"Sorry," I murmured, trying to control the shaking of my hands and slow down the frantic beat of my heart.
I still had a job to do, and I couldn't succumb to panic.
When he released me, I followed what I'd been taught and crawled to the other side of the tower, peering through a gap in the wooden slats.
Three Shedun were attempting to flank the Marson family's home. I lined up my shot and fired. The nearest one went down hard, clutching his leg. His companions hesitated, and in that moment of indecision, they made perfect targets for the defenders in the eastern tower.
"Good shot," Ednis grunted, picking off another attacker with a careful aim. "Keep watching that side. Don't let them get behind the houses."
Time seemed to lose all meaning. I fired, reloaded, fired again. My shoulder ached from the rifle's recoil, and my ears rang with the constant gunfire. But I didn't stop.
I couldn't stop.
A scream cut through the noise. One of ours.
I risked a glance and saw Weber clutching his arm, blood seeping between his fingers. But he kept firing one-handed, his face twisted with determination and pain.
"They're retreating!" someone shouted. "They're running!"
Sure enough, the Shedun were melting back into the shadows as quickly as they'd appeared, dragging or carrying their wounded with them, but leaving the dead behind.
"Keep firing!" Ednis bellowed.
I tracked a fleeing figure through my sight, squeezing off two shots in quick succession. The second one found its mark, and the Shedun crashed to the ground.
He didn't get up again.
Within minutes, the surviving demons had disappeared into the darkness, and I could imagine them jumping into the mouth of their tunnel—a dark hole torn into the mountainside, carved out by one of their giant worms.
The sudden silence was deafening.
"Is it over?" I asked.
Instead of answering, Ednis turned and lifted his eyes to the sky. As I followed his gaze, there was nothing to see, but I heard the distant beat of powerful wings approaching.
A thunderous roar shattered the night, so powerful that it made the wooden tower tremble. My head snapped up just as five massive shapes burst through the auroras, their wings creating gusts of wind that whipped my hair around my face.
Their scales gleamed like polished steel in the ethereal light as they dove after the fleeing Shedun. The lead dragon opened its maw, and the stream of blue-white flame that erupted turned night into blinding day. The raiders were consumed in an instant, their bodies reduced to ash before they could draw a breath to scream.
I should have felt satisfaction watching our enemies burn, but the raw display of power made my insides twist, and the acrid stench of burning flesh brought about a wave of nausea.
This was different from rifle fire.
This was devastation on another level—nature's fury harnessed as a weapon. And yet, death by dragfire was swift and far kinder than what the Shedun offered their victims.
These vile creatures did not deserve such mercy.
Fueled by an irrational hatred of dragons and those who bonded with them, the Shedun dedicated their collectivemiserable existence to hunting both. Every life they extinguished was an offering to their abhorrent god of death, a deity as cruel and as insatiable as its worshippers.
Elusitor, the dark face of Elu, the deceiver, the destroyer, the tormentor.
It was this relentless onslaught that forced all Elucians to dedicate long years of their lives to military service, standing with our winged, fire-breathing allies against the tide of darkness.
The ground shook as the massive lead dragon landed in front of our tower, and I instinctively gripped my rifle tighter, even though I knew it didn't mean us harm.
Frankly, I was as awed as I was terrified or perhaps the other way around.
No, fear was definitely the stronger emotion. This was an apex predator, and I was a puny human it could snuff out with a hiccup.
