Chapter 46 #2
Below, the storm bared its malice—air twisting with ravenous intent, clawing for any weakness. Wind and mist knifed across his face in rapid pulses, blurring his vision as lightning sheared sideways with heat and static.
Angling deeper into the eye, each wingbeat met crushing resistance, pressure bucking beneath him, every stroke a battle to keep from being flung into the funnel. Jassyn reached for the wind, seizing the currents to carve a narrow pocket of steadier air as they flew downward.
Serenna dove beside him, slicing through the chaos, draconic eyes reflecting lightning. Fingers splayed, she snatched sparks before they struck, hurling them back into the spinning storm wall.
Fenn stretched out his claws, fire bursting in controlled waves to steer the static aside. They worked in tandem to keep the path open, descending in a fragile formation. A single falter meant tearing loose, shredded by the storm and erased in a heartbeat.
And Cinderax…
Wings beating furiously, the dragon darted below them, straining against currents built to devour titans. A sudden shear slammed into him and he tumbled twice, yanked toward the roiling wall.
At the last instant he caught himself, claws scrabbling at empty air, a ragged plume of fire ripping from his maw in a defiant snarl.
“Cinderax won’t last like that!” Jassyn shouted, angling toward Fenn as they flew deeper. His focus clamped hard on the churning corridor, every nerve screaming with the effort of restraining the funnel. “Serenna and I have our hands full—grab him before the wind does!”
“But he bites!” Fenn protested, wings snapping to correct his drift.
“Then bite him back!”
The words lashed out before Jassyn could cage them, nothing like his voice at all. Lykor’s growl lived in that command, and Jassyn seized the echo, needing its steadiness more than the safety of silence.
Fenn huffed something under his breath, but warped.
He reappeared below them, snatching Cinderax out of the air as another violent gust tore past where the dragon had been. Vanishing in a blink, Fenn materialized back at Jassyn’s side, his wings strumming hard.
Cinderax hissed, claws raking against armor as he wedged himself against Fenn’s shoulder, fangs bared into the storm as if daring it to try again.
Jassyn forced his focus downward, stomach lurching as the eye stretched below him—a plunging chasm of water where the sky’s light speared into the dark sea. The Maelstrom carved through the waves, dragging itself across the ocean in a slow, inexorable crawl that tugged their flight in its wake.
Mist salted his lashes and he blinked through the burn. He hurled a coil of fire into the abyss and watched its glow sink through veils of deepening shadow until it vanished entirely, leaving only the sense of a bottomless fall waiting to claim them.
They tipped forward into the descent. The wind’s roar thinned as water replaced the storm’s fury, spinning them downward through a hollowed pillar of sea. Lightning continued to crawl through the column, each jagged pulse illuminating the constricting eye in flashes.
Shrinking fast, the surface shimmered high overhead—no longer a reachable plane of safety but a distant sheen of fractured light. Depth warped the sea, shapes stirring beyond the spinning walls.
Serenna gasped as something sleek cleaved a shadow through the water before slipping out of sight. Jassyn’s spine prickled, beastblood sensing what his eyes could not. But he shoved the fear aside and led the way deeper.
The hollow narrowed as they descended, the air thickening with every wingbeat. Disturbed silt billowed upward from a few dozen paces below, rising like smoke from the ocean floor.
And there—caught in the lightning’s flicker and untouched by current or tide—a glimmer flashed in the dark.
The Heart of Stars.
The relic hung in perfect stillness, supported by nothing Jassyn could sense. Keeping distance, he halted well above it, the others slowing to hover beside him. Any closer and they might trigger something catastrophic.
“I don’t see any Starshards guarding it,” Serenna murmured, her gaze sweeping the sandy floor below. But her wing talons twitched, betraying how little she trusted the way it waited.
Jassyn’s claws trembled with the same unease, feeling as if the entire ocean hung poised to collapse in a single breath.
One of Fenn’s fangs clicked against a ring in his lip as he glanced at Cinderax, the dragon’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I rather suspect this won’t be as simple as plucking the Heart free.”
Jaw tight, Jassyn silently agreed as he looked up, the world lurching with a sickening tilt.
The ocean loomed above like a vault of black glass, the sky beyond reduced to a pinprick.
Vertigo spun through his skull, and he swallowed back the rush of nausea crowding his throat before steering his gaze downward.
“I have a feeling the second we touch the Heart, the ocean will come crashing down.”
Serenna shuddered, eyes catching his. “Do you think we can hold it back?”
Jassyn forced the worry from his voice. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I’ll go,” Fenn said, eyes flaring. “You two hold the sea.”
