The bridges were pulled up already. He’d missed his chance to get in the easy way. Vidar briefly considered repeating his stunt with the stakra runes to get over, but dismissed it. With how woozy his head was after all the beatings he’d taken lately, and with exhaustion making his entire body feel leaden, there was just no way it’d be successful.

  Instead, he ran back and headed down the nearest entrance to the underground. The blockage would be gone now. He knew it would be. At least that was what he kept telling himself as he ran. Unfortunately, it was not. Frustrated beyond words, Vidar grabbed a stakra rune and held it up above his head, straightening his arm and placing the shoulder against the back wall for support.

  The blast of force made his bones creak in protest as the hatch rocked back a little, only to settle again. Vidar gritted his teeth and rejuvenated the rune, drawing upon the styrka rune in the palm of his hand. Again, he triggered the stakra rune, releasing it all in a burst of force that’d take the head off anyone.

  The pain in his shoulder redoubled, and he cried out as the weight above shifted, allowing the hatch to open. Heat pushed against Vidar’s face. Such terrible heat. And the smell. By now, he knew it very well. Burning.

  Finding an isaz rune took a lot longer than he would’ve wanted, but with it triggered, the heat was manageable as he climbed up. The wagon he’d seen now stood above the opening, meaning he had to crawl out of the entrance and worm his way out from under it on his belly while the whole thing burned down above him. Even with the chill rune, that quickly grew unmanageable.

  He didn’t have to endure long and got to his feet to see everything around him burning. At first glance, the entirety of the upper city stood aflame. Then he saw streets farther away that’d been spared the dragon’s wrath, at least for the moment. Trouble was, they were in the opposite direction. With the tower and his friends to the east cut off by fires, the keep to the north, and most of everything around him burning to the ground, the only option remaining was west.

  Vidar crafted another isaz rune from soot on a loose piece of debris. Two of them helped considerably, and he soon found his way to one of the surviving buildings, a tall structure with what looked like a bell at the top. He needed the high ground to find a way around the fire so he could reach his friends. This meant more climbing. He hated climbing.

  Still, climb he did. It was treacherous going with the wet stone and old fixtures liable to break if he put too much weight on them. About halfway up, he was just about able to make out the eastern tower. Too far away to see more than blurs and spots, Vidar still thought it was his own friends over there. They’d made it.

  Just as he was about to start climbing again, the ballista on the tower let loose a bolt. Even from that distance, the twang reached Vidar’s ears. Someone, most likely Siv, had painted a kenaz rune on the damn thing, making it stand out against the black night sky. It allowed Vidar to track its arc through the air as it approached the dragon, and ultimately missed.

  “No!” Vidar shouted.

  It’d been close, but not close enough to end the dragon. Vidar kept climbing, wanting to get to an even better vantage. One more shot. One more chance.

  “Ida never misses,” Vidar kept repeating to himself, like a mantra, as he climbed. “Ida never misses. Ida never misses.”

  Just as he made it to the top, the dragon bathed almost the entire plaza in fire. They were too far away for sound to make it over the roar of the flames surrounding him, but he saw soldiers running away, all of them burning as they fled.

  The dragon roared in triumph and resumed its digging. Always digging.

  Another twang made Vidar turn and look at the second arrow, soaring through the air. The arc was good. Very good. The kenaz rune shone bright like a star up in the sky, like judgment come to end their enemy.

  “Come on,” Vidar said, willing the shot to hit its mark. “Ida never misses.”

  The arrow slammed into the dragon’s side.

  “Yes!” Vidar shouted. “YES! Take that, you dragon scum!”

  It flapped its massive wings, ran a few steps, and lifted off the ground with a high-pitched whine that sounded not unlike when someone kicks a dog.

  The dragon rose into the air and Vidar felt his heart drop. It hadn’t died. The arrow didn’t work. Did Siv forget to add the styrka runes? No, there was no use thinking like that. Of course she remembered. They’d all done their tasks admirably. The failure was his.

