Cayce blinked, her dry eyes popping. The dragon wasn’t just a machine, he was a self-repairing machine. And whatever magical method of self-repair he was using, it was somehow tied to the incomplete pile of dragon bones lying forgotten under the wreck of the wooden ship.
Outside the ship, Kula leaped back into the battle. She was again human-sized, but her hair had grown wild and long, extending around her head like a thorn thicket. Her hands glowed with green eldritch light, and she seemed to be doing a complicated dance, carving intricate shapes in the air as she glided toward her foe. Kula shouted something in the language of anchorites then extended her hands toward the dragon. The green glow leaped from her body to the dragon’s, enveloping him in verdant light.
Thick reddish rust spread across the dragon. Then this scabby coating faded to a dusty brown. As with Rus’s toxic crystal, however, the dragon was merely inconvenienced by this subtle attack. Damn, Cayce thought, he’s already leaving crusty flakes of his own all over the chamber. How would another layer of corrosion make any difference?
It was pointless. Neither their carefully planned assault nor their special anti-machine tactics would work until they solved the dragon’s ultimate secret. He was impossible to kill if he instantly recovered after each of their attacks.
If Vaan could tell them the answer, they’d be laughing. But how could you get someone to say what they simply could not say?
Thinking quickly, Cayce turned to Vaan and said, “You use glamour to make us see things. Things you pixies want us to see.” Cayce dashed in front of the hovering blue man, locking eyes with him. “Show me,” she said. “Highlight everything in here that’s valuable to the dragon.”
He didn’t understand at first, but Vaan’s eyes widened when he realized what Cayce had just made it possible for him to do. He grinned as tears welled up in his eyes.
“Done,” he said.
Vaan concentrated, fixing his otherworldly white eyes on Cayce. She blinked again, and when she opened her eyes she was treated to the exact same scene, only now the treasure trove was a collection of bright, gleaming lights. Every coin, every jewel, every broken bit of statuary was shining silver-white, as if the coins and rubies and polished steel had been replaced with solid energy. Gold, silver, and white brilliance sparkled, scintillated, and gleamed throughout the chamber.
Around Cayce, beams of solid light crisscrossed among piles of coins that sparkled like stars. Lustrous tapestries, statues, and plate-sized discs competed for her eye against fine-cut gemstones that gleamed like the sun on shards of a mirror. The radiance wrinkled Cayce’s eyes as it hit her from every angle. Even the old bones and bits of armor glowed and shone as valued symbols of the dragon’s victorious past.
As Cayce expected, showing her the dragon’s proudest possessions wasn’t a violation of Vaan’s geas. After all, there was nothing secret or dangerous in knowing dragons valued wealth and conquest. Her heart pounding, Cayce turned to the headless skeleton.
There was no glow around this particular item. In fact, there was a black emptiness among all that shining treasure, a skeleton-shaped hole in the avalanche of dazzling brilliance. Aside from the odd broken stone and the rotting timbers of the merchant ship, everything else in the cave had been tagged by Vaan’s magic. To Cayce’s eye, everything but the skeleton was clearly marked as valuable, shining with importance as if each reflected the pride it inspired in its owner.
Cayce stopped. “Thank you.”
“You’re welc—” Vaan’s words were cut off mid-syllable, interrupted by a wet slashing sound and a spray of blue-black liquid.
Smiling helplessly, Vaan cast his white eyes down to his own chest. Cayce followed his gaze to the bladelike tip of the dragon’s tail, which now protruded several inches from the pixies breastbone.
Cayce glanced into the stricken pixie’s eyes. Behind him, the tail curled and looped all the way across the chamber to where the dragon was getting the best of Kula. He had her pinned against a massive column of rock with one disdainful, clawed hand. The beast let Kula up then butted her aside with a long thrust of his neck. Eyes glittering, the dragon twisted his face back toward the little blue morsel skewered on the end of his tail.
“Vaan.” The dragon leered through narrow eyes, his lips pulled back into a cruel smile. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”
Instead of looking to his master, Vaan lunged forward and grabbed Cayce by the shoulders. Fortunately, the pixie’s arms were long enough to keep the tip of the dragon’s tail from stabbing Cayce as well, especially with her own arms pressing him away.
“Listen,” Vaan said. “Listen… to me… now….”
Across the chamber, the dragon roared. He jerked his tail away, whipping Vaan out of Cayce’s arms. With the pixie still flailing on his tail, the brute stood tall, blue sparks churning and glittering across his completely restored chest.
Near the opposite wall, standing on a shelf of broken rock, Captain Hask held his special sword aloft. As he had when Rus launched his last-ditch effort, the dragon paused and watched as Hask prepared to unleash whatever he had held in reserve. Hask was ranting, wild-eyed, and Cayce quickly counted three dead soldiers scattered around the captain’s feet. Without Boom or Kula, the soldiers were little more than grist for the mill.
“Behold,” the crazed officer shouted. “The Twice-Drawn Sword, the Hand of Righteous Retribution. Blessed by the High Primate of Angelfire and the Serran Mother Superior alike, it will burn you to slag and ashes, unclean thing.”
“Captain Hask,” Cayce yelled. “Over here!”
“The sword is drawn only in the cause of holy justice,” the officer wailed. As he spoke, Hask undid the bindings that kept the sword sealed in its scabbard. “Any who stand before it shall be smitten. It can only be drawn twice.”
“Hask! Listen to me!”
But the soldier paid no heed. “First,” he bellowed. “In anger, and only anger, as outrage is the true spark that becomes the fire of retribution.” Hask slid the scabbard an inch up the foot—wide blade. Piercing white light spilled out and curled to ash the officer’s eyebrows and the ends of his sweat-soaked hair.
Recognizing the tone and cadence of a powerful incantation, Cayce slid back behind the timbers of the ship. Hask’s trump card was his to play, but she feared the noble captain was as doomed as her ignoble master had been. Battling the dragon head-on was futile; the skeleton was somehow the key.
Hask drew the sword. Light poured from the blessed blade, consuming the captain, the dragon, the hoard, and the cavern. The last thing Cayce saw before the Hand of Righteous Retribution consumed her as well was a small, winged, blue-tinged figure that positioned himself between her and the advancing wave of white.
Cayce awoke on the rounded peak of a grassy hill. The sky was blue and full of clean white clouds. A floral-scented breeze wafted by.
“This is an illusion,” Cayce said. “Pixie glamour. Vaan? Are you doing this? Or have I defied Master Rus’s predictions after all and gone to paradise?”
A healthy buzzing sound accompanied the pixie as he descended from above. Vaan was no longer dour and drawn, no longer pierced by a dragon tail, but healthy, whole, and relaxed.
“Thank you, Tania Cayce.” Vaan hovered just over the top of the grassy peak.
“What for? I think we’re both dead.”
“You are neither dead nor dying. And because of you, my perpetual life-in-death can finally end.”
“How? What do you mean?”
“You have correctly guessed the dragon’s weakness: the skeleton and that abhorrent metal shell must both be destroyed together. In one fell swoop.”