Chapter 51
SERENNA
Lightning struck the Drowned Spires, the impact rolling across the lake.
Light and sound slammed through Serenna’s chest hard enough to throw off her next wingbeat. She dropped half a span before a pulse of Vesryn’s force caught her. Fenn’s cloaking shadows writhed around them, thinning under the violet-white flash.
Over the lake, twenty circles flared into view—five Starshard wielders suspended in each formation above the water, hidden by a wraith until Skylash’s lightning ripped the dark open. Then the night rushed back.
Skylash wheeled above the platform, violet charges branching across every scale.
Veyrix stood motionless, staring at nothing as lightning raked his scales, its glare trapped in his crystalline eyes.
Skylash’s sparks spilled over and battered Rimeclaw and Blossom, yet they gave no more response than the crystal under their claws. Only the five hatchlings bound behind the Wardens thrashed against their harnesses of force, shrieking as Skylash turned her vow into a storm.
Kyansari soldiers scattered from the blasts as lightning skittered over the platform in jagged veins.
“So much for waiting on the king,” Fenn growled.
Heated air bucked off the platform and pitched Serenna sideways. She wrenched her wings level as Skylash struck again and again. Fury lashed through the spark in her chest, sharp enough to seize her gut.
Skylash had to stop. Every bolt stripped the darkness from the circles and laid them bare to the army around the lake.
If Serenna could pick them out through the glare, so could every channeler on the ground.
Below, shamans and elves woven through the army were already hurling magic skyward—stolen druid fire, lances of force, rending that scored black scars through the smoke.
Cinderax’s shrill roar cut between the thunder as he arrowed along the shore, scales flashing in Skylash’s light.
Seventeen hatchlings broke from his wake and scattered toward the exposed circles, each bringing an element the children of earth and starlight could harness.
A Stormstrike dropped into one ring’s heart, lightning bleeding between his scales.
An Emberhart swept into another, fire kindling behind her fangs.
At a third, a Tidecrasher claimed the edge, snow spilling from his jaws into the dark.
One dragon didn’t follow.
Vasharax raced toward them instead, wings beating hard through Skylash’s storm. She tucked herself beside Fenn, tiny body sheltered under the sweep of his wing.
Serenna still thought they were too small for war.
Too young.
She swallowed the protest. The hatchlings were already airborne, beyond the reach of wishing them anywhere else.
“Vesryn, tell the Starshard wielders that our plan stands. Hold position and stay cloaked. Don’t ignite sunfire until the king steps onto that platform.”
Vesryn’s eyes went unfocused. A faint pressure brushed Serenna’s awareness as his telepathy spread across the lake, carrying the command silently from circle to circle.
His attention returned to her. “They’ll hold. But if those channelers below start picking them off…”
“They won’t.” Serenna closed her fingers around the Starshard at her throat. “Because they’ll be aiming at us.”
Fenn’s eyes glowed. “You want us to be bait?”
Serenna angled toward the shore where the fighting churned thickest. “We’ll open portals to strip the Essence-wielders from their formations and dump them somewhere out of the fight. Like the marshes to the south.”
Some would travel back if they had the talent. But by then, the lines they’d left behind would already be broken.
Vesryn’s mouth curved with the same reckless delight he’d worn while taunting the wind gliders, trailing prismatic Essence for them to chase. “And if we ignite our circle first, every channeler focuses on us. Takes pressure off the dracovae too.”
Serenna’s heartbeat stumbled as she glanced at Vasharax hovering at Fenn’s side. She’d meant to draw danger away from the hatchlings, not drag one into it.
“Vasharax stays with the circles,” she said, pointing toward the rings flashing in and out through Skylash’s storm.
The hatchling’s molten eyes flared. Her mind brushed Serenna’s in a pulse of fear and excitement, the two tangled too tightly to separate, crackling like static before a strike.
“You heard her,” Fenn said, snatching for the dragon.
Vasharax folded one wing, slipped between his claws, and shot out on his other side with a defiant puff of smoke.
Serenna leveled a look at Fenn as his wing dipped to make room for Vasharax, then turned to the hatchling. “Fine,” she muttered. “Stay by his side or I’ll portal you out by the tail.”
Fenn dropped his cloaking. The weightless veil dissolved around them, leaving them exposed to the night.
Fire whirled around Vesryn’s wing claws, shadows sheathing his fists. “Let’s give them a target they can’t resist.”
As they wheeled toward the shore, Serenna searched the churn below for openings. Human battle lines scored the mud along the bank, shields locking together only to buckle under the dracovae and fliers sweeping overhead.
Archers fired between the ranks, volleys climbing into the night, while crews heaved weighted nets into the air—black webs unfurling wide enough to snare wings and rip bodies from the sky.
Deeper in the formation, shamans and elves struck from behind the shield walls, Essence blazing through every fracture as stolen druid fire veered and climbed toward anything in flight.
