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Interlude 2: LANDON

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Interlude 2: LANDON

Dodging the monster's beak is more of a reflex than anything else. But then she slashes towards him with her talons like a cat swatting at a spider, and he's sent through the wall—literally. Plaster and brick rain down into the back garden.

His form flickers when he lands on top of the overgrown hedge with a snap of branches, but he can't change, not until he remembers his name. It takes years to recall one's name from the abyss of death, but this time—this time is different. He can feel the shape of it on the tip of his tongue, so tangible he could almost taste it.

She stretches out massive copper wings that send out fiery sparks and glides down right on top of him. He rolls out from underneath her, without feeling a single one of the scrapes and bruises on his body and grabs a piece of wall big enough for him to hold. With all the strength of a seventeen-year-old human boy, he hurls it at the mountainous gryphon before him.

It hits her right in the head. She shrieks, not in pain, but in annoyance. "You dare, Little One..." Her lion's tail swishes, cutting through the air like a whip. She stalks towards him. "You are mine, my flesh, my blood. How dare you show defiance? How dare you cling to hope?"

If he'd any words to spare, he'd tell her that he's not the one who clings to hope, it's the other way around.

He moves away from her, but in a half circle, so she can't pin him to any wall. They circle one another, like two beasts preparing to fight—or a boy taking on a fully grown gryphon. With a single word, she could empower the compulsion she placed upon him centuries ago, but she chooses not to, instead, relishing in this game.

If he could keep her going long enough, he could buy himself some time. His name feels so close.

He turns all at once, leaping over the demolished part of the hedge and out into the street beyond. She's after him faster than any mortal creature could fly and he could hear her sneering laughter in his mind.

He expects her to let him run a bit, before snatching him up.

But she doesn't.

She swoops down before he's even clear of his parents' drive, talons carving into his back. He screams, sharp pain shooting through his pathetically small form.

"This ends now," she shrieks. "This is your last life."

Warm human blood courses down his back. He knows it's coming. For some reason, Revenna is anxious to end this. He doesn't have time to wonder why.

Despite himself, he squeezes his eyes shut, willing the blow to never come.

"Stop," says a voice that could command mountains to dance.

"Who's there?" Revenna asks.

"Give him to me. He has been spoken for by the Dragon of Manhattan."

"Is that so? Last I checked, the dragon's reach starts and ends in North America. Does the dragon think he can send a lackey over here, wave a name and expect me to comply? This is my son. He is mine to destroy."

She doesn't sense the danger, she doesn't see what's coming. Revenna, Landon marvels, has truly grown old.

"I'm no lackey," says the voice and Landon could hear, from his place on the ground, the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Whatever you are, you are nothing but a nuisance. THIS IS A FAMILY MATTER," she barks. "I will finish HIM, and you're next."

"You have grown mad and weak, Revenna," says the intruder with the practiced calm of the monster of monsters. "You've destroyed a once magnificent race and now you claw at your last chance for salvation. He has been claimed, he is no longer yours."

She finally senses it, finally sees her error. Not a bird makes a sound, even the wind holds its breath. In the presence of dragons, the very air is filled with so much magic it is difficult to feel anything but terror. Landon senses Revenna's talons on his back grow lax and begin to tremble.

"It's over," says Summervell, the dragon of Manhattan.

It happens very fast. Revenna is weak and Summervell, always the pragmatist, doesn't play games. He flashes into his dragon and back to his human faster than Landon's eyes could see.

Revenna is off him. She lies there in a heap greyer than the tarmac. Landon doesn't know what to feel beyond the physical pain of the talon wounds along his back. He listens for her name as she disintegrates, leaving behind the corpse of an old woman wrinkled with age and something catches his eye—but he can't see as well as he's supposed to, not yet. Whatever it is, it feels meddlesome and irritating, something that shouldn't be here.

"What do you see?" Summervell asks, but Landon doesn't reply, instead he glares up at the man-shaped dragon.

"I'm not going to thank you," he says coolly.

"I don't need what I didn't earn," Summervell replies. "We have work to do."

Landon stays silent.

"I should have listened back then," says the dragon. "When remedying the situation would've been simpler."

"Simpler? You mean, when it was possible..." If he weren't injured and could've moved, Landon would have walked away. "You were short-sighted. All of you. We're past the point of no return, and you've gone and killed Revenna. Don't you feel it, we can't even afford—"

"She was at the end of her human life, which was why she was desperate."

"There won't be enough magic to sustain her rebirth."

"Then you'll be free of her at last."

Despite the pain, Landon's arms fly out. "I'll be free to watch it all end. Everything. All of it."

"Then there is work still to be done," says the dragon. "Do you remember where you left the lens that time you died?"

Landon says nothing.

"I will help you find your name. I will vouch for you. The others will learn to comprehend that you, Little One, are the key to our salvation. Like when you found the way to defeat the Black Death, your plan is the only viable solution."

There's a long spell of silence in which neither of them moves.

"Summervell..." Landon sighs, wincing as he tries to shift into a more reasonable position. "This could go badly. I don't know what these...things...will unleash."

The dragon steps towards him and crouches down. "We will just have to discover that together."

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