by L J Andrews
I shot up, my arms tingling in sharp pin pricks. My heart burst like an explosion in the center of my chest, and the air seemed to have a hushed whisper with every gust. “Stop!” I shouted.
Raffi’s wings billowed like a parachute, and he hovered for a moment. Leoch stopped next to him. I leaned over to speak to Thane, but he was looking to the ground. He must have sensed it too.
When he met my eye, he had a wildness about him that was a cross between anger and solid joy. “They’re here,” he growled.
I nodded, my mouth dry and my pulse racing in my ears. “Right below us.”
Thane bellowed a cry and stood on the back of Leoch. The warriors roared and shot streams of fire into the sky. Then, on my second glance, Thane and Leoch dove through the clouds, pummeling toward earth. Raffi wasted no time in following, and thankfully, Mitch had enough sense to clutch my waist, or I was certain he would have rolled right off the back. When Raffi’s claws thundered against the soil, I leapt from his back without a pause. Every inch of my body was on fire from the inside out. I expected to see them, the energy was so breathtakingly strong, but when I looked around all I saw was a meadow entirely surrounded by trees with scorched ruins of what looked like a house near the edge of the forest.
“Where are they?” I hissed, stepping out into the clearing.
Thane ripped me back and shook his head. Silently, he pointed toward the center of the meadow. I narrowed my gaze, then my throat closed on my airway. There, slithering in the distance, was a large, disgusting zomok. I saw the way its tattered wings flapped over slender bones. I knew most couldn’t see zomoks but this one didn’t seem concerned with hiding its black body.
“They are concealed, remember,” Thane said. “But they’re here. We will make ourselves known. We find the barrier, we break through whatever enchantments Bron has placed to keep them hidden, and then we take them back.”
Thane walked back toward the warriors. They were remarkably skilled in stealth. For such enormous creatures to hide without hardly making a sound in the thick trees was impressive. Thane lifted a blade, his voice powerful yet eerily quiet.
“We fight for our lost people today. We take them back. Warriors, fight honorably, fight with passion, and kill as many lindworms as you can.”
The forest billowed with steam as the wyvern warriors acknowledged their leader and rose to the fight. I turned toward the meadow. She was there, I knew it. Slowly, taking the blades from my back, I honed my focus and promised I would not leave without freeing Gaia from her invisible prison. Thane stepped to my side, his arms trembling with passionate fury. With a single glance, he nodded, and together we darted into the meadow.
Chapter 21
I’d had moments in my life that would be forever engrained in my memories. The first time Aunt Liz had taken me on an overnight camping trip. My first fist-fight. The first kiss with Jade. Now, this moment.
Outside, the air was frosty, and normally I would be shivering with chills. As I burst from the trees with my blades, my skin seemed drenched in flames. It was strange. The warriors roared into the sky, and the meadow instantly burned with the scent of smoke from their fiery breath. I knew I was shouting, but at the same time as my wild power took hold, it sounded as though we were rushing under water.
The zomok sprawling through the tall grass hissed when he saw Thane and me rushing forward. Green pyre shot from its fangs, but in a matter of seconds, two mages on Thane’s flank thrust jagged knives through its skull until the slithering beast stopped squirming with a gurgling sound as it choked on its poison.
Silence enveloped the meadow, the muffled sound settling as my energy centered like an electrifying ball of lightning in my chest. Thane glanced around, the skin on his knuckles white as he clutched his blades. “We fight together,” he breathed out, his eyes keeping to the sky. “Even if I change forms—you remember?”
I nodded, rolling each blade in my palms and scanning the trees. “Yes. Together.”
The earth shook first, then I heard the screeching echo around the forest. Like a treacherous shadow, in the distance I saw a swarm of black scales, yellow eyes, and dripping fangs darting right for us. Lindworms. The worst sort of lindworms. Each beast had a gleam of hatred for the elemental warriors in their frightening gaze. But there was more. Atop each serpent dragon rode a mage. The mages were perhaps worse than the dragons. Their eyes were wild, dark, and their skin had armor of the blackest pitch I’d ever seen.
