Chapter 27 #2
Wreylith cruised over the canyon, but she was neither chasing anyone nor being chased.
She landed on the rim opposite Syla and Vorik and scratched at the edge, her talons strong enough to rip rocks free.
They fell through the barrier, clunking down on the far side of the laboratory.
A creature that had been wandering over there hissed loudly. Vorik hoped it had been crushed.
Wreylith’s golden eyes sharpened as she looked down. From her perspective, had the rocks disappeared?
She dove off the top of the cliff and toward the laboratory but encountered the invisible barrier. Her wings wobbled, then corrected as her belly bounced off.
With smoke wafting from her nostrils and her eyes glowing with irritation, she flew to the opposite side of the canyon, turned, and perched at the edge, peering down.
Not more than twenty feet from where Syla and Vorik were, she tore more rocks away.
A boulder the size of a cow slammed down onto a crystalline formation, breaking it and sending shards flying everywhere.
Several hit the walls and flashed, exploding like holiday fireworks.
Syla lifted a protective arm as one struck five feet away. “She’ll kill us by accident.”
A yellow dragon from the Sixteen Talons flew toward Wreylith, interrupting her investigation of the barrier. Vorik recognized the rider and wished he could shout to wave him away. The red dragon wasn’t an ally of the Freeborn Faction, and his people had enough foes without picking a fight with her.
Wreylith abandoned her perch and flew to meet the oncoming threat. The two dragons collided, biting and scratching, but their flight took them out of Vorik’s view.
“I don’t know whether to be relieved she won’t crush us or worried for her.” Syla returned to her surgical maneuvering.
Wind whipped through the laboratory again. Syla cursed as it tugged at her first-aid kit, and some of her small tools skidded away.
As Vorik bent to catch them and pluck them up for her, the telepathic voice in the cloud spoke again.
Enemies have turned my children away from their purpose, and they would now invade the laboratory of the storm god.
“That’s a different message,” Syla said.
“Yes.” After the several repeats of the other words, Vorik had thought the apparition a mindless part of the security defenses the storm god had long ago left, but this indicated it had awareness of what was going on. “His children? Does he mean the dragons?”
“He did create them.” Syla accepted her tools and returned to work, using her sleeve—a hole singed in it, as she’d said—to wipe sweat from her forehead.
Scalpel in hand, she risked leaning close and resting her fingers on the orb.
Vorik readied himself to catch her if it hurled her away.
It flared a brighter silver, as if it was thinking about it.
But he sensed magic flowing from Syla’s moon-mark and into her fingers and then the orb, even running down the stalk to its base and the substrate.
One of my children remains true. It will defend against the wayward ones and the uninvited.
A thunderous grinding came from the back wall of the canyon, and a hidden door in the red rock opened. A huge hidden door.
A black dragon stomped out, its eyes glowing red, and it spread its wings.
It looked like a bigger and even crabbier version of Ozlemar, and it glared up at the sky, at the dragons and riders engaging with each other, the vengeful Sixteen Talons descending upon the faction.
Though she wore an expression of frustration, Atilya turned with determination to face Jhiton and the others.
Blood would soon spatter the desert floor and the magical cactus flowers.
If their potent scent had reached the dragons and riders flying about, it hadn’t done anything yet to change them from aggressive to amorous.
“Probably too windy,” Vorik muttered, though he didn’t know if the continuing gusts affected the canyon outside.
Inside the laboratory, the black dragon crouched, maw opening to reveal eager fangs.
Since its gaze had focused skyward, Vorik thought it would fly up to battle the aerial intruders.
Then, a soft snick sounded. Syla had cut the orb from its stalk.
As she hurried to wrap it in protective bandages, the dragon’s head swung toward her, its red eyes glowing brighter.
“We may get a visitor.” Vorik jumped to put himself between Syla and the storm god’s defender, but his heart pounded.
Facing a dragon, especially one with enough power to make its eyes glow, would be a lot more difficult than battling the bug-lizards.
“Any chance you can take your scalpel and find something to cut that will bring the barrier down so our people can help us?”
“Those aren’t my people,” Syla said, “but I’ll look.”
The dragon bunched its muscles and sprang. Wings flapping, it flew straight toward them, and there wasn’t time to speak further.
