Chapter 46
Chapter Forty Six
Across the room, Gideon shoved aside a table someone had overturned and turned toward her with a look of disbelief. “What are you doing?”
Cassara turned to him slowly, the words rising before she had time to make them sound strategic or reasonable or anything at all. Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
“If we don’t fight it,” she said, “we lose more than the wards.”
He stared at her for a moment, something unreadable twisting behind his eyes. She could see him weighing her words, weighing the risks, weighing the cost of action against the cost of inaction.
Then he gave a single, sharp nod.
“Thought you’d never say it,” Liri breathed as she slipped back into view, with Nym fluttering close. In one hand she held Spireglass and in the other an aether shard.
Cassara’s aether shard.
Liri grinned, though it didn’t quite hide the tension in her shoulders. “Thought you might want your angry sparkle fox and your murder glaive.”
A shimmer burst beside her, soft and brilliant, and Flicker popped into view, glowing faintly, tail curling upward like a flame caught mid-flick. He chittered, nose nudging her wrist with urgent affection, and her ACS pinged a half-second later.
Sync established.
The familiar weight of their bond settled into place, steadying her racing heart. Whatever happened next, they would face it together.
"Hope you're ready," Cassara whispered.
Always.
Rett was already strapping his bracers tight, the leather worn smooth from countless training sessions. Skelli paced behind him like a caged predator, her plated form reflecting the storm light as she sensed blood in the air. "No one else is coming."
Oliver adjusted a strap across his chest, checking the placement of his support gear with practiced efficiency. Ilza clung to his shoulder, her camouflage plates already shifting and adapting against the dim stormlight. "And the leviathan won't wait."
Gideon slid his gauntlet into place with deliberate precision. The last lock snapped with a hiss of engaging mechanisms.
Auric Vow stood together, not perfect. Not even close to ready. But together.
Around them, other first-years watched with wide eyes, some still pressed against the fractured windows, others huddled in the corners where the emergency lighting cast the deepest shadows. A few looked like they wanted to join, hands drifting toward their own gear, but fear held them back.
Cassara understood. She was terrified too.
They made it as far as the archway before the doors burst inward again.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Julian strode towards them, his expression settling somewhere between outrage and disdain. His unit flanked him in perfect formation, Jonas with his beast already summoned, Vash loading arc-tethers into a containment pack with swift, efficient movements, the others sharp-eyed and silent.
Julian's gaze locked on Cassara, then snapped to Gideon. The look that passed between them carried months of rivalry and resentment.
"What are you doing, Julian?"
"You think we're going to let you play heroes while we watch from a window?" he demanded. "Think again."
Cassara frowned.
This wasn't about heroics, this was about survival.
She glanced at Gideon who simply nodded and moved toward the shattered wall.
The breach was wide enough for three people to pass through side-by-side, jagged stone and twisted metal framing the gap where the leviathan's attack had torn through.
Cassara climbed over the rubble first, boots finding purchase on broken masonry.
Rain immediately soaked through her training gear, cold and sharp.
Gideon followed, then the rest of Auric Vow, picking their way through the debris with weapons drawn. Julian's unit came after, moving with practiced coordination.
They'd barely cleared the common room when Talia appeared at the breach behind them, twin pistols holstered at her sides. Her braid whipped behind her like a battle banner, soaked and shining with rain.
Cassara stopped. "What are you doing here?"
"I want to help," Talia said, raising her voice to carry over the wind.
No one spoke. The wind answered instead, howling between the towers above. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the leviathan's form as it coiled through the air above the northern courtyard.
Liri looked to Cassara, then to Gideon. Her mouth twitched, almost a smile. "The more the merrier?"
Gideon didn't argue. He stepped aside, making room.
Talia crossed the distance and fell into formation like she'd always been there.
Two teams. Eleven students. Against something that had shattered Vallemont's legendary defenses.
The odds were terrible.
But they were all they had.
"We need a plan," Gideon said, water streaming down his face. "Something to keep it occupied without getting ourselves killed."
"Hit and move," Julian cut in before anyone else could speak. "Rotating strikes. My team takes the north approach, yours flanks from the east. We keep it turning, distracted."
