63. Battle
A eden looked up quickly but was not fast enough for the soldier who was hurtling towards him. Both the soldier’s hands were behind his head, ready to bring his sword straight down onto Aeden.
Aeden jumped back as best he could from Kael, but he wasn’t fast enough. His focus had been that intent on healing Kael that he had dropped his guard.
Luckily for him, he had Nyra, who leapt across the flames and slammed straight into the oncoming soldier before he had time to react, driving him into the ground.
Before he even had a chance to scream out, Nyra had bitten down on him with a deep, threatening growl, his bones crushing under her strength.
Her attack caught Aeden off guard. It was the first time he had seen her this way, and she hadn’t hesitated to protect him.
“ Are you okay? ” Aeden asked .
“ I’m fine .” She snapped her head up and lowered herself into an attack position. “ There are more coming ,” she said as her head darted from left to right.
“They’re flanking us!” Lyric said.
“Get in a defensive formation,” Galen called.
Aeden picked up his blade and took up position beside Nyra. Kael stood beside him with Threxel, and Damien and Corra did the same as well as the one other Offence class student that was on their side of the fire.
On the opposite side of the flames, the others prepared themselves.
“ What do we do? ” Nyra asked.
“Now we fight,” Aeden said as a group of soldiers headed straight towards them.
“There’s so many of them!” the Offence student said, standing beside Kael.
“They don’t have Aer-Kin,” Kael pointed out. “We have the upper hand. These aren’t bonded riders, they’re foot soldiers. That gives us an advantage.”
“I hope you’re right,” Aeden said. “We need to hold a line as best we can. If we get split up, that’ll make it easier for them to pick us off.”
“I agree,” Kael said, words that Aeden never thought he would hear leave his mouth.
The soldiers attacked together, and the Aviara students and guards raised their blades in defence.
This was it, this was the combat that they had been preparing for. The question now was, could they survive this?
“ I’ll protect you as best I can ,” Nyra said, and then she leapt forwards and slammed into the chest of one of the soldiers before spinning and using her tail like a rope to take out another two attackers.
The remaining soldiers reached Aeden’s group, and they parried the strikes as best they could.
Aeden’s hands vibrated as he nearly dropped his sword, unprepared for the force of the blow.
He gathered himself, needing to raise his sword quickly to block a second attack, then a third.
He couldn’t stay on the defensive, though, as the flames behind him threatened to kiss his back.
After the third strike, he took a step forward and swung out his sword at the soldier.
It was a wild swing, and he hit nothing but air, which set him off balance as the soldier stepped forwards, jabbing his blade towards him.
Aeden just managed to step to the right to avoid the strike.
That was a lot closer than he would have liked, but he had already broken the line.
He brought his sword down onto one of the soldier’s weapons, sending it towards the ground.
Before the soldier could react, Aeden quickly followed the line of the sword back towards him with his own and raised it into the soldier’s throat.
The soldier dropped his sword and grabbed at his neck, choking on his own blood.
Aeden stared. He had never taken a life, but he didn’t have a choice, they had attacked him. These were all the things Aeden told himself to try and rationalise the situation.
“Aeden,” Kael screamed, “fall in, you’re leaving us open!”
Kael moved with more precision than Aeden as he drove his sword into the stomach of another soldier before removing it and kicking him over .
Aeden rushed to stand beside Kael as more soldiers descended on them, with them all doing what they could to fight back. Behind them, Nyra moved like a blur, diving from one soldier to the next, tossing them around like dolls.
A scream of pain came from Damien as he dropped to his knees and fell face first into the mud, his blood oozing from his chest.
“Shit!” Aeden said as he fought back against another soldier.
This time he decided to remain on the offence as he swung his sword from the side.
The soldier jumped back but wasn’t prepared for Kael, who took advantage of the situation and stepped into his space before driving his sword into the soldier’s side.
Aeden pierced the soldier’s stomach with his blade, and he and Kael both withdrew their weapons from the soldier’s body at the same time as the man slumped to the ground.
Nyra rounded on the one remaining soldier as Aeden, Kael, Corra, and the other Offence class student stood side by side.
The soldier raised his hands into the air. “I surrender!” he said.
Kael laughed as he bolted forwards, striking at the now-unarmed soldier. Such an attack was against the rules of combat, but at this moment in time, Aeden didn’t care as Kael killed the man where he stood.