  Vidar had failed again.

  The dragon’s climb to higher altitudes stopped, and it veered left with a heavy, unnatural tilt. In the distant night, he saw its neck glow before fire spewed from its open maw. Vidar blinked. It was a pitiful burst of flames, barely reaching past its row of jagged teeth.

  “It isn’t diving,” Vidar whispered. “It’s falling.”

  And it was. The dragon tumbled through the air, its shrieks smaller and smaller as it struggled to right itself.

  Vidar held on tight to a small pillar and leaned out into the air, shaking his other fist into the air and then pointing. “Yes! Yes, you bastard! It worked. The damned arrow worked! FEEL MY VENGEANCE!”

  He blinked and wet his lips. The thing was coming awfully close, veering in his direction with wings stretched out to its sides, gliding through the air. Grabbing for an algiz rune, knowing it would do him little good against such a massive creature, Vidar roared with equal parts fear and exhiliration as he watched the light go out of the dragon’s eyes while it tumbled through the air.

  Again, he saw something move atop the dragon’s back. Like one of the shadows, but this one had more substance to it.

  The dragon smashed into the ground right by the house. Even if it only touched the base of the house, the building crumbled beneath Vidar’s feet. He fell and struck a still-intact outcropping on the tower with a grunt of pain, then rolled and continued falling to the roof. The place where he landed broke, and he kept rolling, holding his arms around his head for protection, more from reflex than anything else. The world spun and fire raged all around him.

  His mind reeled, but he still managed to rejuvenate and trigger a whole lot of runes, including the ones on the bottom of his shoes. No matter what Vidar did, nothing helped. All it did was serve to weaken him. As he fell to the ground, his arms flopped uselessly around him. The world went dark as he struck the cold, hard ground, but only for a brief moment.

  Everything hurt. Each breath required tremendous will, and his chest felt cold. The desperate search for a rune to save him against the fall only served to worsen his chances of living through this trial.

  Vidar got to his knees and propped himself up against something warm before turning and realizing what it was. The dragon’s neck.

  He wailed in terror and pulled away, almost dropping to the ground again with how weak his legs were, but caught himself when he realized the dragon was not moving.

  It was well and truly dead.

  Vidar stood there, breathing as best he could, while looking up at the enormous beast, taller than the building he’d been standing on. All around him, buildings burned, making the air hot and uncomfortable, adding to his fatigue. Still, this was his moment of glory. For a brief moment, he basked in it, then he punched the dragon’s foreleg.

  “That’s what you get!” His words came out with a slight slur and Vidar felt the dryness of his throat. The heat on his back kept getting worse. He looked around, confused. Forming thoughts proved difficult and holding on to the ones he did manage to form even more so.

  Danger. An icy chill ran down his spine. Vidar was in danger. The fire would consume him if he stayed any longer, consume him along with the dragon’s corpse. Fitting that the beast’s destruction would end up eating into its remains, but Vidar had no intention of burning right along with it.

  Still, there was one thing he had to do, one thing to confirm.

  His legs were sluggish. Each step required more will than the last as he shuffled over to the dragon’s head, lying to the side with its enormous jaw open. As he peered in between its teeth, something moved in the corner of his eye. Vidar turned but saw nothing more than shadows behind the dancing flames.

  The dragon’s mouth was too dark, and his kenaz runes were dry from his desperate triggering as he fell. With no other option available to him, Vidar climbed into the mouth, pushing back soft tissue with a shudder as he forced his way deeper and deeper. The corpse was still warm, but for the moment, he was protected against the warmth of the fire. Any moment now, they would begin licking the dragon’s scales. No matter how thick its hide, nothing could withstand such heat.

  Vidar reached the end. It was pitch black and impossibly tight, not unlike the entrances to the underground tunnel system. Unable to move his numb arms, he briefly panicked, then remembered the kenaz rune on his forehead. Miraculously, it’d stayed on in the fall.