"That puts us in its direct line of fire," Gideon said evenly. "Better to—"
"Better to what?" Julian's voice sharpened. "Wait for it to level another building? We don't have time for your overcautious—"
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The voice cut through the storm like a blade.
Auren crossed the courtyard, his coat plastered to him, strands of dark hair dripping over his brow. His expression was thunder—fury barely contained, every line of his body radiating authority and barely restrained anger.
Cassara's stomach dropped.
He was going to order them back inside. Going to pull rank and send them away and—
But Auren's gaze swept over them—over their weapons, their beasts, their formation—and the fury in his eyes sharpened into assessment.
They were already committed. Already outside the walls with steel in hand.
"Distraction is the priority," he said at last. "Hold it off. Keep it moving. The others are evacuating. Protect the dorms at all costs." A pause. "Reinforcements are en route. We just need to hold it off until they get here."
Their eyes met briefly and Cassara offered a curt nod.
Gideon was already calling for Vangal. The griffin answered with a screech, wings beating back the storm in rhythmic bursts.
Lightning lit his feathers in sharp flashes, silver-gray, soaked and gleaming.
Cassara ran, boots slipping once on the stones, before Gideon’s hand caught hers and pulled her up in one clean motion.
The saddle was built for one. She didn’t ask where to sit. She just hooked an arm around his torso and held on.
“You alright?” he called over his shoulder.
“No,” she replied, tightening her grip. “Go anyway.”
Vangal launched like a living storm.
They were airborne before she could adjust, slicing through sleet with terrifying speed. The wind ripped at her clothes, stole the breath from her lungs. Below them, the courtyard shrank, glimmers of fire and magelight scattered as the rest of the unit split.
Liri and Nym darted toward the west hall, casting light illusions that danced like false targets. Oliver knelt near the crumbled gate, hands pressed into the glyph lattice. Rett jogged alongside Skelli, their path angling toward the broken observatory.
And from the far side of the courtyard, Julian rose, his wyvern carving a graceful spiral into the clouds. His team followed behind in tight formation, glittering and perfect.
Cassara didn’t watch long.
The real storm was ahead of them, and it was hungry.
Vangal banked left, cutting across the air with a bone-jarring lurch. Cassara clung to the saddle spine, breath locked in her throat, the world below vanishing into a churn of wind and vapor.
“There!” Gideon shouted, pointing.
The Tempestrix coiled just beyond the shattered watchtower, its crown of storm-spines flared outward in a vibrating arc, a signal of alert and rage.
Gideon leaned forward with a sharp whistle and a flick of the reins.
Vangal responded instantly. The griffin let out a piercing shriek, wings tilting to catch the updraft as he twisted into a dive.
Just before they passed the leviathan’s flank, Vangal unleashed a sonic pulse of his own, a thunderous, echoing cry that split the air and shimmered with sync-born distortion.
The sound collided with the storm-spines flaring along Tempestrix’s back, drawing its attention like a challenge hurled across the sky.
The creature turned and screamed, a pressure-blast of compressed sound rippled through the clouds, and Vangal shuddered midflight.
Another burst cut across the sky, a streak of radiant gold.
Julian dove in from above on his wyvern, loosing an arc-bolt that cracked against Tempestrix’s side.
The impact lit up the rain like fireworks, and the leviathan hissed, turning its focus away from the dormitories and onto the skyborne threats now circling like insects.
“It’s working,” Gideon said, almost to himself.
Cassara’s gaze locked on the leviathan’s spiraling body, already rising through the upper cloud line, its form flickering with speed that defied its massive size. Each movement carved wind currents into invisible blades.
They looped for another pass.
And disaster struck.
Julian was the first to reengage, his wyvern diving low with another volley prepped, the beast’s wings cutting through the rain with practiced precision.
But the Tempestrix twisted faster than anything that large had a right to move.
Its tail lashed out like a whip, cracking the sky apart with a sound like breaking glass.
The strike clipped the wyvern’s wing with a flash of kinetic backlash that sent sparks of displaced energy cascading through the air.
Julian’s mount shrieked, a sound of pain and confusion that cut through the storm’s roar. The wyvern dipped hard, its injured wing struggling to maintain lift, and veered straight into Vangal’s path.
“Hold on!” Gideon barked, yanking the reins with desperate strength.