Pressure rolled off Serenna in a wave. She shoved her hands out, preparing to bend the ocean’s weight.
Jassyn stretched his awareness wide to meet hers, every nerve igniting as he braced himself against the drag of water. He gave a single nod and Fenn folded his wings and warped.
A heartbeat later he reappeared below, boots sinking into silt, Cinderax still perched watchful on his shoulders. Jassyn held his breath as Fenn’s talons closed around the Heart.
The Maelstrom seemed to still as though the ancient force had fixed its attention on them. Jassyn’s gut twisted as he glanced at Serenna and asked, “Can Fenn take all of us to the surface?”
“Maybe,” she whispered, eyes locked on Fenn and Cinderax. “If we keep a path clear. He can’t warp through water.” She hesitated. “Or swim.”
Muscles straining, Fenn heaved against the Heart, but the relic resisted. As if in protest, it flared with the colors of Fenn’s talents, filaments of light appearing and lashing out to net his claw.
Cinderax released a piercing trill. His wings snapped wide as he unleashed a gout of fire at the Heart, heat rippling outward against the walls of water. Fenn’s arm shifted to scales before the strike, absorbing the blaze without a mark.
Leathery frills flared along Cinderax’s skull as his fire deepened—gold morphing into red, red bleeding into an impossible black that ravaged the light.
The relic’s bindings writhed around Fenn’s claw, but the black flame seized them, heat blistering and burning the strands away.
When the final thread of magic snapped, the Heart tore free, the force of it staggering Fenn back a step.
He glanced up, then warped to Jassyn’s side. His wings strummed the air in steady rhythm as fire faded from Cinderax’s fangs.
Jassyn tensed as a ripple shuddered through the water. Then another as the Maelstrom’s churn ground to a halt. The lightning laced through the whirlpool unraveled into darkness as everything stilled. His lungs cinched tight, breaths labored against a calm that felt wrong.
Fenn’s wing talons ignited, tiny globes of flame blooming between the claws, fragile lanterns flickering against the dark.
The ocean held. For a moment. For two.
Thunder gathered inside Jassyn’s chest, each wingbeat pounding like a second heart. He shot a look at Fenn. “Can you warp us to—”
The silence cracked and the ocean roared.
A sound rose from the abyss like the world groaning open. The storm’s walls folded inward, and the sea came crashing down.
Jassyn flung his arms wide, dragging tatters of air into his grasp as he shoved back against the flood. Beside him Serenna caught the collapsing current and hurled it aside, her power shearing the water apart.
But the sea surged, slamming in from above and below, from every angle at once. His chest locked until it felt as though even his lungs might be flattened under the weight.
But together they forced the water back enough for air to regather around them, a thin and trembling sphere shivering against the crush of the deep.
“Up,” Jassyn rasped, lungs seared raw from effort, the shell of air resisting every inch of the climb. His muscles burned with every stroke as he pushed himself higher. “Don’t stop.”
Tucking the Heart in his armor, Fenn kept pace between them, Cinderax clinging to his shoulder. Each wingbeat sent tremors skittering across the sphere as they ascended inside their wavering globe.
For an instant, reaching the surface felt possible.
Then Fenn yelped.
Jassyn twisted, breath locking in his chest as a leviathan slid past the veil—sinuous like a monstrous eel, translucent fins unfurling along its spine. Scales shimmered with a pearled sheen, lightning pulsing through its body in broken flashes.
It turned, and Serenna cursed. Nestled in its skull gleamed a Starshard, shining with illumination.
Jassyn tensed as the beast opened its maw. Rows of needle teeth framed a mouth too wide, hinged in layered arcs, mandibles peeling outward to bare a coiling tongue.
It struck, crashing into the thin skin of air they’d torn from the sea. The pocket ruptured. Water flooded in as the shape collapsed under the blow. Cold slammed into Jassyn, driving the breath from his chest.
Blindly, he lashed his awareness outward, hurling the tide back as he grappled for scraps of air, forcing the sphere to reform. Stitching the torn seams together, he tightened the shrinking shell, leaving scarcely enough room for their wings.
Serenna punched a burst of lightning into the sea, the charge blazing toward the creature. The leviathan shrieked as it writhed away, spine rippling as it flowed out of the lightning’s reach.
Wrathful now, it reeled and circled, its vast bulk cutting the water so fast the air tore loose from Jassyn’s grip.
Fenn’s claws locked tight on Jassyn and Serenna both. “Hold your breath,” he barked.
Jassyn barely inflated his lungs before Fenn yanked them skyward, tearing through the sea’s throat.