“It was made by Crystal Dragons; they meant for a Crystal Dragon to clean it all up.” Dusk spoke soberly. Stepping into the small clearing Adrian had made on the highway, Dusk took a deep breath. Extending his hands at his sides, palms splayed towards the earth, he gave a tremendous rumble inside his body. Shuddering it outward in a massive shockwave, he hammered it deep into the crystal snow on the plain, slamming his shockwave out to at least five hundred feet ahead of them. Like magic, those shudders undulated the glittering shards like some vast sea – and then like waves retreating from a shore, the shockwaves pulled back.
Pulling the crystal snow back from the highway with them.
Layla watched the last edge of Dusk’s vibrations; she saw how his power took those shards and resorbed them into the earth, back where they belonged. Before them, the bank of snow retreated, shimmering in a long line as the Crystal Highway was exposed, leading them into Dusk’s lands. But Dusk was shaking now as he lifted his elbow, wiping sweat from his brow with an unsteady exhalation. Through their Bind, Layla could feel his exhaustion, as if clearing all the crystal his people had left behind was yet another test – not one of heart now, but truly of strength. They wanted to make sure whomever came to claim these lands didn’t just care for their people and wealth, but was strong enough to protect it.
“Get the Jeep.” Dusk spoke with a glance to Layla and Adrian. “I can clear it, but it’s going to take a fuck-ton of energy from me, and I’d rather not walk the whole way into the city.”
“On it.” Adrian was already in action, vaulting down to where the Jeep waited before the embankment at the edge of the plateau. As he and Yousry moved to it, Layla had no idea how they were going to winch the Jeep up that ten-foot jagged cliff, when she realized she was thinking like a human, not like a Desert Dragon. Waving their hands at the Jeep, Yousry and Adrian had within moments created a cocooning wind for it. Heaving it up from the ground, they levitated it smoothly up to the Crystal Highway and set it down, their combined winds not disturbing even a single item in the Jeep’s back, then levitated themselves back up also.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, Yousry started it up. As he revved the engine, Dusk took the passenger side, while Adrian climbed in back with Layla. Driving forward slowly along the glassy multi-colored highway, they proceeded with care as Dusk held one palm out the window and one forward, clearing a six-foot-wide path so they could drive. The thick snow of crystal shards undulated as they drove, cresting back like some enormous parting of the Red Sea, except it was all glass-white. Resorbing into the ground on either side of the highway, they left nothing behind.
And it was a good thing, because Layla was certain even a single grain of those vicious shards could pop one of the Jeep’s thick tires.
Proceeding, they drove the highway’s course over the wide plateau, until Layla could no longer see the Egyptian desert around the plateau’s heights anymore. Only glittering crystal snow spread out in all directions, like they drove through the middle of endless salt flats. Dusk was shaking now, doing a deep breathing practice as sweat poured down his brow and neck, soaking his white Cuban shirt. Layla could feel how much it was taxing him as they hit their third mile into the mess. The crystal citadel was still some miles ahead, and as Layla reached out to touch Dusk’s shoulder to comfort him, she felt his energy leap to hers.
Suddenly, Dusk was drawing on the Bind between them, drawing on Layla’s Dragon-power like it was his very last breath. Layla gasped, but clamped her hand down on his shoulder, knowing what he needed as her drakaina roared inside her veins for battle. Joining her energy to his, Layla fed his magics like a golden river, pouring her strength down through their Bind into his body. Steadied, Dusk let out a relieved breath, glancing to her with deep gratitude. As Adrian felt what was happening, he set a hand to Dusk’s other shoulder – pouring his own energy down through the Bind that had formed directly between him and Dusk just the night before.
Dusk’s energy roared like a bonfire, and he cried out, jolting like he’d been hit with a Mac truck. But as Adrian’s hand clamped down on Dusk’s shoulder, a furious aqua-gold fire in his eyes, Dusk suddenly snarled. Opening his door and getting out from the Jeep, Dusk walked to the front of the car as Yousry stopped it. Climbing out of the Jeep also and moving to stand at his sides, Layla and Adrian set their hands to his shoulders again as Dusk extended his palms out near his hips.
Pointed directly up the highway.
“Ready?” Dusk asked them, though his entire focus was upon the highway before them.
