Chapter 11 Evira #2
Collective relief went through our ranks as something finally made an impact against the assholes, and they went flying, others destabilized and crashing into the trenches, slipping all over the place.
Dad gave the order for House Lavadon to move in, and they burst forward and flooded the trenches with violent streams of water.
“Move back!” Flame ordered in the next moment so we were out of harm’s way. After what had happened to House Athyras, yeah, it was a needed call.
As I made it back to the line, catching the relief all over Zayn briefly as I did, I shifted back into human form.
I went to clothe myself with my magic, but then I felt Zayn’s familiar power roll over me, and I was already back in my outfit from earlier.
I turned and found him smiling sweetly at me.
Dad burst back between me and Grandma, but stayed in dragon form.
I heard her beckoning his ear in Dragon Tongue.
“Mom?” he asked back, grunts and growls sounding, which was all most non-dragons could make out, not the actual meaning behind it.
Except Zayn now with the spell I’d performed on him earlier.
And Vaxan. He’d learned it all by himself, something exceedingly difficult to do.
Fuck. I wished he was here with me and Zayn right now.
Zayn had the holoscreen we’d been monitoring him with in his pocket, and it would alert us if Vaxan woke up. I mean, we hadn’t just left him there alone while he was healing and defenseless, I’d called River over. He’d been able to get there immediately, while Octana had been in class, phone off.
My chest started to ache as I thought of who else wasn’t right here with us.
Winter.
My lovely.
Our gentle sweetheart.
I blinked. I guess experiencing something so caring and tender—and a little territorial—from Zayn right in the middle of battle had kind of thrown me, allowed emotion to bleed through in a way I wasn’t used to, or prepared for, in this sort of situation.
“My thoughts exactly,” I heard Dad telling Grandma in Dragon Tongue. “Let’s light it up.”
He signaled Flame, who gave a chin lift, and then Dad and Grandma were headed for the hostiles.
They possessed a special ability that went beyond regular Ice Dragon stuff of being able to send out a shot of lightning, sending thunder cracking through the sky, snow squalls, that sort of thing.
The two of them could also send out highly-targeted spidering lightning at multiple hostiles at once without diluting the potency.
They could deliver it through the sky and via the ground.
And right now as Grandma soared powerfully into the air and Dad went for the ground, it was clear they were going to do both.
It happened, Grandma sending spidering veins of blindingly-bright lightning down upon the enemy like a massive encompassing web sparking viciously. Just what was needed.
Dad sent out his into the water-logged trenches to finish the hostiles off still reeling and destabilized.
But not only didn’t it fry the ones in the trenches, it didn’t impact them from above either. That voltage could take out any dragon here. Oh my God.
They kept going, wanting it to work, the freaked energy from the troops around me palpable, when even the almighty Draven Vortimer and Elyrren Vortimer couldn’t put down these fuckers with their most powerful ability.
Their special ability.
I didn’t have that same ability. Apparently, it had something to do with the one who’d birthed me, and her makeup nullifying it.
But there was another rare ability that could maybe—yes!
That could work.
I swung my head toward the Titanus dragons as they roared into the battlefield on command, the heat from raging flames deploying as some flew over us, making me wince.
As the first dozen who reached the enemy started throwing up flame walls to stop their approach, others enveloping the hostiles in tornadoes made of flames, some delivering blasts—and all of it just rolling over them, not harming them in the least. Gasps ran out from the troops as a bunch of the hostiles strode right through the flame walls, as though they weren’t even there.
The next wave was already in motion, and I caught sight of Zayn amongst the ground human form House Titanus dragons, Fanor and Torvek with them.
“Brute force!” my dad called out, and a massive surge forward of all troops followed. I saw Dad and Grandma, now back in human form, conjure their jagged ice swords, while Flame conjured a battleax wrapped in fire, and sprinted into the heart of the battle among the troops.
I cut through the battlefield and snagged Zayn’s arm, drawing him off to the side with a burst of speed, as all that raged on.
“Evira?” he questioned.
“I have an idea.”
“All ears. This is fucking brutal,” he said, seeing dragon fists and limbs shattering against the enemy targets as they delivered blow after blow.
Even sudden bursts of motion and might at the hostiles had little effect, the hostiles remaining standing against it, and the brutal impact propelling our troops clean across the area instead. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“There’s another thing that has rarely been seen before.