“Gaia!” Thane bellowed, facing the spot where the zomok still hunched in its blood.
Thane shouted the name only once; his voice reached all edges of the forest. If the High Priestess was near, there was no doubt she would have heard him—and hopefully the mages trapped inside would now fight desperately to break free.
An enormous lindworm dropped a dark mage near Thane. I rushed toward him as the lindworm snapped at Thane’s sword, and the mage tried to pulse whatever mutated energy he held at the warrior’s back. I caught the mage first.
My blades sliced through the air without a sound. The mage shrieked, lowering his palms from striking Thane with his energy. He clutched his arm where I’d cut his skin and glared at me. The mage ripped a black dagger from his belt and tossed the weapon toward my head. I crossed the two jade blades in front of my face, and with a furious thought, the dagger turned to ash at my feet.
The mage stepped back, his face painted in stunned hatred. “The High Priest blades. You are supposed to be dead,” he snapped.
Something about the plot of ground built my power tenfold. I scoffed through an arrogant smirk, clutched one blade in a firm grip, and without a glance from the dark mage, I thrust the tip through his chest. He gasped, and the sword trembled as all his energy and life source seemed to absorb into the steel. I tugged his body further onto the blade, feeling a new sort of fury, and pressed my forehead against his. “Well, looks like I’m not dead.” I didn’t take time to wonder why the mage thought I would be dead—I’d accepted people knew of me, even if I remembered nothing.
I ripped the blade from his body and watched the mage crumble in a heap on the earth. Thane and Leoch battled nearby. Thane’s blade slashed into every neck of the lindworms as they swooped toward him. With the gaping wounds exposed, Leoch would blast the lindworms with angry fire from above until the serpents practically combusted. Thane moved like the sword was simply an extension of his body. Dodging low, he would reel his sword back against the scaly flesh of the dark dragons until at his feet were lumpy corpses toppled in stacks. The closer I stood to Thane, the more the electrifying shock of power riled through my veins.
A snapping hoard of zomoks darted toward my legs. Stabbing the blades into the ground, I pressed my hands along the soil until a furious crack fissured across the meadow. The zomoks hissed and spat their pyre at me, but I held firmer. The ground obeyed my every command and swallowed up the fury of serpents until their shrieks and cries were only echoes in the dark soil. Several dark mages rushed to stop my attack. The earth groaned as they tried to seal the opening. I stood straight, holding my palms toward the sky. I knew what to do—as Thane told me I would. Inside my heart and mind, I could see plainly how to attack. Soon my palms burst with power. I’d seen Ruby hold fire in her palm before, but I’d never had such a thing happen. In my palms were two bright balls of brilliant white. The energy sputtered and sparked as though I’d ripped bolts of lightning from deep in the sky.
The dark mages stopped, their eyes wide—one even turned to run while the others fumbled to protect themselves from my attack. They weren’t fast enough. I released the trapped energy with my palms open wide until the power wrapped along their bodies. The mages shuddered violently and fell to the ground. I stood above them, one still twitching with sick, gurgling blood dripping out the side of his mouth. The energy I’d physically held was gone, but my blood boiled with more. It seemed endless.
Ripping the two blades from the soil, I stumbled once when the ground rumbled in a fast wa
ve. Nothing was around to cause such a stir. None of the mages, dark or my allies, had caused the shudder. Thane met my eye from where he stood. He’d felt it too. I shook my head, telling him it wasn’t me. Then I saw a glimmer in the center of the meadow. It was a fleeting illusion. I’d thought the air shimmered, almost like a mirror reflected the sunlight then faded back to oblivion. I stepped closer to where I’d seen the shift. Nothing was there.
The roar of a lindworm drew my thoughts and focus back to where I stood. The beast came behind me and spilled a long stream of molten breath toward my back. I tore away from the blast, but the dragon only darted after me. Thane held a knife in one hand and his sword in the other as he and Leoch fought against four lindworms and a mage. He saw the beast come for me. With frenzied strikes, Thane slit his dagger across the throat of the mage, his sword coming atop the neck of one of the lindworms. Carefully, he drifted his own battle to where I was running. The lindworms chased him, but Thane met every blast of fire, each strike of their claws, with expert agility.
