by Chant, Zoe
The shifters gathered themselves and fled up the shivering stairs, just as the gathering clouds opened up and rain began to pelt down on them.
The rain changed to hail before they were all under the overhanging restaurant deck, first pebble-sized, then fist-sized, then chunks of ice the size of small melons were hurtling towards them at impossible speeds. Tex and Travis toppled the cooler onto its side to act as a defense against the onslaught while some of them hid behind of the bar. Magnolia and Chef, still in their bear forms, protected others, thick fur ruffled in the wind.
Unable to help them, barely able to keep her physical form, Scarlet stood at the edge of the bar deck, watching her resort tremble as Mal began to chant in earnest. The runes on his forearms were bright in the gathering darkness.
The hail gave way to rain, heavy and driving. Scarlet stared through the gloom to where Mal was beginning to weave the tools he needed to subdue the monster long enough to cage it.
Shimmering ropes appeared, looping around the cottages and across the pool deck, and Scarlet wasn’t sure if they were shivering with energy, or from the endless shaking of the earth. It was starting to feel almost normal, the earthquake had gone on so long.
Then, as if challenging that idea, it intensified and someone screamed as one of the columns cracked and a portion of the restaurant deck collapsed. Further away, Scarlet could hear building and trees groan in protest, and more glass was shattering.
Mal leaped into the air, spreading tiger’s eye wings, just as the wyrm emerged from beneath one of Scarlet’s cottages, throwing rock and earth out of its path.
Each of its heads was a wedge nearly the size of Mal’s entire dragon, its great eyes lighting white above a snarling mouth full of shining teeth. Coils of his legless body flattened another cottage, and his tail sent white gravel spitting in all directions as it sliced up through the resort paths.
Scarlet had expected the wyrm’s size, but she hadn’t expected the creature’s unearthly beauty. The serpentine body was most similar to a snake, but moved in ways that no snake could ever manage, flowing and pulsing in shimmering waves. Its gleaming body was covered from face to tail-tip in razor-tipped iridescent blue and green feathers, each one reflective and flexible enough to move like a leaf. They sang like tuned windchimes with every sinuous movement.
It was like watching music, shimmering waves of color blazing from its feathered hide.
Mal rose up into the storm and fell down upon him like a sparrow on an alligator, the runes on his dragon’s forelegs glowing as he folded his wings and dropped. Magic-strengthened, he hit the wyrm right behind the nearest head, driving it down to the earth as the ropes whipped up to capture one of its long necks.
The second head dove for the golden dragon, snapping down... on a brilliant blue shield that snapped to life. Through the driving, pounding sound of the storm, Scarlet could hear the teeth screech off of the barrier. The first head was ripping up from the ropes holding it, straining and pulling as the second head changed its tactic and rammed into Mal with all of its strength.
A portal opened behind him, another opening directly above him with the same sweep of his tail, and then Mal was dropping into one and out of the other to dive onto the head flailing through empty space. Claws that gleamed blue light drove through the slithering feathers. The first head had fought its way free of the magical rope and was snapping at Mal in fury.
The wyrm, now free, twisted in a corkscrew into the air like it was climbing an invisible ladder and scraped along Mal’s hide with a sound like metal on stone.
That was when Scarlet realized that the plumage wasn’t merely decorative. Every gleaming blue-green feather was knife-edged, and strong enough that she felt scale slice beneath it.
Mal, she whispered, staggered by his pain.
She could feel the spell that healed the cuts, and see the runes flare briefly on the dragon’s forearms. Flexible as a cat, he twisted away, vanished through a portal, and reappeared above the wyrm once again.
One of its heads turned to snap at him, the other ducked to come up behind him, but Mal dove between them, then made a mid-air turn that no bird would have attempted and came up under one of the chins, digging in with magic-hardened claws as he hauled it back down toward the magical ropes wriggling above the resort below.
The other head screamed and came crashing in against Mal’s blazing shield.
Chapter 27
This isn’t anything we haven’t trained for, Mal told his dragon as they tumbled through another portal to get behind the wyrm again. They both knew he was desperately lying.
The magic from the Shifting Sands staff was nearly as strong as Scarlet’s had been. But it was incoherent, competitive, and using magic that wasn’t his was just different enough than using his own that he was sometimes scrambling to understand what he was doing. His shields were a moment slower than they needed to be, his portals just a little sloppier. His concentration was broken between smoothing the lines of power and setting the spells, all while he fought an angry, razor-feathered, two-headed wyrm who had everything to lose and vengeance to gain... in the middle of a raging storm.
He felt like a boy again, a dragon who could barely fly, in the air being pitted against experienced warriors with the advantage of fire.
We won those battles, his dragon reminded him, dodging a head followed by a swirling blender of sharp feathers. Sometimes.
Mal could hear his father’s voice. What edge do you always have?
Knowledge. What did he know that could possibly help him?
You know nothing, a voice intruded scornfully.
Less than nothing, a second voice chimed.
Then, together, We have all the edgesssssss.
