Chapter Twenty-Four #3
Protected by airborne missiles and magic shields, an entire company of Mages lobbed sphere after enormous sphere of Mage Fire
at the defenders. Hundreds vaporized in instants. Half of the first three levels simply disappeared, as if scooped out of
the mountainside by the hand of a god.
?Fey!? Rain cried on the Warriors’ Path. ?Twenty-five-fold weaves! Hold off that Mage Fire.?
He took to the air, twisting and turning as the air around him went black with sel’dor arrows and great barbed spears catapulted from the bowcannon. The arrows were a nuisance.
The massive spears, however, were tairen killers.
?Rain! Bank left! Left!? Bel’s scream tore through his mind. Instinctive trust in his oldest friend sent him rolling left, and the bowcannon spear
that would have ripped through his chest tore a gaping hole in one wing instead. He barely made it back to Maiden’s Gate before
his ripped wing gave out. He fell from the sky, crashing right into the center of an Eld attack force.
Fortunately, tairen didn’t need wings to breathe flame. The entire level went up in a boiling sea of fire. Screaming Eld leaped
from the walls and fell, burning, to their deaths.
Rain Changed and finished off those left with his swords, fighting with delirious fury and roaring in triumph as blood filled
the air like hot scarlet rain. His teeth flashed in a savage grin. Bloodlust rose high. Tairen Souls killed with fire at a
distance. But this close, intimate dance of death brought the savage predator in him screaming to the surface.
Dead allies were scattered like leaves across the ruins of Orest. Too many of them wore Fey faces. Friends’ faces. This battle
must stop. Here and now. No matter what.
He Changed again—his wings re-forming whole and untorn—and leapt back into the sky. This time when he dove for the Mages and
sel’dor filled the air, he didn’t try to dodge the missiles. This time he simply Changed into formless mist and let the spears and arrows fly through him.
The burn still hurt. Some sentient part of Rain scattered to the rainbowed gray cloud of the Change felt the acid brush of
sel’dor against each tiny droplet of his being, but the foul black metal passed through him without doing harm.
When it was gone, he Changed back into the midnight black tairen with death in his eyes, and dove towards the knot of Elden
Mages, spewing a furious jet of flame that incinerated everything in its path. The Mages’ shields lasted a scant three chimes
before crumpling like seared kindling, leaving the hot, fierce licks of tairen fire to consume the vulnerable red- and blue-robed
sorcerers beneath. He screamed in triumph, put on a burst of speed, and raced into the sky.
Rain used the same tactic to destroy three of the trebuchets and their flanking bowcannon, but when he swooped down upon the
fourth, the Eld had adapted to his attack. Their sel’dor barrage came in a continuous stream rather than a single, dense burst, so that he emerged from the Change into a stream of
arrows and took a dozen of the barbed missiles in one side. His flame burned the rest, but as he dove to set fire to the trebuchet,
portals opened on every side, revealing bowcannon targeted directly at him.
His body twisted, and four sel’dor spears raked deep cuts in his side as he swept by. Sel’dor nets fired from another two portals, and the weighted wire mesh wrapped tight around him and dropped him to the ground. His
attempt to Change to escape the net ended in writhing agony as dozens more sel’dor arrows thunked into his side.
Eld surrounded him, brandishing black metal pikes and barbed blades.
A deafening roar drowned out the cacophony of battle.
Bright, boiling clouds of flame burst from the Faering Mists, heralding the arrival of eight great tairen.
With screams of fury, they dove towards the battlefield of Lower Orest. Steli led the way, white and fierce, and on her back she carried a slender, shining figure clad in studded scarlet leathers.
Flaming cyclones of Air and Fire shot from Ellysetta’s fingertips, driving back the Eld circled around her mate.
Rain closed his eyes as tairen flame poured over him in searing jets. The heat and fire enveloped him, burning the sel’dor net and barbed ends of the arrows from his body without raising so much as a blister on his tairen hide. Moments later, he
sprang into the sky. ?You should not be here, Ellysetta,? he chided as he circled close to Steli’s fierce form.
?Where else do I belong if not by your side?? Ellysetta tossed her head and gave him a blinding smile. ?Tairen do not abandon their mates. Tairen defend the pride.?
He gave a snort and blew smoke. Stubborn woman. Headstrong woman.
His woman.
And he would have her no other way.
?You bring pride to this Fey.? He set every thread of their bond singing with the vastness of his love. ?In truth, I can use your help at the Veil. There are wounded in need of a shei’dalin’s care.?
She didn’t hesitate or argue. ?I will go.? Her eyes narrowed on the blood-soaked arrows quilling his side. ?Finish this, and join me, shei’tan. I will be waiting for you.? She stroked a hand down Steli’s neck, and the white tairen wheeled towards Upper Orest.
?What shall we do with the Eld?? asked Pella, one of the other seven tairen, as Steli winged towards the mountain city.
Rain glanced down at the battlefield where so many had been lost. From this height, the Eld looked like nothing but ants scurrying
across an anthill. ?Burn them,? he commanded. ?Burn the Eld and scorch the ground. Leave no finger span unscathed.?