Chapter 44 #2
He flared a shield around himself and aimed his mount upward.
His swarm followed.
Wind struck like a wall. Ice fragments raked his ward and punched through translucent wings. One razorwing spiraled away. Then another, its shredded membranes thrashing uselessly as it dropped.
The vine harness bit into Jassyn’s thighs as the gusts tried to peel him from the creature’s back. He tightened his hold on its mind and steered it higher through currents that splintered the edges of its carapace.
The razorwing shuddered beneath him.
Jassyn bore down until the resistance vanished into obedience.
He read Veyrix’s gales as terrain written across the sky, following the wind where it bent, narrowed, and broke apart. Rimeclaw’s frost was easier to see but harder to survive, white sheets and jagged spears erupting through the gaps.
Strike. Recoil. Then the stillness between.
Jassyn flew there.
He sent the first wave.
Six razorwings broke from his formation and speared upward toward the king. Jassyn spent them to measure the distance between threat and response.
Rimeclaw’s head swung toward them, frost erupting from his jaws in a white torrent. All six froze, vanishing from Jassyn’s awareness as ice locked wings and bodies in an instant. The next gust struck before gravity could claim them, shattering the frozen razorwings into a storm of chitin and snow.
Jassyn sent another rank of razorwings.
Then another.
Galaeryn never looked away from Veyrix. But each formation Jassyn forced upward drew Rimeclaw’s jaws after it, frost obliterating the razorwings while Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn climbed through the space torn open.
Behind Jassyn, the drone of wings thinned. He sent more anyway, feeding bodies into Rimeclaw’s path, every burst of frost buying the three another stretch of sky and Veyrix another chance to dislodge the king.
Prismatic light flared as Vesryn lifted the Heart of Stars. Sunfire swelled around his fist until the surrounding snow burned gold.
Then he hurled it into the Tidecrasher’s flank.
The impact tore a bellow from Rimeclaw. Black scales blistered, glowing trenches splitting through his hide as the reek of scorched flesh reached Jassyn through the wind.
Dread sank through Jassyn, deeper than Rimeclaw’s frost, as Vesryn stowed the Heart and its radiance vanished.
He understood the failure before the smoke cleared.
He’d torn coercion from too many minds now to mistake where its violence lived.
Galaeryn had barbed his control so deep into the dragon’s consciousness that sunfire could scour Rimeclaw to the bone and leave every hook untouched.
Essence surged between Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn again as their combined power bent toward a new target.
Sunfire screamed toward Galaeryn in a torrent bright enough to bleach the clouds.
The king raised one open palm and the magic vanished into him, his Well consuming the sunfire whole.
Then the devouring turned.
Even across the gulf of storm, Jassyn felt the reversal, a hard inward pull. Prismatic light guttered between Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn as Galaeryn’s siphoning raced back through their own magic, targeting their Wells.
Fenn warped them out of range before the king could draw deeper, reappearing with Vesryn and Serenna in the open sky below the dragons.
Dozens of razorwings still crowded Jassyn’s awareness, panic rippling through them until the creature he was riding lurched with the swarm’s impulse to scatter. Jassyn crushed the urge in its mind first, then reached for the rest.
Fear multiplied faster than he could contain it. Fly. Climb. Turn. Bite. Flee. The instincts crowded through his skull until the borders of himself began to blur.
He couldn’t subdue them one mind at a time.
Jassyn seized the panic itself and forced a single command through every consciousness anchored to him.
“Hold.”
The razorwings convulsed back into shape.
Blood spilled from his nose before he swiped it away. Countless minds pressed against his own, every wingbeat driving the pressure deeper. A white fracture split behind his eyes, bright enough to spot his vision.
Still, the swarm stayed in formation.
Jassyn sent the remaining razorwings around Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, glass wings wheeling into a living screen while he braced for retaliation.
It never came.
They’d never been Galaeryn’s quarry.
Veyrix broke clear of Rimeclaw and seized the opening. Wind streamed toward him from across the sky, swelling with each beat of his wings. The storm coiled around the Zephyrfang, all of its violence aimed at the king.
Galaeryn raised one hand.
Essence gathered around a Heart of Stars in his palm. Bruised light pulsed within its blackened surface, leeching color from the sky.
Horror followed recognition in the same instant. Jassyn should’ve known the king would come prepared to claim the Zephyrfang.
Power erupted from Galaeryn’s palm toward Veyrix.
Jassyn reached for the dragon’s awareness and met a mind vast as weather, rage turning through it in violent fronts. He tried to wrestle a warning into the chaos, but Veyrix swept it aside before the meaning could take hold.
Jassyn flinched as darkness struck the Zephyrfang in the chest.
The dragon seized, wings locking wide, jaws wrenching open around a roar that died in his throat.
Veyrix’s resistance snapped, and the break struck through Jassyn’s skull with sickening familiarity. He was familiar with that violation. He’d practiced its smaller cruelty across a hundred minds.
Veyrix shuddered before his wingbeats smoothed into Rimeclaw’s rhythm.
Sunlight glinted in crystalline eyes gone distant and captive, the same dead sheen staring from the Tidecrasher’s gaze.
The wind failed with him.
Across the sky, wings staggered as the currents they’d been fighting vanished.
Druids dropped hard before catching themselves on frantic downstrokes, wraith warping back into place.
Jassyn’s razorwings pitched around Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, translucent membranes thrashing through the sudden loss of lift.