XX

  Partypooper

  I shuffled backwards. ‘What should we do?’

  We had to get back to Aurille, but there was no way we could escape these two.

  Aedan brandished her morning star. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The stream of fire latched onto Aedan’s weapon like a whip.

  We blinked collectively.

  Aedan glanced down at her now bound arm, pulled against the chain and found she couldn’t break it. On the other side of the battle, flames swallowed the cultist cheering too loud.

  The Bloodletter sighed. “See, Lord Vyke? You cannot trust animals.”

  Erri chuckled. “Do not blame us. Blame yourself for not demanding our deal written in blood.”

  Black marbles jangled. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’ll lose your free shot at the herald.”

  Leathery lips stretched. “See, I thought about that. It’s true that you giving me free reign will make the fight easier…but killing all of you makes it even more so. Besides, getting rid of you and at the start of the realm? Father will praise me.”

  A flick of the wrist ripped the morning star from Aedan’s grip.

  “Kill them all,” the drake heiress’s bored tone rung out.

  And dozen rushed to do her bidding.

  Aedan barrelled forwards and tackled Erri before the drake could throw her weapon away. They landed in the dirt and kicked up a mound of snow. That was the last I saw them.

  Our frontline crumbled once they noticed their rearguard fleeing in every direction. That left nothing but sparse members between us and the cultists.

  Aurille was still fighting Vyke. The boy had done nothing but levitate menacingly and absorb whatever Aedan pulled out of those corpses. But now his wings furled and unfolded with a snap. Spikes of metal shot down, the sheer breadth of the attack many times wider than what Aurille had produced.

  Garen’s barrier flared and Duke’s high notes rang out. Not everyone had such excellent defence. Where the darts hit, they pierced through skin and flesh to lodge deep within bones. Smoke rose from the wounds, and black pus and veins raced up the victims’s bodies, who were left rolling on the ground and screaming for their lives.

  I kept myself from emptying my stomach.

  Jake, who was in a different part of the ranged formation, joined us just as two drakes charged our position.

  The archer drew breath, channelled, and fired. Contrary to what I expected, the arrow didn’t bounce off but punched through the scales and wedged deep into flesh.

  The drake roared and stomped harder.

  Garen charged into the drake closest to us, leaving only one enemy to deal with. Ray shot forwards too, but he wasn’t fighting a drake by himself. Ashwing joined him. I controlled the summon as she dove and jammed her talons into the beast’s neck. The creature was the size of a cow, though, so she couldn’t wrestle it to the ground. Neither could her claws injure it severely.

  ‘I need the cutter.’

  But when I slashed the air in time with Ashwing’s beating wings, nothing but a lick of fire came out.

  The drake slammed its tail into Ray’s chest, sending the boy flying. He rolled to a stop in the dirt and didn’t get up.

  “Ray!” Judith called out.

  But she was out of essence, so she was forced to watch as the drake stomped its way forwards. Garen looked back, which almost earned a locked jaw around his face. Jake fired. Duke played the highest note he could, and though my body and mind felt clearer than ever, the drake didn’t stop its advance. So much blood had been spilled that splashes of it kicked up with its footfalls.

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  Above, the storm howled. Arcs of the heavenly wrath flashed, temporarily casting a dozen winged shadows on the ground.

  Disciples cried.

  “Mother…!”

  “No, please—”

  “My LEG. Where is my leg?!”

  Ray stirred, pushed himself to his feet with the butt of his spear, then sagged back down.

  My chest depressed and a plume of white exited my mouth. I sent Ashwing forwards. Her wings beat against the sky. They rose above the clamour and drowned the noise. It was so clear to me that the reverberations washed over my face and pushed back my hair. The energy coalesced at the tip of her wings. My hand moved in tune with her, cutting down right as she punched the air.

  I didn’t know if I could kill a drake in one hit, so I aimed for the knee joint. The slice of flame cauterised the air in its path. It was so lethal it’d fry a mortal’s flesh just by being near them.

  The drake opened its mouth to feed on the poor spearman when its world flipped. With a bellow, its head found the ground, and blood spurt from the stump of its leg. A second flame cutter took care of its remaining limb.

  Desperate and confused, flames built within the drake’s mouth. Ray called on everything inside him and leapt, but the drake wrenched its neck to the side to follow him.

  None of us would get there in time.

