The ground was starting to not only reverberate, but break beneath our feet now, too, with what Ruxnoth was doing, while he had his minions crushing us to pieces.
I went to ease Zayn off the battlefield with me, but shocked exclamations jolted me, and I followed the source of the chaos to see a twisted black spire shooting up through the ground.
Another followed.
Another.
They rose and rose.
So many of them, so fast, tearing into our own structures.
A shimmering blue and swirling gray opening formed, a magical door, a portal, then whole dark stone buildings were rising too, it all coming in both materially and magically.
Fuck.This had to be Sanctus.
And it wasn’t just one structure. A whole slice of another realm was muscling its way into ours.
Ruxnoth was trying to latch Sanctus onto the Dracoryn Realm!
And we couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it, to even try, while his creepy fake-dragon forms tore into us.
I tried to call my power through it, but instead of mine sparking, familiar vermillion magic caught my eye.
It shot out in pulses over the entire battlefield.
The pressure went away.
The assault just… stopped.
“Return to your creator!” Torvek’s voice boomed.
The hostiles began moving like automatons then, slow and steady steps away from us.
As soon as there was room, I was able to turn around, and loosen my hold on Zayn to check he was okay. He was smiling up at me, but concern soon took its place when he saw my left arm hanging limp—the fractured one. “It will heal quickly,” I assured him.
And then all attention went to Torvek.
Holy. Fuck.
There he was levitating off the ground, his vermillion magic swirling around him, as it also enveloped every single one of Ruxnoth’s constructs.
He was using his Command of Beasts ability.
Right out in public.
In a very visible way at that.
Shock infiltrated the troops. Flame stared out in confusion at Fanor who was smiling so very proudly at Torvek.
Grandma was nodding her head in approval at his bravery of doing this, risking this.
For us all.
She was healing Dad who’d taken a massive brunt of that blunt force attack and was down on one knee as she swept her magic over him. There were several dragons flanking them in protective formation. I saw him give a chin lift to T.
And T looked equal parts freaked out and deeply relieved.
“I’ve got this!” he called out. “Stop that monstrosity from rising!”
