Chapter 52 #2
Lykor drove a spike of frost through the next soldier.
Ice burst outward from the wound, splitting flesh and armor in a storm of jagged shards.
Aesar swept through the white eruption, one glaive scything through the back of another soldier’s knee and severing the leg in a spray of blood and shattered armor while Lykor slashed shadows through an Emberhart’s bindings.
The Emberhart shoved further into the huddle of hatchlings, fire spilling in frantic ribbons from its jaws.
Two freed.
The remaining three writhed in their restraints as soldiers closed in from every direction.
Aesar wheeled both glaives fast enough to blur the blades.
A soldier lunged. Aesar sheared through his wrist, sword and severed hand skittering across the ground.
He reversed the second glaive into the next soldier’s side, the blade punching him sideways.
Steel rang through the crush while Lykor sent frost into every gap Aesar carved.
Aesar turned with the pressure of the soldiers, blades forcing the tightening circle back a step at a time. Lykor whipped out tendrils of shadows, striking the remaining restraints until blue light burst.
The hatchlings bolted.
Claws scrabbled over crystal, wings battering one another in panic. An Emberhart stumbled, a Stormstrike slamming into its side. A Tidecrasher slipped, nearly trampled by the tangle.
Lykor threw his awareness to the Everfrost Caverns and ripped the distance open.
Aesar kept the glaives whirling around the portal while Lykor lashed a pulse of force at the hatchlings. The blow caught all five in a single sweep and hurled them through the rift before they could scatter across the platform. When the final tail vanished, Lykor slammed the portal shut.
Five dragons the king wouldn’t claim tonight.
Frost crusted their armor, shedding in brittle flakes as the capital’s soldiers swarmed closer. Aesar swung both glaives through a vicious arc. Lykor poured Essence into the path the blades carved, a shield solidifying an instant before a volley of rending struck.
Lykor bared their fangs through the violet glare as fractures raced across the shield.
A blast of force bludgeoned their ward. The shield flared at the point of impact, threads of Essence splintering through its surface. Lykor drove more strength into the damage until every break sealed.
Too many for steel. But he could siphon their Wells, strip Galaeryn of soldiers one screaming body at a time. Gut the platform before the king ever set foot on it. Leave a massacre behind.
Aesar’s grip tightened around the glaives. “We did what we came to do.”
Lykor hated that he was right. He’d left Jassyn alone for barely minutes. Too long.
He glanced back to the overlook, but snow and falling sparks obscured his view.
Overhead, thunder rolled from Rimeclaw’s wingbeats as he and Veyrix pursued Skylash.
Each concussion struck through their chest as another wave of shadows broke against the shield.
Then Skylash’s lightning tore the lake white.
The ledge where he’d left Jassyn flashed into view.
Empty.
Lykor’s gaze ripped through the smoke, hunting for Jassyn.
Across the platform, Blossom lifted her head.
Crystal split under their boots.
A root punched through the fracture and snapped around their ankle. Lykor sheared it away with frost, but two more burst through beside it, faster than the first. They clamped around their calf, jerking their leg sideways.
One knee crashed against the ground. A vine lashed around their thigh, a second around their waist. Before they could rise, the roots wrenched them backward. Aesar’s glaives screeched across the platform as their shoulders slammed down.
Beyond the shield, soldiers pressed close, weapons and Essence flashing through the glare. Rending scored black across the ward. Force struck after it, cracking a jagged fault through the violet light above their face.
Lykor drove Essence into the break until it fused, even as another root hammered across their waist. The coils around their legs constricted with it, grinding their body against the platform until crystal bit into their spine.
Lykor froze the roots.
New growth split the ice.
Vines speared through the platform’s widening fractures, forcing past the frost-locked roots. One whipped across their forearm and pinned it flat to the crystal. Another wound over their middle and climbed higher, tightening across their ribs.
Blossom cinched the snare. The roots compressed their chest, stealing what little room remained inside their lungs.
Aesar dragged one glaive back into their grip and chopped into the vine trapping their other arm. Steel bit deep, scattering splinters across the crystal. Bark sealed over the wound before the fragments landed, swallowing the blade to its hilt.
