“You’ve always had a dragon?” Tennet asks, turning his attention back to where Szonja is soaring high against the stars. “I was expecting a scorpion.”
Fortiss’s lips twist. “Well, I’m not Rihad’s son, so he retains his scorpion…or at least he did. I don’t know enough about the Divhs’ plane to understand the images they show me.”
“Wait—what images?”
Tennet’s newest question barely registers in my mind as I’m distracted by the brief bursts of fire that still arc up from the coliseum well behind our mighty Divhs. I can almost hear the sound of cheers and imagine Caleb’s successful training lifting the spirits and the confidence of the newly banded soldiers. Then my gaze lifts to the moonlit plain that stretches far to the west, and something catches my eye. A cloud almost, a stain across the moon-brightened sky. Like a low-moving cape or cluster of birds. But it’s too thick, too dark to be birds. Almost like a swarm, really. Almost like?—
“What’s that?” Tennet asks sharply, and I know he sees it too. Fortiss glances up, then jerks back. “Szonja!”
In my mind’s eye I feel Gent turn, sense him peering hard, but he can’t pierce the darkness with his limited eyesight. I reach out to the other Divhs and realize that while their sight is solid in the daytime, they too are having a hard time tracking the thick wave ofsomethingthat’s spinning across the sky.
“They can’t see!” I blurt. “They can’t see.Gent!”
My beautiful Divh rotates back towards us, his arms sweeping out, and he lurches toward the First House as I take off across the platform.
“Talia! What are youdoing?” Tennet’s cry sounds genuinely terrified.
“They can’t see well on this plane! You have to help them!” I repeat, then I have no more time for words. Instead, I leap into the sky, barely clearing the edge of the overlook before Gent snatches me out of the air. Our minds touch, and he understands what must be done. Because of course he understands. He holdsme up, clutched in his paw like a torch, and I lean forward and urge him to run.
Something is coming out of the west, ready to attack.
“Wrath!”
Nazar calls out the name of his Divh, and I hear Fortiss and Tennet cry out as well. I urge Gent forward, but this creature is coming from the sky—the sky! Gent may be immense, but he can only defend the coliseum from this attack, he can’t go on the offensive.
Fortunately, I know three other Divhs who can.
Szonja. Fortiss’s beautiful dragon is the only Divh I’ve deeply connected with before, and her mind is open to me and to the dark sky. I open my eyes wide and will her to see what I see and understand it more than I can, but instead she’s focusing on the First House—and Fortiss, who is standing with his arms outstretched, as if he can somehow guide his Divh from the sidelines.
Szonja! I plead, urging her down, but another creature erupts in front of me, racing at Gent so quickly my mighty goliath wheels around, flinging me into the air. A streak of gold flashes past, then back again, and suddenly I’m hauled up so hard I think my neck may break. My arms and legs flail wildly and Gent howls in…laughter?
My Divh islaughingat me?
“Blood and stone!” I screech, spinning around and craning my head up, up—and I realize I’m pinned up against the muzzle of Tennet’s golden beast, his teeth clamped tightly through my cape. His name shimmers through my mind as fast as a shooting star—Ayne—and then he rockets toward the overlook where Tennet stands, still looking stupefied.
Only then do I know what to do. “Jump on!” I scream as we make a passing run, but Tennet scrambles back and out of our way. “Come on—we don’t havetime!”
The second pass he’s almost able to connect, and then with the third, he flings himself off the overlook and crashes into me. The two of us wrap around each other tight as Ayne wings off across the open plain.
“He needs you to see with any detail! Tosee?—”
The wind rips the words from my mouth and as I twist around, I see Gent pounding across the grassy plains, his hand stretched out. Too late I realize what he and Ayne have planned, and I scream as Ayne opens his powerful jaws and both Tennet and I plummet down, down—abruptly landing in Gent’s meaty paw. He dumps us both in his left then plucks up Tennet like he’s a fig dangling from a low-hanging branch, then turns back to where Ayne is beating his wings in place. I catch only a glimpse of Tennet’s starkly terrified face as Gent lays him atop Ayne’s ridged neck—and then the golden dragon is streaking off again.
Fortiss’s voice sounds in my mind as Gent turns back toward the coliseum.
“I can see more from down here—show me what you see.”
I squint against the whipping wind and struggle to understand what I’m looking at as Gent reaches the coliseum and spins me toward the incoming storm.Stormis about right, but it’s not a mere cloud that is hurtling toward us, but a writhing mass of winged snakes, glistening wet with a viscous ooze that can only be poison. It’s as if the creature that I saw in Rihad’s fireplace has transformed into an entirely new monster, this one the size of a mountain. The whole of it can stretch over top the coliseum, and if those creatures are dripping poison, they’ll become a rain of death on the untrained warriors and Divhs just now getting their feet underneath them. And Caleb is down there too!
Then the snakes are upon us. Gent punches through the first wave of the creatures as I crouch into his carefully closed fist, and a high-pitched screeching noise is all I can register for amoment. Then they are past us and Gent shifts to the side as Wrath swoops by. The powerful draft of the griffin’s wings sends the snakes hurtling beyond the edge of the coliseum, and the few that clear the surface are incinerated by Szonja as she emerges from the center of the coliseum, breathing fire.
But the many-headed monster isn’t finished. The snakes that weren’t destroyed zip up into the sky and regroup, creating a new irregularly shaped blob, this one thick and bulbous. It darts past Gent’s swinging paw, and instead of attacking the coliseum, it lurches toward Wrath; the mighty lion immediately darts away, so fast it takes my breath away, and whether its mesmerized by Wrath’s eagle-scream or its flashing claws of its scrambling lion’s body, the stream of snakes screams after it, thinning out like a deadly arrow?—
Then I hear a twin howl of rage over my shoulder. Gent half turns, then hauls me back into his chest as a streak of gold blurs by me, and I catch only the swiftest glimpse of Tennet crouching alongside Ayne’s sinuous head, the two of them riveted on the stream of snakes shooting through the sky. Ayne breaks off from his scream and the sound is replaced by a fiery woosh as flames race along the surface of the snakes’ oily bodies until it reaches the thick center mass and explodes outward.
A shower of fried carcasses rains down on the coliseum. When I conjure up a clear image of Marsh and Caleb, coupled with a surge of worry, Gent bounds back to the outer walls of the coliseum—and slings me into the center of the field…directly at Marsh.
I collide into the mighty Divh, and he grabs at me, then falls backward, the ungainly Divh rolling to the side to let me slide off him and hit the snake-strewn tournament field. I don’t fall the final few feet to the ground nearly as gracefully as I probably should, and I lay there, dazed, as the sounds crackle and chatter around me, my sight completely blacked for…far too long.Gradually, a familiar voice breaks through the thudding chaos in my ears.