“Ready to fuck some shit up.” Adrian growled, his chin lowered and an eager glee in his eyes, to work some serious magic. Layla felt his excitement also; like a wildfire it poured through her.
A fierce eagerness to see just how much their trio’s combined power could do.
As Dusk started a low vibration in his body yet again, Layla felt it pour through her own body in a bright wave. Like someone thundered a sea of diamonds through her, it was hot and cold and brilliantly powerful all at once. She cried out for the pain and pleasure of it and heard Adrian do the same on Dusk’s other side. But they stood strong. And as all three of their Dragons suddenly roared with the same voice, twining that enormous roar together into one massive vibration, Layla felt that sound harnessed inside Dusk through their golden Binds.
And released in one powerful, gargantuan blast through his hands.
Crystal snow shot back in enormous waves, roaring away like an ocean to twenty feet beyond each side of the highway. In front where Dusk’s palms pointed, that blast cut like a knife straight up the highway, following it through twists and turns as it gained the vast heights of the crystal citadel. Clearing miles of highway in a single go, Dusk roared aloud with all the terrible, earth-shuddering overtones of his Crystal drake. As a vicious, incredible fury took his gaze, searing his irises entirely diamond-white, Layla felt that roar sweep the citadel far ahead.
Clearing a path directly into the city.
As Dusk’s hands came down, a jangled, over-tuned energy vibrated all through him, as if it might shift him into his Dragon. Heaving hard breaths, Layla and Adrian drained Dusk’s cacophonous energy back through their Bind, siphoning it away on a vast wind that swept out from them both. With a deep shudder, Dusk’s energy quieted, and silence devoured the highway as they all stared at what they had wrought together.
And then behind them, Yousry started clapping, his jubilant laugh rising to the afternoon sky. “I knew I would have stories to tell today! Ah! If only I had thought to grab my phone and video that!!”
“You wouldn’t have been able to,” Dusk turned to address Yousry, though he was grinning now with a fierce jubilance in his diamond-white eyes. “Cell phones have a bitch of a time working around so much crystal.”
“So clear it all away then, Royal One, and we’ll be just fine!” Yousry laughed again, slapping the top of the Jeep where he’d stood up through the roll-cage. “Come, friends! The city awaits! Let us not delay, for Yousry wishes to see the Crystal Plateau before the sun goes down today, as he did in times of old. I want plenty of stories to tell my grandchildren!”
“You have grandchildren?” Layla laughed, shaking off the last of the crazy magic they’d just wrought as she flicked her hands. Curls of wind came off her hands, as if she’d still not entirely dissipated the tremendous force of Dusk’s energy that had nearly shifted him.
“Many!” Yousry laughed with a pointed look. “Many, many grandchildren.”
“We all get it, Yousry. You love women.” Adrian chuckled as he moved back to the Jeep, escorting Layla at the waist and helping her up into it when she proved a bit shaky. Dusk made it back on his own, though he huffed gratefully as he sat back in the passenger seat, putting one boot up on the dash. Twisting towards the back seat, Dusk held up his hand palm-out, and Layla laughed as he waggled his eyebrows at her. Giving him a high-five, it was repeated with Adrian, before Dusk thrust his sunglasses back on his face.
“Onward, chariot!” Dusk roared with a massive grin, slapping the door of the Jeep with his hand out the window.
“Yes, milord!” Yousry bellowed with as much glee, throwing it into first gear and lurching the poor Jeep as he mashed his foot down on the accelerator like a race car driver. Layla’s heart lurched in her chest with elation, adrenaline, and a smooth exhaustion now like she’d just run a good race. As her Dragon coiled up inside her to take a nap with a pleased purr, she snuggled up to Adrian in the back seat, and he threw his arm up around her shoulders.
Reaching a hand up to the front seat, her fingertips found Dusk’s. With a blissful smile, he twined their fingers together as they moved forward into his home.
CHAPTER 19 – SPIRITS
As they drove up the Crystal Plateau, everyone was in a blithe mood, watching the heights as the city drew closer. No one was in a gayer mood than Dusk, tapping a dance rhythm out with his fingers upon the edge of the door, eagerness riven through his frame to see his home at last. But as the Jeep began to wind up along the Crystal Highway, they saw it – the first Crystal Dragon skeleton, jutting like broken mammoth bones from where it had fallen over a hundred years ago at the bottom of a sandstone pinnacle.