  I grabbed hold of my essence and cycled in the pattern of agility. I didn’t create the effect in my shard. My core revolved. Essence spun, then whirled through my entire body. The universe sucked in a breath. I stepped. My sight blurred. Before I knew it, I was at the drake’s throat. The enchantments on my blade flared, and the tip went through the bottom of its mouth.

  Fire gushed from its nostrils. The mouth ballooned, but the explosion remained contained within. The beast squirmed on the floor then died.

  “Thank you…” Ray heaved, eyes wide.

  I only half listened. The shard pulsed like a heartbeat. My hands drew the portal on their own. The cindertree branch slithered out—

  “Get back!”

  The shadow crashed to the earth before the warning finished sounding. Buffeting winds sent me scurrying backwards.

  ‘What the hell?’ My arm shielded my eyes from the pelting dirt.

  I peered. The light-grey shadow was perhaps a cross between a lion and a hawk and the size of a small home. Its eyes were shaped like hexagons that looked like spinel.

  Its whip-like tail hovered behind it as it wrapped a talon around the torso of the drake.

  Agility still fuelled me when I shot to the floor on pure instinct. Strands of my hair disconnected from my head.

  In one fluid motion, I got to my feet, leapt backwards, and read the golden letters above its head in the space that bought me.

  [Herald of the Western Mountain. ? - ?]

  A bar of liquid fire screamed. Aedan crashed to the floor near Ray.

  “How kind of you to come to me!” Erri yelled.

  She leapt at the beast. One of the liquid fire snakes coiled around her waist opened its mouth and lunged too.

  The herald only spread its wings. Winds gyrated and rose into a twister with the beast at the centre. Erri yelped as she was flung away like a doll. I jammed my blade into the earth, which was the sole reason I didn’t suffer the same fate.

  “RAY!” Judith screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Only then I did notice the two halves of Ray’s corpse floating in the twister. Unlike me, he hadn’t dodged the herald’s tail. The same fate awaited Aedan, who still hadn’t recovered her weapon and was swept up by the twister.

  The herald’s tail took aim—

  “Dusk.”

  I blinked. For an instant, the world was dark. In that dark world, which existed for not even a fraction of a second, I swore a mass of shrieking and howling souls shaped like an arrow flicked past. When I opened my eyes, the twister was gone. Vyke hovered motionlessly in the air, a massive black bow in his hands that dissolved with a wail.

  A black, writhing hole that grew larger by the second had burrowed into the herald’s flank. The beast threw its head to the sky and screamed. It slammed the corpse of the drake into the ground and slashed its tail at anything remotely closeby, then it took to the sky, the drake still jammed in its talons.

  The pulse coursed through me again. My face darkened.

  How dare it steal my kill…!

  Ice flashed and struck Vyke from the sky. Aurille was at Judith’s side at an instant.

  “We have to go!” she yelled, pulling her back by the shoulder.

  “No! Please. Get Ray! We can still save him!”

  Garen, who’d damaged his drake enough to get the creature running back to its brood, took over from Aurille.

  He threw Judith over his shoulder. “Pardon me, Milady, but Lady Everfrost is right.” He dashed off, Jake behind him.

  Aurille spared me a glance.

  I stared after Judith, who had her hand stretched out as tears dripped down her face, then at the shadow of the herald retreating to the mountain.

  “Go on without me,” I said and rushed after the herald.

  White stalkers swooped down on both cultists and disciples alike in the wake of their herald retreating. Whichever poor victims they managed to sink their claws into were carried off, their screams swallowed by the storm. Ashwing fired a cutter at a stalker diving for my dome. I rushed past a group of three cultists surrounding a single disciple. The disciple thought I’d save him, but I kept running. His cry for help alerted the others to my presence though and one of them hurried after me.

  He got a sharp wave of fire to the mouth for his trouble.

  My gaze went to the distant sky. The herald was already too far for me to make it out without Ashwing’s superior vision. But it was flying like how I imagined a drunk person would.

  ‘Vyke’s attack definitely hurt it.’

  I just needed to reach it before it could heal or devour the drake. But I was already using agility to power myself, I couldn’t go—

  An easing tune rang out behind me.

  I frowned and glanced back. “Are you serious?!”

  Duke smiled. “It’s not illegal to follow you, is it?”

  I wrenched my head away from his smirking face. “Don’t complain if you get left behind.”

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