Chapter 34
LYKOR
The Maw was fucking chaos.
Lykor’s portal spat him and Zaeryn into the sky above the Blackreach, just north of the summit where he and Jassyn had scouted. The stormfront hit the same instant, slamming like a hammer swung by the sky. Lightning raked the clouds, the air writhing in its own fury.
Trella shrieked as she caught the wind, wings flaring wide. The gale punched beneath her feathers, wrenching her sideways, every wingbeat a battle of strength to stay aloft.
Behind them, his rift sealed shut after Zaeryn and her dracovae emerged. A bolt of lightning obliterated the space a heartbeat later, vaporizing air in a flash of white.
Half-blinded by the strike, Lykor’s vision stuttered back in violent pulses. They’d arrived before Rimeclaw. Barely. The sky trembled like it already sensed the dragon’s approach.
Daeryn’s forces held the summit in a clustered ring, little more than a line of bodies against the storm. If they were still fighting, then Jassyn was still below—enduring what Lykor should’ve faced at his side.
He killed the thought before it could rise. Jassyn had given the order and no amount of bleeding over it would rewrite that truth, despite every breath after feeling borrowed.
Above the rim of the mountain, the scalebound hurled fire into the clouds while lightning answered in jagged strikes.
Even from this distance, Lykor saw the defense collapsing.
Razorwings swarmed the air. Druids dove through broken currents.
Warriors sprinted across the summit in scattered formation.
More desperate than coordinated.
Trella released a keening shrill, slicing through the gale as a downdraft hurled her off balance. Lykor’s breath ripped free of his lungs, the wind clawing past his ears.
Aesar seized control in that instant, hips, knees, and spine locking into alignment. Lykor yielded just enough to stay upright in the saddle.
Fire and lightning combusted in front of them in a white-hot collision. Lykor gritted his teeth as Trella swooped. He cinched his scales tighter over his skin. He could survive a strike—maybe two—but Trella wouldn’t.
Zaeryn rode the sky at his flank, her dracovae a streak of rust carving the storm. Heat from her flames hissed against Lykor’s senses but he kept his eyes forward, forcing himself to trust that she’d protect what he couldn’t.
Before Lykor could orient himself, the mountain erupted. A column of molten sunfire speared from the summit’s core, ravaging the storm.
Serenna.
His gut knotted with the terrible clarity of consequence. If she lost control of that power, Jassyn would be among the first to burn.
Lightning catapulted toward the peak in relentless volleys, but still their forces held—bolts caught midair and flung back into the sky.
It wouldn’t last.
He couldn’t reach them in time.
Couldn’t shield what was already breaking.
Yet the instinct still clawed beneath his ribs—drag Jassyn out of whatever stars-scorched pit they’d cracked open. Be there if it all came crashing down.
“He doesn’t need you dying for him,” Aesar murmured in his mind. “Let them finish what they started. We’re here for Rimeclaw.”
Lykor’s knuckles blanched against the saddle. Trella banked, every wingbeat thudding through his spine. He exhaled slowly as cold rain slashed across his face.
He blinked.
Rain.
The storm Kaedryn had sworn would never break.
A chill struck his scales, slicking Trella’s wings in a silver sheen as the wind heaved sideways. Fighting for balance, she snapped her beak at the gale. Lykor leaned low and braced, fingers buried in her feathers.
The wrongness hit him first, a pressure coiling beneath his sternum. A reckoning presence.
Rimeclaw.
Squinting, he scanned the storm, searching for the dragon as ice began to descend.
Razored spears, long as lances, screamed earthward.
They slammed into cliffs and ravines, bursting on impact in violent sprays of glittering frost. One tore straight through a razorwing, shredding its wings before the creature spun down into the Blackreach in a screeching plunge.
The sky hurled wave after wave of havoc across the Maw. Ice sheared around the rangers as their dracovae wove frantic paths above the scattered fleet.
Another javelin of ice skewered a druid mid-flight. No cry followed as the limp shape was flung like refuse, trailing a dark smear across the sky.
Lykor moved before thought could rise. He yanked on the flood behind his ribs, ripping every trace of moisture from the air.
The lacerating rain stilled as he claimed the storm.
Ice shards collided, splintered, and fused, each one spinning into orbit around him.
Frost became a living bulwark, moving with Trella as she banked and dove.
Then the lightning found them.
Viper-fast, a bolt streaked past Zaeryn’s flames and clipped the edge of Lykor’s shield. Ice shattered in a deafening crack, flinging shards like an explosion of knives. Trella’s wings thrashed, the saddle lurching beneath him with a brutal jolt.