Not toward them, Vorik realized. Just like with the creatures, Syla was its target.
“Run back to the bed,” he urged, shifting to block it. “Or try to find a way out. Or both.”
“I will, but you need to run too.”
With crystal formations all over, the dragon couldn’t fly as directly as in the open sky, but it came quickly, nevertheless. There wasn’t time for Vorik to run.
Syla hated to abandon Vorik to the wrath of a dragon—surely, even with his enhanced abilities, he couldn’t defeat one of their kind—but he was right. If they couldn’t figure out how to escape the laboratory, they might all die here. Now that she had the orb, they had no reason to linger.
With the dark cloud and hideous visage of the storm god roiling in the center, she worried for all their lives. Especially when the red-eyed black dragon roared and breathed fire, the fluctuating orange light reflecting off the crystalline formations in the dark laboratory.
As she ran down the crooked aisles, trying to avoid creatures and find a way back to the others, she risked glancing back. She couldn’t see Vorik but, from the way the dragon leaped atop a workstation, one wing snapping the top off a crystal formation in its haste to move, it had to be chasing him.
He must have dared stab it to draw its attention away from her. The moon god bless him.
Vorik jumped onto a formation behind the dragon and came into her view, swinging his blade at its tail.
He must have dived under the great creature to come up in that position.
He managed to clip its tail, but the dragon was fast for such a huge foe.
It whirled and flung fire at Vorik while slashing its deadly talons toward him.
Vorik ducked in time to avoid the flames, but they nearly caught him. The fire might have singed off some of his wild black hair.
Amazingly, Vorik rushed closer to the dragon, diving below its slashing talons to reach its belly. He sliced into its scaled flesh, but right away, its fangs whipped down toward his head. He dove between two crystalline formations, and Syla lost sight of him again.
Terrified for him, she almost turned to run back to help, but what could she do? Throw an astringent at its eyes? No, she had to find a way out. For all of their sakes.
Overhead, Wreylith returned to the edge of the canyon.
Syla couldn’t hear her—couldn’t hear anything of the battle raging overhead—but the dragon’s maw opened in what had to be a frustrated roar.
She’d escaped—or slain—the yellow dragon that had been after her, and now she returned to tearing pieces of rock from the canyon rim.
Was it possible she would claw her way inside by destroying the area around the barrier?
As Syla patted her way along the wall, hoping to find a glowing crystal or switch that would open the barrier or turn off the defenses, Vorik came into her view again. He flew, somersaulting through the air, more than ten feet. The dragon must have struck him, knocking him flying.
He twisted in the air and landed on one of the workstations. His sword remained in his hand, but blood dripped from the side of his face, and the uncharacteristically concerned look in his eyes said he was in over his head.
The black dragon glanced at Wreylith and roared, but Vorik must have annoyed it sufficiently, because it returned its focus to him.
A crossbow twanged, and a quarrel flew across the laboratory.
Fel and Teyla were back at the bed, Teyla poking at something on the platform while Fel stood beside her, firing at an enemy he shouldn’t have wanted to attract.
Maybe he felt compelled to help Vorik? Regardless, the quarrel bounced off the dragon’s scaled flank without harming it.
It didn’t even notice, instead flying again for Vorik.
“Syla, these are ancient temple runes,” Teyla called. “I can read them and tell there’s magic to them, but I think they’d mean more to you.”
“Not now,” Syla yelled, forcing herself to continue searching for a switch. Unless the marble bed held the secret to escaping, she wasn’t interested.
More boulders slammed down, landing near the wall under Wreylith. She kept tearing them free, determined to get inside.
As Syla worked her way down the wall, patting and searching, a bug-lizard appeared out of a side aisle. She managed to escape it but had to jump over a workstation and scramble to the other side to avoid a second creature.
The bed came into view again, and she ran toward it.
Since they believed it had been added after the storm god departed, she doubted it had anything to do with deactivating the defenses, but more creatures were coming after her.
She had little choice but to rejoin Fel.
With Vorik in deep trouble of his own, she needed her bodyguard’s protection.
Before she reached the bed, a boulder slammed to the floor scant feet in front of her. She flailed, almost dropping the orb.