Chapter 16 #2
Ayla jerked Serenna to the side, a burst of Tidecrasher ice screaming past her ear before it splintered against a reaver’s chest behind her.
Above them, claws scraped stone at the lowest window. A Stormstrike forced itself through first, wings folding tight to clear the opening. A Tidecrasher followed. Then an Emberhart.
Three more.
Then eight.
Gone into the dark.
Ayla stopped chasing the dragons.
She hurled Serenna into the defenders instead. Across the chamber, Taryn did the same with Fenn, the two of them attacking their allies from opposite ends.
Fenn’s horror slammed into hers through the bond. Every strike against their own people rang between them, grief and fury crossing faster than blood could darken the sand.
A druid spun toward her, staff leveled, the Starshard at its tip shrieking with Essence. Then his eyes flared crimson as they found her face.
The staff dipped.
Serenna tried to scream a warning.
Ayla’s command locked her throat shut and snapped her hands open. Rending burst from Serenna’s fingertips as the druid lowered his arm.
He detonated in a spray of blood and bone before her memory could give him a name. Warmth spattered her cheek, and Ayla kept Serenna’s face turned toward the ruin she’d made of him.
A flash cut across the dust and smoke.
Fenn’s Starshard, glinting in Taryn’s fist.
Force shot from Fenn’s hands and hooked Vasharax out of the air. She crashed into him in a tangle of wings and flame, and his arms locked around her. Fire streamed from her jaws, breaking against the Essence binding her as he hauled her toward a portal.
Not Vasharax. Not through a rift.
Serenna couldn’t break Ayla’s hold. Fenn couldn’t fight Taryn’s.
But Cinderax was still free.
His fire kept the path clear to the windows, every gout buying another hatchling time to vanish into the night.
“Cinderax!” Serenna flung the thought upward as the dragon circled overhead. “Fenn’s Starshard—take it from her!”
For one wingbeat, he held the line above.
Then he snarled and dove.
Cinderax hit Taryn’s forearm talons first, punching through her armor. His fangs clamped around her wrist, his wings never stopping. He banked hard, wrenching her arm taut. Blood sprayed in an arc, hissing as it struck the braziers.
Taryn shrieked but kept her grip on the gem.
Until Cinderax ripped her hand free with a wet, fibrous snap.
The dragon rose, wings hammering the air with Taryn’s severed hand clutched between his jaws, the Starshard trapped in her dead fingers.
Fenn staggered and released Vasharax. She hit the sand thrashing, frills flared, hissing at him like she was still constricted with Essence.
Fenn knelt, hands sliding under her belly, launching her into the air like they’d done a hundred times before. Her wings snapped wide, and she surged upward, talons catching the window’s edge. She scrabbled through, stone scraping her scales before she disappeared into the night.
Fenn shoved upright and turned to Serenna, the blue in his eyes gone cold and feral.
Fire roared to his palms, aimed past Serenna and straight at Ayla.
Ayla dragged Serenna into his path. Sparks ripped to Serenna’s fingertips, the charge gathering as Ayla leveled her hands at Fenn.
Fenn snarled as he killed his own fire, curling his fingers into fists rather than risk burning her again.
Cinderax had barely risen with Fenn’s Starshard before Taryn struck back.
Blood sheeted from the stump of her wrist, but she bared her teeth around a furious scream that was more animal than elf and flung her remaining hand toward the dragon. A coil of force burst from her fingertips, a ragged lash of magic that should’ve missed.
It didn’t.
The severed hand tore free from Cinderax’s jaws. The Starshard ripped loose from the locked fingers, tumbling before Taryn snatched it against her chest. The hand struck the sand beside her as she dropped to one knee, blood pooling around her.
Fenn’s body went rigid as the control snapped taut, yanking him back toward his sister.
Through the bond, Serenna felt the instant his hope went out. His eyes found hers across the cavern, and whatever chance he’d seen for them died there.
Ayla’s grip tightened, and Serenna’s body turned away from him.
The hatchlings were gone, but not all of them had made it through the windows. She’d seen at least three dragons hauled through a portal. But the ones who’d escaped, Cinderax could lead them beyond Ayla’s reach.
“Go,” Serenna sent to him, the thought breaking as it left. “Keep them safe.”
He tucked his wings and dove through the widest window, obsidian scales grinding against the frame.
Only the fighting forces remained, Asharyn’s defense crumbling around her. For every druid or wraith that fell, two reavers surged over the body. Ayla’s control never wavered, every strike she wrung from Serenna feeding this battle.
Rending tore from Serenna’s hands again. A wraith vanished before it struck, but the blast caught the druid behind him, splitting armor in a burst of leather and blood. Serenna’s stomach heaved. Her body was already turning as Ayla hunted the next silhouette through the smoke.
Serenna’s attention snagged on the fire in the braziers.
They ringed the chamber like sentinels, every fourth one seeded with a Starshard that Kaedryn had helped her anchor. They’d embedded them weeks ago against the day intruders might cross the nursery’s threshold.
Serenna had lost count of who still stood among their allies. She only knew those assigned to the cavern defenses would answer. They’d volunteered for this—for defending the chamber until there was nothing left to hold. And now with the hatchlings out of the fight…
Ayla’s will rode in Serenna’s wrists. In her fingers. In every stolen strike.
But Serenna’s lungs were hers for a breath.
She filled them until her ribs strained.
“COLLAPSE IT!”
The command cracked against the walls before the response came.
Wraith and druids broke from the fighting and warped to the walls, claws hovering above the braziers.
A chorus of keening swelled, the deafening shrieks of Starshards waking.
Ayla spun, hands clamped over her ears. “What is that?”
Serenna met her sister’s eyes. “The one thing you didn’t ask about.”
The braziers detonated.
Essence erupted in blinding columns. Force punched through rock, through the ceiling, through the bones of the cave itself. The ground buckled as stone screamed, dust avalanching as the cavern shuddered.
Serenna didn’t see Fenn cross the distance. One moment, stone was falling between them. The next, his hand found hers, fingers closing tight. The bond blazed between them, carrying everything neither of them could say as the cavern crashed down.