The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City

Chapter 31: Tabitha

Soldiers coughed and huddled around the middle of the deck, choking on the furious heat that surrounded them. The engineers, Chief Dremora included, were crouched near the bricks of Cold-stone, trying to shield themselves from the fires. Even Mathias, beside her at the helm, had rivulets of sweat trickling down the sides of his face.

In her hand, the controls were hot enough to sear fabric on contact, and sweat falling on the deck evaporated instantly.

All of this despite the fortune in cold-stone around the ship, and her own power.

"We can't do this much longer," Mathias noted. For a reason Tabitha couldn't explain, her shadow had a Salamander slung over his shoulder. If she weren't focused on keeping the Dragon's fire from the ship, she might have asked about it.

"We don't have to," Tabitha promised, flinching as the Dragon pounded harder against the lift-bag.

Whatever Mathias was going to say was interrupted by the sudden absence of fire. Cold air rushed across the deck, the breeze a welcome relief to Tabitha's anxiety.

He got it, she thought to herself. Well played, boy.

Firelight flashed on the side of the ship and Tabitha reached for her own power on reflex, as the Dragon tumbled into view.

Its immense wings were somehow trapped tight against its body, and fire pounded the air as it tried to stop its descent. But as Tabitha brought fire across the rails to shield the crew from the Dragon, it reached with its immense claws and dug hard into the deck.

The ship swung violently, tossing Tabitha to the deck. She managed to land with her hands in front of her face, and was up again in only a moment, to find to her horror that the Dragon was clinging to her ship.

Its immense leg dug through the ship and clutched the inside of the hull, while its arm gripped into the deck, smashing one of the Valkyries apart as if it were a child's toy. The engineers had scattered, and the soldiers were already grabbing Salamanders.

Tabitha reached into her pocket and drew out a half-dozen Salamander shells, advancing on the Dragon. She fired as the beast aimed a blast at some of the first soldiers to begin peppering the beast with Salamander shot, and managed to knock its head so hard it crashed into its own shoulder.

The motion caused the ship to jerk again, and cause her to stumble, just as the Dragon fired a stream of brilliant white fire at her. Desperately, she hit it as hard as she could, scattering fire that cut holes into the deck and threw nearby soldiers off the rails.

The Dragon didn't relent, pressing its assault. Terror gripped her as she pushed against the Dragon's fires, and she became intimately aware of all the fire around her.

The Valkyrie rounds on the deck would turn the battle for her. The fires in the lift-bag offered strength enough to pound the Dragon into the water. But the lure of the Spire, closer now than it had ever been in her life, sang of power to drown her foe in flame, to crush its will and life in an onslaught of fury the world had never before witnessed.

Become the fire! Become power, and life!

"Damnit, Gerald," Tabitha whispered desperately. "Put a hole through the lift-bag! Drown us both before one of us destroys the City!"

At the edge of her perception, a small flash of fire erupted behind her, and the oddest sensation passed through her awareness. A flash of cool air, as swift as the sound it made, punched through the fires clashing between her and the Dragon.

The Dragon screamed a gut-wrenching sound that shook the ship, but filled Tabitha with hope.

Something had hurt it!

But how?

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she glanced to her right without turning her head to see the rim of a familiar hat.

"You were right. It hates cold-stone," Mathias said, standing right behind her. He popped open the Salamander in his hands with surprising familiarity. In his gloved hand, he held several small pieces of black stone.

"I'll draw its attention. Get close. Use that knife."

Tabitha nodded, and took the knife out of her pocket.

The Dragon turned back to look at them, but only one of its terrible eyes shone through its fires. The other eye was a black blot.

Mathias dashed towards the bow of the ship, levelling the Salamander at the Dragon. Out of fear, the Dragon turned its head to shield its remaining eye.

Clever shadow. The beast was no longer watching her.

She charged, knife in hand.

The heat emanating from the beast hit her like a wall, pushing at her and forcing the air out of her lungs. She hissed, and forced herself forward, into the swirling mass of air and radiating heat.

The Dragon turned to her, noticing her presence in the fires around it, and moved to fire a mass of flame from its immense jaws. But it flinched and cried out, as Mathias fired his Salamander at it.

Tabitha closed the last few feet and leapt up off one of the slagged guns, jamming the cold-stone dagger as deeply as she could into the beast's shoulder.

It cried in pain, flinching backwards as far as it could manage with its claws stuck in the hull of her ship. As it shied away, Tabitha lost her grip on the handle of her dagger, and dropped to the deck, ducking back beside the ruined Valkyrie.

The Dragon turned its head to her, and she could feel see its neck coil up, ready to snap its head towards her.

"Tabitha!" Tabitha heard Mathias call out, and she could tell by the cold-stone he wore that he was charging the damn beast.

She didn't hesitate. She set her hand on the wreckage of the Valkyrie, felt the charge still inside, and lit it up.

Fire and molten metal enveloped her. The force of a thousand cannons flung part of the deck into the Dragon. She didn't bother to try and shield herself, instead hurling everything she had into this single blow.

Her last thought, as she was thrown from the deck into the air, was that she now knew why Crafters didn't try to fly.