The moment her flaming wings unfurled behind her, she evidenced speed and strength well above what she had shown before. Given little time to think, Blackthorne narrowly avoided her hard blows, while she whittled away at his body and life force with her quicker less powerful attacks.

Claws tore through his traveler’s garb and scraped flesh time after time. Minor wounds, to be sure, but such things added up. Soon, enough of them had massed together that they began to bleed freely.

By this time many of the people in the crowd had fled from the scene. They did not want to get caught up in an errant burst of flame. Sonja sat in place with her eyes glued to the battle. She wanted to join in, but to her chagrin she knew that she would be a distraction at best. That realization stung her, but she was not a fool. The level of power that Branwen evidenced was, in her eyes, like what a valkyrie should be able to do at her apparent age. Not for the first time did she curse her bastard of a husband, but this was the first time that she felt anger at herself for not being able to live up to her potential.

The seats around her were mostly empty. Scraggles, the alchemist, and the grocer remained nearby but the less developed members of society were scattered around the room in small grouped together pockets of onlookers.

Back in the makeshift arena, Blackthorne had his work cut out for him. Branwen proved relentless. She moved with the speed and ferocity of a raging beast, but the skill and precision of a machine. Despite what he believed to be his statistical advantage; she was definitively the better pure fighter between them.

When he attempted to shift into shadow form to avoid a series of blows, the flames enshrouding her hands made him shout in pain as they tore through his shadowy mass. At a loss, he decided to simple endure a few of her attacks. The trade-off was that when she unleashed a rapid-fire combination of punches, he positioned himself in such a way that he allowed them to scrape against his flesh just enough for those blows to hurt. However, it gave him the opportunity to counter her momentum by snatching her horn and using it to throw her to the side. She was sent flying but arched her way into a mid-air flip and landed on her feet. Before she even touched down, however, she was already charging her dragon fire.

The distance, however, was substantial enough that Blackthorne was able to give her a little taste of her own medicine. She released her flames first, a powerful burst of fire that scorched the air and crossed the distance with ease.

Before it could strike its target, Blackthorne unleashed his own flames. Blackfire laced with lightning surged from his palms. Those flames engulfed the flames released by Branwen. Should flames be known to have a life, clearly this would have sucked the very life from them. His fire consumed hers and raced across the court room arena with blistering speed.

She cried out in shock as the fire washed over her body. Her hair became singed. Her flesh reddened. It also seemed that her life was being sucked away by those black nightmare flames.

Only stunned for a brief second by those hellish flames, she threw herself to the side and rolled on the ground to escape the inferno. Already, her skin had begun to heal itself. Her physicality was so great that even his dragon fire could not do significant damage with a single burst. Clearly, it was an attack that could hurt her. Even so, he could not keep it up indefinitely. As things stood, their regeneration rates were so ridiculous that the fight could go on for hours.

Branwen stomped the ground and launched herself toward him once more, her foot cracking the floor due to the pressure. More by instinct than any true plan, Blackthorne shifted into shadow form then dived into the ground below. He could not sense much of his surroundings due to the density of the materials around him, but he could tell the difference between up and down given how he had just gone down. He shot forward a good distance and waited a moment.

A tremor ran through the foundation of the building. It took him a moment to realize what was happening, but Blackthorne would have sighed heavily had he the time to waste. Branwen was shattering the floor in various places to try and stomp him out. Her foot ablaze, the residual energy would singe him if she guessed right.

He could not help but wonder at why she fought so fiercely. She was a slave. Clearly, she would want her master to summer a defeat if it meant that she might be set free. Yet, she had only hesitated to fight him in the beginning. After a small amount of prodding from the slave seal on her back, she fought him like her life depended on it.

Once that train of thought occurred, he realized something. Did her life depend on it? What was worth more to the Davrin family? Was it the pride in a unique slave that they could show off? Was it the money they might earn from her? She might only be related to dragons in a distant manner, but how much were her body parts worth? Her horns alone would fetch an obscene price.

