“Have faith, Little Sister – in the might of a true dragon’s wings!” Ymmen half-scolded me, as he suddenly snapped his gigantic black wings out, unfurling them like blankets of night—
They immediately caught and were filled with air, and I felt the sudden strain on Ymmen’s shoulders, back, and chest.
“Skrrr!” The dragon grunted in pain as his right shoulder flinched suddenly. I looked in horror at where Inyene had fired her bolt of purple light, and there was a terrible blackened patch of smoking scales. It looked as though several had somehow fused together and then cracked, forming odd, painful plates of bone-scale that looked as though they would impede Ymmen’s movements—
But, amazingly, Ymmen’s wings held, and we stopped spinning towards the nearest Masaka mountainside and were instead swooping across its surface, with boulders and outcrops of the unkindly rocks barely below the lowest point of Ymmen’s chest. I bit my lips in consternation, my heart urging me to warn the dragon to be careful but knowing with the certainty that came from the dragon-bond, that yes, Ymmen knew exactly what he was doing.
A thundering blast of purple light on the cliffs and mountain ridges behind us, as now Inyene was flying to chase us, somehow using her Earth Light scepter as a magical weapon. But now I saw Ymmen’s plan, his twisting and spinning roll through the air had not only released us from the mechanical dragon’s tail, but it had also allowed him to generate speed for this part of the battle. Which he must have predicted was coming, I thought with no faint amount of wonder.
“I told you I had lived long, Little Sister!” Ymmen roared through my mind, and even though there was a fierce determination to his voice – there was also a savage glee for the fight that I could sense in him.
We shot forward over the mountains, flying faster than our opponent – but not too fast, I realized. Ymmen was holding some of his strength back… But why?
The rocky ridges and promontories of the Masaka flared and rose to meet us as Ymmen twisted his wings, closing and dipping and flaring them open to hug the contours of the landscape as tight as a hunting hawk. Behind us, Inyene’s dragon was having trouble keeping close, but I could feel Ymmen flaring much further out from the rocks than he needed so, as if taunting her.
What are you playing at!? I thought, my trepidation and anxiety now mingling with excitement – and even a sort of joy at the way we were running circles around our foe—
Phwap! An outcrop of rocks exploded with Inyene’s thrown purple-white light as Ymmen flew underneath – my heart leapt – but we were too fast, and the thrown shards and splinters of rock only barely grazed Ymmen’s tail—
“Just a little further, dragon-sister—” Ymmen’s excitement rose as, once again, he slowed his wings by the barest fraction that only he and I – his bonded partner – would be able to detect.
Another explosion of purple-white light, this time ahead of us, and Ymmen snapped with his wings to flow over the blast with ease.
“Here!” And then we were turning quickly, as Ymmen leaned and twisted his body on one wingtip, cutting a line through the air so that we were flaring straight into a deep ravine of rocks.
“Where are we going!?” I called out in confusion – more out of instinct than any particular need for Ymmen to tell me. I trusted my dragon partner in a way that I had only rarely experienced with any human – my mother, perhaps. Abioye? Possibly.
There was a high screech of rage from Inyene as her quarry – us – seemed to be evading her capture. She almost sounded inhuman, so tight was the emotion in her voice.
And she was following us into the ravine.
“Ymmen, I’m not sure about this—” I said, but then I saw the deep cleft in the Masaka start to narrow and twist ahead of us. Before too long, the avenue of rock would be too tight for even his bulk to navigate through – let alone the behemoth-like beast of Inyene’s mechanical dragon.
“Yes!” Ymmen had read my thoughts, and suddenly he folded and pushed down with his wingtips. A mighty jolt ran through his body and up into mine as his rear legs punched out at the rock below and flung us upward towards the sky.
We were climbing now, barreling past the walls of the ravine in the mountains as Inyene was attempting to turn her own beast to do the same. Her dragon was much slower than we were and had to bodily clutch and scrabble at the walls, half climbing and flaring its heavy canvas wings as it pushed itself upwards after us.
“Watch out!” I cried, as I saw the flash and flare of Inyene’s scepter. Ymmen managed to yank one wing into his body just in time as a burning lance of purple fire shot past it. It was the same wing that had been injured by Inyene’s earlier blast, and I could feel the radiating heat and pain from the dragon’s shoulder through our connection.
“Skrargh!” Ymmen roared in rage, and his heavy, black-scaled tail thumped onto the walls as we flew upwards, releasing a shower of rocky fragments onto the mechanical dragon below. Was that his plan!? I liked it, of course – especially hearing the snarl of fury and frustration from Inyene below me. But it’s not exactly going to be enough, is it? I had to wonder—
There was a rising surge of annoyance that welled up through the black dragon underneath me at my thoughts, and another heavy thump of his tail on the mountain walls. I could feel the judder of pain from the impact – but in that way that all of the other animals were so expert at, Ymmen managed to turn off his awareness of the ache as simply as if it were no more than the feeling of rain on his scales.
“Ymmen?” I gasped, as his tail thumped against the rocky cliff walls again, and again, and again—
Crack! There was a sound like the entire sky had somehow broken open, and suddenly we were free of the cleft in the mountains, and the low gray clouds were dropping towards us as we shot upwards. Looking backwards, I could see that there was movement from the ravine walls, as great towers and pillars of the rocks were sheering away, plummeting down into the depths—
Down onto Inyene and her monstrous dragon-creation.
That was his plan! I realized in joy, as Ymmen sprang forward through the sky, turning his hurt shoulder and still holding it strong so that he could direct us back towards the distant battle.
“I told you, Little Sister – I have lived long in this part of the world, and I have fought many battles—”
But still, a worried premonition made me turn around to look back at the ravine in the rocks from which we had just come. It was too much to think that Inyene and that brute of a thing she rode could be so easily vanquished. Hard to think that a woman with so much determination, and who had caused so much misery for my people and to half the known world, could be stopped by mere rocks, as if her iron stubbornness would be all it took to force her way through injury and death and mountain rock too—
But that entire lip and ridge of the mountain was spewing with a thick gray steam of rock dust, as the ground shook and shuddered and the bones of the mountain collapsed and pulverized each other – I thought I detected a distant purple flare in their murk, but I couldn’t be sure.
Even if she found a way to survive, she’d still be trapped under a whole mine’s worth of rock! I thought savagely. It felt good to think of my tormentor being stuck in tight, cramped, airless caverns under the surface. After all – it was just what she had done to me, wasn’t it? I thought with a draconian sense of justice.