  Empty. It was empty. Vidar moved his tongue around in his mouth, trying, and failing, to work up a little moisture. Things were bad, but he needed to know. He’d seen the hint of something glorious and he needed to confirm, one way or the other.

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  He fed a trickle into the kenaz rune and triggered it, and there it was. Right in front of his face. A new rune. One the dragon used to create fire. The dragon used runes.

  Committing the lines to memory proved difficult. Each time he closed his eyes, the completed symbol eluded him, despite the simplicity of its design. With thoughts muddled and vision spinning, Vidar forced his hands to obey, willing them into action. The dragon’s soft insides gave way and he brought out the only implement he could find to make marks with. His knife.

  With his head lolling to the side, he pressed the blade into the skin of his arm. One small wound for each line, coming together to create the symbol. Blood oozed, forcing him to wipe it off again and again to see. He’d never get another chance like this. Vidar would be the only person in the world able to create fire out of nothing. That was worth a little suffering.

  Watching the wound made him nauseous, but he gritted his teeth, finishing the design before crawling backwards, out of the dragon’s throat and mouth.

  Outside, things were dire indeed, with the fire drawing ever closer. He heard shouting from a few streets over and what he thought might be cheers. Not trusting his own ears, he ignored everything in order to make his way back toward the entrance to the underground sewer system.

  A sound broke through the raging roar of the fire and everything beyond. It was neither high-pitched nor particularly loud. It sounded like a strained grunt. Dumbfounded, Vidar forced his stumbling legs to continue past the entrance.

  There! Trapped under the dragon’s left hind leg. A boy. Vidar frowned. No, not a boy. A young man. He wore nothing but a pair of threadbare short pants despite winter still holding the land in a tight grip. His clean and pale skin shone in the orange and red light of the flames. But what was he doing?

  Not having noticed Vidar, the young man was tying something around the thigh of his stuck leg, a piece of torn fabric. Tears were running down his face, but they did not detract from his concentrated expression. Something glinted in his hands. A knife.

  Vidar understood then and rushed forward as quickly as he was able.

  “Don’t!”

  The stranger's eyes widened, and he turned to Vidar, holding up the knife and shouting something Vidar couldn’t make out.

  Vidar held up his palms to show he carried no weapon. “I’ll help you!”

  Actually, what he really wanted was to abandon this strange man. The fire would soon take them both and risking his life for some runt who didn’t have the good sense of staying somewhere safe during a dragon attack was against everything Vidar believed in. Still, no matter what he tried telling himself, he could not abandon this strange person.

  The stranger’s eyes widened even more when he saw the rune on Vidar’s palm and his face twisted in a rage, of all things.

  Confused, Vidar approached carefully, waving for him to put the knife down. A tightened, set jaw, together with an intense glare and lips pressed to a line, signaled a deep bitterness in this strange young man as he looked between his trapped leg, Vidar, and the knife in his hand. Finally, he threw it aside.

  Vidar hurried over and threw his weight against the dragon, futilely attempting to lift it just enough for the stranger to pull his leg free. When it didn’t budge, his first thought was toward the runes.

  The tingling in his arms, like they were starting to properly wake, told him another rejuvenation would mean going without the use of them. Still, little choice remained to him.

  Vidar sat down with a thud right next to the stranger, once again marveling at just how different he looked. The shape of his face and the deep color of his hair was one thing, but his eyes were something else. Up close, he saw that they were not blue, a rarity in its own right, but violet. He’d never seen such a thing.

  Struggling to regain his focus, Vidar lifted the bottom of his shoe to point the stakra rune toward the dragon’s bulk. Some small measure of essence trickled into the runic symbol. His arm dropped to his side, completely useless, and that icy chill he’d grown to hate so much spread through his chest and down his back. The empty space around his heart twisted, squeezing the life out of him.

