Chapter 27
Vorik had been knocked away from the marble bed when the cyclone struck—they all had been—and now he sprang from crystal workstation to table to unidentifiable object, trying to avoid the creatures swarming the floor so that he could find Syla.
Though they were difficult to kill with their solid bodies and scaled carapaces, they weren’t the speediest of foes, and he’d only suffered a couple of lashes from the antennae.
Those wounds burned though. More than that, his muscles felt heavy and sluggish, and he worried some venom had flowed into his bloodstream.
“Syla?” Vorik called again, worried because she hadn’t responded.
Might she have struck her head and blacked out? He’d only glimpsed her flying toward the back of the cavern. The powerful swirling wind had hurled him in another direction.
It was the creatures that made him realize Syla’s location. Some were still after Teyla—fortunately, Fel had found her quickly and was defending her, helping her return to the bed and whatever she believed it could help them with. But the other bug-lizards…
Drawn by—he assumed—moon-marks, they scurried toward the back of the laboratory.
Vorik sprang past more of them, hoping to find Syla before they did.
Especially if she’d been knocked out. His gut tightened at the thought of losing her to the creatures.
He wanted to get the components but not that way.
“I could use a hand, Vorik,” came her call from the direction he was heading.
“Coming!” Relief renewed his strength, and he leaped from a workstation to what looked like a huge crystal pin cushion. “I have two excellent hands. Very skilled.”
That was assuming his muscles didn’t grow more sluggish. He hoped to finish this as quickly as possible so they could find a way out of here before they triggered any more of the storm god’s defenses.
“I can’t argue with that assessment,” Syla called back, the words light, but there was a tense—or scared?—warble to her voice.
“No, you cannot.”
A gust of wind blasted into Vorik when he was in midair, jumping to the next platform. It knocked him off course, and he landed on a creature heading toward Syla.
Antennae slapped him before he could spring free. He received another painful welt—another brush with whatever cilia delivered the venom. Irritated, he slashed his sword through both antennae, then twisted his grip and drove the blade into the back of the creature’s broad skull.
Leaving it to die, he rushed toward numerous glowing crystals and artifacts along the side wall of the canyon.
Panting by the time he arrived, with the ichor of the creatures dripping from his sword, Vorik found Syla kneeling on the floor.
With her tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth and her surgical kit spread before her, she lifted a small tool to pluck glowing droplets of who knew what from a sphere a little smaller than one’s head.
Vorik gaped. Was that the orb he was supposed to find?
“Thank you for killing those things,” Syla said mid-pluck.
Was that the same tool she’d used around the fang embedded in Wreylith’s foot? To extract venom from the wound?
After removing enough droplets to fill the tool’s small reservoir, she moved it aside and dumped it out. The glowing liquid hissed and flashed and smoked when it spattered down, and Vorik jumped.
“Is that poison?” he asked. “Venom? Something else?”
Something worse?
“It’s acting like an acid on the floor, but it hasn’t eaten through my tool, so that’s fortunate.
” Drop by drop, Syla filled the reservoir again—removing more of the liquid from the orb—and dribbling it into the smoking hole left by the first deposit.
“I first tried to wipe them off with my sleeve, and the fabric not only disintegrated but went up with a burst of flame and smoke.”
The sounds of battle came from the other side of the laboratory, and Vorik glimpsed more creatures heading toward them.
He strode forward to see if he could help Syla.
The sooner they figured out how to remove the orb, the sooner they could escape.
Or try. He well remembered that they couldn’t walk out the way they’d come in.
“We have to stay by the weapons platform,” Teyla called, an exhausted pant.
Weapons platform? She wasn’t talking about the big marble bed, was she?
“Those things are staying by it,” Fel snarled back.
“They’re going wherever I am.”
“Which makes it cursed hard to defend you. Princess Syla, where are you? Can you make it back to us?”
“In a moment!” Syla called. “I’m otherwise engaged.”
“Eyes of the moon, what does that mean?”
“Funny he should mention the moon,” she murmured.
Yes, the orb, like the shielders themselves, not only glowed with silvery moonlike light, but the craters in the real moon were replicated on its surface.
A creature scurried out of an aisle between Syla and Vorik.
