Chapter 30
Auriel had her reasons for turning out in force.
She'd brought only four Angels — commanders, all of them — with roughly two hundred ordinary Wingborn making up the rest. Even so, her army outclassed Lilith's by a wide margin, and there was no helping that.
Auriel couldn't raise fallen enemies into new Units.
If she meant to squeeze every last Kill Point out of this war, holding back was a luxury she didn't have.
"Now that you're both here, we should leave at once," Rowan said. "The sooner we reach the front, the sooner we'll know what's actually happening."
No argument there. Lilith climbed back onto the Bone Dragon; Auriel spread her wings and rose.
"You two can ride with me," Lilith told Rowan and Blaise. "Otherwise you'll slow us down."
Rowan looked less than thrilled about it, but the logic left him without a leg to stand on, so up he went onto the dragon's broad back. Blaise waved both hands.
"Thanks, but I'll pass. You two are more than enough for one battle — I'll stay and keep an eye on the Territory."
Someone did have to defend Verdant Spire. Lilith had expected as much. "All right. See you later."
At her command the Bone Dragon spread its skeletal wings, and the downdraft ripped through the trees an instant before the enormous creature launched itself above the canopy.
Auriel's forces and Lilith's Gargoyles fell in behind.
The aerial armies of two of the channel's strongest Lords swung south, toward the Wood Elf settlement.
Rowan still looked uneasy. "Orcs are extremely powerful up close!" he shouted over the wind. "Most of your forces can fly — engaging them head-on plays away from your strengths!" He jabbed a finger south. "Use the mobility. Swing behind them. Harassing their rear lines will be plenty."
Standing on the dragon's back, Lilith nodded. That had been the plan all along.
"And drop me at the Clan's camp. I need to help direct the battle."
The Bone Dragon could have left the Gargoyles far behind, so Lilith kept it below full speed.
What surprised her was that Auriel and the Wingborn matched the pace without strain — a few were even a shade quicker than the Gargoyles, though none touched the dragon itself.
The trip from Verdant Spire to the Wood Elf settlement normally ran two and a half hours; flying cut that by more than half.
Somewhere over the forest, Lilith and Auriel both felt it. The elemental power in the air had gone unstable.
Auriel felt emotion rolling up from the trees below. Fear. Rage. Bloodlust. Excitement.
What Lilith sensed was different: life force, a vast tide of it. Nothing like the Wood Elves' tranquil presence, which sat in her senses like ancient trees — this was dense, violent, seething.
"Is that the Orcs?"
Auriel drew level with the dragon and met her eyes. "Something savage and corrupted."
"Then the war may have already started."
"What?" Rowan went rigid. "We need to move faster!"
The horizon confirmed it as they closed in.
Fire had stained the distant sky red; columns of smoke climbed above the trees and tangled with a green haze bleeding through the forest. War cries, bestial roars, the clash of weapons — all of it carried on the night air, and even the ground seemed to shudder under the weight of the fighting.
From the dragon's back, Lilith peered down through the dark.
The Wood Elf and Centaur forces were leaning on dense woodland and broken ground to blunt wave after wave of Orcs. And the Orcs were huge — every one of them well over six feet, packed with muscle, torsos bare, swinging crude weapons of bone at anything in their path.
The Wood Elves held the high ground among the trees, raining arrows from the canopy into eyes, throats, every weak point with lethal precision.
It barely slowed the charge. Pain seemed to mean nothing to these creatures.
One Orc had taken so many shafts it looked like a pincushion — and after it finally collapsed, it kept dragging itself forward on both hands, right up until a charging Centaur pounded it into mangled flesh beneath his hooves.
Where the Wood Elves killed at range, the Centaurs brought the hammer.
Spears and battle-axes, driven home with the momentum of heavy cavalry, smashed lanes clean through the Orc lines.
But there were far too few of them against a horde that size.
Any Centaur cut off from the rest was swarmed the moment his charge died, dragged down by sheer weight of numbers, while more green bodies poured in from the plains beyond the treeline — shrugging off their losses, battering the allied defenses without pause.
Then Lilith noticed something that gave even her pause.
The Orcs were eating the dead.
They tore into fallen Wood Elves and Centaurs like Ghouls. Their own dead, too. And every mouthful of flesh visibly sped their healing and thickened their auras.
Lilith stared. "They're oversized Ghouls."
"Damn it. We're too late." Rowan's voice came from behind her, his face drained of color.
"One of you needs to get me to the command camp.
My mentor must have discovered something.
" He was looking toward the forest's southern edge.
"The Verdant Forest ends at a cliff. The Orcs should never have been able to reach this area so easily. "
Lilith and Auriel knew the terrain already.
Beyond the forest lay a narrow, sparsely grown plain, and past that a sheer cliff overlooking the dry grasslands of the Orc tribes below.
That cliff was a natural wall — it should have stopped any large Orc force cold.
Yet thousands of them stood in the forest anyway.
Something was very wrong.
The two of them traded a glance. Rowan was already aboard the Bone Dragon, so ferrying him fell to Lilith by default.
"I'll join the battle first," Auriel said.
"Be careful."
Auriel paused — caught off guard, apparently. Then she nodded. "I will. Thank you." A beat of hesitation. "You too."
Golden light flared along her wings, and she led the Angels and Wingborn south, streaking across the night like a formation of golden meteors — making for the border between the Verdant Forest and the Orc lands, to find out how the enemy had crossed the cliff.
Lilith watched her go, then turned. "We should move."
"Right," Rowan said quickly.
The Bone Dragon and the Gargoyles swung north, toward the Wood Elf command camp.