Ch. 134

Ch. 134
The jaw muscles beneath his pale skin tighten as he makes this offer, and I wonder at the weight of what the Professor is promising. If anyone could find a way to sneak the Empress’s favorite science experiments through the border beneath her own nose, it would be him.
The floor beneath us trembles again, more violently than before. A shower of stone fragments rains down from what remains of the ceiling, pinging against Coach's scales. I duck instinctively, arms covering my head, but the debris that would have struck me is intercepted by Coach's wing, extended with casual protectiveness above me.
Walderon's massive tail lashes against a crumbling column, reducing it to powder with a single blow. The gesture seems almost contemplative rather than aggressive, like a human might tap their fingers while thinking. His silver eyes narrow to glowing slits in the darkness, fixed on Professor Bellamy with predatory intensity.
"Sorcerers. Ever the diplomats," he growls, the words emerging in plumes of crystallizing breath. "Always believing you have the moral high ground while serving a king who abandoned his own kind."
The accusation catches me by surprise. Did he mean the High King? What abandonment?
Professor Bellamy's expression remains impassive despite the accusation, his face a perfect mask of polite detachment.
"My offer stands. Safe passage. Nothing more."
His voice carries no defensiveness, no denial of Walderon's charges. It strikes me suddenly how little I truly know about Professor Bellamy—about his past, his politics, his true allegiances. The man who seduced me with knowledge and mystery remains an enigma even now, with death looming over us all.
Walderon rears back, his massive body rising to its full height in the confined space of the collapsing chamber. His chest expands visibly, scales glittering as frost begins to gather around his maw. The temperature drops so rapidly that my next breath burns in my lungs, the moisture in the air crystallizing instantly.
"Then your offer means nothing to me," he roars, the sound reverberating through the chamber with enough force to dislodge more debris from above.
Everything happens at once. Coach shouts "Get down!" as he pivots with impossible speed, his massive body a crimson blur as he positions himself between me and his brother. His wing sweeps around, forcing me to the floor and covering me in a protective canopy of scaled membrane. Through the gaps between his wing joints, I see Walderon's attack forming—a blinding concentration of pure cold gathering in his throat, blue-white light building to an impossible brilliance.
Professor Bellamy's hands move in frantic patterns, faster than I've ever seen him cast. Runes spiral from his fingertips, overlapping and connecting into a complex lattice of protective magic. The symbols glow so brightly they leave afterimages burned into my vision when I blink.
"It won't hold," Coach growls above me, his voice vibrating through his entire body. "Not against a Grand Drake's breath."
"It doesn't need to hold," Professor Bellamy responds, his voice strained with effort. "It just needs to redirect."
Walderon unleashes his attack—not a stream of ice crystals as I expected, but a concentrated beam of absolute zero that cuts through the air with the precision of a surgeon's blade. The freezing ray moves with deceptive slowness, warping the space around it as moisture in the air freezes and shatters in its wake. The cold is so intense it registers as a physical pressure against my skin even through Coach's protective covering.
Professor Bellamy's protective ward blooms into existence at the last possible moment, a shield of runes that intercepts Walderon's attack. For a heartbeat, the ward holds, the ice breath splitting around its edges like water around a stone. Then the runes begin to crack, fracturing under the relentless cold.
Coach curls his body tighter around me as the ward fails, positioning himself to absorb whatever makes it through. Above me, I hear his sharp intake of breath as the redirected portion of Walderon's attack catches his wounded flank. The dark corruption there pulses violently, spreading visibly beneath his crimson scales.
Professor Bellamy is thrown backward by the force of the failing ward, his body slamming into the chamber wall with a sickening impact. He slides to the floor, momentarily stunned, blood now flowing freely from both his nose and a new gash across his forehead.
The ice beam continues past us, striking the far wall with enough force to shatter the ancient stone.
The Cobalt Drake's ice beam strikes the far wall with the force of an ancient glacier, shattering stone that's stood for centuries. The impact reverberates through the chamber, awakening new tremors in the already unstable vault. I struggle to stand beneath the protective canopy of Coach's wing, my ears ringing from the deafening clash of elemental magic. Through the membrane of his wing, I see Walderon's silver eyes gleaming with three centuries of hatred, his massive body already tensing for another attack.
"Stay down," Coach growls, the command vibrating through his scales and into my bones.