” I gestured at the fucked-up magical creations.
“They’re forged from warped magic. They’ve been unharmed by any dragon ability so far.
Dragons are technically considered natural and of pure magic.
But with us fighting against these… constructs—”
“Well, damn, you wanna try what I brought up earlier?”
“You said yourself it’s hard to do, that even us fusing so easily in class in any way shouldn’t have been possible. Doing this, Ifrit flame and dragon ice and frost fueled into one, it’s not considered natural.”
He grinned. “You might even say it’s ‘warped’.”
“Exactly, little hellion. Exactly.”
He squared his shoulders. “All right. Let’s do this fucking thing, then.”
“You’re not worried at all about the danger? Me freezing through your flame or something? Hurting you? Especially when we’ve got to pull it off in the middle of battlefield chaos?”
He laid his hand on my shoulder. “First, we both know I breathe chaos, baby.” His expression became more serious, earnest, as he said next, “Second, I trust you. Like, completely, Evira. With every fucking thing. And the fact you didn’t even mention you being worried about the danger makes it clear you’re already at that point with me, too. ”
“I am.”
“Good.” He lifted his hand from my shoulder and took a step back. “Then go ahead and have Draven and Flame clear the battlefield, and we’ll get to it.”
I turned and let out a sharp whistle, one Dad and me had established between us during my childhood. It was our unique call to each other.
He swung his head immediately, catching my eye.
I gestured between Zayn and me. “Ecliptic Convergence.”
He jolted.
Yeah, it was no small thing.
I could see the war taking place all over him.
Because he knew how badly it could go if not carried out properly.
But then I saw a spark in his eye.
He nodded, then gave the order for everyone to pull back and clear the way.
Flame had three dozen of the injured collected and teleported out for medical attention.
Everyone else took position again further back, though, almost touching the city, because the enemy had drawn so much closer. Despite everything we’d thrown at them.
“Here goes nothing,” I said to Zayn, taking his hand, and bursting him with me a few feet in front of Dad, Grandma, Torvek, and Fanor.
I let go of him, then we moved a few feet apart, very aware of the hostiles just fifty feet out now from decimating all of us. I could hear Zayn’s pulse going wild.
“Zayn—”
“You think I’m freaking out. And I partly am. Obviously. Look at this shitshow. But if you just used your sexy dragon senses to read me—” At reactions from the troops behind us, he called over his shoulder, “Yeah, I said ‘sexy’. She fucking is. Said it, owned it, done.”
There were a lot of stunned looks, but then chatter broke out, and some laughter.
I eyed Zayn. “You did that on purpose.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Figured a morale boost was warranted.” He shifted his weight.
“The pulse thing, though, the ‘freaking out’, is me channeling the chaos of my flame, gathering, coiling. We’ve got to connect carefully at first, but then send out a massive rush.
As an Ifrit, if I do that without the prep aspect, I could burn it out accidentally—and, ironically, myself as well.
” He winced. “Feels like shit. And worse, it’ll make me useless for a while afterward.
” He narrowed his eyes at the enemy. “And what we’re trying to do here isn’t gonna fail. Not gonna let it.”
I smiled. “I love you.”
His eyes shone. “Love you, too.”
Then as he ramped himself up further, I did the opposite needed for my end of things, and drew in a couple of steadying breaths, then thrust out my right hand, my glacial magic emanating in a vibrant glow.
Zayn shot out his left hand about four feet away from mine, and his fuchsia power flared in the form of wildly lashing flames.
I pulled harder, forging the glow into a glacial sphere.
Zayn did the same, his flames licking and lashing around the circumference.
We both poured more power into them, until they were two-feet in diameter hovering between us, just a mere inch from touching.
“Ready?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, giving a definitive nod, then shifting his weight.
We pushed the spheres closer, both of us grunting as they connected. His fire blazed against my ice, shooting painful sparks through my fingers, and quickly traveling up my arm.
I pushed back with more power, leveling it off and sending his fire back into the sphere along with some added stabilization of my ice and frost.
There was resistance then, and I couldn’t push my sphere further into his. It was connected just an inch in, when they needed to align as one perfectly before we could launch it at the enemy—an enemy that was rapidly closing in.
“Zayn, it’s okay.”
“It hurt you.”