Chapter 62
Aella
We were finishing with the translation potion when Rayna let out a curse, glaring at the sky. I followed her line of sight and counted at least twenty green dragons flying in our direction. Something about them gave me chills.
“Not friends?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The green ones are almost always the enemy. Usually, they leave us alone, but now and then they have to test our border. They can also sense heavy magic usage, and that portal put out a lot, especially since it was open for quite a long time. I was afraid it would bring them here.”
Dagra growled at the incoming threat.
“Those are bad ones,” I said to her as she swished her tail angrily.
Rayna looked between the dragon and me. “Anytime you need to communicate with her, I can do it. I’m able to speak to any animal telepathically, and she speaks the same language as the dragons here, so I’ll understand her replies even without the potion.”
“My older sister can talk to them, too.”
She smiled. “I think I’m going to like you.”
“You’re so much more open and friendly than most fae,” I said, grinning back. “It’s refreshing.”
“I might be hard to kill, but slayers tend to die young because eventually we find a dragon or group of them that we can’t handle.
” She shrugged. “I don’t have time to be rude to people except my mate, Galadon, because he can be cranky and annoying.
It was also a really lonely job that involved traveling alone for many years until I met him, so I tried to make friends along the way, and being nice helped. ”
I laughed, though I could sense that those were difficult times for her. “That makes sense.”
Before we could continue the conversation further, the dragon dots in the sky had grown larger.
We were a mismatch of strangers preparing to battle together again, and I had no idea what to do.
There were four of them, and counting our dragon, we had eight from Paxia.
That still left us outnumbered against an enemy who was considerably larger than most of us.
“Um, normally, I have wind and light power to help in battle, but I nearly drained myself opening a cross-galaxy portal to get us here,” I said, glancing at the slayer.
She pointed at the sky where clouds were forming. “Galadon is already brewing a storm so that I can hit them with lightning the moment they break our wards. That will knock a few of them down before we have to fight the rest.”
I wondered what she meant about the ward until the dragons hit it, clawing and biting at the invisible barrier with ruthless intensity. It appeared to be similar to what the Andalagar used to protect their territory.
“Wait, you can control lightning, and he manipulates storms?” I asked.
She’d said they had magic, but neither of those were common abilities on Zadrya. I’d come across people with them, and faced a weather wielder at Bismag, but I didn’t know anyone personally. For a mated couple to have that combination of abilities was amazing.
“Yes, to his storms. For me, it’s more like I can control electricity, and lightning is one form of that.
I can shoot it straight from my hands or even pull the charge out of people’s bodies to stop their hearts, though that is a lot more exhausting.
It also feels like cheating, so I only use it as a last resort. ”
I gave her an incredulous look. “If you weren’t so nice, I’d be scared of you right now.”
“Most people are because they don’t look past my abilities or magic,” she said, a hint of vulnerability in her expression.
“Everyone—including shifters—is terrified of Galadon as well, which is what makes us such a great pair. We’re universally disliked and envied by most people and dragons except our friends. ”
I gestured toward Darrow, who was low on power, but the God of Wrath had left him with more than me since he wasn’t as weakened by the portal channeling. “My husband, who is also my mate, terrifies people with his magic, too.”
“What does he do?” she asked, surprise in her gaze.
He’d moved to stand by Galadon and raised his hands as well.
My lips quirked. “Just watch.”
Faina came to join us and stood next to me. “Dare wants me to guard you since you’re weak right now.”
“What do you do?” Rayna asked.
“Control fire and put people to sleep,” she said with a malicious grin.
Rayna tapped her chin. “The first ability will be useful around dragons. As for the second, there are times when I wish I’d had you around because insomnia or nightmares kept me awake.”
Whatever gave a dragon slayer nightmares would have to be bad.
Faina shrugged. “All you have to do is ask.”
“Thanks!”
The ward fell with a crash of magic that crackled the air around us, and our conversation died. Rayna lifted her hands, drawing lightning down from the clouds. It forked to strike three dragons at once and sent them plummeting to the ground. I gasped in awe.
Darrow had his arms upraised, and the lead dragon flying toward us suddenly shrieked. He jerked his arm. The beast’s stomach ripped open, and its organs began falling out. A moment later, they all splatted on the dry grass below, followed by the limp body.
Rayna covered her mouth. “How did he do that?”
“My brother is telekinetic,” Faina replied.
“I bet everyone is terrified of him,” she said, awe in her voice. “Never seen anything like it, but I’m glad he’s on our side.”
I noted that even Galadon was giving Darrow an appraising look.
“Most everyone is,” I agreed.
“I need to get a hands-on kill to keep my instincts at bay longer.” She turned and looked at Dagra. “She has kindly offered to help, so I’ll see you all in a minute.”
Rayna took off running toward the waiting blue dragon.
She didn’t hesitate to leap on the beast’s back and hang onto her spikes as she took off into the sky.
Once they were level, the slayer stood. I didn’t know how she could keep her balance so easily, but I’d heard that the ones like her on Zadrya had incredible agility, too.
The giant blue dragon dwarfed the enemy ones and sailed right over them. Rayna leaped off, and I shrieked as she dropped through the air. Then, she landed on a green beast, climbed up to its neck, and stabbed the back of its head with a dagger.
As it began to plummet, she leaped off to another dragon and repeated the process.
Finally, I spotted Dagra come in from below.
They had to be communicating telepathically to choreograph it so well.
Rayna jumped onto her, and they flew together as the blue beast got in a kill of her own, chomping through the neck of a green one.
All the while, Galadon was somehow directing lightning to hit those who came close, and Darrow managed to kill a couple more with his powers.
