The next wing of dragons was now close enough for her Faery eyes to count individuals: a dozen. She also thought she could make out a few curious Chetsuans peeking out from their underground hidey-holes. Dreya the Dark was about to provide them with a feast. It wouldn’t be the most varied diet, but at least starvation would no longer be a worry.
“Time to show you lot what I can really do,” she told the dragon on the ground.
She waited until all twelve dragons were in range and then fired her beam of focussed energy like a deadly searchlight, blasting straight through the lot of them.
Dreya was no expert on dragon facial expressions, but she flattered herself that the emotion she was seeing displayed before her on the face of the dragon on the ground – now stunned figuratively as well as literally – was fear.
“I didn’t actually need to use that much power against a mere dozen of your kind, but I thought it would be a useful demonstration of the fate that awaits you, should you fail to do everything I say from this moment on. In fact, compared to what I will do to you if you disobey, that was mercy.”
“What are you?” the dragon gasped.
“I’m y—” she stopped herself. “Sorry, for a moment there, I was actually going to say, ‘I’m your worst nightmare’. Can you believe that? What is it about conquering the world that makes it so easy to slip into melodrama? Let me try again: I’m your ruler, now. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s less melodramatic or more. Whatever. My name is Dreya the Dark. Mistress Dreya is the most acceptable way for you to address me. Basically, I’m in charge, now, and any dragons out there who think otherwise, you’re going to help me convince them.
“In a moment, I’m going to release you. I’ve already covered what happens if you disobey, so you’re obviously not going to do that. Instead, let me tell you what you are going to do. You’re going to let me ride on your back across the sea to where your soon-to-be-ex-ruler Mallax is based. You know the place, I presume?”
“Yes, Mistress Dreya.”
“Excellent, and does it have a name?”
“It is called the Citadel of Doom, Mistress Dreya.”
The sorceress gave the dragon a look of pure incredulity.
“You have got to be kidding me!” she demanded, though it was clear he was serious. “There we are again: melodrama. Maybe there’s something in the air, here. Mind you, I suppose I’m in no position to criticise. My home is called ‘The Black Tower’. That’s not exactly subtle, either, is it? Still, it’s hardly my fault. I didn’t choose the name. Unfortunately, I can make no such excuses about my next line.” She climbed onto the dragon’s back and cancelled the stun. The dragon rose, carefully and tested his wings. “You see, while I’ve been talking,” Dreya continued, “I’ve been trying to think of a better way to say this, but I can’t find one, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to just go with it.”
She closed her eyes against what she was about to say, but there was just no avoiding it.
“Take me to your leader,” she ordered, finally, and the dragon took to the sky. “You see? Melodrama. Try as I might, I just can’t get away from it.”
*****
An hour’s flight later, and she’d really caught someone’s attention. As they flew, they were frequently assailed by larger groups of dragons. Ten, a dozen, fifteen, twenty. Fighting on dragonback was a new experience for the Faery woman, but it didn’t make much difference in practical terms. Some of the assaults she faced were at last powerful enough to be a significant threat, forcing her to invent the technique of short-range teleportation for both herself and her steed to avoid many directed attacks. Every time she used a power word, she immediately compartmentalised a section of her brain to work on refolding it so that it would be ready to use again a few minutes later.
Sara and Jessica’s intelligence proved consistently invaluable and unerringly accurate. Thanks to them, she knew exactly what each type of dragon was capable of and could be prepared to counter their threat before they were even in range. Without their help, she would likely have died at least twice already.
One species of dragon had a particular talent for telepathic attacks. Half a dozen of those assaulting her mind at the same time was putting a severe strain on her mental resistance, even with her sympathic link through Catriona to the Ysirian, Pyrah. Without that link, she knew she probably would have succumbed long since. As it was, she had to make them primary targets. Cutting down their numbers was her top priority, even allowing herself to get slightly singed from minor penetration of her shields against physical magic and fire breath.
At one stage, more than two dozen of the creatures closed in on them from all sides. Blood magic combined with higher planar energy turned the sky to liquid flame, and after that, the two that survived, thanks to being immune to fire, were easy pickings.
As they flew closer to the citadel, Dreya was prepared to pull more power from her guards back home. Never one to allow arrogance or conceit over her abilities to cloud her assessment of any situation, the sorceress knew that when she got to the heart of the matter against Mallax and his elite guards, she was going to need all the power she could get.