The energy between me and the warrior remained intact when I stopped running and faced the serpent in my wake. Its fangs dripped with yellow saliva, and its scales were jagged like shark teeth along its jutting shoulders. Turning on my heel, I cut the blades toward its head with a violent strike. The lindworm towered over me, but it backed away, notably anxious around the jade swords. The beast was enormous and blew a new stream of fire toward my chest. Without hesitation, I crossed the blades, wrapping the powerful energy shield around myself.
“Teagan!” Mitch’s voice was at my side. He ducked behind my blades in a huff. Mitch’s face was coated in grimy smoke and sweat, but his smile was euphoric. Athika followed close behind Mitch, sliding along the grass on her knees. Athika’s body burst with such power I could practically see crimson energy covering her skin. My armor was dormant—Jade was not here, after all—and Athika’s ruby markings were simply designs on her body. There was something feral and powerful about fighting without the aid of our armor. I used it to add to the shield created by the crossed blades.
The lindworm roared when the last of its molten breath ceased. I lowered the blades, glaring at the beast as Athika and Mitch rose next to me. Mitch sort of chuckled like a maniac and then lunged toward the dragon. One scale-penetrating knife lodged just beneath the lindworm’s tattered wing when Mitch threw it. The creature shrieked angrily and tried to spew more fire toward Mitch, but he seemed out of spark. I knew it wouldn’t last long. With a nod toward Athika, we each took a side of the creature while Mitch weakened it by tossing two more knives into the thick neck of the dragon.
Athika and I said nothing to each other, but at the same time, we shoved our hands to the ground. I couldn’t see her once she dipped behind the opposite side of the dragon, but I felt her power rumble beneath the slithering body of the great snake. Like a crashing wave over jagged rocks, our energies collided. The lindworm was covered in bursts of dirt and grass as the ground beneath it erupted from inside the soil. Hot molten fire showered in the blast as the body of the dragon crumbled beneath the crushing surge of our power. When it settled, there was a gaping hole in the ground, and at the bottom, torn, bloodied flesh was all that remained of the beast.
“That was incredible!” Mitch screamed, his hands raised to the sky.
A dark mage rushed behind Athika, and she narrowly missed the blade. I ran next to her, blocking the next strike with one sword. Mitch was already rushing toward Raffi for a new fight as Raffi rained white fire over a new wave of poisonous zomoks. The mage who’d tried to kill Athika backed away, rolling the black dagger in her hand. Her hair was like the night, but there were pieces that had a gilded look, and I wondered if her coloring might have been different at one point before joining with King Nag and Bron.
She chuckled, staring at the blades, then at the jade markings showing through my torn shirt. “The jade mage really has returned. I didn’t believe the High Priest at first. Those blades don’t belong to you,” she hissed.
I sensed Athika at my back, but she faced away, preparing to hold another mage who was rushing toward us. I scoffed and rolled a blade in my hand easily. “Huh, looks like they belong to me. Want to hold one? Let’s see what happens.”
The smirk washed off the mage’s face, and she snarled at me like a rabid dog. “You know he has her,” she hissed. After a breath, the mage chuckled. “Actually, he has both of the women you seek. After this, I’ll make sure the former High Priestess and your little dragon queen meet a slow, torturous end.”
I knew she used the words against me intentionally, but I’d had enough of her voice. I struck one blade toward her shoulder, the other slashing across her middle like Thane had taught me. A smooth power rushed from the edges of the blade, but she blocked the middle blade with her dagger and dodged my top strike. When her dark weapon locked with mine, my palm ached with night energy. It was strong, frighteningly strong. I wanted to release my blade as the dark power ripped through my blood like poison. Clenching my jaw tight, I pulled out of the hold, and the agony ceased.
The mage crouched low and swung her dagger, striking against the jade swords with expert blows. Remembering how Thane and the mages in his cave had taught me to use both my energy and my weapons, I gripped the hilts tighter, blocking her angry strike. With a new calm concentration, I focused my power into the blades. My chest tightened, but the same flesh-ripping sensation didn’t assault my body when her dark weapon cut along my swords. With a new confidence, I slashed the jade blades against her, one striking her dagger, the other cutting along her upper thigh.
