” I gasped as he questioned my intentions through the bond. ”Please, we need to be closer. I don’t care if we won’t survive the shockwave. Closer.”

He resisted a moment, then his tail slumped, and he nudged me onto his back. I collapsed straightway, clinging to his horns as he lunged forward, bounding across the shattered landscape. We passed a wide crater where Fyren had fallen, and I gasped, covering my mouth in horror. The demon lay sprawled across the bottom, deep gouges running across his torso. One of his eyes was gone, and the whole side of his head was scorched black. How much fire did it take to burn a fire demon?

My grasp on time started to slip as we fell beneath the dragon’s shadow. Its fire breath extended overhead like a blanket, vanishing within the depths of the shockwave. It couldn’t be allowed to reach Elaine and the dragon within.

”I’m sorry,” I whispered, running my hand down the glassy haft of my staff. ”This isn’t your battle, but I’m bringing it to you anyway. Please, please help me. I can’t do it alone.”

With tears running down my cheeks and my heart heavy with guilt, I pointed my staff at the colossal dragon and poured the last of my mana into a gate. A plea to a realm of peace. A whisper away.

”Open.”