He nods. “The last one was lost during the hundred years’ war.”
“So what do we do?”
His expression is grim. “Survive.”
The closer the azhi gets, the more terrifying it is.
Those fangs crowding each of its mouths have to be as long as my legs, and the myriad spines on its necks are tapered to lethal points. Its wingspan is massive, and it moves gracefully despite its considerable bulk. Designed for death, I have no doubt it will be formidable in battle.
As it nears, I can see bumps and oozing boils marring its greenish-gray body, leading down to twin spade-edged tails and four legs capped with talons resembling curved scimitars. But it’s the deep purple tendrils of rot I can see that make alarm curdle in my gut. I feel my simurgh rise inside me, magic curling along my spine. If it’s being controlled by Fero’s corrupted rot, who knows what it’s capable of.
I stare at its gaping mouths. “Does it breathe fire or poison like you, Indira?”
Indira chuffs.Worse. One breathes a corrosive acid gas that eats away anything from steel to scales to bones, one blows out a nightmare plume that causes hallucinations and delusions, and the last and worst is the nullifying breath that erases all magical powers.
I blink at the last. “Null? For good?”
It depends on the strength of the magi.
“Is it immune to magic?” I ask.
“The middle head is to most numena,” Darrius says. “Kinetic magic fuels it, so we have to avoid elemental attacks, or it will become stronger, reviving the two other heads. All three are resistant to psionic magic.”
I grit my teeth. “So we can’t attack it, we can’t control it, and we need a lost god-sword to even have a chance. What the fuck can we do?”
Behind me, Darrius rolls his neck, the deity in him coming to the fore. “The best we can hope to do is weaken it by working together in a collective approach. Evade the breath attacks, aim physical assaults at its underbelly and its wings. If we can take it down first, even better. Indira, call to your kin—our fight will be in the air, while the Aspacana and King Roshan’s forces keep the focus on the ground. Tell your azdaha army no magic.”
I belatedly realize that Indira must be alpha of the azdahas when she lets out a trumpeting call that nearly makes my eardrums explode and echoes across the valley. Answering cries come back and dozens of azdahas, a few with riders and most without, join our ranks. My jaw falls open, eyes widening in wonder. If we weren’t fighting for our lives in battle, it would be the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
Azdahas in every gemlike color of the rainbow, blotting out the sky, their wings gliding on the wind—some delicate and ethereal like butterflies’, and others spinier and batlike but no less majestic. There are tiny azdahas and huge ones, a few with long, frilled tails and some with thorns and spikes and barbs. And they all united at Indira’s call.
“Gods...” I say. “There are so many.”
Darrius leans into me. “When this is over, I’ll take you to visit their largest adult colony on the Lost Isles in the northwest.”
“I’d love that.”
If we survive...
I don’t see Razulek, but maybe he’s still fighting down below. Fire is one of the only things that seems to kill the revenants and keep the rot plague from spreading.
I glance down to where most of the revenant forces have resumed movement, and I hope that Roshan can hold his own, because we are going to have our hands full up here.
As Indira swoops in, I send a test blast of star magic toward the beast. My power is unique and might lend us a small advantage, if it doesn’t feed the monster. But Anahima dodges the blast at the last moment, the azhi moving nimbly under her command. She sends back several bolts of lightning that Indira narrowly manages to evade.
“She’s an electrokinetic, too?” I shout in surprise, peering up at Darrius.
“Looks like my sister was hiding many things.”
Raz, where are you?I reach out for the azdaha, sensing him near.I need you.
“Dare, we will be better off separate,” I tell him. I twist around, kissing him soundly. He barely has time to return it before I’m leaping from Indira’s back with a war cry; Razulek passes below, catching me easily on his back.
We zoom off to the right and bank sharply, aiming for the azhi’s underbelly. Darrius and Indira attack from the left, his shadow magic pouring from him in a dark, viscous tangle of deadly ribbons and his obsidian sword cutting a path along the azhi’s left head, blinding it temporarily. Buoyed by hope, I shoot a burst of starlight as Raz lets out a scream and swings his barbed tail into the monster’s wing. We both make contact and the azhi roars, but the damage from our strikes is instantly healed.
That has to be Anahima’s corpus magic.
Other azdahas dive, slashing with talons and snapping with teeth, but the injury they’re inflicting is minimal. The middle head blows out a stream of gas that catches one bright blue azdaha dead in its sights, and it screams piteously when its scaled hide immediately starts to dissolve. The first head catches another with its nightmare breath, and I see the moment the delusions start when the azdaha and its rider turn on one of their own, launching an arc of fire that takes out a nearby griffin. The hallucinating rider—clearly an ice numen—sends several bolts toward Indira.