She shrieked, the wound instantly festering in blood and scorched flesh. The mage snarled at me, her eyes flashing to pitch. She shoved her arms straight from her body; I focused and could practically see the surge of power rushing toward me. Dropping my blades, I opened my arms wide. I’d never done it—accepting antagonistic energy—but the whisper on the trees, the power bursting from the center of the meadow, told me to accept it.
When her blast of dark power struck my chest, I lost my ability to breathe. My blood scorched like it was made of boiling water. Every inch of my skin bubbled and seemed to melt from my bones. But there was the familiar carving sensation along my legs, against the back of my neck. The jade armor, it was spreading. For a moment I wondered how it was possible, but the mage had threatened Jade then tried to kill me. The armor was reacting.
She lowered her arms and gasped as I took on all her twisted darkness. “You took the night energy?” she gasped, her brow beading in sweat.
I smirked wickedly. Crossing my arms over my body, I enjoyed my final, sinister glance at the dark mage. She eyed me with wonder and confusion. Ripping my arms back out wide, the energy she’d used against me fused with my own, and a violent surge of mage power enveloped not only the dark mage in front of me, but a pair of enormous lindworms and half the zomoks fighting against Raffi and Mitch. Each of the dark creatures crumbled—dead on impact.
The ground shuddered from my power, the trees swayed along the edge of the meadow, and one towering pine cracked and fell forward. Athika laughed behind me and cheered toward the sky.
“That is how the leader of the mages would fight!” she screamed.
I smiled, feeling the draining ache still in my body. I glanced across the meadow. Thane had drifted, and the connection of strange energy between us was fizzling. Thane cut a final, fatal blow across a particularly large mage. The warrior’s face had streaks of dark blood, but his eyes seemed brighter and filled with life being in battle again. The empty space in the center of the meadow shimmered once more, followed by a deeper shudder in the ground. My throat tightened, and my grip pulsed on my swords when I lifted them from the ground. An excited buzz filled my chest, and if I listened hard enough I could hear distant pounding—like someone was dropping steel blocks from a distance.
Lindworms shot from the ground, some with mages on their backs, and they darted toward the sky, but not too high above
the battle. I eyed them curiously, then like a fresh breeze striking my face, I realized the mages were blasting energy toward something above the meadow. They were fighting against an invisible force—they were desperately keeping something hidden.
Chapter 22
Athika stabbed a dark mage who screamed painfully as she died.
“Watch over Mitch,” I shouted, giving her enough time to realize I was speaking to her, before I tore across the meadow toward Thane.
The warrior rose from his knees after slicing through the heart of a lindworm. It didn’t matter that Thane was in human form, he had no trouble slaughtering the snakes.
“Thane!” I bellowed. He found me, his eyes filled with concern at first until I pointed toward the sky. “Up there! They’re keeping them in.”
Thane followed my gaze, his smile filling me with more confidence. Without needing me to ask, I watched Thane’s human body peel away until he was the enormous dragon. The warriors roared with a chilling power when they watched their leader take his true form. It seemed to invigorate all the wyvern warriors, and the meadow filled with more shrieks as lindworms fell with new fury.
Thane lowered his broad head just enough for me to leap onto his back. Instantly, the connection returned. I didn’t sit, I balanced along his massive spine and clutched to the broad, russet horns on his head. Mighty gusts of wind from his massive wings energized any fatigue I might have had. Thane paused in the air when we approached the first line of lindworms and mages shooting power at whatever was hidden to our eyes. The mirror shimmers were blinding. I could see a shape concealed among the trees like a large, invisible dome. Though I couldn’t see inside, I knew there was a cage hidden in the meadow. I had a feeling that inside the cage there was incredible power bursting to be set free. With a shudder, Thane blasted the first lindworms with his pyre. The mage shrieked and fell from the fiery beast until the lindworm followed and landed to the ground in a ball of flames.
