The Elf hesitated.“Bayas.I cannot say that. There is risk. But if you send her from you, risk becomes certainty. You will die; she will fall.”
Rain stared hard at the Elf commander, trying to read those impenetrable gray eyes, but as with most Elves, looking into her eyes was like staring down a bottomless well. They gave away nothing.
“Rain, let’s go.” Ellysetta’s hand brushed his. “You heard her. Tairen fire is one of the few weapons we have against this army.”«It’s time for trust, not doubt, shei’tan. The Elves are right. We’re stronger together than apart. You know it as well as I.»
He wanted to refuse. The danger to them both was very real. He’d just almost died himself. But already, the entire field around Lower Orest was blanketed with foul, maggot-colored monsters. There were easily two hundred thousand of them, and thousands more scrambled out of their boreholes with each passing chime. Behind the allied lines, the earth shifted and bulged upward as a new line of holes erupted and began spewing revenants to cut off the allies’ retreat.
Rain spun to face Ellysetta’s primary quintet. “You five organize the hundred-fold weaves. Let’s kill as many of those creatures as we can, starting with those.” He jerked a hand towards the line of revenants threatening the allies’ rear flank.
“The Aquiline riders will assist you,” Commander Silverleaf said.
“I’m counting on it.” Rain leapt into the sky and Changed. Ellysetta’s quintet flung her skyward on a weave of Air, and she slid effortlessly into the saddle strapped to the back of Rain’s neck, herdahl’reisen-forged armor shining in the sunlight.
As Rain wheeled around to head back towards the field of revenants and prepared to fire, he heard Greywing cry, “Elves! Take aim!”
The Elvian general didn’t look up to watch Rain’s approach, but just before Rain flew past, he cried, “Fire!” The Elves loosed their Light arrows, and the sky before Rain and Ellysetta lit up with blinding brightness.
Rain, the tairen, and the Aquiline riders flew through the wake of the Light storm. They burst from the brightness with tairen fire and arrows blazing to incinerate the monsters threatening the allies’ retreat.
Fire consumed long tracts of revenants in red-orange flame. As they burned, they emitted a grating, high-pitched screech that rattled Ellysetta’s bones. She shielded her ears against the noise but kept her eyes open and scanning the sky.
Bowcannon bolts turned the sky dark, flying from Orest and across the river. She spun whirling cyclones of Air and Fire to stop them, but the missiles were too plentiful for her weaves alone.
«Gil!»she cried.«You and the Air masters keep those bowcannon bolts off of us.»Instantly two dozen cyclones sprang up around the tairen and Aquilines, catching the bolts midair and leaving the tairen and Elves free to rain fire and Light arrows down upon the revenant masses.
The Mages clearly didn’t like that much, because the rest of the dragon flock took wing from the peaks surrounding Upper Orest. They screamed, the sound like great trumpets blaring. Long, serpentine necks ended in wedge-shaped heads with snouts filled with sharp, curved teeth. They flapped their massive wings and soared over the fields of Orest on a direct course with the tairen and the Aquiline riders. With them was a female dragon nearly twice the size of the rest. Clearly, she was the pack’s queen, for when she bugled a command, the others obeyed.
«Dragons, Rain. Coming from our left, off the Rhakis.»
«I see them. Silverleaf, you deal with the revenants. The tairen will take the dragons.»
Commander Silverleaf raised her bow in acknowledgement, and the Aquiline riders spiraled down. Elvish bows sang and Light arrows zipped towards the ground in streamers of golden light, as if the sky were raining sunshine. Each revenant pierced by the golden arrows went bright and exploded in a cloud of black dust.
Above the fray, Rain’s wings spread wide and pumped to gain loft. Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl raced ahead in a V formation as, with a deafening roar, four more tairen burst from the Faering Mists south of the healing tents. Fahreeta, Torasul, and two younger pride mates sped north across open Celierian land to join their pride-kin above the battlefield.
The dragons rocketed towards the pride, fangs bared, razor sharp claws extended. Great cats and dragons slammed into one another in the sky, fangs and claws slashing, tails whipping as they tumbled through the air. As the ground zoomed up to meet them, they broke apart. Both tairen and dragons were soaked with their own blood, still neither gave quarter. They simply flew back to a higher altitude and reengaged.
The tairen belched boiling clouds of flame, but the dragon queen heeled back and flapped her great wings. Magic swirled in the air, and a brutal gust of wind blew the tairen’s fire back upon them. The monster dove below the pride and rolled onto her back beneath them. The dragon queen opened her own venomous maw and spewed searing jets of green, concentrated acid-flame.
On Rain’s back, Ellysetta cried out in horror as the monster’s corrosive spew sliced through the tairen like Mage Fire, scything limbs from bodies. Maimed and mortally wounded, Fahreeta and the two younger tairen fell from the sky in a shower of blood and smoking gore.
The queen screamed in victory and shot out on a burst of speed only to circle around for a second pass. Fire boiled from Torasul’s muzzle in a searing orange cloud as he dove to the aid of his fallen mate.
Steli roared and burst through the concealing cloud of smoke above. With her white ears laid back against her skull, razored claws extended, she stooped towards the dragon queen. The foul beast glanced up too late to dodge Steli’s attack, and the pair clashed in midair, claws and fangs ripping and rending, wings and tails tangling in a savage battle for survival and supremacy. They plummeted towards the earth, roaring and screaming as each fought to rip out the other’s throat and claw open the other’s belly.
They crashed into the ground with the force of a meteor. Debris exploded upward into the sky, then showered down in a hail of dirt and shattered rock, radiating out from the great crater where the two creatures lay in a limp tangle of limbs.
Steli had taken the brunt of the fall. Wings and back broken, she lay in the pit, struggling for breath. The dragon queen hadn’t fared much better, but she could still move. She dragged the heavy weight of her body towards Steli and lifted herself up on trembling forelegs over the white tairen’s shattered form. The monster opened her maw, yellowed fangs dripping green poison as she prepared to deliver the death-bite. Steli’s pupilless blue eyes, their fierce glow dimmed with pain, gazed up, unflinching, defiance mixed with the grim acceptance of defeat.
“Get away from her, you monstrouspetchka!”
Ellysetta’s furious shout heralded a searing jet of tairen flame that enveloped the dragon’s head just before she struck.
The queen reared back, roaring. Ellysetta leapt from Rain’s back, riding a column of Air down to Steli’s side and peppering the dragon queen’s head and neck with Fey’cha as she went.
Rain’s curved tairen claws sank into the tough, superheated hide of the dragon queen’s back, and with a mighty pump of his powerful wings, he hauled the foul creature into the air. Curving tairen fangs snapped at the dragon’s neck but the long, serpentine neck writhed and twisted, eluding him. The dragon hissed and struggled, spewing acid flame. He rocketed skyward in a rapid, magic-powered ascent, carrying the queen far above the earth, to a part of the sky where the air grew thin and so cold a drop of water would freeze in an instant.
The abrupt change in altitude and temperature acted like ice shot on the dragon’s hide. Steaming scales cracked, ripping fissures down into the vulnerable flesh beneath. The queen shrieked in agony as the icy cold of the high atmosphere seared her.
