Chapter 43 #2
Aesar surged forward and seized their Well. Essence struck through Lykor’s hold, violet light locking the ice into place.
“The others.”
Lykor snarled and forced the dome outward. It swept over Serenna, Fenn, Vesryn, and Veyrix just as the full weight of Rimeclaw’s breath crashed down.
The shield of ice bowed until white filled Lykor’s vision. Fractures raced overhead, each one ringing through his skull. The blast roared across the frozen curve, pounding the island until the pressure against his palms began to ease as Rimeclaw flew by.
Lykor crushed the ice overhead from within. Its frozen weight burst into snow and collapsed around them in a white roar, hissing against the sunfire. Only then did Aesar unravel the shield.
As Rimeclaw circled above the crown isle, Galaeryn raised one hand.
The gesture carried idle contempt, the careless certainty of a king who only had to reach for what everyone else was bleeding to save.
Essence ignited from his palm and followed the prismatic currents of the Starshard circles. Across the sky, every blazing stream became a path to the wielders. The nearest cluster of magus fell first.
Aesar recoiled before the first scream, the memory of pain flashing behind Lykor’s eyes.
Across the storm, the magus convulsed in flight. Their wings locked. Limbs stretched. Indigo spread through their skin while their mouths widened around shrieks too high for any sound.
Any other channeler needed hands on flesh to plunder a Well. Galaeryn reached for the prismatic power from Rimeclaw’s back, distance another law he’d stopped obeying centuries ago.
Five magus became wraith between one wingbeat and the next, their bodies growing still as they fell. Talents tore free in blinding globes and circled their falling forms, moons ripped loose from ruined worlds.
Galaeryn closed his hand, his gaze already landing on the next wave of fliers.
The stolen power streaked toward him. One globe after another plunged into his chest, light branching beneath his skin before sinking out of sight into the fathomless depths of his power.
“No,” Jassyn breathed beside Lykor, his face gone bloodless.
Another wave of Essence rolled outward.
The sky hemorrhaged fighters, Starshard circles flickering out across the storm. Flame, shadow, and starlight died as Galaeryn pillaged from Well to Well.
Rimeclaw’s ice slammed through the alliance, hurling fliers out of formation. Razorwings flooded the gaps, closing around each severed cluster until the battle splintered into isolated rings of fraying prismatic light.
Lykor turned away from their falling people.
Vesryn hadn’t stopped. Sunfire streamed from the Heart into Veyrix’s prison while the battle collapsed around them. Starlight leaked in bright seams between the prince’s plated scales, burning outward from within.
His knees buckled, wings spasming behind him. Serenna and Fenn rushed to his sides, taking his weight while he forced the blaze deeper.
Skylash struck Rimeclaw again.
Lightning raked across the Tidecrasher’s spine in a scream of violet light, and the dragon thrashed under the charge. Galaeryn’s stillness broke, one hand dropping half an inch as his head turned.
Rimeclaw stirred.
Lykor felt a pulse of awareness move through the frozen dark, faint enough to die between one breath and the next.
“The stars scream. Make them stop.”
Rimeclaw had once begged Lykor to end him. Lykor had refused, fool enough to believe he could still break the dragon’s chains. The king had made Rimeclaw pay for that belief ever since.
The leash snapped taut, and Rimeclaw vanished into silence.
Veyrix roared, lurching forward. Crystal and ice burst from his flanks as he tore free from his prison.
Wheeling above the island, Skylash’s head whipped toward him. Her dive toward Rimeclaw faltered.
A heartbeat was all it cost.
But by the time she faced Rimeclaw again, he’d wheeled to meet her, a blizzard already gathering behind his fangs.
Lykor’s own frost withered, brittle and shallow beside the pressure mounting in the dragon’s maw. Every trace of moisture crystallized with the shriek of breaking glass.
Skylash streaked to meet Rimeclaw head-on, violet lightning wreathing every scale.
She was faster. She’d always been faster.
But inevitability lived in the slow beat of Rimeclaw’s wings.
Ice erupted from his jaws and struck her charge. Lightning drowned in the torrent, sparks dying along her scales. Skylash’s wings fought through one last stroke as frost locked over them.
Veyrix saw her fall.
His wings flared to their full span, blotting out the sky. Wind bowed under the vast membranes as he crouched, claws gouging trenches into the island. One ruinous downstroke shattered the ice beneath his talons and flung him over the rim.
