Chapter 44
JASSYN
Jassyn watched Lykor dwindle between islands until the chain swallowed him. He chased Skylash, chased death, chased the kind of duty he only believed in when it demanded his own life.
And Jassyn had told him to go.
Wind sheared across the crown island, driving frost against his armor and scales. Jassyn dispelled his wings before the crosscurrents could seize the membranes and wrench him off balance. Ice glazed the rock and groaned as the surviving forces closed ranks around him.
Veyrix and Rimeclaw tore the sky apart.
The Zephyrfang climbed in spiraling fury, each downstroke twisting the currents sideways and beating thunder through the clouds. Rimeclaw met him with frost and mass, ice and tempest colliding hard enough to hammer the air outward.
Galaeryn sat motionless atop Rimeclaw’s shoulders. His siphoning rolled outward in waves, invading Wells before surging back to him in a tide of stolen talents.
Kaedryn held the line at Jassyn’s side, her vertical pupils constricting as she tracked those in the sky. “Do we take the fight to him?”
Linked Starshards remained their best defense—a single strike might wound the king once they had the strength and coordination to build it. But every circle bright enough to threaten Galaeryn marked itself for his plundering.
“Retreat to the lower islands,” he said. The order tasted like defeat because it was. “Small groups. We stay alive.”
Kaedryn’s wing claws curled tight. She held his gaze, resistance locked through every line of her body as a silent argument lived and died between them. Dispersal meant abandoning any unified defense, but staying would only gather their strength into one target for the king to slaughter.
She looked away first, cutting two fingers through the air in signal.
Their perimeter broke apart, wraith and druids flying into a sky swarming with razorwings.
The creatures carved through the cloudy haze in angular bursts, chitin flashing before they vanished. They reappeared to rip dracovae riders from saddles or punch through wings whenever the scattered formations tried to close.
As the surviving ranks peeled toward the lower islands, Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn hunted Rimeclaw through the storm, the Heart of Stars burning in Vesryn’s fist.
The Tidecrasher and Zephyrfang crossed vast reaches of sky faster than the three could safely follow by portal, their collisions casting walls of frost and violent winds across every route. Fenn warped them through one onslaught only to emerge with the dragons already tearing away again.
Jassyn measured the treacherous path. He could send warriors and channelers to shield their approach, buy them time to reach the dragon. Yet the three were already exposed to Galaeryn’s siphoning, and every fighter he committed would place another Well within the king’s reach.
Jassyn was still calculating when the air beside him fractured into a glassy shimmer.
A razorwing burst forward, wings blurring fast enough to raise a metallic drone. Six legs hooked around Jassyn, their barbs biting into his armor as the creature ripped him from the island.
He flung a shield around himself as mandibles closed, violet light detonating between jaws and flesh. The creature surged straight down, pinning him to its plated thorax while it sliced through frost and wind.
The frenzy of its wings shuddered through Jassyn’s body. He swung in the creature’s grip, armor grinding against chitin as the mandibles snapped at his ward a finger’s width from the meat of his shoulder.
Wind scoured the breath from his lungs. Ice, clouds, and the dark undersides of islands reeled past until the sky overturned. Terror struck his ribs, and his mind betrayed him with distances, turning every island below into a measure of how far he would fall if the creature dropped him.
Jassyn clawed for the razorwing’s thorax, vines bursting from his palms.
The creature rolled.
His body wrenched sideways in its grip, vines skidding over slick chitin without purchase. No ground below him. No wings to lift him. No handhold beyond the razorwing carrying him.
He was cargo, prey clamped to its abdomen.
His mind lunged like a hand reaching for stone in freefall, thrusting into the razorwing’s skull.
Coercion already lurked, a crude loop lashed around the creature’s instincts.
Jassyn crushed it.
The razorwing convulsed. All four wings locked, and the sky let them go.
They dropped.
Jassyn’s stomach lurched into his throat. The fall streamed tears from his eyes as he snared his own command around the creature’s awareness.
“Hover.”
Wings whipped back into motion. The fall broke against the air, driving the barbed legs deeper into Jassyn’s armor and slamming his head against chitin.
A shout cracked above the carapace. Shadow spilled under the creature’s flank and struck Jassyn’s shield.