  His vision darkened as he struggled to draw breath. The stranger grabbed Vidar’s sagging shoulder, and they locked eyes. Vidar saw hope and compassion in them, a far cry from the anger and resentment he’d been shown before.

  It gave Vidar the strength to reach down and steady himself before triggering the rune. The stranger pulled on his leg in that same moment, moving it an inch as the dragon’s massive leg lifted from the thrust created by the much-diminished stakra rune.

  Not enough. It had not been enough. A little more of the stranger’s bare leg was free. What Vidar saw made him think that amputation might not have been such a poor choice after all. The thing looked crushed. Despite the gruesome injury, the stranger had not screamed.

  Now, he looked resigned, waving for Vidar to go, to save himself. Stubbornly, Vidar refused, leaning over to again rejuvenate the stakra rune at the bottom of his boots.

  The stranger reached out and grabbed his hand, shaking his head vigorously, speaking a mad ramble of words that held no meaning to Vidar, who pulled on his hand only to find the stranger’s grip strong like a vise.

  “Let me go!”

  The words appeared to confuse the young man, who furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes, thinking. When he spoke again, it was with great hesitation and a terrible accent, but with words Vidar knew.

  “No. You die.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The stranger’s eyes widened at the use of the word hell, but he quickly regained his composure and spoke again, not having to think this time.

  He pointed to himself. “I. Rend.”

  “Well, Rend, you better let me go or we’ll both burn to death.”

  At first, Rend tried to decipher the words, but Vidar didn’t have the patience, so he pointed at the fire. “FIRE!”

  Rend let go of his hand and shoved Vidar. “You! Go!”

  “Stop that!” Vidar crawled back, refusing to let this stranger tell him what he could and could not do. “I’m not going to die from another rejuvenation!”

  “You! Die!”

  Vidar ignored Rend and reached his numb fingers toward his boot. Again, Rend grabbed his wrist, then seemed to come to some sort of decision, one that did not agree with him. While making a face like he was disgusted with himself, he pulled on Vidar until his hand rested on the dragon’s scaled hide.

  “What?” Vidar asked, nervously looking over his shoulder at the fire that was now consuming the house he’d just fallen down from. If it collapsed any more, the entrance to the sewers, their escape, would be buried underneath the rubble.

  Rend pulled Vidar’s hand back and pointed at his palm. “You. Use. Now!”

  The styrka rune. Rend wanted him to drain essence from the dragon’s corpse. Only then did all the pieces come together.

  “You’re the one I saw. On top of the dragon. You were riding it!”

  He was speaking too fast for Rend to follow, but they didn’t have time. Instead, Vidar pointed at his hand and the dragon. “Safe?”

  Rend shook his head vigorously. “No!”

  “Fair enough,” Vidar said, closing his eyes and wincing as he triggered the styrka rune in the palm of his hand.

  Essence surged from the dragon’s corpse, filling the rune instantly. It glittered and shimmered, reminding Vidar of the stars in the sky as the circle in his mind shattered. His head tilted back and he roared as power raged into the rest of his body, unfettered but seemingly with purpose.

  The essence reached his heart almost instantly. No, not his heart. The empty area around his heart. Its constricting hold lessened, then disappeared entirely as the space filled with the same blinding speed as the styrka rune, turning into just as perfect a circle as the ones he imagined in his mind each time he worked a rune.

  Vidar gasped, his whole body feeling lighter, the exhaustion driven from his limbs. He laughed, turning his face to the sky, uncaring of the flames as they drew ever closer.

  Then the pain came upon him. Real, thunderous pain from the area inside him straining to contain the dragon’s essence, bulging outward. Removing his hand to break the flow between himself and the dead beast was impossible, like his hand and arm would not obey his command. More and more filled him, threatening to obliterate his very existence. Too much, far too much.