The wyrm cackled in unison at its own joke as it sent the tail that Mal had lost track of to twist around him in a swirl of dark, iridescent feathers. Mal gave a roar of pain, failing in surprise to raise a shield before they sliced into the scales along his side, through the magic-hardening spell altogether. He was poorly positioned for a portal. The driving rain and wind made it difficult to stay steady long enough to accurately dive through a small one and a large one took more power.
A swift healing spell kept the cuts from being deadly, but Mal was keenly aware that he was burning through the magical reserves at an unsustainable rate.
He steeled himself for a phased attack, dropping through a portal just a little above from one of the great heads as he escaped snapping jaws. He took hold of the huge wedge head and used a jolt of magic that burned like alcohol through his veins to drag the wyrm with him back to where the ropes waited to capture it. The other head and the tail twisted to batter against his gleaming shield.
They fought, teeth shrieking over shield, claws digging through feathers, magic will against brute strength and fury.
Harder and deeper, Mal poured the magic that had been given to him selflessly into all of the spells he was keeping alive: the shield, the force dragging them towards the shining ropes he was keeping alive and waiting, the magic hardening of his claws and scales.
For one bright moment, he thought he could do it; one strong push and he could force the wyrm down to his destiny.
But then the wyrm flared every feather in braking power and the free head opened its toothy jaws to roar a command into the storm. Furious wind tore through the shield to Mal’s wings, ripping the membrane. The rain was so dense that it blinded him and Mal, unable to divert any magic to healing, shivered in pain.
The wyrm took advantage of his distraction and crashed into his shield with its tail, overpowering it with sheer force. Mal clung to the head under his claws desperately; he couldn’t portal in this kind of wind, and he didn’t dare let go, even as the spell pulling the wyrm back to be caged unraveled in the air and the wyrm slithered back up into the clouds.
Then the second head bit into him and ripped him loose, tossing him end over end into the storm.
For a moment, Mal only tumbled, helpless and s
tunned. Then he cast a swift healing spell to stem the worst of the bleeding and he tried to make sense of where he was and where the wyrm was.
Out of the cloud and rain, a grinning head came sweeping with jaws wide to snap at his ravaged wings. Mal dived for a portal, missed it in the driving wind, and slammed into the body of the wyrm beyond.
Landing in feathers was somehow less comfortable than it sounded when the feathers were tipped in knives.
Mal kicked off and fell backwards through the clouds until he could spread his wings and fly again with his damaged wings.
Think! he berated himself. Act! Fight! His magic stores were draining too quickly, and he couldn’t risk harming the shifters who had so selflessly given it to him.
The wyrm spiraled down towards him, lazily, and batted at him with a playful tail.
It was a game, Mal realized as he dodged the tail with effort and feathers skidded off a hasty shield when he wasn’t quite fast enough. The wyrm was toying with him, confident in its victory now.
Their battle, swiftly becoming one-sided, was taking them out over the storm-raged jungle and Mal had a sudden cold moment of terror. Was the wyrm deliberately taking them to Scarlet’s grove?
The tree... one of the heads hissed dismissively, as if it felt his thought. We stopped the tree.
She is powerless, the other smirked.
To Mal’s horror, the storm was effortlessly flattening the giant trees of the rain forest below them, ripping them up by their roots and tossing them aside as if they were tiny saplings. He had a glimpse of the clearing, just beyond.
Scarlet...
Mal closed his eyes and dug as deep into the magic as he dared, waiting until the two baleful heads were close together and then casting a shield not over himself, but over the wyrm’s two heads, like throwing a bag over two squirming snakes.
He had only a heartbeat of optimism before the two heads, growling, moved in opposite directions and ripped the shield into a spray of sparks.
Before we take the world back, we will make you suffer, the wyrm snarled in harmony. We will make you pay the sins of your forefathers in the blood we draw from your sides and the pain we will make you scream.
But when Mal expected the feathered creature to rip his heart out by upending Scarlet’s tree, it only growled into the storm and the wind sent him tumbling as the wyrm chased him like a cat chasing a crippled mouse.
Mal spread badly damaged wings, breathing what he knew was his last healing spell into them as he fled back towards the ocean, hoping only to draw the monster and the storm it was making from Scarlet’s unprotected grove.
Chapter 28
Scarlet had never felt so helpless. Not as a new dryad, not wandering the streets in England with her dying tree. Not when she was most sure she would lose her resort. Not even feeling her tree’s life slip away after she had been salted.
Her forest was tapped, the life energy that they had shared with her so selflessly drained to nothing. Even if they survived the storm and captured the wyrm, she didn’t know if the jungle would ever thrive again.
And there was nothing she could do for her mate.
She stood at the edge of the bar deck, as if she could do anything to protect the staff hiding there. They were crouched behind whatever shelter they could find—toppled tables, chunks of rubble from the restaurant deck above.
And above them was the terrible aerial battle, half obscured by charcoal clouds and blowing debris.
The wyrm tore chunks from Mal’s hide, ripped at the webbing of his wings, batting him out of the sky like he was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Every time, Mal returned to try to drag it back, every time more slowly. Bright shields flared more briefly with each hit.
He was being idly savaged, Scarlet realized. The only reason that the wyrm hadn’t left the island for its freedom yet was to exact painful revenge from Mal himself, playing with him like a cat with its helpless prey. Mal’s magic was finite, his ability to heal was slowing and his protections were failing.
