Chapter 34 #2
The Starshards dragged every horror back through Serenna. A druid tree guarding a Heart of Stars. In the Wastes, a snow golem siphoning each strike of Essence and hurling stolen power back at them. In the Maelstrom, a leviathan of the sea destroying entire ships.
The gliders were already close enough to plunder the air that held Serenna aloft. Her lift faltered.
She seized the current racing through her shard and crushed it inward until pain cinched her chest. Then she flung her arms wide.
Illumination erupted in a soundless burst, striking the island’s underside in strobing light. The gliders shrieked and scattered from the sudden brilliance, afterimages searing across Serenna’s sight.
They regrouped, circling at the edge of striking distance.
Above, the rangers surged upward on the dracovae, racing for the island’s peak.
Serenna’s breath came ragged, Essence still pounding through her chest.
“Your turn,” she called over the wind, shoving control to Vesryn.
The absence jolted through her like a missed step. Vesryn seized the current at once, prismatic light whirling between his palms.
The gliders coiled downward in a tightening spiral, the Starshards in their skulls beginning to glow. Faint at first, like embers catching. Then brighter, pulsing in rhythm.
“Hold,” Vesryn said. “Let them come closer.”
Serenna’s pulse skidded. “Closer?”
“Every Starshard we claim arms another wielder.” Vesryn’s gaze found hers, his wing claws flexing. “One more chance to stand against the king.”
“By killing every glider?” Serenna’s voice sharpened, her wings beating harder to hold her level.
A muscle jumped in Vesryn’s jaw. “They’re trying to kill us.”
“Because we made ourselves a beacon and called them here!”
Fenn’s grin had vanished as he wheeled closer and closed the gap between them. “She’s right. The druids left them here as wardens. They’re doing exactly what they were made to do.”
Vesryn never looked away from the lead creature, emerald eyes narrowing to draconic slits. “So we fly in circles, let them live, and return with nothing?”
“We take the gems,” Serenna said. “Without harming them.”
“More dangerous,” Fenn murmured.
“I know.”
A downdraft buckled Vesryn’s membranes. He caught himself with a growl, gaze still fixed on the gliders. “We’ll try. But only if we’re all in. I can’t do this without you.” His attention shifted to Fenn. “Both of you.”
Fenn’s fangs flashed. “So we pluck Starshards from gliders while they devour the sky around us. In flight. While their gems attempt to detonate us.”
“Yes,” Vesryn said through his teeth.
Fenn cracked his knuckles, wings flaring wide. “Well, what are you waiting for, princeling?”
It was almost a plan.
The lead glider tipped forward. Its Starshard flared, a metallic whine rising from the gem.
Serenna tensed. She knew what came next—Essence erupting, the world breaking open around their bodies. Then only light, and the question of who would still be breathing when it faded.
“Vesryn.” The idea came together fast enough to frighten her. “Can you snare one with force and portal it far enough where the others can’t reach us?”
His gaze snapped to hers, sharpening as he followed. “How long can you hold the air around us once it starts devouring it?”
Serenna reached for the wind and drew a current around them. “Long enough.”
She turned to Fenn, pulse hammering at her throat. “You warp us out as soon as we grab one—wherever Vesryn opens a portal.”
Fenn nodded.
The keening of the Starshards climbed past hearing, piercing deep into her skull. Her vision blurred, pressure swelling behind her eyes until she thought they’d rupture.
“Now,” Vesryn ordered.
Force lashed from his palms and snared the lead glider. It bucked against the bindings, mouth splitting wider as it shrieked and thrashed.
A portal tore open by the creature. Vesryn flung it through as Fenn seized both their arms.
The world inverted.
They snapped back into the sky beyond the lower isles, the crown island reduced to a distant smear of stone and shadow above them.
The glider tumbled through the portal beside them, thrashing to reclaim its flight. Vesryn’s magic whipped out and caught it again. He reeled the creature against his chest, bands of force ratcheting tight.
The glider writhed against the bindings. The Starshard set into its skull flared brighter, pulsing with darkness as it fed on the prismatic current linking the three of them.
Its mouth gaped wide.
The air hissed, then vanished.
Serenna’s breath slammed short, her chest locking as it swallowed the sky.
Beside her, Fenn’s wings strained against the collapsing air.
She reached past the creature’s pull and dragged the distant wind toward them.
A gale rushed in torn sheets, battering their wings and wrenching them out of the fall.
She hauled in one lungful of air. Then another.
The glider convulsed in Vesryn’s arms, its Starshard keening as the charge wound toward detonation. His force bindings bit deep across its broad body, and the pearly flesh under them split, dark fluid welling through the tears.
“Siphon it.” The order ground out through his teeth, sweat beading his brow.
Fenn extended his claw, palm hovering inches from the glowing crystal.
Then he pulled.
Fenn bared his fangs as the charge hammered into his Starshard, the impact scorching across the bond. The glider’s gem began to dim as he drained its stores.
Vesryn’s magic surged, thin tendrils of rending slipping under the crystal’s edges, probing the seam where it met flesh. The glider screamed, heaving so violently that one band of force unraveled before Vesryn wrenched it taut again.
“Careful,” Serenna hissed—to which of them, she couldn’t say. The pocket of wind around them buckled as the glider’s mouth gaped, forcing her wings into punishing strokes.
Vesryn drove the shadows deeper. The Starshard lifted by a hair, and the glider’s shriek climbed beyond rage into agony.
Leathery skin tore. A thin line of blood, dark and viscous, trickled along the crystal’s edge.
Crimson light chased the rending, drawing torn flesh together to staunch the worst of the blood.
The glider thrashed. Its mouth gaped again—wider, more frantic—and the fragile sky around Serenna lurched toward it.
Her wings pounded through the failing air as she hauled the currents back into shape, stitching lift faster than the creature could unmake it. Each breath scraped her ribs as she held the three of them aloft on a narrow corridor of wind.
Vesryn’s shadows wrenched. The Starshard tore free with a sound fit for a butcher’s block. He snatched the gem before it fell.
The glider’s shriek fractured as it sagged in Vesryn’s arms, going still.
“Well,” Fenn said. “That was horrible.”
Then one wing jerked. The creature bucked weakly, clawing its way back through whatever pain had seized it.
Vesryn ripped open a portal beside them. His force bindings dissolved as he hurled the creature through the rift.
It reappeared near the crown island, wings flaring as it circled in a limping spiral.
Away from them.
Breath sawing through her lungs, Serenna watched it labor. Every few wingbeats, its body listed toward the open drop before forcing itself level again. They’d spared its life, but left it wounded. Still, it had worked.
And then she remembered the others.
Nine shadows streaked toward them, turning as one. The Starshards set into their skulls pulsed brighter as they locked onto the prismatic stream still whirling between the three of them.
Closer now. Faster.
Fenn’s laugh broke their silence. “Nine to go?”
Vesryn’s eyes snapped to him, glinting with grim amusement. “Next one’s yours.”
Vesryn released his hold, and control of the current slid to Fenn.
Fenn’s eyes flared. Essence crackled around his knuckles as he squared to face the approaching horde. “You want to keep score?”
Vesryn’s mouth twitched. “I already am.”