That vast mind shoved Lily’s mindsense away, leaving her dizzy. Keep a distance, said a mind-voice as chill and cutting as a shard of ice, or you will succumb to dazzlement.
Okay, but do you know what’s going on? The spawn rule this world, and they’ve made a deal with the Great Bitch to—
Later. The construct is already partly operational. It must be destroyed before it becomes fully operational.
Do you know what—
The spawn shot into the air. All of them. And threw fire, brilliant and glowing, at the empty sky.
And Reno was there. Clearly visible, soaring in an easy circle, forty feet of sinuous green with wings—green as dark as wet moss for the most part, but brightening to chartreuse along the ridge of his spine and the tips of his wings. The orange of his frill provided a shocking punctuation amid all that grim green ferocity.
He roared.
A dragon’s roar is like no other sound. First there’s the sheer volume. Scientists estimated it at one hundred decibels, roughly as loud as a jet plane passing overhead at a thousand feet or most rock bands. Scientists, Lily suspected, were full of shit. But then, they’d had to estimate because no dragon had been willing to roar on command so they could measure it, so maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault they got it wrong.
Then there was the deep bass of the roar. That was like being surrounded by a dozen cars with their windows down and their stereos’ bass cranked up to max—a bass that traveled through her bones as much as it did through the air. Yet it wasn’t all bass, no more than it was just a really loud noise. Harmonics turned what should have been a sonic assault into a sound of surpassing beauty.
Dragons manipulate magic with their voices.
The spawn went tumbling through the air, toes over heads, beautiful white shenyi flapping around them like ineffective wings.
Ah Wen stood, his face glowing with joy in the pulsing red light of the alarm. He lifted his head proudly and cried, “I speak for her!”
Tú’àn landed on the ground. Hard. He made it look almost like he’d intended to do so, bouncing quickly to his feet to look up at the dragon. Expressions flowed over his face like a river in flood, too fast to isolate. “H-her?”
Dick Boy had been blown backward without colliding with the ground. He, too, stared, looking rather stuffed. “That one is—is no longer female.”
“The pronoun is irrelevant.” Ah Wen’s voice was now deeper, richer, and much colder than normal. He sounded like Reno—Reno as expressed through human vocal chords, yes, but very much Reno. “Once one becomes a mother, one does not cease to be a mother. You will stop this squabbling. We have little time to amend matters concerning your arrangement with the Great Enemy. Tell me this: did you intend to destroy the world I left you, or were you unaware this will happen?”
Shēngwù, who had been blown the farthest, shot forward with absurd speed, slowing to sail alongside Reno. He screamed his reply—and clearly not just so he could be heard over the gong that still reverberated. “The world you left us? The key words are you left us!” And he hurled another invisible something at the green dragon.
The great wings froze in place. Reno dropped like a stone—an enormous green stone.
“Stop that,” Ah Wen/Reno said as Reno’s wings caught air once more. The dragon rose quickly and slapped Shēngwù with one wing. The Master of Body Magic went spinning off.
“And I thought I had mother issues,” Lily muttered.
“I wonder,” Rule said softly, “if the spawn are teenagers.”
She looked at him. “Hundred-and-fifty-year-old teenagers?”
“With all the angst and issues of a fifteen-year-old boy and vastly more power.”
Cynna moved up to join them. “Don’t forget the part about them being sociopaths. Can’t someone shut off that alarm?”
“You knew I would leave when it became possible,” Ah Wen/Reno said, the voice crisp the way Reno’s always was, but not as cold. He almost sounded sad. “You were, perhaps, young for such leave-taking, but my choices were few. I explained this. Had I not left, what territory could you have claimed that was not also my territory? You wanted your own, which is as it should be. Do you not remember this?”
“You said you would return,” Shuǐ said. “You have been gone for one hundred and twenty-nine years.”
“I am relieved to hear that. For me, it has been two hundred and nine years. That noise is annoying.” And the alarm at last fell silent, although the crimson light continued to pulse, melding its bloody color with the gold of the approaching sunset. “You have not answered my question.”
“You ask the wrong question,” Tú’àn said. “You should ask why we made such an arrangement. She offers us the ability to Change into our true forms. When we can be dragon in form as well as in mind, we will be able to enter third birth.”
“This is not sufficient cause to destroy your world.”
“A few fires will not destroy the world.”
“I told them it would do more damage than she had admitted,” Kongqi said slowly. He’d been blown almost as far as Shēngwù, but hadn’t been in as much of a hurry and had just now reached them. He hung motionless in the air, his face oddly blank. “They chose not to believe this. Please explain specifically what you mean by ‘destroy.’”
“I will explain, but understand that the words I use are imprecise. The construct will merge Earth with Dragonhome—”
Merge? What did that even mean? How could it be possible to merge two realms?
“—in such a manner that protections that have been in place for millennia will no longer apply. She will be able to enter Earth in the body of her avatar with her power intact. The merging process involves crushing the strata between the realms, which will create destructive forces such as have not been seen since the Great War. Because she wishes to rule Earth, those forces will be directed into Dis and Dragonhome. I doubt this continent will survive.”
“What proof do you offer that this is so?” Tú’àn said coldly.
“We lack the time required to present my proofs.”
“You want to stop us,” Shēngwù said, voice ominously low. “You mean to stop us.”
“Yes.”
This time he threw mage fire. Fire that burned black, not yellow or blue. The fire that burns anything.
Most of it spattered off Reno as if it had been water. Most, but not all. Reno swirled in the air like an enormous green ribbon. His tail was burning. He opened his jaws and breathed out a single note. The flames died.
“Together!” Shēngwù cried.
This time, Shuǐ threw mage fire with Shēngwù. Two streams of black fire hit Reno at the same instant.
Tú’àn shot up in the air, calling down to the Fists, “Proceed as ordered!” Then he, too, summoned mage fire and hurled it.
So did Kongqi. So did Dick Boy.
But they threw it at their brothers.
“Back!” Rule ordered as a dozen Fists charged them.
Lily got off one quick shot and took two quick steps back—and realized that Rule wasn’t retreating with her and Cynna. Instead he screamed and leaped at the sword-wielding men—and Changed in midair.
A wolf the size of a small pony landed among a dozen deeply surprised men.
THIRTY-THREE