Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 670: Trophies in the Sky

“I’m pleased that we were able to walk away from this peaceably,” Lorena said to them. She had resumed laying on her bed made of her ridiculously-long tail.

Jaray had long ago left, but Argrave didn’t think for a moment that the god of politics wasn’t capable of hearing them. The Heralds had shown to have a sort of omniscience over the world of such intensity that they were able to convey to Dario what Durran was saying through Elenore’s blessing of connection. The only thing that would be spared their scrutiny were the thoughts in their head—and even that was up for question.

“I never want conflict. I try to avoid it, as I hope you know,” Argrave reminded her calmly, sitting side-by-side with Anneliese.

“My daughter would be angry at me if I wasn’t on good terms with you.” Her reptilian eyes phased and settled on Anneliese. “She is a very ardent supporter, Anneliese. She’s been watching for a long time.”

“A supporter of me?” Anneliese put a hand to her chest.

“Indeed. You have a red-haired lookalike, at times. She made her mortal form in your image. She idolizes you.” Lorena smiled. “She’s been watching you somewhat obsessively since Argrave halted the war, and you caught her eye. She’d be rather embarrassed to hear me tell you this. Hopefully it’ll make her come out of the house…”

“There’s much to idolize,” he said as he held Anneliese’s hand. Argrave looked up at the moon, which was just barely beginning to phase behind some distant mountains. “The dragons are always watching us from up there? Your deal with the Heralds… it sounds so strange to me. All the tales we’ve read say that the dragons come as ugly women, picking out nice men.”

“The Heralds culled every one of our men, and ensured there would never again be more,” Lorena said as if it didn’t affect her as she used her claw-like nails to carve markings in the nearby stone. “They placed severe restrictions on how we could reproduce. Our population can never again exceed what it was at the time we made the deal. We’ve… adapted. But I’m here to be sure that you won’t experience something like that. And I do also intend to help you with what you originally sought me out for, Jaray be damned.”

Argrave’s eyes widened in surprise. “You mean stopping Gerechtigkeit’s mental influence?”

“Of course.” Lorena nodded. “It’ll be doubly needed once you’re gone, free of this world.”

“How did you come to make this deal?” Anneliese questioned, leaning forth on her seat. “How did you come to live on the moon?”

“How far back need I go?” Lorena asked, but continued before an answer came. “My situation was not so dissimilar to yours. I had lived through two comings of Gerechtigkeit. My people, the dragons, were always the foremost defenders. We were the most powerful species, and our intelligence was without peer. But we were solitary, prone to isolation. We all hated each other.”

of the dragons here?” Argrave questioned curiously. “How do they

air. “Comparing us to the ‘dragons’ you see today… that’s the equivalent of comparing

held his hands out.

charisma, subjugation, or in many cases, marriage. You’re familiar with that story, I suspect.” Lorena held out her arms, and her tail thumped against the ground as if to betray her pride. “And with them at my back, we achieved much the same thing that you did. We brought most of the world under our control—not for personal glory,

“And Sophia,” Anneliese guessed.

found the city only because Gerechtigkeit had arrived there first. It wasn’t buried quite so deeply as when you had found it. He couldn’t break the hold of the prison the Heralds had crafted, not immediately. But they feared he could, so they came to us. The Heralds asked that we do nothing more than fight and kill Gerechtigkeit, offering…” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember what it was. I didn’t consider it for a moment. I felt invincible. I was the strongest living being alive. I had killed gods. I had

you find this story on Amazon, report the

you mentioned earlier… the Heralds

creating a device that prevented him from manipulating flesh. Back then, he could create hulking chimeras out of the flesh of many unintelligent races without the will to resist, wielding them as an extension of himself—I put an end to that, harnessing the energy of the moon that had so long empowered my kin to create something that might be called a mirror. That power came to hurt him, terribly.” She shook her head. “That tremendous victory made me arrogant. For days, we fought… then, we suffered betrayal from certain gods. When the war began, there were eighty thousand

the end?”

And it remains that number, with small variations as we live and die, to

“Gods…” Anneliese exclaimed.

next the Heralds approached us, the fighting had lulled, but the future remained uncertain. There had only been crushing defeat after crushing defeat. Then, Jaray came to us. He had always been exceptionally helpful in keeping the deities in line with our ideals, but this time, he spoke for the Heralds. They would switch sides. The terrible power that Gerechtigkeit had been wielding

be killed, to the last,” Argrave

why I cautioned you so, advised you so? If only I could go back… if only I could’ve known…” She shook her head. “I’ve been ruing that day every day that

seemed frantic, even desperate—it was almost as though she was still trying to convince herself, to this very day, that her choices had been the correct ones. Or perhaps he just

question why the Heralds don’t just control things

a fact it costs them,” Lorena explained. “And they can’t persist outside of a willing host, as you know. But those that they inhabit can exhibit terrifying powers. A lich under Gerechtigkeit’s sway became capable of matching a dragon physically.

in the end, the deal…?” Argrave