The bitter chai was less medicine and more liquid fire.
Hank choked, gasped, then slumped against Juni, his body wracked by violent tremors. Sweat rolled down his ashen face, mixing with the dust of the ruined Indian hall. The hakim watched, eyes wide with hope and terror, muttering prayers to the shattered stone goddess who seemed to gaze upon their defiance.
The Greater's eye was gone, but its oppressive presence lingered like a phantom hand around Juni's throat.
The ghost Hank flickered beside them, his form thin as dying candlelight. "It's not finished!" he hissed, desperation bleeding through his voice. "The Greater withdraws to assess, not to concede. It will reassert control. This strand is too damaged... too visible!"
The Dragonbone Awakens
Suddenly, Yoggy's hopeful hum changed. It grew louder, sharper, resonating with something deeper. The air crackled with raw, untamed energy. Dust motes vibrated, forming tiny whirlwinds. Shadows writhed and stretched into impossible, sinuous shapes.
The hakim cried out, pointing a trembling finger at the brass pot. The bitter root paste inside was glowing, pulsing with faint embers like captured stars.
"Asli haddi!" he breathed. "Dragonbone! I did not know... it still held the spark!"
Hank's pain clouded eyes snapped open. "Dragon... bone?" he wheezed. "M'lady... tell me... he didn't just say...?"
The ghost Hank's expression twisted in horror. "Dragonbone is a temporal catalyst, Flux! Primordial, chaotic! The Greater imprisons their kind. Using it here... it's a beacon!"
The Discordant Sky Tears Open
Outside, the hazy Indian afternoon sky tore apart. Not with lightning, but jagged rents of impossible color – searing violet, toxic green, abyssal black. Through these tears, glimpses of other realities bled through:
Colossal crystalline spires piercing alien skies
Oceans boiling under twin suns
Desolate plains littered with fossilized ribs that dwarfed mountains
A cacophony of roars, shrieks, and tectonic groans bled into their world, creating a symphony of pure multiversal discord.
Then a shadow blotted out the chaos.
Nidhogg's Scion Descends
A massive, leathery shape filled the rift. Wingbeats thundered like artillery, shaking stones from the ceiling. It roared – a sound that wasn't just heard, but felt, rattling Juni's bones and making Yoggy quiver in terrified harmony.
It landed with an earth shaking crunch in the courtyard beyond the shattered doors.
A dragon.
But not the storybook kind. This was a creature of terrifying, alien majesty. Scales of tarnished copper and dried blood rippled over a serpentine body thicker than ancient trees. Vast, bat like wings crackled with arcs of raw temporal energy. Its head was long and jagged horned like broken obsidian. Molten gold eyes burned with ancient, predatory intelligence – and a fury that felt deeply personal.
"Nidhogg's Scion..." ghost Hank whispered, dread thick in his echoing voice. "A lesser spawn, but still... bound to the roots of the World Tree the Greater controls. It senses the Dragonbone... and its kin's imprisonment."
The Hakim's Defiance & Yoggy's Song
The dragon lowered its massive head, nostrils exhaling smoke that smelled of ozone and burnt metal. One molten eye fixed on the glowing brass pot in the hakim's shaking hands.
But the hakim didn't cower.
He raised the pot high, chanting in a language older than Sanskrit, sprinkling the glowing paste onto the dusty floor before the shattered goddess statue.
Yoggy pulsed, swelling slightly, and began to hum. Not a Nazi anthem. Not Bollywood. A single, discordant note that resonated with the fractures in reality – the sound of pure resistance.
The note hit the dragon like a blow. It reared back, its molten eyes flickering with confusion... almost recognition.
The Greater Strikes Back
But the reprieve didn't last.
The chaotic sky rippled. The nebulous eye of the Greater reformed, vaster and colder than before. It focused not on the dragon, not on Juni or Hank, but on Yoggy.
A beam of pure cosmic erase lanced down towards the pulsing blob.
"NO!" ghost Hank screamed aloud, his form blazing with desperate light. He threw himself, not physically but conceptually, into the beam's path. For a fraction of a second, the Greater's attack hesitated.
The beam struck Yoggy. The blob froze mid hum, solidifying into a shimmering crystal of temporal energy. Its hopeful song was silenced, trapped in stasis.
Ghost Hank flickered violently, almost gone. "Flux... the bone... Hank needs the spark..." His voice was fading. "The dragon... hates the Greater... more..."
The Dragon's Fury & Hank's Choice
Enraged, the dragon unleashed a torrent of temporal fire upwards, colliding with the Greater's nullity beam in a cataclysmic explosion of warping reality. The sky tore wider, revealing a vortex of screaming chaos.
Debris rained down. The brass pot clattered near Hank's hand. Glowing Dragonbone paste pulsed within like a captive star.
Hank's trembling fingers brushed the pot's rim. He looked up at Juni, pain and mad trust in his eyes.
"For... the future, M'lady?" he rasped, smearing the paste onto his gangrenous wound.
Agony wracked him. But beneath it, a faint, impossible warmth spread from the wound, battling death's creeping chill.
The Leap into Chaos
The dragon, its fury momentarily spent, extended a colossal claw towards the shattered window.
Ghost Hank, barely a shimmer now, gave Juni one last desperate look. "Go... with the storm..." Then he vanished, spent but not gone.
The Greater's eye began to gather power again.
"Hold on, Rigby!" Juni snarled. She grabbed Hank and the hakim, dragging them towards the gaping window. The dragon's claw was there – a platform of living scale and ancient power.
With a final, adrenaline fueled heave, she pushed them both onto the rough surface and scrambled up herself.
The Discordant Sky Consumes Them
The dragon's wings beat down, lifting them with hurricane force. Below, the Greater's beam vaporized where they'd stood. Yoggy's crystal form glowed faintly amidst the ruins.
As the dragon surged upwards into the screaming, multicolored vortex, Hank groaned, clutching a massive scale. The hakim chanted prayers to gods old and forgotten. And Juni Flux, Temporal Anthropologist, stared into the storm of infinite realities – a sentient dragon beneath her, a spark of defiance in her hand, and the Greater's cold gaze fading into the chaos behind them.
> The chaotic love story had just gone multiversal. And it had just acquired scales.
End of Chapter 10
[Next Time:]
"Riders of the Fracture Storm" – The Custard Rebellion finds a draconic ally as the Greater unleashes its final purge…