Across the flames, Rowan, Cassian, Lyric and Corwin all fought against more attackers.
“Nyra!” Aeden pointed at the flames as Nyra rushed towards them. As she passed Aeden, he grabbed hold of her harness and pulled himself towards her with everything he had as she leapt over them. While airborne, Aeden let go, using the momentum to crash into the soldier who was descending on Rowan.
In a frenzy, Nyra attacked the group of warriors. There were more here than what Aeden and the others had faced on the opposite side of the fire.
Aeden rolled through the mud, gripping hold of the soldier as the two of them came to a stop. In the process, he dropped his blade, but luckily for him, so had the soldier, and the two of them raised their hands.
They exchanged blows, but the soldier was caught unaware by Aeden’s strength as he quickly got the upper hand. Aeden jabbed a couple of times before unfurling a strong right hook to the soldier’s face.
The soldier was dazed but still standing as he desperately dived into Aeden. With little choice, Aeden dug his heels into the ground as best he could, then clasped his hands together and slammed them down into the soldier’s back with as much force as he could.
It was enough to send the man face first into the mud, and Aeden quickly dived onto his back and wrapped his forearm around his neck. He squeezed, clasping his free hand around his wrist as he held his arm in position until the struggling soldier fell limp.
When he looked up, he saw that his and Nyra’s intervention had helped give the upper hand as Rowan, Cassian, and Corwin dispatched some of the remaining attackers.
Lyric, however, was struggling against two attackers as he fought a few feet away, and Aeden jumped to his feet to get to him as fast as possible. Somehow Lyric had been dragged away from the others as he fought to parry the attacks that were coming from either side of him .
Aeden was surprised at how well he could fight, but unlike the rest of them, Lyric was not bonded to an Aer-Kin, meaning he was not as strong as them.
“Lyric!” Aeden called out. As he surged forward, his foot snagged on a fallen body, however and he was sent crashing back to the ground with a sickening thud, his jaw bouncing off the ground. For a moment he swore he could see stars as he desperately tried to reach the hatchery master.
Lyric parried away another strike before backhanding one of the guards. He quickly drove his sword forward, but his own strike was deflected by one of the soldiers. Before he had a chance to react, the second soldier brought his sword down with enough force to disarm Lyric.
Lyric dropped his sword.
Aeden did what he could to climb to his feet, but he was too far away. The soldiers both lifted up their blades. Time stood still. Aeden’s heart was in his mouth as he screamed out Lyric’s name.
“LYRIC!”
A blur of black flew straight into one of the soldiers, whose screams turned into nothing more than a deathly gargle as a small Aer-Kin tore at his skin frantically.
With the other soldier distracted, Lyric threw a solid punch into the side of his head before kicking him backwards. He quickly reached for his sword and spun it from the hilt around his wrist, then drove it down into the final soldier’s stomach.
“Midnight?” Lyric said as the youngling continued to claw at the dead soldier’s body, tearing through his armour like it was paper .
The unbonded Midnight was growling aggressively as it raised its bloody face towards Lyric and let out a chittering noise, similar to what Nyra did when she was happy.
Midnight had just saved Lyric. There was no mistaking that as Lyric stood in shock.
Nyra rounded them all at speed as she scanned for any further threats.
“ I think that’s all of them ,” she said, “ for now, at least .” She pulled up next to Midnight and lowered her head towards the youngling, who bowed in return. Nyra pushed her head against Midnight’s and chittered.
“ Is she okay? ” Aeden asked.
“ She’s terrified ,” she said. “ They all are, except Threxel .”
“You saved him,” Aeden said as he ruffled the back of Midnight’s head.
“We can’t stop!” Lyric called out, barely acknowledging Midnight. “Did we lose anyone?”
“Damien fell, as well as two of the Offence students from the blast.”
“What the fuck was that!” Two hands slammed into Aeden’s chest, causing him to stumble backwards. It was Kael, and he was furious. “What the fuck happened to hold the line!”
“I—”
“I saw what you did, we all did, saving your heroics to protect her .” Kael tapped a finger behind him at a sheepish-looking Rowan. “That left us vulnerable!”
“I didn’t think” – but Aeden struggled to find words.
“Too fucking right, you didn’t.” Kael pushed Aeden again. “You could have gotten all of us killed. This is why Supports don’t fight. ”
Fire ignited in Aeden as he stepped forward and the two came chest to chest.
