But he was no match for Skylash’s speed.
Lightning raked from her jaws in serrated arcs, retribution made flesh, forged to punish anything that dared reach for her. She struck Rimeclaw’s flank midair, the impact reverberating through the Maw.
Ice shattered outward, lancing across the sky. But none touched her.
Sparks streamed from Skylash’s wings as she raced through the clouds, her storm splintering Rimeclaw’s frost before his magic could find her. She spiraled in a blinding arc, body blurring into light, diving like a star with reckoning at its core.
Not toward Rimeclaw.
Toward the fleet.
Lightning erupted from her throat, scything across the lake in a thousand spears of light. Hulls burst apart. Masts buckled. The waters below ignited, fire climbing the rain as the shockwave punched upward.
Skylash’s roar cleaved the clouds and Serenna could only watch as an ancient force rose to reclaim her throne in the sky.
Essence began flickering in tentative halos around those still fighting. The lightning no longer seemed to punish magic. It obeyed its queen.
Even though the dragon hadn’t spoken—hadn’t so much as acknowledged those who’d freed her—Serenna dared to hope Skylash might turn the tide. For one heartbeat, the storm seemed to steady, its fury bending toward the enemy ships.
Then the lightning turned.
The next strike didn’t spare their forces. It devoured them.
Druids. Wraith. Rangers. A scattering of bodies obliterated in an assault of sparks.
Skylash twisted through the sky in a streak of radiant fury, lancing through their ranks. She made no distinction. Her storm claimed them all, like a wildfire loosed upon a forest already burning.
Serenna’s breath caught as a dracovae plummeted, wings aflame, trailing smoke and blood. Skylash struck, tearing rider and beast apart.
Throat raw, Serenna stared at the carnage unfolding. A wraith warped too late, vanishing in a flash of sparks.
“What have we done?” she whispered.
They’d unchained something that didn’t understand the difference between liberation and annihilation.
“This isn’t a battle,” Jassyn said, scanning the chaos below. “It’s a slaughter. We need to get everyone out.”
The air fractured with screams and lightning. From their vantage above the mountain, no place stood untouched by Skylash. Not the water, the skies, or the jagged slopes cradling the Maw.
Serenna felt Vesryn’s presence somewhere under her wings, where the rangers had once held the line against the fleet. That order was now abandoned, precision drowned beneath the storm as they flew for survival, not victory.
“But we freed her,” Serenna said, the protest fragile, thinned to a breath.
“I don’t think we can reason with her,” Jassyn answered, worry tight in his words. “Cinderax would have tried.”
A bolt of light split the air beside them, close enough to sear the edges of sound. Serenna flung out her hand, scattering sparks before their wings were scorched. Her pulse hammered, each beat trembling between terror and resolve.
“We can’t lose her,” she said, purpose rising. Not after everything they’d risked.
With a feral roar, Skylash wheeled to strike Rimeclaw once more. Lightning crawled down her spine, coiling across her neck until every spark converged into a single bladed arc.
She dove like a javelin and slammed into Rimeclaw’s wing with a sound so brutal, sowrong, that Serenna flinched as though the tear had ripped through her own.
Rimeclaw writhed, jaws snapping for Skylash’s throat. But she clung fast, just beyond his reach. The claws on her wings hooked deep, raking trenches through the membrane. Then her fangs struck—puncturing sinew, spraying blood into the rain.
Rimeclaw’s bellow echoed like thunder. Nearly the full span of his wing collapsed, flayed leather thrashing against the wind.
The sky ruptured with him, frost detonating outward in waves that turned the air to hail and ice. Dragged down by the weight of his shredded flesh, he spiraled, blood and mist trailing in his wake.
