Chapter 399 (2/2)

All except for the man with the twin leaf-shaped blades

Half-risen, his furious gaze still on his dying coht his blades up far too late, andhis ar his flesh I sensed his round A moment later, the rune-covered woman faded as well

This This was yet another cruelty I would lay at Kezess’s feet These deaths were as much his work as mine

“General Aldir, please, stop this madness!” Irini shouted frorass to avoid the dragon’s fire and was bleeding fros as the Warrior’s Wind whipped the grass about “We only rass thrust up underneath her chin, piercing her skull Her misty pink eyes blinked rapidly as she stared at rass all around her was cutting and slashi+ng, ripping her to pieces

The savanna was burning, I realized The dragonfire had set it ablaze It was under attack, and so it was fighting back Defending itself and the pantheons

“Irini!” her brother shouted, his voice cracking He sprinted for her, no threat to me, and I turned ons dove fro a ball of blue fire fro Hidden within thethrough the air, and fros

With Mirage Walk already active, I was able to instantly step fro the attacks Or rather, I should have been able to do so, but when I tried, I felt myself slam into some invisible barrier My shoulder ripped free of its socket fro back

The spear hit me just below the breastbone With a purple shi+mmer, the aether infused within it puncturedagainst the ribs nearonto one knee, I took the butt of the spear in one hand while lifting Silverlight over my head with the other

A transparent sphere of cool light wrapped around ed

Fire and lightning crushed in on the barrier, and Silverlight trembled in my fist as she drank desperately froh the shi+eld

It shattered

I burst upward, running along the beaon breathing it out snapped closed its jaws and banked sharply away

An instant later, Silverlight cut the air, projecting a wide arc of cutting force Blood burst froon’s underbelly, and it listed to the side before careening into the savanna, where the grass careens to dark crimson

Curved claws like sci reen dragon blotted out the sky above an to treon shouted, and I understood

The tre became a vibration, and the black scales took on an a us back to the base of Mount Gelous

I released Silverlight and groped for the end of one of the large claws When I found one, I twistedsound as the claw shattered inclaws closed hard around me Dull pain overrode all sensation in my left aron’s talons, taking Silverlight with it

As the sword tumbled free, she whirled around and flew up just above me, then slashed at Kastor’s emerald-scaled ankle

Still partially contained within the severed claw’s grip, I began falling

Spiros hurtled to meet me He had partially transformed so that lustrous black scales covered his flesh and ings sprouted fro violet, and fire was flickering between elongated fangs

I kicked free of Kastor’s severed claw, rotated, and swaht was back in ory line from Spiros’s shoulder to hip

In the sah with a short, sharp cut, the force of which sheared through everything betweenUrien of Clan Somath, who burst apart in a shower of blood

With a fierce tug, I pulled round I hit hard, using the force to kick up a cloud of dust to obscure ons’ round, Tassos and the longspear wielding dragon, Orrin, both of the Indrath Clan, stood shoulder to shoulder to ht, in the distance, Windsom had fallen well back from the combat Alkis, Irini’s twin, had vanished Taken by the savanna, I was sure

In the sky, I could hear Kastor cursing his pain while the other two transforround

“Let this end,” I booons in particular “There is no need for the rest of you to die as well”

“Traitor!” Tassos shouted, the word rolling like thunder across the savanna

Through the cold fury offrom a warrior whose life I had once saved, who had sworn to return the favor so over burned limbs…

Could none of them see what I could see?

But no, of course they couldn’t Even I hadn’t seen it, not until Kezess had forced me to use the World Eater technique Until then, Kezess’s control over my worldview had been absolute, a veil so subtle and ethereal that it could not be seen or touched

It would have been better if I could show them Perhaps another could break Kezess’s spell someday But because I could not, it would be too late for these dragons

Sensing around e Walk Distortions in space itself, invisible to every sense except ons was utilizing aether to block the near-instant bursts of speed allowed by Mirage Walk, the Thyestes Clan’s “secret” technique

But of course, when all clans answered to Kezess, there were no secrets froht shi+fted forspear, and I thrust at the invisible barrier Though the dragons’ ability to influence aether had est of all the races, they did not control it Creating so solid, such as an invisible barrier, was a subtle use of their influence that even the strongest of aether-wielders would struggle to ainst the application of pure force

The barrier shattered High above, the white-gold dragon howled in surprise and pain

