Chapter 58: The Worst Heir in the Desert

The descending shadow crashed into Sylph, and the impact sent them tumbling over the sand. With a motion too quick to react to, it grabbed her skull and spun her around to face forward. “Don’t move,” Nahana hissed.

Veria landed about three tail-lengths in front of them. “Let her go.” Her spikes stood fully erect and her gaze shot past Sylph’s head, just as sharp.

“Leave this place if you value the life of my daughter.” Nahana tightened her grip on Sylph’s head, readjusting her pfod ever so lightly to place her entire palm on her scales. Stings radiated outward, but at this moment her body’s misguided pain was the least of her problems. Nahana could kill her the second she decided Sylph was useless to her. To say that her idea had not quite gone to plan was an understatement. But maybe it was not all lost. Considering her last thought, her mind sped up, or the world slowed down along with the throbs of her dragonheart. She had an idea.

Sylph considered Nahana’s options. If she were to use her beam now, Veria could hardly dodge it, so why didn’t she? Why did she take a hostage? “You are out of water,” Sylph said out loud, just so Veria could hear.

“Don’t be sure of that.”

Nahana held her head tight, but not strong enough to be unable to turn around a little to face her. “Veria will not give up. I got all my stubbornness from her. Do you really want an heir like Veria? Just let me go and we will both leave you alone.” Sylph pressed herself backwards and tighter into the grip. She was not an heir worth having. Nahana must realize that.

“You have no clue, little one. I made dragons obey me you could only dream of being.”

Sylph snorted. “You failed to make a human woman talk for over seventeen years.”

Nahana’s grasp tightened, and Veria raised her voice. “Sylph, stop.” Her concern was hard to hide, and yet Sylph could not help but smile. A plan, a daring one, a very dangerous one, but her confidence in herself was great enough to follow it through, so she started to hydrate the paint on her wings to reabsorb it all. “You don’t even know half my vulgar vocabulary that I will scream from your balcony. To a large crowd, of course. Otherwise, there would be no audience to witness what I’d throw after.”

The grip around her head tightened like a vice as Nahana’s fury grew with every second. She preferred her image intact? Not if Sylph existed. “Shut your snout and let the adults talk.” Shutting up was not a word in Sylph’s vocabulary, not now. Partially focused on the mirror lake within, she pulled and weaved her ability into place like a watery tapestry that would come undone with one simple tug whenever she wanted.

Sylph snorted a laugh. “You do not know to what lengths I’d go to embarrass and insult you and your legacy. You will punish me, do things I can’t imagine, but then you will think you finally broke me. I have all the time in the world to pretend and run with it, too. But then, when you think everything is fine, it is my turn to do things you can not even imagine an adult dragoness would degrade herself into doing. All your work will be undone yet again. Should I remind you about your laboratory?”

Nahana ignored her and continued her conversation with Veria. “I won’t say it again. Leave.” But it was hard to not notice the ever growing, seething hatred in her voice. Sylph had impeded her plans far too often in such a short time.

“And you know I am a pathwalker. I would not eat or drink anything I got in contact with. I hear waterfiend blood fits with every meal. Too bad you could not taste it because we are Aer.” She felt a twitch race through Nahana’s pfod as her patience crumbled. “You’d sure like to just grab my snout to make me shut up, wouldn’t you?”

“I have long seen past the game you are trying to play, little one. My pfods won’t leave your head until they leave the arena.”

Sylph played a game. That much was right, but Nahana missed the point.

“Sylph, please stop,” Brandon urged as he too noticed Nahana’s patience slimming.

In a sheepish way, it felt incredibly satisfying to talk like this to Nahana and watch her go mad. Or perhaps the adrenaline and the insatiable fire in her chest drowned out all reason. “I think I am now scared of washrooms after you tortured me. I hope your servants like to clean carpets.”

Nahana’s pfod shook and sparked with electricity, building and building in intensity like an unrelenting thunderstorm. “I will put you in the torture chamber until you won’t even dare to speak back to me. Let’s see who has more patience,” she burst forth. Her voice seeped with anger, so much so that Sylph had to bar it out to keep a calmer head than her.

With that outburst, it was time for the finale; Reason. “What a great heir I’d be, locked up in the dungeon all these years. Maybe you should’ve left me at the gate and continued with Farron, or had another hatchling.” Nahana’s shaking calmed, and Sylph knew she had reached a tipping point. Time to push her over. “What good is an heir to you that screams profanities from the dungeon and can be presented nowhere at all? Let me go.”

