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And then the enemy’s blood-forged weapons were clattering to the ground, their hands suddenly clutching the sides of their heads. The cultists’ mouths fell open with silent screams as a beautiful white gryphon flew into sight, circling low, before Aster Tartanis slid from its back.

Elyria’s father had both hands held aloft, a furious expression on his face. The air around him rippled with power as his mindwielding magic tore at the sanguinagi’s minds.

One broke free, a man whose tortured eyes were now singularly focused on the dark-haired fae now facing Elyria.

Tartanis had his back turned when the cultist charged.

She started to scream a warning.

She needn’t have bothered.

The cultist froze mid-run, limbs locking as if seized by invisible chains. His strangled cry cut off abruptly, red eyes rolling back as blood leaked from his nose and ears.

A heartbeat passed, and the man collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

“Thank you,” Elyria panted, her shadowswords dissipating into the ether.

Tartanis grunted in acknowledgment, running his green-eyed gaze briefly over Elyria as if checking her for injury. Then he turned his attention back to the remaining cultists, still clutching their heads, writhing in pain. Sweat beaded at his temple, and his hands shook as he grunted, “Go.”

Elyria’s staff floated at the edge of her vision, and she turned her head to see Jocelyn holding it out for her. “Go, Elle,” she repeated. “Your father will not be able to hold them for long.”

Elyria flew for the crater.

But it turned out that “for long” was even less time than any of them could have hoped, because just as she neared the opening, ready to follow Malakar down into its depths, blood-magic ribbons were suddenly curling around her legs, hauling her back, pulling her down.

Stars-damned motherfuckers. She really hated that particular manifestation of their magic. With a frustrated scream, the threads of shadow and sunlight wrapped along Elyria’s staff sharpened into long, razor-like strips, and she hacked away at the bloody ribbons.

“Fucking pixie whores!” yelled one of the cultists, rushing Elyria with a red crystal scythe held high before she had a chance to get herself back in the air. She didn’t even have time to rebut that thoroughly unimaginative insult.

Because it was an entirely different enemy who blindsided Elyria, tackling her to the ground.

No, not an enemy.

Jocelyn hauled herself off Elyria’s body, apology written into the creases of her face, even as her gaze immediately snapped back toward the crater.

And Elyria understood why she’d just been unceremoniously blasted aside.

The monsters had caught up.

And one stood, red-plated chest heaving, exactly where Elyria had just been.

Tartanis’s gryphon screeched as a second abomination barreled into it, the two beasts tumbling away in a tangle of talons and claws. Her father was fighting to keep the rest of the sanguinagi down, even as a third beast, its wings little more than a shredded cape dangling from its back, loped unevenly toward him.

Jocelyn’s attention was on the approaching beast, her back to Elyria, when it happened.

A cultist burst from the side, crazed eyes bleeding, a crimson glaive held with both hands. She thrust the weapon forward, and it punched straight through Jocelyn’s armor, the curved tip of the blade emerging between the parallel scars on her wingless back, dripping blood.

Elyria screamed.

Shadows flared as she leapt on the cultist. Dark, glistening spikes curved out from her knuckles as she slammed her fist into the side of the sanguinagi’s head, piercing her temple, crushing her skull. And then she leapt on the abomination roaring nearby, tearing into it without thought, without restraint.

Elyria just kept hitting.

She hit and she hit and she hit until nothing recognizable remained.

And the only thing that pulled her back from the edge was Jocelyn’s wet cough and low grunt as she fell to her knees.

Elyria was kneeling too, her hands shaking as she caught Jocelyn before her body tipped back entirely. The red weapon stuck in Jocelyn’s chest dissipated in a burst of mist, and for a horrifying, paralyzing moment, Elyria thought that Jocelyn would be subjected to that same agonizing pain that had torn her from the sky.