“Why don’t I show you again.”
“Now’s not the time for dick swinging,” Cassian snapped. He was checking on Galen, who lay on the ground unmoving. He looked at Rowan and shook his head. “We have enough going on without you two tearing chunks out of each other.”
“This whole situation is so fucked,” Rowan said as Vorne pressed his head into her side. Rowan wrapped an arm around his neck and stroked her free hand over the back of his neck.
“We need to move, before more soldiers target us,” Lyric said. “Let’s get out of here.” He turned to leave but froze in his tracks as another ear-splitting roar came from above, accompanied by another. Two large shadows swooped overhead before slamming onto the ground, wings outstretched.
“Need I remind you that it isn’t just the academy that’s at stake?” Lyric’s eyes bore into Aeden.
Aeden’s stomach lurched. Was he to blame for all of this?
Director Vale had stood her ground because of the prophecy.
All these lives had already been lost. What if the prophecy was wrong?
Doubt crept up Aeden’s arms like vines in a forest as he ruminated on the thought.
It was enough to make him want to be sick.
These weren’t Aer-Kin that were attacking, however; they were something entirely different, and the sight of them made Aeden’s blood run cold.
Orion and Rosheen sat atop two griffins, their bodies covered in a dark brown fur, the front of their bodies feathered with two bird-like legs. Both had ginormous eagle-like heads, with dark beady eyes and hooked golden beaks.
“What the fuck,” Kael said. “Are those griffins?”
“I’d says so,” Lyric said. He didn’t look as surprised as everyone else. “Get ready to run, there’s no way we can fight these. They’re too powerful.”
“Well, well, well, what do we have here, sister,” Orion teased from the griffin on the right, which was slightly larger than Rosheen’s.
He looked at all the corpses around them and shook his head.
“Looks like you struggled against the foot soldiers. I can’t say you’ll have a much better chance against us. ”
“What do you want?” Aeden shouted as Nyra rushed to stand by his side. “You won’t get away with this!”
“But we already have. Can you hear that?” Orion cupped his ear sarcastically, grinning, “The Conclave have not come to your aid. They know they’re not strong enough for what’s coming.
” His eyes fixed on Aeden. “And we have a bloodline to eradicate. When your director stood up to us, we had no choice but to make an example of her and the academy. We tried to do things the nice way, didn’t we, sister? ”
Rosheen sat stony-faced, gripping the back of her griffin tightly.
“You see, we would have just killed the last of the bloodline, but given the resistance, if we have to bring this whole academy to ruin, we will. Our master wills it.”
“Why?” Aeden asked. “Why do all of this? What do you want to achieve?”
“You’re quite the spirited student, aren’t you? I am not about to divulge all our secrets, but I am about to enjoy ripping apart the one who has been a thorn in my side. And trust me when I say, I am going to have fun with you.”
Darkness clawed at the side of Aeden’s mind as Orion sought to Dominate him. How could he have been so naive? He knew what would happen, yet he had fallen into the trap.
“I’m going to have fun watching you kill all of your friends and classmates.”
“No!” Aeden cried out as he dropped to his knees. The back of his mind was getting darker, the hisses and growls of commands seeping into his thoughts as if they were his own.
“ Kill them. Slaughter them .”
Each word was like barbed wire, sharp and painful as they raked through his mind. Aeden continued to fight it as best he could.
“ Nyra ,” Aeden reached out desperately through the Weave. “ He’s going to take control of me . He’s already in my head. I don’t think I can keep him out. Don’t let me hurt anyone .”
“ Aeden ,” Nyra said, her voice laced with fear, “ what is going on? I can’t hear you properly, your voice, its crackling, I can’t tell .”
Aeden tried to speak again, but it was as if his consciousness had been pushed to the back of his mind and he had become a passenger. Fear gripped him as he desperately tried to fight back against the Domination, but he was no match for Orion or his power.
“ Kill them ,” Orion said calmly.
His words echoed in Aeden’s head.
Kael drew his sword, ready to strike Aeden as he readied himself to attack. Aeden was powerless as his limbs moved without him willing them, as if he were a puppet on a string .
Nyra snarled and jumped in front of Aeden to defend him, but Aeden found himself taking aim at her, even though she was trying to defend him.
“Nyra, get out of the way!” Aeden tried to scream, but no words left his mouth.
When his sword drew blood, he could swear in that moment that his soul left his body.