The red dragon also flew through the air, tearing into opponents and throwing them to the ground for Ori, Jax, and Loden to finish. None of them had fought such creatures before, but they worked together to kill them quickly.
As one severely wounded green dragon crashed to the ground, Onyx galloped over to the thrashing beast. It lay on one of its wings that had surely broken in the fall.
I started moving toward it with Faina staying at my side, worried the horse would get hurt.
To my shock, it tore its teeth into the dragon and crunched down on its throat.
As the creature bled out, Rayna’s mount began eating it.
Faina and I looked at each other in horror, each of us gripping our stomachs. The slayer had mentioned something about eating the fire-breathing beasts, but I hadn’t pictured this.
“Have I lost my mind, or did that horse just kill a dragon and start consuming it?” I asked.
Her skin had taken on a green pallor. “Either we both saw it really happen, or we’re both delusional.”
Dagra landed close to us, and Rayna hopped off the blue dragon. The slayer didn’t have a scratch on her after all those acrobatics in the air. She could have easily fallen and broken her neck, yet she barely appeared winded from it all.
“I can’t decide whether you or your horse is crazier,” I said.
She glanced in Onyx’s direction. “Oh, yes, that. It disturbed me when he started it up as well—believe me. I spent the first year begging him to stop, and God knows the embarrassment he caused me, but he refuses. It has made him stronger and smarter, though.”
“Did you say god, as in only one?” I asked, curious since I’d never heard anyone speak that way.
She lifted her brows. “Well, yeah. Most religions on this planet believe in only one, but some believe in multiple gods or something else entirely. Also, some worship nothing at all.”
“We have the nameless gods.” I glanced at the ring. “Two of them were with us when we arrived, but they had to go because they said they weren’t welcome here.”
Rayna’s eyes widened. “Your gods actually manifest? But they don’t have names?”
“Wait.” Faina put her hands on her hips. “That’s who was with you when you arrived? I was busy fighting dark elves and barely caught a glimpse of them, but I’ve never seen more than one of the gods until that situation with the Cù Sìth. Why do you and Darrow always get to see them?”
I should have kept my mouth shut. “Well, it’s complicated. We couldn’t keep the portal open for so long without help, so they stepped in to give us more power. Then the goddess said I was dying, and she healed me enough that I could live.”
“You were dying when you got here?” Rayna asked, looking me up and down.
“I guess…a little.”
The slayer rolled her eyes. “No one just dies a little.”
“Ha!” A beautiful middle-aged woman with wavy black hair, who had arrived while we were giving everyone the translation potions, came toward us.
“Don’t let Rayna act like she hasn’t nearly died numerous times and forced me to heal her.
Once during a battle, she had most of her guts hanging out, and after another awful situation, she was actually missing organs. ”
Ujala was Galadon’s mother, another shifter. That was all I’d learned about her so far, except now I learned she was a healer. With most of our group wounded, that would be helpful, especially if she could handle people with injuries as severe as she’d described the slayer’s.
Faina and I turned shocked gazes toward Rayna. I couldn’t even fathom my guts hanging out. “How did you survive that?”
“Didn’t I mention I’m hard to kill?” She tucked her wavy hair behind her ear. “It’s a curse when it means someone can torture you in the worst ways possible, so you lie there in horrible pain and can’t even die.”
An ache formed in my chest. “Actually, I do know what that’s like.”
“You should see her back,” Faina said, nodding.
“Mate!” Galadon shouted, coming our way. “What were you thinking, riding on the back of a dragon from another world? You don’t even know her.”
Rayna gave him an annoyed look. “First off, since it was a female, I didn’t think you’d get jealous. Second of all, she is perfectly nice if you talk to her.”
“I did speak with her, and she seems fine, but that isn’t the point.
” He stood over her menacingly, easily twice her size or more.
“You couldn’t have possibly assessed her trustworthiness so quickly, and you know I don’t like it when you leap from one dragon to another. One of these days, you will fall.”
“And then I’ll have to put her back together,” his mother said, sighing.
The slayer looked between them with exasperation. “You two worry too much. Ujala, I know you’ll always take care of me, so what’s the big deal?”
“Someday, when you quit trying to make my heart stop, we will have children, and you need to be alive for that.” Galadon pulled her into his arms and kissed her gently on the head. The love he had for her was evident.
Darrow stepped up behind me, pulling me into his chest. “I have never been more grateful that your powers work best on your enemies at a distance—on the ground.”
I craned my neck to look at him. “It was fun to watch her, though.”
“Please don’t ever consider leaping from one dragon to another,” he said.
Maybe it was good to keep a mate on his toes. “We’ll see.”
He groaned.
Idwal joined us. “Now that the killing is out of the way, can we see the fountain?”
“The what?” Galadon and Rayna asked at the same time.
The elder druid pointed across the field. “Over there. I can sense it’s that way.”
I’d been feeling it too, but there had been too many distractions with dark elves, green dragons, and meeting new people that I hadn’t had a chance to examine the sensation. It thrummed along my skin. Having never been to Earth before, I’d thought maybe it was normal.
“You don’t want to go over there right now,” Galadon said, shaking his head.
Idwal frowned. “Why not?”
“There are dangerous plants that eat people. They’ll die out in a few weeks, and then it will be safer.” The larger dragon shifter shuddered. “Sometimes, I let my enemies go there just to watch them get chomped on, and it looks quite painful.”
“Carnivorous plants?” I asked with a squeak.
He drew his brows together. “Yes.”
“I’ve got to see them now!” I said excitedly.
Darrow groaned. “You have no idea what you’ve just done by telling her that.”