“This still doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “Fire melts ice. Why is an icy fragment of Hush more powerful than a whole dragon?”
“Hush isn’t the dragon of ice,” said Aurora. “She’s the dragon of cold.”
“So?”
“To understand the true nature of reality, you need only look into the night sky. Darkness is the permanent state of things; light is merely a fleeting local phenomenon. The same is true of heat and fire. Flames can rage brightly for but a moment. Just as darkness will always win out over light, cold is the eternal backdrop that existed before fire, and will endure after. Flame can never win any permanent victory against cold.”
“The true power of the weapon lies in more than simply its elemental chill,” said Relic. “Greatshadow is the dragon who broke Hush’s heart. Its frosty bitterness embodies the seething hatred Hush feels toward Greatshadow. It can, and will, slay him.”
“I know a lot of dragon history, but I’ve never heard that,” said Zetetic.
Before Relic could provide us with a history lesson, Greatshadow burst from the surface of the bubbling magma, his neck rising up fifty feet, a hundred, as he drew a deep breath into his mighty lungs. He was wreathed in fresh flames, his skin aglow with his newly stoked energies. The ground beneath us trembled as the lava pool began to rise.
Relic shook his head, looking as if he might be about to cry. “He’s opened fresh lava vents beneath the surface! If the volcano erupts, we’ll all perish!”
Aurora craned her neck up, drawing the harpoon back. Greatshadow spread his enormous wings, beating them in a powerful downstroke. Globs of molten rock rained around us as a foundry wind nearly swept us from our feet.
“His head’s too far away!” Aurora shouted over the gale. “I can throw a harpoon a hundred yards on a good day, but not straight up!”
“You could if you were bigger!” Zetetic leapt in front of her. “Fortunately, I have the power to make you a giantess with an enchanted kiss!” He stood on his tip toes, grabbed her cheeks, and mashed his puckered lips between her tusks.
A wall of flame shot down toward us as Greatshadow exhaled once more. As before, the flame was thwarted by a shield of ice as Aurora grew rapidly, doubling to sixteen feet, then thirty, as Zetetic grabbed Relic by the tail and dragged him back toward the tunnel.
I lingered behind for half a second to watch as Aurora topped out close to ninety feet tall. The Jagged Heart had grown with her, taller than any tree. Her long black coat flapped as she leaned back to throw, the hem catching me like a sail, knocking me from my feet. Flat on my back, I watched as she let the harpoon fly, aiming toward Greatshadow’s open maw as the jet of flames died away.
The Jagged Heart flashed up like reverse lightning, trailing snow, entering the dragon’s cavernous jaws and punching into the roof of his mouth. His head tilted sideways as he shrieked in pain. The bright, crystalline tip of the harpoon jutted from the top of his skull. His eyes rolled up, as if trying to focus on it.
Finally, Greatshadow shuddered, his body wracked with a death spasm. Zetetic ran from the tunnel and grabbed my hand, dragging me back toward relative safety as the dragon began to fall. Magma splashed up in a raging tidal wave as his body collapsed. Aurora, no longer in possession of the Jagged Heart, dropped to her hands and knees and tried to squeeze her massive bulk into the tunnel.
She was too late. The molten wave fell upon her and she screamed as her giant shoulders slammed into the tunnel entrance, plugging it, saving Zetetic, Relic, and myself from the magma bath.
I ran to her as the magic that had transformed her drained away. She returned to her normal size, inside a large cave that was a perfect negative outline of her body. The lava had hardened into solid stone on touching her, but not before it had burned away much of her skin. Her face had been spared, at least, and she was still alive as I dropped to my knees in front of her. “Hang on!” I screamed. “Zetetic can fix you!”
Her words were nothing but a whisper as she answered, “Th-the Heart… i-it must b-be returned…” The last of her breath passed between her ivory tusks as her eyes closed.
I pursed my lips together, fighting to keep from crying. She’d never intended to fight Greatshadow when this all began. She’d never done a thing to deserve this fate.
Relic hobbled next to me, the bone-handled knife in his bleeding claw. “There is no time for mourning,” said the small dragon. “Greatshadow’s body is dead. We must act swiftly to kill his elemental spirit, before he can grow a new shell.”
Zetetic wandered around the cave left by Aurora, staring up at specks of light that dotted the ceiling. He climbed a wall and thrust his fingers into one of the lights, which proved to be a hole in a paper-thin sheet of rock. He flaked it away in big handfuls, and soon had a large enough gap to climb through.
“Follow me,” he said, as he wriggled out.
Relic leapt onto the wall and clambered after him. Despite his injuries and the obvious pain of every movement, the little dragon still seemed much stronger and faster than I was. I guess even a lamed dragon was a better physical specimen than an ordinary man. Or, at least in better shape than me. I was panting, my arms trembling, by the time I managed to drag myself through the hole. My legs were quivering as I walked out onto a freshly formed plain of soot-black rock still spiderwebbed with tendrils of bright red lava. The volcano seemed to have lost a great deal of its energy with Greatshadow gone. Still, I danced around, grateful I had boots. As long as I kept moving, the heat was merely blistering instead of crippling.
In the center of the rapidly cooling lava, amid rock that cracked and popped as it gave up its heat, was Greatshadow’s enormous head and shoulders, frozen into the solidifying stone. One wing jutted into the air behind him like a giant black sail. The deep brick-red of his scalp was now pink beneath a layer of thick frost. The Jagged Heart had returned to its normal size and lay upon his snout as if it had been dropped there by some hopelessly lost whaler.
Zetetic ran across the smoking plain, jumping over glowing cracks, scrambling up Greatshadow’s scaly hide. Though it was entirely the wrong thing to be thinking about, I couldn’t help but gawk at the sheer size of the dragon’s skull as my internal booze calculator tried to figure out how many rounds I could buy at the Black Swan if I could somehow cash it in. A lot. A whole damn lot. Numbers weren’t my strong suit.
Zetetic stood between the dragon’s eyes as he snatched up the Jagged Heart. “Got it!” he shouted. “Now, we just need to get a warrior to the spirit world to finish off the dragon!”
Relic nodded, standing before the Greatshadow’s toothy jaws, staring up at Zetetic. “Stagger will have to do.”
“Have to do what?” I asked.
“Go to the spirit world to kill Greatshadow,” said Zetetic, tossing the harpoon at me. I jumped back as the tip buried into the stone where I’d just stood.
“You almost killed me!” I shouted.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” the Deceiver said. “You aren’t alive, remember? No court would convict me.”
I grabbed the harpoon and yanked it free. I held it toward Relic. “You’re the one with the daddy-grudge. You do it.”
“Nowowon has broken my claws. It’s agonizing to hold this knife; I could never wield the harpoon effectively,” said Relic. “And Zetetic is too cowardly to be trusted with the mission.”
“I have no argument with that statement whatsoever,” said the Deceiver.
“I’m not exactly a prime physical specimen myself,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “And I’ll fight any man who says I’m not a yellow-bellied coward!”
“You may not need to fight the dragon yourself,” said Zetetic. “The War Doll — I mean, Infidel — is already in the spirit realm. The gate she passed through leads to the specific abstract reality where Greatshadow’s soul resides. She did show a certain talent for violence. If she’s somehow recovered from her psychic split, you could have her complete the mission.”