I frantically beat my wings, desperate to catch the wind, but the air above the ridge was cold, heavy, and dead. We were dropping too fast. The black, jagged expanse of the obsidian field rushed up to meet us, an unforgiving landscape of shattered glass and razor-sharp stone.
There was no time to find a clearing. There was no time to arrest our momentum. We were going to crash.
Something primal and fierce flared in my blood—a protective drive that went far deeper than Warden duty, whispering of a mate-bond my mind wasn't yet ready to accept. It violently supercharged the terrifying realization that Tove was about to hit the ground, completely overriding my own survival instincts.
I didn't try to save myself. I focused entirely on Tove.
I twisted violently in mid-air, using the last of my aerodynamic control to invert our descent. I threw my massive weight backward, rotating so that my heavily armored back faced the rapidly approaching earth. I curled my body inward,pulling my knees up and wrapping my massive wings entirely around Tove, locking her inside a dark, impenetrable cocoon of obsidian feathers and hardened muscle.
I clamped my arms around her waist, burying her face into my tactical vest.
"Brace!" I bellowed.
We hit the ground.
The impact was a catastrophic, deafening explosion of shattering rock and bone-jarring kinetic force. My heavily scaled back slammed into the brittle obsidian formations with the force of a falling meteor. The brutal, glass-like shrieks of the razor-sharp stone shattering beneath my weight echoed through the ash storm, followed immediately by the sickening, heavy crunch of my own armor taking the blunt force trauma.
We plowed violently through the field, leaving a deep trench of pulverized glass in our wake. A jagged spire of unbroken rock caught the leading edge of my left wing. The sudden, violent torque wrenched the joint backward with a sickeningpop. The agonizing sound of snapping bone and tearing cartilage cut through the roar of the storm. The pain was absolute, a blinding, white-hot agony that ripped the breath from my lungs and sent a terrifying spasm of fire through my chest.
We tumbled violently, a chaotic, bone-crushing roll through the shattered glass and cinder. Every impact was a brutal assault on my armor, but I kept my muscles locked rigid. I didn't let my arms loosen by a fraction of an inch. I took every jagged edge, every crushing blow, ensuring that the fragile human inside my grip never touched the stone.
We finally slammed to a halt against a massive boulder, the impact knocking my head back against the rock.
The world spun, a dizzying blur of gray ash and pulsing, agonizing pain. I lay there for a long, heavy second, my lungs fighting to pull air into my crushed chest. Sluggish, molten bloodseeped from a deep, jagged gash along my left wing, sizzling violently as it hit the cold obsidian ground.
But the pain didn't matter.
I uncoiled my wings, the movement sending a fresh, nauseating wave of agony down my side. I loosened my grip, frantically pushing Tove back just far enough to see her face.
She was covered in gray dust, her eyes wide, her chest heaving with frantic, shallow breaths.
I ran my large, heavy hands over her shoulders, down her arms, checking the integrity of her silver suit. There were no tears in the fabric. No blood. No broken bones.
"Are you hurt?" I demanded, my voice a harsh, breathless rasp. "Tove. Are you hurt?"
She blinked, the shock slowly receding from her dark eyes. She looked down at herself, then back up at me. She shook her head, a short, jerky movement. "No. I'm... I'm whole."
The tight, agonizing knot of terror in my solar plexus instantly unwound, leaving my limbs heavy and shaking. It wasn't just a psychological reaction; it was a deep, biological resonance. That impossible bond—the one my mind was still desperately trying to deny—flared in my chest, singing with the confirmation of her safety. The physical release of tension was so potent it momentarily drowned out the blinding pain in my wing, turning my quiet suspicion into a truth I was terrified to face.
She was safe.
I slumped back against the boulder, letting my head drop back, my chest heaving as I pulled the ash-choked air into my lungs.
"Your wing," Tove said, her voice trembling slightly. It was the first time I had ever heard her voice waver.
She reached out, her small, pale hand hovering over the jagged, bleeding tear in my primary flight joint. The heat radiating from the wound was intense, but she didn't pull away.
"It will heal," I gritted out, forcing myself upright. "But we can't stay here."
I looked up. The sky was entirely blotted out by the dense, swirling ash storm generated by the geyser eruption. The sun was gone. And without the direct heat of the magma river or the sun, the atmospheric conditions of Ignis IV were undergoing a violent, terrifying shift.
The ambient temperature was plummeting.
It was a localized volcanic winter. The ash was blocking the thermal radiation, and the cold was settling over the obsidian field like a heavy shroud. For my biology, the cold was a minor discomfort, easily fought off by my internal heat.
But for Tove, the cold was a death sentence. Her silver suit was designed to reflect extreme heat, not insulate against freezing temperatures.
I grabbed her hand, ignoring the sharp spike of pain in my wing as I hauled myself to my feet. "Up. We need shelter. Now."