Conveniently, the so-called Citadel of Doom was also a Citadel of Dome, covered by a dragon-sized domed roof made of glass. According to Sara, this building had once been the seat of Chetsuan government on this continent before Mallax rose to power and wrested it from them. It was about twice the size of the Council building in Walminster whose lofty halls Dreya frequented back home.
She made a mental note to give Cat the news about official things that had happened there, next time she saw her. She was sure she’d be pleased. But that was for later.
In the here and now, from her position high above, Dreya could already see the enormous red dragon that lay inside that building, on what appeared to be all the world’s treasure in one decadent golden mountain. Mallax, surrounded by his elite guard of twelve.
It was almost time to make an entrance, but there was one final piece of business to take care of, first: her dragon mount.
“Listen,” she began. “You’ve given me not a bit of trouble the entire journey, and I haven’t needed to waste a single drop of power on keeping you in line. I appreciate that, just as I realise that I couldn’t have come so far without a ride. That means I owe you, and I always pay my debts. The way I’m going to repay this one is by giving you one chance to keep on living. For your final service, when I say ‘dive’, I want you to nosedive towards that glass dome. As soon as I’m in range, I will break it apart, jump off your back and levitate the rest of the way down. That is your one chance to fly away. You’ve seen what I can do, and believe me I’ve been holding back, so if you even think of trying anything, you will be dead before you ever finish the thought. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Mistress Dreya,” the dragon replied.
“Excellent. Now, dive.”
As the dragon accelerated downwards, Dreya gathered her will, focussed on the glass and said, “SHATTER,” causing the glass to break into a million tiny fragments. True to her word, Dreya dismounted and began to float down. As she descended, she created a conduit of power through her micro-portal, connecting with her elite guards and the magic that powered all the defences of the Black Tower’s grounds.
Her chief death knight sent a telepathic message that all was ready. There was just one slight wrinkle in the plan, however: Laethyn, the Black robe Triumvirate representative, was approaching her Tower, clearly on the warpath. It was not unexpected, after what she’d stolen from him. It was just inconvenient timing. Still, there would be time to deal with that, later. Right now, she was rather more interested in the scene before her, and she needed to have access to every drop of power at her disposal, even though that would leave the Black Tower defenceless. If all went well, even if her Black Tower were to fall, she would have the resources of this whole world to help her take it back. If things went badly, she wouldn’t live long enough to care.
She was prepared to prick her finger on her dagger, but it proved unnecessary as a stray shard of glass grazed her left cheek and did the job for her. As she floated down, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. She prepared to draw on all of her power, leaving nothing to chance, because this was where the intelligence provided by Jessica and Sara ended. Understandably, they knew practically nothing about Mallax himself, beyond his general distaste for Chetsuans. Nothing of strategic value. Dreya the Dark would simply have to be prepared for anything.
Even as she drifted down, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck began to tingle in subconscious warning: something was wrong. She didn’t know what it was, but she trusted her instincts. At the last possible moment, she telepathically told her guards to stand down and await further instructions. Then, instead of unleashing her beam of higher planar energy, she sent out a simple torchlight at negligible power. The light immediately shone back in her face, forcing her to close her eyes. It must have been some kind of power reflection field, she realised, not unlike Catriona’s Nature’s Mirror. If she had unleashed her full power as she had planned, she would have killed herself instantly. She had to concede it was a clever ploy and she had very nearly fallen for it.
As her feet touched the floor, she opened her eyes and realised something else: her feet should not be touching the floor. She should have landed on top of the dragon. Except he had vanished.
The scene changed before her eyes. She found herself in the middle of the vast chamber, as she intended, but there was no mountain of treasure. Instead, the spot in which she was standing was a small, empty space, surrounded by a cylinder of glass. She was inside, and the dragons were on the outside looking in. Mallax deftly picked up a disc-shaped object in his claws, placed it on top of the glass cylinder and screwed it on tight. With horror, Dreya realised that from the dragons’ perspectives, she was a fascinating specimen they had caught in a jam jar.
Moreover, as the lid closed, she felt cut off from all of her magic. Even her micro-portal had closed because she was inside an anti-magic field. The dragons rumbled with what she took to be their equivalent of laughter.