Jassyn braced both palms against the armored underside and drove his vines upward. Thorns bit into the seams between plates. Rootlets hooked each ridge and dragged the vines over the creature’s flank until they reached the harness bolted across its spine and the rider strapped to the saddle.
Jassyn clenched his fists, sending thorned coils around the rider’s restraints. Leather split as they wrenched her from the saddle and whipped her body into open sky. She spun end over end, arms wheeling, no wings to arrest her fall.
The empty saddle became his next target.
The creature’s legs opened when Jassyn sent the thought.
His weight dropped into the vines anchored across its carapace, the sudden strain jarring through his shoulders as he hauled himself over the creature’s side.
His boots skidded across the glassy armor until he hooked an arm over the saddle and dragged himself upright.
Tendrils cinched around his waist and thighs, lashing him to the creature’s spine.
Jassyn’s breath came ragged, hands trembling around the living harness. Wings thrashed in a blur while the rest of the razorwing held rigid, every hooked limb locked to his control.
The coercion had taken less effort than mending a wound.
Sharp, illicit exhilaration flooded him at the ease of it, the same treacherous rush Stardust had once poured through his veins.
A dracovae’s screech from below yanked Jassyn back to the battle.
Their retreating ranks had drawn most of the razorwings toward the lower islands. But one turned from the chase. Another followed. Then more peeled from the swarm, faceted eyes locked on the light burning in Vesryn’s fist.
Jassyn’s fear narrowed to the three figures climbing toward the king and the razorwings closing behind them.
He sank his awareness into the creature below him. Its mind bore the breach where he’d torn the coercion free and anchored his own in its place. The design had been brutally simple, cruelty stripped of craft. One order cinched around instinct until obedience became reflex.
The other razorwings snagged in his awareness, matching knots of coercion scattered through the sky. Their riders channeled nothing, merely holding the reins someone else had tied.
Jassyn knew where to slice.
His own wings would never overtake them. But beneath him, four translucent blades tore through frost and crosscurrents at a speed his body could never match.
He sent his razorwing after the others closing on Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn. The intent crossed into its mind before Jassyn formed it into full command, its wings scissoring faster as it accelerated into the chase.
The first rider saw him coming. Shadows whipped from their hands.
All four wings of Jassyn’s mount canted at once, and the razorwing flung itself sideways. His stomach pitched after it, the horizon shearing across his vision.
He hadn’t ordered the razorwing to dodge. His instinct to live had crossed through the coercion and emerged as motion.
Jassyn closed the distance before the rider could turn for another strike. In passing, he pierced the adjacent razorwing’s consciousness and found the crude knot of coercion exactly where he expected. He severed it, sank his own command into the break, and rolled the creature hard beneath her.
The rider tore sideways against the harness. Jassyn whipped his vines across the gap, snagged the straps, and ripped them apart.
They fell with a scream, vanishing into the clouds.
Jassyn streaked past, his mount veering toward the next razorwing trailing after the Heart of Stars shining in the prince’s grip. Jassyn stripped the coercion from its mind and tied his own around its instincts as vines snapped upward and wrenched its rider from the saddle.
The first two wheeled in his wake. A third joined them. Then a fourth.
Six. Eight. Twelve. Each mind he took yielded another body to the flight unfurling around him, translucent wings beating to the same rhythm. Riders tumbled screaming through the clouds while their mounts swung into formation at Jassyn’s back.
Having cleared the sky behind Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, Jassyn tracked the razorwings still harrying the retreating alliance. He turned toward the melee and went hunting.
At his command, the swarm divided and streaked toward the razorwings bearing the king’s soldiers.
The first line struck broadside with the force of falling stone.
Chitin burst against chitin. Saddles snapped sideways, hurling enemy riders into the second line surging from below with mandibles spread wide.
Jaws sheared through plate and flesh. The wet crack of bone reached Jassyn through the wind before what remained fell below.
Thirty became forty. Forty became sixty, then more, until translucent wings crowded behind him.
Another clash hurled the dragons across the sky. Wind slammed into Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, driving them wide while Rimeclaw climbed beyond their reach again, Galaeryn unmoved between the Tidecrasher’s shoulders.
They needed an opening long enough to close the distance.
Jassyn’s thoughts crossed into the razorwing beneath him, then spread through the swarm until every creature moved on the same command.