A lance of shadow speared upward.
One of Kaedryn’s druids twisted aside. Too late. The strike carved through his wing, tearing a ragged crescent from the membrane. His cry broke as the torn span buckled, sending him spiraling toward the mud.
The muscles along Serenna’s spine seized in reflex.
She reached through her Starshard for the portaling talent buried in its facets. Her awareness swept toward Vesryn and Fenn, their crystals stirring the instant she touched them.
Prismatic light snapped between them, a constellation igniting above the battlefield and branding their position across the sky. Vesryn’s and Fenn’s strength surged through the circuit in a hard rush, crowding her Well until the gem at her throat pulsed, sharp enough to steal her breath.
Below, shamans and elves turned toward the flare, Essence whirling through the ranks.
A net shot up below Serenna, iron weights dragging the mesh wide. Vesryn shredded it with shadows before the hooks could catch her wings.
Fire streaked through the falling wreckage, stolen druid flame bent upward by the shamans below. Fenn seized the blaze, wrenched it aside, and hurled it into the knot of channelers.
They scattered from the impact.
Serenna ripped open a rift across their escape, darkness spreading flat over the churned ground. Three hit the opening at a run and vanished into the marshes where she sent them. The fourth hurled himself sideways, torso clearing the threshold just as Serenna snapped the portal shut.
His scream ripped through the battle.
Serenna looked down as they swept overhead. The elf clawed through the mud on his elbows, blood streaming behind him. His boots and feet were gone, stranded somewhere in the marshes fifty leagues south.
Acid climbed Serenna’s throat. Every path through this battle would leave someone broken or bleeding.
Farther ahead, Essence flared. A channeler lifted both hands toward a dracovae circling low over the shield line, power gathering bright in her palms.
Serenna opened a narrow portal across the channeler’s path. Vesryn slammed a burst of force into her back, pitching her through the opening.
Their prismatic current caught the archers’ eyes. Bows swung toward them in a ripple, soldiers aiming between the shield walls as strings drew taut.
Fenn dove in a streak of flame, Vasharax plunging at his side.
Arrows rose to meet him, a volley hissing upward.
Vasharax twisted under his wing and spat a burst of flame through the barrage. Several shafts blackened and broke apart mid-flight, raining charred splinters around her.
Too many kept coming.
Vesryn tucked his wings and dropped low, arms snapping wide. Shadows fanned across the sky and shredded the rest of the volley before it struck. Splintered wood and iron heads clattered across shields and armor while Fenn wheeled through the opening untouched.
Vasharax tumbled once in his wake, wings flailing before a frantic beat righted her. She darted back beneath Fenn with an indignant puff of smoke, every scrap of dignity apparently recovered.
Fenn slashed both claws toward the earth.
Fire ripped a crescent across the mud ahead of the ranks.
He banked over them and raked his claws down again.
A second eruption tore along their inland flank, cutting off another escape.
Bodies collided as the formation buckled shoreward.
Shields crashed into armor, soldiers stumbling over one another.
Panic finished what the fire began. Soldiers burst through the gaps, trampling mud and the fallen in their rush to flee.
Fenn’s flames drove the broken ranks toward the shoreline, heat snapping at their backs and sealing every path but one.
Serenna was already there.
She tore a portal open across their retreat.
The first soldiers vanished into the void at a run. Those behind crashed into the opening before they could stop, fear and fire driving the column into the dark. Armor clashed against armor. Bodies tripped over bodies as the rift swallowed them by the column.
Serenna sealed the portal shut and circled back toward Vesryn.
“Again,” she said as Fenn reached them.
They found their rhythm.
Serenna carved rifts across the paths of channelers whenever Essence flared.
Fenn broke formations with fire, driving soldiers into motion.
Vesryn guarded the sky around them, shadows shredding arrows and weighted nets until the fleeing ranks bunched tight enough for broader portals to be torn open, sending whole clusters spilling into the marshes.
Vasharax burned arrows where she could with bursts of flame.
More than once, Fenn snared her in a loop of force and ripped her clear of incoming Essence.
But her frantic wingbeats were slowing now, the little dragon losing height between strokes before hauling herself level again.
Serenna’s own shoulders burned, every correction through the flashing air harder to force than the last.
She risked a glance toward the Drowned Spires.
Skylash still hammered the platform, lightning breaking over Veyrix’s unmoving body and splintering the crystal around him.
The circles still held above the lake, hatchlings guarded at their centers, every Starshard hoarded for a king who had yet to appear.
Their distraction worked, but the effort was costing them.
Every portal Serenna tore open spent Essence she’d need against Galaeryn. Every wave of Vesryn’s shadows drew more from the current binding them. Fenn’s fire still roared, though strain had begun to build from the effort.
A sudden gust hit Serenna hard enough to wrench her sideways.
Wind shrieked across the lake. For the first time since Skylash struck the platform, the lightning stopped.
Veyrix had taken wing.