Bastian was suddenly standing beside her. “He’s released us,” he said, sounding weary.
Scarlet felt her chest seize with pain. Mal had only his own magical reserves remaining, and she knew they would not last long.
It was still raining, still windy, but the worst of it was away over the jungle, beating on her forest and battering Mal.
Bastian went to the edge of the deck; the railing was drunken on the cracked concrete.
Saina staggered to him against the wind. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to go fight with him,” Bastian said matter-of-factly. “He isn’t going to save the world alone.”
Saina gave a low keen of misery and dragged his face down to hers for a long kiss. Then she released him. “I will sing for you,” she said. “As long as I have voice.”
Then Bastian was rising on his green wings into the buffeting wind.
“I wish there was something we could do,” Jenny said, shifting from otter to woman at Scarlet’s side.
“He could have used more of our magic,” Travis said, soaking wet at her side.
“He didn’t want to drain you too far,” Scarlet said miserably.
Mal and Bastian looked like tiny songbirds trying to harass a great roc. A great, angry, confident roc.
Saina was singing what little power she had left into her mate with a hoarse voice against the grasping wind.
Scarlet cringed. Even that was her fault. If Saina had not exhausted herself saving the dryad... If she had not been a dryad, Mal would have been able to evacuate everyone and fight the battle where he could beat it.
Scarlet thought bitterly. It’s all my fault!
Gizelle, crouching behind a table near Conall, looked up at her abruptly, as if she’d heard Scarlet’s thought. Her white-streaked hair was dripping wet and tangled, and Scarlet wondered how many ways she had failed the young woman. She should have persuaded Conall to take her off the island earlier. She should have taken the threat that slept—didn’t sleep—below them more seriously.
Scarlet dragged her eyes up to the storm.
Mal and Bastian gamely fought, but no one on the ground had any illusions that they had a chance against the beast.
Jenny couldn’t watch after only a few moments, turning to bury her face in Travis’ chest.
“It’s just toying with them,” Travis said quietly.
Jenny looked up. “If it really wanted to hurt Mal, why hasn’t it gone for Scarlet’s tree?” she asked quietly.
“It doesn’t think I’m important anymore,” Scarlet guessed, remembering the wyrm’s confusion over the bond that Gizelle and Conall shared. “It doesn’t understand love, or loyalty. Because I have no power, it thinks Mal doesn’t care for me any further.”
She knew love. And loyalty... she only had to think about the staff of Shifting Sands and everything they’d done for her. They’d offered up their own shifter energy. They’d even pooled their resources to buy her the island.
Scarlet froze.
Mal! she cried, knowing the risk of distracting him. Mal, you have to sell me the island!
The wyrm twisted beneath him, the razor edges of his feathers slicing up into Mal’s claws. Mal roared in pain, but pressed his assault, futilely trying to drive the wyrm back down with Bastian’s help. I’m a little busy for a real estate transaction, he pointed out. His voice was not defeated, though he must surely recognize his inevitable loss of this game.
There was no time to explain. Trust me, Scarlet begged. Shift and accept my offer for the island so I can help you. Aloud, with witnesses. There can be no doubts.
She could feel his hesitation as he considered. The storm was rising to an impossible tenor, the wyrm was driving him back up into the clouds. He’d be more vulnerable yet in his human form.
But he trusted her.
The jaws of one of the heads snapped in air as Mal unexpectedly streaked away from the battle, retreating to the battered resort.
Bastian swooped down at the creature’s tail, sending a blast of flame over the wyrm that simply rolled off its shimmering feathers. But the attack made the wyrm hesitate, and that was enough time for Mal to streak over the jungle, drop from the sky and shift to human long enough to shout over the wind, “I accept your offer for the island before these witnesses with no exceptions or refusals!”
He gave Scarlet a piercing look. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he told her, then he was launching into the violent air again just as the wyrm got its teeth around one of Bastian’s rear legs mid-air and Saina screamed helplessly.
It was enough.
Scarlet felt the contract that had walled her from the far half of the island dissolve with Mal’s words, and all that had been there was suddenly hers.
She could feel every inch of the island, every ridge and rock and beach.
The forest there was not as vital as her half of the island had been, not nurtured as hers had been by a dryad of great power for many decades, but it was thick and alive, and when she reached out for it, it answered.
Wild jungle covered most of the island, and even the blades of grass where tame lawn had been gave her a little tickle of awareness. The arboretum at Beehag’s compound had housed dozens of rare trees, their dormant energy buzzing awake as she caressed them with her greeting.
You are my forest now, she told them lovingly, and from the smallest sapling to the greatest giant kapok, they answered with devotion and delight.
Power coursed through her once more, nearly as strong as it had ever been, filling all the empty corners of her tree.
And she knew exactly what to do with it.
As Mal battled against the wind to rejoin the fight, he went incandescent with the magic that Scarlet abruptly flung at him. His golden claws struck fast and true, magic-strengthened. The wyrm gave a cry of rage and pain as the claws managed to penetrate his armor-like feathers, dropping his hold on Bastian’s leg.