For a heartbeat, they dropped.
Sky spiraled. His stomach hollowed.
Screeching through the chaos, Trella battled the fall—wings bucking, claws gouging air as she forced them level.
Movement whipped in from the side.
A razorwing arrowed from the storm, wings vibrating in a glassy blur. The beast’s compound eyes flashed as its needle-like limbs darted toward Trella. A rider lay flat along its segmented spine, lacquered armor catching the lightning as they lined up the kill.
Lykor punched a fist forward, water hardening over his knuckles in a gauntlet of frost. He twisted his wrist, driving the ice outward. Shards detonated from his hand in a serrated burst.
Zaeryn’s flames hit in the same instant.
The razorwing exploded midair—wings shredding, catching fire, blood misting the wind. The rider fell with it, unseated and burning, flung into the sky with a strangled cry.
As the bodies fell, a shadow the size of a mountainside cleaved through the clouds.
Wreathed in sleet, Rimeclaw dropped from the thunderheads, ice and rain trailing like a shroud. Each wingbeat ruptured the sky, every blast a shockwave of pressure.
The dragon’s roar split the peaks, the force so violent it shattered the mountain’s crowns. Stone avalanched in thunderous cascades as he descended into the Maw.
Aesar tightened their legs, shifting weight through the saddle. Trella banked with them, angling straight toward the leviathan as if she meant to strike him from the sky herself.
Lightning struck again.
The bolt speared through the sky beside Lykor—no time to react. It ripped through the wing of Zaeryn’s dracovae, vaporizing bones and feathers in a burst of searing light.
One moment, the beast flew.
The next, it fell.
Flung from the saddle, Zaeryn went with it, spiraling after her mount as blood streamed in crimson ribbons through the rain. Limbs flailing, wings splaying too late to catch herself, Zaeryn fought the sky—trying to fly, to right herself, to survive.
“It won’t be enough,” Aesar warned.
With a curse, Lykor kicked free of the stirrups, then warped.
Space folded—black, crushing, the roar of wind tearing through him—and he reappeared beneath Zaeryn, breath sawing sharp in his throat. He shifted his wings just before impact, membranes tearing free through his armor.
Zaeryn slammed into his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Lykor caught her in a collision, locking both arms around her as the storm screamed past, ice and rain slicing the air into ribbons of white.
They spun—tangled, falling.
Below, her dracovae struck a cliff. Lykor flinched when the beast he couldn’t save shattered against stone. Blood, bone, and feathers exploded across the slopes.
He warped again, the world crushing inward before spitting them out once more into the storm.
They reappeared above the mountains. Lykor’s shoulders strained as he hovered with both their weight. Zaeryn gasped against his chest, wings thrashing in erratic bursts. Still fighting the fall even as he held her aloft.
Below, smoke curled from the wreckage of her fallen mount. Guilt lodged beneath his ribs. He’d called Zaeryn into this storm, and her dracovae had paid the price.
Between lightning flashes, Lykor caught sight of Rimeclaw sweeping lower through the clouds.
His pulse lurched. Each flare carved the dragon’s shadow across the sky, a heartbeat of light revealing desolation poised to strike.
He had to reach Rimeclaw before the beast entered the fray and turned the tide.
Trella released a shriek, wings pounding like war drums as she rose through the storm toward them. Fierce. Focused.
She swooped to catch them, and Lykor slammed into her spine, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs. The shock nearly tore Zaeryn from his grip, but Trella held steady, driving them back into the sky.
And Zaeryn—stars scorch her—didn’t hesitate. Her wings vanished as she slid into the saddle in front of him, every motion honed with training, though none of them had prepared for this kind of ride.
Essence flared beneath her palm as she pressed her hand to Trella’s neck, a thread of telepathy unspooling.
Violet and ravenous, lightning screamed in answer, raging toward them.
Lykor snarled, biting back a curse at her for channeling magic. He flung a hand skyward, and a glacial sweep burst from his fingers—frost spearing into a curved shield of ice.
The bolt struck dead center. Ice detonated on impact, a blizzard of snow and sparks exploding outward.
Funny. Seemed he could block the fucking lightning after all.
Trella veered hard, wings shredding the wind.
“She’ll bear me,” Zaeryn said in front of him, her voice unsteady as she released her power.
Lykor said nothing. He only looked at her profile—soot streaked, soaked to the bone, still trembling from the fall—and all he could think was how much it had cost her to be here, defying the storm.