  His inner circle struggled to contain it all. As Vidar let out a raging, wordless scream, the containment for the dragon's essence inside him expanded, forced to grow by the influx of power. As it grew, the circle healed itself by using the very same essence that was trying to destroy it from within, trying to destroy Vidar. It grew and grew, expanding far beyond what it had been, beyond what it should've been able to.

  Finally, the essence pouring out of the recently deceased dragon and into Vidar stopped coming. He'd drained all of it. The dragon was nothing more than a husk. A husk that still rested over the stranger's leg.

  Vidar slumped to the ground, panting, still feeling like his chest was about to explode.

  “Use!” Rend shouted, and Vidar reached down to his boot, rejuvenating the rune. A drop of dragon’s essence filled the entirety of the stakra rune’s capacity, and more.

  Upon triggering it, the stakra rune burst with force, pushing the dragon’s corpse away several feet. It also propelled Vidar back and right into what remained of the burning building’s wall. Debris, dust, and sand rained down upon him.

  The back of his head sang with pain, but it was nothing compared to the raging storm inside him. It threatened to drown Vidar in his own body. Woozy from yet another strike against his head, he reached out to the kenaz rune on his forehead, triggering it while pouring massive, continuous amounts of essence into the circle.

  It was like night turned to day in that instant. If Rend or anyone else had been looking right at Vidar in that moment, their vision would have been burned away forever, as surely as if someone had plucked the eyes out of their sockets.

  A split second after triggering the rune, Vidar saw shadowy figures coalescing into something bigger, something more tangible. The light shining into their hidden corners chased the shadows away, but there was no longer a doubt in his mind that what he’d been seeing was real.

  When the circle of dragon’s essence around his heart no longer strained like a bubble near bursting, Vidar relented with the light. His back was warm, too warm, the wall behind him hot to the touch. Only then did he spot Rend crawling toward him on the ground, finally freed from the dragon’s bulk. His eyes were to the ground, his breathing labored.

  “Rend!” Vidar shouted, getting to his feet a little too quickly. The world spun around him and a wave of nausea struck. He ignored his vast assortment of injuries and ailments, hurrying to help the dragon rider.

  With one arm slung around Vidar’s shoulders, they moved slowly toward the hatch that’d take them both to safety. Vidar fumbled for the key, then remembered he’d blown the thing wide open. Anyone would be able to enter his kingdom now. At that moment, he did not care. All he wanted was to escape the fire. He longed to feel cold again.

  Rend froze right as they were about to descend.

  Vidar looked up into his face and saw him staring straight ahead, his face entirely drained of color. Fear was in every feature of Rend, from his expression to his stance, and in his lack of breathing. Uncontrollable dread. Unsure what he would see, Vidar raised his gaze to find a figure standing right near the dragon’s eyes, peering into them.

  Lytir turned to face them, a gentle smile playing across his lips. That same kind, gentle expression he’d always shown was on display. Only now, his gaze was burning with a fire hotter than any dragon’s, his pupils an undulating orange and red.

  Rend shrieked like a child and dove into the tunnel, shouting a single word.

  “Devil!”

  Vidar swallowed hard, trying not to show his own fear. “Lytir?”

  Shadows gathered at Lytir’s feet as the vagrant moved, wreathing him in a shroud of darkness. Terror struck Vidar’s heart as well, and he would have fled if his legs did not betray him.

  “A dragon felled is a foe earned,” Lytir said, running his fingers over the dead, glassy eyes of the dragon like he was caressing a lover. “Well done, little scribe. Sacrifices must be made, however regretful they may come to be.”

  Vidar regained control of his limbs and threw himself after Rend, wanting nothing more than to escape the creature in front of him. This was no vagrant. This was no man at all. Devin’s words echoed in his mind. Devil. Lytir was a devil.

  As he climbed down, Vidar heard his once trusted friend echo the words he’d heard so many times. This time, they sounded far more ominous.

  “Well done, little scribe.”

  LINK). It's sitting at a single 3-star review and it's making me a little sad :(