There could be other reasons as well. For all he knew, those two were kinky and liked to play S&M games with each other. That latter thought chilled him a bit. He struggled to fight back against her, partly because he did not want to fight someone who had no choice. Yet, what if she did have a choice?

The tremors grew more powerful. She was closer to him now. He moved a bit to keep his distance. He knew that he could not go far, however, or he would get lost in the dirt.

He could not glean much information from her. Either her mental walls were too thick, or her charisma was too powerful. It amounted to the same thing. She might even have skills or a racial ability that weakened such things.

After the next tremor washed over him there was a brief pause. The silence of his underground world was soon broken by a strong feminine voice. “Lord of shadow. Lend your only remaining daughter your eyes that she might find this creature.”

Confused for a moment, Blackthorne nearly rose out of the foundation in order to see who it was who had spoken. He stopped himself, however. It was like before! The voice was different, but he clearly heard a feminine voice speaking something that sounded reminiscent of a prayer.

He had not heard the voice before, but from the context it had to be Branwen. What exactly was this lord of shadow to whom she had prayed?

She stomped and broke the ground in several places before her voice echoed through his mind once more. Her tone was one of self-recrimination, of incredible sadness.

In that moment, the walls fell away to a small degree. A minute fraction of her thoughts and feelings washed over Blackthorne. Throughout the entirety of her life, she had prayed. Never once had her god listened or answered her. Yet, still she prayed.

A crushing wave of loneliness and despair rolled through his mind. Everything had been taken. Her family. Her home. Her innocence. Even her body was nothing more than a tool for the pleasure of the man who had slain her family. Yet, she could not even allow herself to die. She was the last. She was alone. If she died, then everything that happened to her family would be forgotten. It would rot away… just like her unmourned corpse would rot.

Her words came again, and again. She was sorry that she was not strong enough. Sorry that she was nothing more than a slave. Please, do not let it end this way.

Blackthorne was annoyed before. It was an annoyance that rose to anger as the court proceedings were revealed to be a corrupted sham. However, that anger had never been meant for this girl. She who fought so fiercely, solely because to do otherwise would mean that everything she ever loved would die with her.

He knew now who it was to whom she had been speaking. He could deny it no longer. It was there all along. She did not fight him fiercely, she fought against the loss of the only thing that she had left.

The only thing that confused him was the fact that she seemed to be entirely certain that she would be killed if she did not win this fight. He could not be certain, but fleeting glimpses of her life as a slave allow him to sense something. It felt as though there was an agreement between her and her master. Win and live. Lose, and you lose everything.

Enthralled by the thoughts that she inadvertently shared, he almost did not hear the plaintive cry that reached his mind. “Of course, he does not hear me… Why would he hear the words of a slave…?”

Whether she prayed to some god, or he was the one to whom she prayed without her knowing it, Blackthorne could stand it no longer. “I hear you.”

Surprise. Shock. Disbelief. Sudden waves of emotion poured over him. Above ground, Branwen stood perfectly still with one foot raised up as though she intended to stomp once more.

“No…” came her whispered reply. “No. No…”

Loneliness. Bewilderment. Despair tinged with hope. These were the flavors of her emotional outburst.

Branwen fell to her knees and threw back her head even as tears began to slide down her cheeks in great rivers of long pent up emotion. Her body was that of frail humanity, but her soul was that of a dragon. There was no mistaking that presence. No dragon of any kind would be unable to recognize their god. Yet, that was not the reason why she cried. Not only did she recognize his presence now, but she recognized the voice in which he spoke.

Blackthorne allowed her grief to continue to wash over him for a moment, but then slipped a piece of himself up through the ground just enough to break through to the surface. Once again able to sense the situation, he noted that Dallen was shouting obscenities. Branwen was on the ground sobbing into her hands. Sonja was busy looking around, no doubt in search of him, and the judge was hiding behind his little podium thing. All that could be seen was the top of his head, and the hairy white caterpillars above his eyes.