He lifted her up to slam her down again. She was certain the points of several of his teeth had punched through the nanite shell and were now slipping between her ribs. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't even breathe.
She grabbed the longest tooth in his bottom jaw with both hands. It was time to test Jandra's strength. She grimaced until veins bulged in her forehead as she tried to push the tooth away from her ribs. All she accomplished was to drive the teeth at her back further in.
Fighting her urge to gag, and breaking her ten-century long commitment against taking a bite of meat, she opened her mouth as wide as she could and sank her teeth into the dragon's tongue. The dragon flinched. Blood spilled into her mouth.
She commanded a stream of nanites to swim into the open wound.
Seconds later, the beast's bite slackened. Jazz dropped from his saliva coated jaws, slipping in the pool of drool beneath her as the sun-dragon staggered away. He shook his head violently, banging it on the ground, as if he were trying smash to death a hive of bees that had somehow found its way into his skull.
She sat up, feeling woozy as she gasped in air. Several of her ribs were broken. A three-inch gash near her belly button bled profusely. Her old body would have already fixed this injury. Of course, her old body had more nanites in it than actual biological molecules. Jandra's blood was still mostly blood. She would have to fix that.
Before she could command the nanite shell to cover the wound, she went down again as the young earth-dragon tackled her, sinking his claws into her silvery hair, snarling as he bit at her right ear. "Bad boss! Bad boss!"
She grabbed the little dragon with both hands and jerked him free. Lizard wriggled in her grasp, kicking and scratching like a rabid animal, his eyes red with fury, his sharp beak snapping empty air.
"You are just so cute," Jazz said. She grabbed Lizard's beak with one hand, and his shoulder with the other. She gave a sharp twist, and the little creature went limp in her hands. "I really don't do cute."
She tossed Lizard's corpse aside as she tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't obey. Without warning, her left hand flew up and punched her in the eye.
"Kill you!" her lips snarled.
"Calm down!" Jazz shouted.
"Kill you!" the voice shouted again. The fingers of the left hand began to grow long, silver knives that slashed at Jazz's face. She grabbed her left hand with her right and pushed it away. Her breath came in panicked, sobbing gasps.
"Calm down!" she commanded again.
"Die!" a voice shouted. Only this time, it wasn't from her mouth. Shay ran toward her with the sword brandished in both hands. He lunged, chopping the sword down with a grunt. Jazz rolled to the side, but something fought her and kept her from moving as far as she could have. The sword cut a deep gash into her left shoulder. At least he'd hit the side she was having trouble controlling. She eyed the gaping wound in disbelief as blood spilled down her silver skin. A chill ran through her. This dumb slave boy might actually kill her. If Jandra's brain was burned to ash, she didn't have another back-up.
Shay raised the sword once more.
Jazz clenched her jaw and raised her right hand, willing the nanite shell to full strength. She caught the sword against her shielded palm with a satisfying CLANG. She closed her fingers and jerked the blade from Shay's grasp, tossing it as far into the forest as she could manage. He looked forlorn as the flaming sword flew away.
He never saw her foot flying toward his crotch again. She hated repeating herself, but this did seem to be his Achilles' heel. Shay staggered backward, doubled over, until he tripped over the tail of the still thrashing sun-dragon. She was surprised the sun-dragon hadn't died yet. Of course, sun-dragons had the largest brains of any sentient organism on earth, and she hadn't exactly been concentrating on guiding her nanites to the important bits of his gray matter. If she stayed around to guide the attack she could finish him off in less than a minute, but sticking around felt like a bad idea. She was having enough trouble fighting the unwelcome ghost inside her without having to worry about external enemies as well.
Jazz reached out and traced an arch in the air. Her finger trailed a thread of pale white light that blossomed into a rainbow. A black crack of nothingness yawned between the bands of light. She crawled forward and fell, tumbling into darkness.
Hex rolled over onto his belly as the rainbow fizzled away. The bees buzzing in his brain slowly quieted. He was too weak to stand. His mind felt full of holes. He tried counting to ten. The numbers were still there, he hoped. If he was forgetting one, how would he know? What if there was some number between six and seven that was now absent from his brain?
Down near his tail, a human wept.
With a great deal of effort, Hex lifted his head and craned his neck around to better see the red-haired man who crawled across the dust toward the body of a small earth-dragon.
"Do I know you?" Hex asked. "I feel as if we've met. Why can't I recall where?"
The man didn't look back. He reached the small dragon and tentatively touched its shoulder. It lay perfectly motionless. The man dropped his head to the earth-dragon's chest. He kept his ear against the dragon's breast for a long moment, before rolling away to sit down, his hands on his knees. Tear tracks stained his soot-blackened cheeks.
"He's dead," said the man.
"I'm sorry," said Hex. He tried to rise, making it to all fours, trembling as he learned to control his muscles once more. Specks of light danced before him. He had the worst headache of his life.
"I'm Shay," the man said. He sighed heavily. "You're Hexilizan, Albekizan's eldest son. You know me because you were an aid to Dacorn and I was personal slave to Chapelion."
"Ah," said Hex, slowly rising onto his hind-talons, stretching his wings for balance. "You traveled with Chapelion to the Isle of Horses. I remember now. I take it you've escaped?"
Shay tensed. His eyes searched across the ground, perhaps hunting for a weapon.
"You've nothing to fear," said Hex. "I am a fervent opponent of slavery."
Shay nodded. He looked more relaxed now, but also more sorrowful.
"Jandra's gone," he whispered. "Lizard's dead. I warned her not to remove the sword from the heart."
"Did you help her dig it up?"
Shay nodded.
"Perhaps dissuading her from taking that step would have been more effective."
"I didn't know the heart would be alive," Shay said. "I thought it was some kind of machine. I imagined it like a heart-shaped clock." Then, his face hardened. He stared up at Hex. "You're the reason we came here! You're the dragon that stole her genie!"
Hex nodded. "It's true. Jandra was in possession of incredible power. I couldn't trust that the spirit of the goddess wasn't lurking somewhere inside her."
"You drove Jandra back into the kingdom of the goddess," said Shay. "You caused the thing you were trying to prevent!"
Hex kept his mouth shut. He wanted to argue that this wasn't his fault, but a significant part of his throbbing brain was shouting that he was, indeed, responsible. He decided to accept blame and move on to the next phase, finding a solution. "No matter where Jazz has gone, I'll hunt her down."
"And then what?" said Shay. "You'll kill her?"
"I have no other choice. Though, as we've both witnessed, that may not be an easy task."
"Jandra's still alive inside her," said Shay. "She was fighting to get back out. I don't understand everything that's happened here. But Jazz said her spirit had survived inside her genie. What if part of Jandra's spirit survives inside the genie you stole from her? What if we gave it back to Jandra? It might let her become the dominant mind inside her own body once more."