Chapter 41 Vaylen
Vaylen
Ascreech tears through the pre-dawn quiet. My eyes snap open. Another one follows, sharp with alarm.
I bolt upright, heart hammering as the sounds grows increasingly louder—something approaching from the east. The noise swells, flooding the camp with chaos.
My hand finds Rhealyn's shoulder, but she's already stirring, lashes lifting.
—Something is wrong.
Her voice slides through my thoughts as naturally as breathing. Part of me recoils at the strangeness. Wyrm shit! I'm a Weaver now, capable of things I never imagined. But the knowledge thrumming beneath my skin settles that surprise. Of course I'm a Weaver. Of course we share this.
We're Omneira.
I grab my trousers and yank them on. "Get dressed."
She's already moving, reaching for her leathers. Outside, the harpies screech in discordant waves, a sound that raises every hair on my neck.
—They have found us, the dragoness's voice says with resigned finality. They come and not all will be loyal.
A shudder runs through me as I process the knowledge already lodged in my consciousness.
I close my eyes, sifting through what the dragoness shared when our four souls merged.
This isn't the Sky Order against the Screechclaws anymore.
This is dragon against dragon. A war that began with the Woken Wyrm's treachery, splitting their kind into factions.
Some of those arriving will stand with us.
Others won't. How many? I wonder. Well, at least we won't fight alone.
Rhealyn buckles her jacket straps. Her eyes find mine, and I catch the flicker of fear beneath her determination. She feels it too… the weight of what's coming.
I cup her face. "Whatever happens—"
"We face it together." Her fingers close over my wrist.
The camp erupts with another chorus of shrieks. Zephyros's fierce roar cuts through the noise.
I release her and grab my jacket. "Let's go."
We burst from the tent into cold air thick with rising dust. Screechclaws swarm, preparing for battle.
I plant my feet, summoning wind beneath my boots. The vortex answers instantly, lifting me skyward in a smooth spiral. Beside me, Rhealyn rises on her own column of air, her hair whipping wild as she ascends toward Zephyros's head.
I land on the dragoness's crown between massive horns, knees bent. The moment my boots touch her scales, our bond flares to life.
Dragon's breath!
The connection blazes through every nerve, fierce and absolute.
Nothing like what I shared with Fragor. That bond was a whisper compared to this roar.
I see now how guarded he remained, how carefully he measured every emotion before letting it reach me.
The dragoness holds nothing back. The bond is true, erasing the hurt of Fragor's severance.
Below, the Screechclaws launch themselves into formation, thousands moving as one disciplined force, something they weren't capable of in the past. The idea that I may have to fight alongside them is surreal.
My Skyriders will see me as a traitor. Deranged. Lost. But they don't know what I know.
—Ready? Rhealyn's voice cuts through my thoughts.
I meet her eyes across the space between our dragons and nod.
The sun burns on the eastern horizon, cutting through fog with blades of amber light.
We surge forward, Zephyros and the dragoness side by side, leading the Screechclaw army toward the approaching Sky Order.
My heart twists as their formation breaks through the haze.
Tahranis rides at the front atop the Woken Wyrm, her iridescent scales catching fire in the dawn. But beside him…
Fragor with his silver scales gleaming, those familiar curved horns and that regal bearing I once admired. Silas Pyrewing sits astride him, wearing the Sky Order uniform he has no right to claim.
Rhealyn's shock ripples through me—a sharp pull in our bond—as she spots Silas, who should be in Emberton, whose dragon Ignemara rejected him. Yet there he is, riding Fragor with a determined gaze. Unbelievable.
—How? Her thought echoes mine. Anger surges. Silas is a Skyblaze.
Our dragons slow, their wings beating in perfect synchronization. Wind spirals beneath them in concentrated columns, suspending both massive forms mid-air. They hover like hummingbirds, defying nature itself.
Across the shrinking distance, I watch Tahranis's face shift. Shock ripples across those sharp features. He expected harpies. He didn't expect us, especially me.
I straighten on the dragoness's crown, wind whipping my hair back. Every element hums beneath my skin, waiting.
Behind Tahranis and the Woken Wyrm, the Sky Order spreads across the sky like a living wall. Fire dragons hover on thermal columns, and earth and metal dragon push against the ground, while water and lightening ones circle in wide arcs, unable to sustain flight without their dragons moving.