“You’ve been causing my dragons quite a bit of trouble,” thundered Mallax.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Dreya replied, acidly. If he was planning to talk her to death, so much the better for her. It gave her what she needed: time. Maybe she’d talk him to death, instead.
“What manner of creature are you?” Mallax wondered.
“Why don’t you let me out of this cage so you can examine me more closely and find out for yourself?”
Again came the laughter.
“Oh, there’s no rush,” he replied. “You belong to Mallax now. You’re going to be in there for a very long time, or at least as long as you’re entertaining. So, I suggest you learn to enjoy your new life as Mallax’ plaything!”
“No,” Dreya stated, flatly, holding up a warning finger, as if scolding him.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no!” she insisted. “No, no, no! I won’t have it. Not on my world, not on this one, not anywhere. I mean, I’m an open-minded kind of girl, tolerant like you wouldn’t believe. I even dabbled with melodrama myself, earlier, but at some point, you’ve just got to draw a line and say no.
“OK, I admit, you’ve caught me, and that gives you the right to gloat, no question. Threaten me, taunt me, even torture me, that’s fine, but never ever talk about yourself in the third person. That is going too far, I’m against it, and I’m saying no.”
“You talk too much, plaything,” Mallax growled.
“Really? I thought you wanted me to be entertaining. Well, this is me entertaining you. And I’ll tell you something else,” she continued. “If you’d got me in this position only a week ago, I have to confess I would have been in a bit of trouble, but it’s not a week ago, it’s now.
“You see, back home, I have a girlfriend, Catriona. Oh, she’s magnificent! Really funny, totally gorgeous, and so, so smart. Seriously, she has an absolute genius talent for magic, and I don’t throw the g-word around lightly because I’m in the room. The reason I mention this is that she recently figured out something important about anti-magic fields. Would you like to know what it is?”
“Astound us.”
“They’re useless. An anti-magic field is itself a form of magic. So, if Cat were here, she’d adapt her magical frequency to run off the field itself. The thing is, though, Cat and I do things differently when it comes to magic. I’ve learned to drain power, syphon it off and add it to my own. On the way here, I met a very helpful dragon. He gave me a ride, and on that journey, I analysed his magic. Through that, I was able to drain many more of the dragons I killed on the way, and pretty soon, I got a handle on how your dragon magic works.
“Anyway, I’m sure you don’t want to know all the technical stuff. The point is, you think you’ve trapped me in an anti-magic field, but in reality, you’ve just made me stronger!”
Draining power from the surrounding field, she drew it into herself and fed it her blood. Even as she had been talking, she had been attuning her magic, reaching beyond the glass walls, and quietly reversing the reflection field. As the power grew, the air began to vibrate and hum with energy. It was too much power for her to absorb, but she didn’t need to absorb it, just ignite it where it lay. The looks on the faces of all the dragons in that place – the twelve elite guards, and Mallax himself – switched from arrogance to terror in an instant.
The time was now; her power word was ready once more. Focusing on the glass jar, she said, “SHATTER,” and the glass blew outwards. She levitated high into the air so that she was level with Mallax’ great head.
“What manner of creature am I?” Dreya taunted him. “Oh, to hell with it, just this once, I’m actually going to say it…” She gave a chilling smile, and told him, “I’m your worst nightmare!”
She unleashed a devastating beam of energy straight at Mallax, blasting a hole right through him and coming out the other side. He was in agony, but still alive.
“Kill it!” he gasped, and his guards turned to fight, but it was too late. Far too late. Everything they threw at her reflected back at them, while Dreya shielded like never before and drew the power in close, letting it build for a second or two, before unleashing it. The blast flew out in a ring of fire, pushing outwards, engulfing everything in its path. A moment later, the Citadel of Doom was gone, replaced by a crater in the ground, with a lone Faery woman in the centre of the devastation. Mallax’ guards and all dragons in a one-mile radius were incinerated. Only Mallax remained. Focusing her will on him, knowing he was sufficiently weakened, she unfolded her power word, “DIE,” killing him on the spot.
When more dragons flew to the scene, she levitated up high to intercept them. “I am Mistress Dreya the Dark,” she declared. “Let it be known that Mallax is dead, and his regime dies with him. I am now the ruler of Phitonia. If any of you want to dispute that, come over here, and I’ll quite happily kill you.” There were no takers. “Alright then,” she continued, returning to the ground, “let us begin changing your world.”