Through the tendrils closing over their vision, Blossom moved.
One foreclaw struck the crystal. Then the other. Slow. Heavy. Roots trailed from her in writhing lengths as she advanced.
Coming to feed.
Lykor yanked shadows through the roots clamped around their neck. Wood split. Sap sprayed their jaw as the severed lengths recoiled, air knifing into their lungs.
Another root lashed into the opening, crushing their throat shut again. Their body spasmed as they gasped for a breath, the shield unraveling as Essence slipped away.
Blossom’s looming shape doubled behind the soldiers, then bled into the darkness closing around her. Sound collapsed to a thin, distant whine.
Then the earth exploded away.
Roots ripped from their body in every direction as something slammed into the platform, the impact shuddering through the crystal and up their spine.
Aesar reeled inward and Lykor seized control, twisting onto one side and shoving himself up on a shaking arm. His lungs spasmed around the first gasp of air, then dragged in another, his chest jerking with the sudden rush.
He forced his head up.
Jassyn stood over him, viridian wings flared, a Heart of Stars blazing in his fist.
Around them, the platform had gone still.
Three dragons kept tearing the sky apart above the lake while the battle raged on the shore.
But on the platform, everything had stopped.
Soldiers stood trapped inside unfinished violence, blades suspended mid-strike and Essence dying between rigid fingers.
Blossom had halted, one foreclaw planted ahead of the other, every vine gone motionless.
Lykor hauled himself upright on unsteady legs. He’d seen this before on the shore of the Maw—a fragment of battle snared inside Jassyn’s coercion.
This was the entire platform.
Every mind controlled by Jassyn.
Jassyn’s pupils had narrowed to draconic slits, the amber around them bright with fury. For one treacherous instant, every instinct in Lykor urged him to flee. He crushed the reflex before a single muscle obeyed.
Lykor forced the words through his battered throat. “Let’s get back to the ridge.”
Jassyn shook his head and turned toward Blossom towering over them. “I can free her.”
Lykor’s jaw locked. “Sunfire failed when Vesryn tried with Rimeclaw.”
“I’m not going to use sunfire.” His focus stayed on Blossom. “I have to break the leash from inside her mind.”
Lykor’s talons dented into his palm. Only two living souls could force their way into a dragon’s mind uninvited. One wore a crown. The other stood before him already holding an entire platform with coercion.
“You use that Heart,” Lykor said, willing Jassyn to look at him, “and Galaeryn may be waiting inside her skull.”
“I know.”
Quiet. Steady. Unforgivable.
Lykor’s hand twitched toward the Heart. He could rip it from Jassyn’s fist, warp them both back to the ridge, force him to stay there until the danger passed. Or send Jassyn somewhere the battle could never reach.
But Jassyn had chosen his fight.
Lykor hated him for it. Yet he loved him enough not to make his own hands a cage.
Jassyn raised the Heart toward Blossom, light flaring between his fingers. Then his body went utterly still. His face emptied of everything Lykor knew how to read, leaving him upright and breathing while his mind went somewhere Lykor couldn’t follow.
Defenseless. Yet every soldier across the platform remained trapped inside his coercion while Jassyn faced the king’s magic.
Lykor snatched Aesar’s glaives off the ground with a pulse of force. As the blades spun toward them, he loosened his hold on their arms. Aesar slid into the space Lykor gave him, both hands closing around the hilts. Lykor stayed close, shadows reforming.
“Let them go,” Lykor said. “We’ll hold them.”
Jassyn’s lashes fluttered, knuckles blanching around the Heart. Still the soldiers remained locked in place, dozens snared in his coercion while he traveled deeper into the dragon’s mind.
“Focus on Blossom,” Lykor urged.
The stillness broke.
Essence snapped loose in every direction. Blades crashed through interrupted arcs. Shouts tore open across the platform as the king’s forces lurched back into motion.
Aesar raised both glaives into guard.
Lykor bared his fangs as they stepped between Jassyn and everything else.