While tumbling uncontrollably across the ground, I desperately search for my friends. But all I can see is the sky and the ground that flip over and over before my eyes.
Then I slam to a halt against a small boulder. Air explodes out of me from the hit. Gasping, I try to refill my lungs while also pushing myself up from the stones.
Shadows are falling over the ground around me.
And my terrified and disoriented mind can’t make sense of it.
But then my vision clears slightly. I blink hard, trying to stop the world from spinning around me long enough to see where my friends are. Alistair is lying on his stomach farther to my left, and his eyes are sliding in and out of focus as he tries to push himself up.
On my other side, Orion is already on his feet again and he is sprinting towards something. It takes me another second torealize what it is. Isera. She is also lying on the ground. Her head is right next to a rock, and blood smears both it and the side of her head.
I scream her name, but I can barely hear my own voice over the pounding of my heart.
Then the first chunks of ice hit the ground.
Stone and ice crash down over the entire mountainside as the Ice Palace, the massive ice defensive walls, and the ground it was resting on, all fall back down after being blown sky-high in the explosion.
Dread crackles through my spine as I realize what those dark shadows I saw earlier were.
Debris.
We are still in the blast radius.
I try to shoot to my feet, but the moment I push myself up, the world around me sways so much that my knees buckle and I collapse back down on the ground. Farther away, Alistair looks like he is screaming while he points his palm at the ice crashing towards us. But his fire magic fizzles out before it can even leave his hand since he can’t concentrate enough through his pain and dizziness to use his magic properly.
Blocks of ice smack into the ground all around us.
Scrambling away on my hands and knees, I barely manage to get out of the way as a chunk the size of a boulder crashes down right where I used to be. But there is no escape. I stagger to my feet and run, but I only make it a few steps before the next hail of stones hit. Throwing myself sideways, I roll across the ground to avoid the biggest ones.
Agony pulses through me as the slightly smaller stones rain down over me, burying my body. I desperately shove them aside.
Across the ground, Orion finally reaches Isera. My heart breaks as he throws himself over her unconscious body, protecting her with his own.
Boulders and blocks of ice slam down all around us.
Pushing desperately at the stones, I try to free myself. But my leg is now stuck underneath two of the bigger chunks. I scream in panic, trying to yank my leg out while a massive shadow suddenly appears above us.
True terror grips me as I whip my head back and stare up into the sky.
Because it is not the sky that meets me up there.
It’s an entire section of the massive ice walls that used to surround the Ice Palace.
And in that moment, I know that this is it. There is no escaping this. When that massive section hits, we are going to get squashed underneath it like bugs.
A furious scream of rage and hatred against this unfair world rips from my lungs as the ice crashes down.
But right before it can hit, something huge and black shoots through the air from my left.
My scream is transformed into a shocked gasp.
Lyra.
The ground underneath me shakes as Lyra in her dragon form lands above us. Her four legs hit the ground on either side of us all. I stare up in shock at the huge dragon body that now protects us all like a roof.
Then the massive section of the ice wall slams down.
Right on top of Lyra.
