Jazz staggered backward, bringing her hands to her mouth, looking dazed. Jandra reached out with her nanites and grabbed the kudzu vines behind the goddess. The vines darted out to tangle Jazz's feet. They quickly crisped to cinders, but not before Jazz stumbled. She landed on her butt, hard, then rolled to her hands and knees. Jandra ran to retrieve the crystal globe, intending to fling it again.
Before she could reach it, Bitterwood burst from the branches of a tree above the goddess. His clothes were dripping wet. He plummeted toward her fiery form, both hands clasped around the hilt of Gabriel's sword. The weapon glowed even more brightly than the goddess as he buried it in her back, driving her down. He used his momentum to leap away, dropping and rolling as he hit the moist grass to extinguish the fires that had erupted on his now-dry clothes.
Jandra tried to look at Jazz, but it was impossible. It was like looking into the sun. The ground beneath the goddess boiled and her glowing form melted into it. Slowly, the light dimmed. Jandra walked over to the hole in the ground. All that was left at the bottom was the burning sword lodged into a heart-shaped piece of silver metal. Blackened bones lay scattered around the pit. The soil had been turned to glass by the heat.
Bitterwood leaned over the edge of the pit and reached in with blistered fingers to grab the hilt. Instantly, the white hot blaze dimmed to a dull cherry glow. Jandra blinked, trying to clear her vision.
The leaves in the trees stirred as Hex flew overhead. He swooped down to land, dropping Poocher from his hind talons. The pig was uninjured, but sopping wet. Hex's face was charred, with one eye swollen shut. Here and there, a gash of pink tissue peeked through his blackened scales. His tongue was covered with blisters. He lisped through missing teeth as he asked, "Ish she dead?"
Bitterwood lifted the sword and looked at the silver heart on the end. The fire hadn't melted it, but it was split by a jagged crack where the blade had pierced it.
"If she isn't," Jandra said, "we've certainly broken her heart."
Zeeky ran from Jandra's side to give Poocher a hug.
"I saw Trisky dead on the beach," Hex said, giving Bitterwood a stern look with his one open eye. "What happened to Adam?"
Bitterwood shrugged. "We've agreed to disagree."
High above, the sky began to fragment and drift down as a silvery snow, leaving the rock behind it exposed. The jungle grew hauntingly quiet. Bitterwood dropped the sword back into the pit.
"I don't sense any radio waves," Jandra said. "I think she's really dead. What should we do with her heart?"
"We should bury it, with the sword still in place so it will never heal," said Bitterwood. "Then I want to eat my dinner in peace and get some sleep. I've killed enough gods for one day."
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Zing!
Shandrazel studied the map of the world inlaid on the Peace Hall floor. This was his father's world-a world forged with violence. All his life, Shandrazel had considered his father's ruthlessness an antiquated relic from a less enlightened time. Violence had been necessary once, perhaps, to tame a savage world, but dragons now had centuries of civilization during which more enlightened concepts could take root. Ideas such as justice stemming not from the concept that might makes right, but in the belief that all intelligent beings are inherently equal.
Now, he found that all his high and fanciful thoughts were nothing more than soap bubbles: ephemeral, beautiful, and doomed as they brushed against jagged reality.
Word of the massacre at Dragon Forge had reached him quickly. It was said that the rebels had tried to slow the news by slaughtering innocents for miles around, but those deaths had been for naught. A valkyrie from the Nest had been sent to Dragon Forge in the aftermath of Blasphet's invasion to warn them that the Murder God was still on the loose. She'd discovered the killing fields around Dragon Forge. The humans had tried to bring her down, but, of course, their arrows couldn't reach her. She'd journeyed on to the palace to report what she'd found.
Shandrazel looked up from the map as Androkom entered the hall. The high biologian looked grim. "When Charkon learns of this, he'll demand swift action. This rebellion must be crushed if you are to prevent a civil war, sire. After the Blasphet debacle, any further show of weakness will cause your fellow sun-dragons to turn against you. The Commonwealth will shatter."
"Agreed," said Shandrazel. "Summon everyone."
"Everyone, sire?" Androkom asked.
"Gather the aerial guard. Dispatch them to the far reaches of the Commonwealth. The sun-dragons who control their various abodes are bound by a pact of mutual defense. Gather them at Dragon-Forge within three days. These humans were offered a chance at peace. They've chosen war instead. It is time mankind is reminded that sun-dragons are the undisputed masters of war. We must strangle this rebellion it its cradle before it can grow any further."
"Of course, sire," said Androkom. "Overwhelming force is the swiftest path to returning security and order."
Shandrazel nodded. "Before you go, send Charkon in. I owe it to him to deliver the news personally. If I'd allowed him to return, perhaps his leadership could have prevented this."
"We can't know that, sire."
"I know," Shandrazel said, looking up to the tapestry of his father devouring the army of humans. "It haunts me just the same."
The air of Dragon Forge stank of smoke and death. Pet stared at the thick black smoke that rose from the third chimney. Immediately following the fall of the city, Burke had taken control of the three central furnaces. Two were now dedicated solely to the production of weaponry. The third had become a crematorium, and it was this furnace that provided most of the oily black soot that drifted down onto the town. There wasn't enough time or manpower to bury the dead. Burke had reluctantly cut his production capacity by a third due to the fear of disease. He'd seen the plagues that followed in the aftermath of slaughter. Clearing the dead and all their attendant gore from the water supplies and sewage was the task of half the available men. Burke had said there was no point in creating weapons if all his soldiers were dropping dead from fevers.
Pet turned his attention from the furnace back to the wall of wood before him. Pet had been placed with a team of men tasked with closing the gates of Dragon Forge. It was difficult, backbreaking labor. Digging a trench to free a gate whose bottom edge was buried in centuries of dirt required the use of muscles Pet hadn't known he possessed. He found himself working alongside men with faces rough as leather from years laboring in the sun. Their hands were thick, calloused masses immune to blisters and splinters. They were tough men of the earth who worked stoically, uncomplaining of the cold. Pet wanted to grumble about the pain of his broken nose, or the way his legs were still chapped from the ride, or his fingers still raw from the bowstring, but he held his tongue. These men wouldn't be a sympathetic audience.
It was their second day of labor. Pet joined the rest of the crew in putting their shoulders to the gate and pushing. The legs of a hundred men strained against hinges long locked by rust. Burke had given the foreman a special oil to penetrate the rust and release the gates, but if it had had any effect, Pet couldn't tell. They may as well have been pushing a stone wall.
At last the foreman shouted for the men to stop. Pet collapsed to the dirt, certain that all their efforts had been for nothing. But, as he rested, he watched the foreman at the far edge of the gate measuring scrapes in the ground with a length of ribbon.
"That's five inches!" he shouted.
The men around Pet grumbled, but Pet rolled to his back and thrust his fists into the air, feeling triumphant. Five inches was much further than no distance at all.