He tucked into the dive, streaking for Skylash. Wind streamed from his wings and raced ahead of him, coiling around her frozen body. Her roll slowed, the rigid span of her wings tilting toward level.
A massive portal cleaved the sky around Rimeclaw, broad enough to swallow his wings. The other end of the rift flared open between Veyrix and Skylash.
Rimeclaw surged through, frost already seething behind his fangs. Ice thundered from his jaws and struck Veyrix’s gale, crystallizing into a white barricade. Veyrix wrenched one wing high and carved past its edge, frost splintering across his scales, but the wind around Skylash shattered.
She plunged through the island chain at a slant, Rimeclaw’s frost binding every joint into one unyielding shape.
Veyrix’s bellow stripped the wind from the sky. He charged toward the king, vengeance hammering through every wingbeat.
Mouth curving, Galaeryn steered Rimeclaw into Veyrix’s charge.
Jassyn tore the Heart of Stars from his leathers, grip tightening until his knuckles blanched. His gaze swept over Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn before he thrust the relic into Vesryn’s palms.
“The king is focused on Veyrix. If you can get close enough to Rimeclaw…”
Vesryn swayed, sunfire fading from his scales, but Serenna and Fenn steadied him. His fingers closed around the Heart, radiance burning through the gaps. At his feet, the relic that had freed Veyrix lay in broken shards.
“We’ll reach him,” Serenna said.
Lykor’s jaw locked, but the logic held. Vesryn and Serenna had freed four dragons between them. Both still stood, though smoke curled from Vesryn’s scales. If anyone could liberate Rimeclaw, it was them.
Their Starshards blazed back to life. Fenn warped them from the island and flung them toward the dragons.
Lykor watched them vanish toward Rimeclaw. The debt should’ve been his to carry. Instead, it disappeared into the storm in other hands while his closed on nothing.
“There’s still something we can do,” Aesar murmured, steering their gaze down farther.
Skylash had already plummeted below the first chain of islands. Her wings hung frozen, every membrane entombed in ice as she dropped with the dead weight of stone.
The landmasses vanished past her one by one. Lykor counted those still beneath her, each worth only another heartbeat of sky.
Too few.
Rimeclaw might’ve already killed her.
Kaedryn struck the ground behind Lykor and Jassyn, her druids landing around her with wounded borne between them. Orders cracked from her before her wings closed. She planted herself beside Jassyn and snapped the nearest warriors into a living shield around him.
Snow sifted from Lykor’s shoulders as Skylash continued to drop. His wing claws opened a fraction, reaching for her, before he forced them closed.
His gaze cut to Jassyn. Kaedryn stood at his side, her warriors braced between him and the killing sky. A sliver of survival. Protected but never safe.
Their eyes met, and Jassyn saw the question Lykor refused to ask.
“Go.”
Lykor didn’t let himself hesitate.
He warped from the island and dove, trusting Kaedryn to keep Jassyn alive while every urge clawed at him to turn back.
Wind screamed around him. Veyrix climbed toward the king, but below, Skylash plunged through the lower chain, rolling slowly around the rigid axis of her spine. One frozen wing rose while the other sank, her body revolving in the same death-stiff sprawl as island after island rushed past.
Lykor matched her descent, waiting until Skylash’s rolling body exposed her spine, then warped closer.
Then again.
The void swallowed the sky and spat him into her fall.
He struck Skylash hard enough to empty his lungs. Pain jarred his teeth together, his boots punching through the ice before wedging between her scales.
Her rotation dragged him sideways. The horizon reeled, and an island scythed past. Wind rammed into him and ripped his torso from her body.
Aesar surged through his limbs. Their hips sank with Skylash’s pitch, one knee locking behind a spinal ridge while their wings canted into the roll.
Their weight settled into her rotation, Aesar’s skill of riding dracovae holding them where Lykor’s strength had only given the wind purchase.
Skylash’s snarl rumbled through him. Alive. A storm dragon imprisoned inside her own frozen body and still furious enough to kill whatever touched her.
“I know,” Lykor growled back.
Aesar crouched low and rode the roll as Lykor surrendered everything but his hands. He drove his palms against her spine, invading Rimeclaw’s winter until the casing cracked from within.