Ignoring him, it rushed toward her. She squawked in surprise but grabbed a small vial from her first-aid kit and threw it between the thing’s eyes.
When Vorik reached it a heartbeat later, the glass vial had shattered, spattering liquid onto its face.
Halting, the creature shook its head, antennae quivering.
Vorik drove his blade twice into its back, the scaled carapace crunching as the weapon sank in. To ensure its death, he also plunged his sword into its head. The creature shuddered and collapsed.
“Do you carry magical venoms around too?” Vorik stepped around the dead creature to Syla’s side so he could more easily defend her.
“No, that was margroth tree oil. It’s an astringent.”
“That’s a weapon?”
“It stings a lot if it gets in your eyes.”
Vorik laughed, more out of relief from having reached Syla’s side than because it was a joke, but movement overhead made him pause.
Above the canyon, an orange dragon flew into view—Igliana. Her maw opened in what looked like a roar, but no sound penetrated the laboratory’s barrier to reach them.
“Healers don’t usually carry weapons in their first-aid kits.” Syla glanced up but returned to the orb.
Maybe all that magical liquid had to be removed before they could take the thing with them.
She’d also withdrawn scissors and a scalpel from her kit, as if she intended to do surgery on it.
Maybe she did. It seemed to be growing, like a plant—or a crystal—so maybe it would require a delicate touch to remove it without damaging it.
Overhead, more dragons flew into view. Vorik recognized several of them from the cavern. Igliana’s faction-allied kin.
Storm god’s wrath, had Igliana led them here? Why? Had they come all the way across the desert to try to recapture Vorik? He couldn’t be that important of a prisoner.
Oh, but wait. Earlier, Agrevlari had said Sixteen Talon dragons—Vorik’s allies—were flying down the mountain range to retrieve him. To possibly invade the now-revealed faction camp?
Even as Vorik wondered if his comrades had found Chieftess Atilya and her people, Agrevlari flew into view with Wise’s Tonasketal beside him.
Were Vorik’s allies chasing the faction dragons?
Because Atilya had imprisoned him? Soldiers were caught and imprisoned all the time, if not killed, and a single person wasn’t that important, but… Ah.
The black dragon Ozlemar flew into view with General Jhiton on his back, grim-faced with his twin longswords in his hands, ready to slay someone. Maybe Chieftess Atilya specifically.
Vorik spotted her flying on a green dragon near the far end of the canyon.
She was trying to evade Jhiton at the same time as she followed Igliana.
The orange dragon must have led them here, to where she’d last seen Vorik and the others.
Now, Igliana flew in a circle, her gaze scouring the ground.
Searching for them. For Vorik? In the hope that finding him would keep the Sixteen Talons from killing the faction dragons and riders? They did appear to be outnumbered.
“My brother came for me,” Vorik said, touched but also worried. When he’d allowed himself to be taken prisoner, he’d only been thinking of completing his mission. He hadn’t intended to start a war. “He brought a whole wing of dragons. Maybe two.”
Syla glanced up but not for long. Face intent, she set aside the venom extractor and grabbed the scalpel.
All the magical droplets had been removed from the orb’s surface and the top of its stalk, but a couple of new ones—did the liquid seep up out of that fuzzy blue substrate?
—were starting slowly upward, defying gravity to infuse the orb with magical nutrients or who knew what.
“Should I try…?” Vorik extended his sword toward the stalk, assuming the orb needed to be cut free. Might the magic of his blade be sufficient for the task?
“I wondered if that would work, but I’m considering a more delicate touch.” Syla nodded that he could try if he wanted.
Gingerly, Vorik tapped his sword tip to the crystal stem, not risking an attempt to slice the orb free until he tested it.
Silver white flashed, burning his eyes as a great jolt of power ran up his blade and into his arm.
He couldn’t keep from dropping his sword as he stumbled away, his back slamming into a crystalline formation.
Earlier, the gargoyle-bone blade hadn’t conducted magic, but this burst had been a lot more powerful. Blinking, he shook out his numb hand.
“Maybe you should carry on with your delicate touch.” Aware of more creatures nearby, Vorik picked up his sword again.
“I’m going to try to soothe it with my healing power while cutting it free.”
“It needs soothing.”
“All of the storm god’s creations do.”
“Tell me about it.”