I recognize every face. Dakar. The Airglide twins.
Prime Emberstone. Cliffbecker. Phoebe. Commander Voltguard.
She circles below Tahranis, her expression carved from granite.
I can see it all through the dragoness powerful eyes.
They all stare at me some in confusion at this new dragon I ride, others like I've become something monstrous.
—Hello, daughter. The dragoness's voice rolls through the bond, powerful and heavy with ageless sorrow I feel in my bones.
Tahranis's dragon recoils. A low rumble builds in her throat, displeasure made physical.
—You did not think you would find me in my rightful form, did you?
The dragoness spreads her wings wider, blocking out more of the dawn.
Light catches the ivory crown of spines circling her neck, making her terrifyingly beautiful.
I am only here because my sisters lent me their magic, because we worked together.
But you would not know about that, would you, Vestra?
The name hits like a lightning strike. The only knowledge she held back from Rhealyn and me.
Vestra.
Fragor's daughter. Heratrix's offspring. The black-scaled abomination who attacked her own mother and triggered this entire catastrophe.
I feel the dragoness's sorrow mixing with rage, the true Heratrix suffering a thousand years of imprisonment in the twisted body of the Matron. All because of the creature hovering before us with Tahranis seated between her horns.
The memories the dragoness—Heratrix—showed us during our joining resurface.
This is Vestra. The true Goddess's daughter. She was the only female to be born to the Queen of Dragons. For ages, all others were male, wielding a single power. But not Vestra. She was blessed with all elemental powers like her mother as well as strong Weaver powers.
But in time, the blessing became curse.
She grew up from hatchling to something twisted. Resentment festered in her obsidian heart incited by her father, Fragor, who hated Heratrix for replacing him with Zephyros. Vestra wanted to be queen. She wanted to be called Goddess by the humans. She wanted worship from all.
But she didn't only want her mother's crown and the human's divine status, she wanted every female dragon gone. Eliminated, so they could never challenge her. They were too loyal to Heratrix, and not easily manipulated the same way male dragons were. Thus, she planned to reign supreme.
Too late Heratrix realized her daughter was whispering poison into receptive ears. Males who also craved power and were promised mating privileges with the new queen. All lies wrapped in ambition's gleaming scales.
From the beginning, Vestra used her elemental powers in twisted ways.
She'd freeze water in a dragon's lungs mid-flight, watching them plummet while pretending concern.
She'd ignite forest fires during hunts, blaming lightning strikes while humans died in the flames.
She'd collapse cave systems on sleeping females, calling it unfortunate rockfall, and offering no help to rescue them.
She twisted stone into glass, then transformed it into jagged shrapnel that impaled any creature that got in her way.
She electrified water sources, turning peaceful lakes into lethal traps that cooked anything stupid enough to drink.
But her most disturbing talent manifested when it occurred to her to combine different elements to reshape living matter itself.
She started by freezing her prey's blood solid, then shattering it with sonic vibrations from compressed air.
Then she'd force minerals through a victim's veins, calcifying organs from the inside out.
She'd superheat the moisture in a creature's eyes, boiling them in their sockets while manipulating the blood in their bodies to make them run headfirst into boulders.
She'd superheat a Skyforge's metal weapons until they melted onto a dragon's scales, fusing them together in agonizing permanence.
As she matured, her experimentation grew crueler and bolder. Each innovation brought her closer to something unnatural. Something no dragon should possess. The power to unmake creation itself.
At first, everything appeared accidental, but Heratrix eventually saw the pattern, if too late, despite warnings and suspicions from her kin. She was trying to decide what to do when the female dragons started disappearing. Immediately, Heratrix knew Vestra was responsible.
When Heratrix finally confronted her daughter, Vestra didn't deny anything.
She simply acquiesced, scales rippling with colors that didn't belong to her obsidian nature, and asked if her mother planned to stop her.
Her plan to supplant Heratrix was already in motion, while the Queen of Dragons thought there was still hope to set Vestra on the right path.
But Heratrix was wrong, and the fight between them began that very night. It was the same fight Tahranis related to Rhealyn except he reversed the roles.
As mother and daughter clashed, Heratrix ripped into Vestra's thoughts with brutal efficiency. What she found shattered her heart.