Tassos was already low that seeht, Kastor turned into a dive, shooting toward us like a dark star

Tassos was strong, one of the ons I had ever coe aether into his weapon ht beside him, commanded him, and I knew his abilities better perhaps than he hi, aih to shatter any defense I delayed le step

Like a sovereign cobra striking, Tassos repositioned his blade, pulling it in tight and drawing it across his body in an impressively quick maneuver If I had stepped toward him, his blade would have been perfectly positioned to deliver a killing blow

But I hadn’t My step had been just to the right, barely a half-step, but enough to takecut That short step occurred with such speed and ht, it flew as if it had been fired from a Godbow

Kastor’s ht sped into his throat The dragon went stiff as an old fossil and collapsed to the ground, dark green wings splintering and neck twisting unnaturally as the diffused savanna light glittered off the wreckage of eer and frustration, his blade blazing Beside hian to swell between the across the path froon roared in the sky

The earth shook

A ring of ground aroundwind ca up from the void like one of the ancient ele the narrow pillar of earth on which I stood into a prison cell

Within the raging hurricane ripping upward frohly shaped, nearly-invisible planes of spatiulass in water

Through the wind and aether, I could see the sweat shi+ning on Orrin’s brow and how his fists shook with effort

The void prison spell was no erous at the best of tierous for all but the most talented mana manipulators Orrin Indrath had always chafed at his position of guard and soldier He sought above all greater reatest of all the clans

A dragon had to reach high to stand out atop Mount Gelous This one, it see out ht fro the spear, I drove it down into the circle of packed dirt beneath round

The pillar, carved by Orrin’s spell, splintered and broke to pieces before tu the growing pull as the void thru all that touched it The ent up and up and up, and it grewBut the situation was escalating outside the spell’s circumference far more quickly

The roar of the as too loud forsaid, but the way the two transforons wheeled about in panic and how Orrin’s entire body shook suggested very clearly that he was struggling, and failing, to control the spell

Painfully slowly, I began being dragged back doard the void My attack had disrupted the shape of the spell,it unstable Eventually, Orrin’s hold over it would collapse, but that wouldn’t help me if I’d already been unmade in the oblivion below And so I reared back with Silverlight She became a slim, beautifully-crafted rapier and left a silvery arc in the air where she cut

Belowand shi+fting as it devoured the force offar beyond Silverlight’s glea more and more force andsteadily es blurred

The spell broke

The ic ripped Orrin’s physical for left but a cloud of his purified mana, and even that quickly faded into the at over a deep, circular pit that ended in a rough patch of broken rock soape, at the place where his cousin had ceased to be Silverlight thrust forward, and his neck opened with a spray of arterial blood Both hands flew to his throat, but they couldn’t stop the red running through his fingers His sword fell to the ground, the aetheric glow infusing it blinking and going out He followed it a ons pulled back, one beautiful gold and white, the other the orange and red and yellow of a sunrise, both radiating a powerful aura of fear as they circled tightly in the sky above Windsoon shouted down

“I think we have seen enough,” Windsohty and loyal Aldir Thyestes has been lost to reater force”

I fleard Windso slowly so I could comfortably look down at him “We never should have continued to follow Kezess after the djinn, old friend”

Windsom's nose wrinkled “Lord Indrath”

“We should have seen what he was then We have a chance to do so now Make things right”

Windso “You sined to you”

I hadn’t expected Windsoiance, but I still felt the stabbing pain of regret and loss knowing that ere now truly eneed Windso dragons turned and fleay at speed I let theuard, but it was only Wren in his floating earthen throne

“This is what Kezess wanted,” I said with a sigh, speaking as much to myself as Wren “For blood to be shed, so that he could paintin Epheotus”

“Quite fitting for that high-functioning sociopath to use the very soldiers you helped train as fodder to paint you as a ht be ti the dragons recede into the horizon “Property values in the Cerulean Savanna are sure to go down considering the infestation of dragons here And void holes And killer grass” He eyed me skeptically “Did you know about that, by the way? A little warning would have been nice What if I stepped on the wrong blade of grass and all the others got pissy and turned me into titan confetti?”

“This is hardly the time for japes,” I answered, too cold inside to find any amusement in his words

He shi+fted in his seat, leaned back, and rested one leg over the other “I beg to differ There is no better tiallows humor”