“I think you are right.” Nahana’s words sent an icy shiver down to her tail. “As long as you exist, I can never have a legitimate heir.” Sylph pulled on a string of liquid inside her and felt the carefully crafted knot unfurl. The flashing paint poured from her scales beneath Nahana’s pfod and down the length of her neck, forming a full circle on her back. A mere fraction of a second after the circle had been completed, the world exploded into blue and her limbs buckled like straw under her own weight. A distant sounding thud reached her ears as her head dropped into the dust.

“No!” a piercing scream tore into her ears and Veria lunged forwards.

Sylph listened to her own breaths as she laid motionless on the sand to focus. Her ears rang like an entire orchestra and her skin prickled like she had been set on fire, but she still felt and that was a good sign. Nahana had fallen for her trap. The Aer weapon failed on armored opponents and silver conducted electricity much better than steel. She rolled onto her side and winced in pain as the burns flared up. The conductive liquid vaporizing in its entirety was not something she had predicted. It scaled her scales and yet it meant she had succeeded even more than expected. Using that much power was unnecessary for her.

A dull silver wing darkened her view as Veria jumped and crashed into Nahana. Sylph watched them roll a few tail lengths. Nahana no longer stood a chance. They scratched and bit and wrestled to gain the upper hand, blood splashed all over the sand and Sylph could not even guess who’s it was. Veria jumped off to evade a desperate swipe, just to launch herself back at her. She grabbed her shoulders and forced her onto her belly with enough force to break apart a younger dragon. Veria swiped multiple times at Nahana’s upper back in insanely quick succession until she rammed her whole pfod into the wound, grabbed hold of her weapon, and ripped it out.

Screams of agony echoed through the arena as Nahana pushed Veria away by rolling to the side. Veria followed, blocked a swipe with her arm and scratched her in return. They exchanged more slashes like rabid beasts, neither caring about their wounds any longer. Blood flew and stained the sand like macabre sprinkles a cake.

All the spilled drops of liquid flying around, it reminded Sylph of the bath with Nahana. “Blood is water!” She screamed with all her might as she realized it.

Nahana twisted onto her back and all the blood in motion coalesced near her pfod. Sylph could see it in her eyes, the premature glint of a sure victory. The blood shot forward like a bolt. It connected with Veria’s pfod and surged up her arm, missing her head by inches and pulverizing one of her spikes like a cannonball a dried blade of grass.

Silver scales showered the sand, along with a larger piece of flesh with attached claw. Sylph held her breath. She had been just a little too late. With a pained outcry, Veria smashed her other pfod down on Nahana’s throat. Her claws dug deep into the muscle to hold her still as she shot downwards with her head. Nahana tore her flesh in a desperate attempt to free herself and aimed for Veria’s neck in a counter bite, but faced the spikes on the back instead. Veria’s teeth sank into Nahana’s throat. Sylph turned away. A sickening crack marked the end of Nahana.

What followed was a triumphant roar that threatened to shatter her eardrums. But then Sylph realized it was not triumph, it was pain that reverberated through her bones. An ice bitter cry that turned into a wail the longer she listened.

“Mum!” Sylph called out and pushed herself to stand, despite the intense stings coursing through her body. Her legs refused, but she forced them to wobble forward.

“S-Sylph?” Veria mumbled and wiped the blood from her face. She kept blinking, as though she wasn’t sure that she was actually awake. “You survived?!” She stepped away from Nahana and hurried her steps towards her.

“It takes more than that to kill a puddle.” Sylph fell, and Veria caught her in an embrace. Maybe the residual pain from the shock dulled her senses, but she barely recognized any stings or uncomfortable stabs as their scales touched. Even as Veria pressed tighter against her. “I’m so glad.”

They clung to each other for several seconds in silence until they parted. Sticky blood covered Sylph’s front, and she only now saw the extent of all the scratches and slashes on Veria. Most noticeable was her left arm. It looked as though somebody had dragged a barbed hook up from her pfod, which missed the left-most digit and bled profusely.

Veria followed her gaze and lifted it up to inspect. “That’s not good,” she said almost too nonchalantly, as if she noticed a scratch and not an entire missing claw. Nahana’s ability had left a clean cut all the way through the bone, leaving only a stump. Veria licked away the blood, then placed it in her mouth after the wound did not stop bleeding.

A second later, she spat out a mixture of blood and acid and eyed her pfod again. The cauterized stump still sizzled, but had stopped bleeding. Veria had to be in utter pain but showed not even a hint. Instead, she planted herself right in front of Sylph and the largest part of the remaining crowd and guards gathered on the stands. “I believe you are now their new mistress, unless somebody wants to challenge that right away.”

“Anybody else want to stop us?!” Sylph yelled in defiance at the crowd.

From the sky came a voice. “I challenge the new mistress, no champions, no death, the basic rules,” Farron said and descended to the sands. He landed with an unsteady thud about a tail length away.