by Jada Fisher
She was cut off as the entire ground shook, throwing them all off their feet. Even the monsters seemed to react, scrambling for solid earth.
Except there was no solid earth, cracks racing out like the dirt below them was ice rather than solid ground. Just when Eist was sure that it was going to split in two and swallow them all, it stopped just as abruptly as it started.
“What was—”
A horrendous crack split the air and the grand castle was collapsing on itself. Statues, pillars, and chunks of stone rained downwards.
“Retreat!” she screamed, pushing to her feet and climbing onto Fior’s back. Despite the fact that they had never done it before, she felt like she fit perfectly at the juncture between his neck and wings. “Ain, Yacrist, Athar, retreat!”
The dragons seemed to react before she did, Alynbach grabbing Yacrist and flinging him onto Veralda’s back while the giant red beast gently wrapped her mouth about Ain’s waist. Dille scrambled up onto the back of the dragon from the portal, who flew toward the battle to scoop up the completely exhausted Gaius.
As for Eist, she directed Fior with her knees, urging him to shoot across the grass almost too quickly to even comprehend. She screamed Athar’s name, extending her arm just in time for him to grab it and use it to swing himself behind her on Fior’s back.
Eist was more than grateful for her powerful thighs keeping her clamped tightly to her spot, the force of Athar’s grab nearly yanking her shoulder out of joint. But she dismissed the pain as his strong arms wrapped around her waist once more.
He was safe.
They were all safe.
Within moments, they were all in the air and retreating toward the gated entrance.
Eist could see the guards rushing to see what was happening, but she paid them little mind, her eyes locked on the castle as it collapsed.
Thousands of years of history all tumbling down like it was nothing. Except tumbling wasn’t really the right word. No, not at all. It was being sucked in.
It seemed the portal that had started it all hadn’t ended when its creator disappeared. And maybe Eist knew that in the back of her mind. Maybe she knew that it was powered by her blood and would hold as long as she still had blood to spill. No wonder Farmad had taken so long before finally giving into the desire to kill her.
She watched the castle collapse like it was the end of an era, the marking of some new and terrible part of history they were about to stumble into. It seemed to take ages before it was finally a mess of structure and stone in a large heap on the ground.
No one said anything, because what could they possibly say in such a situation? Silence rang out, heavy with shock.
Or at least it did until something burst from the debris.
Tall, thick, and shining like ink, the force solidified into what looked like the winding arm of a sea creature. A…tentacle, Eist believed they were called.
“What in the All-Mother’s name is that?!”
No.
It couldn’t be.
Another tentacle burst through the rubble. And then another. And then Eist realized they were and weren’t solid. They billowed within the confines of their dark, squirming mess, like smoke that was somehow contained. There was a venomous sort of bubbling to the thick, almost liquid-like appearance, and suddenly she knew.
“It’s the Blight,” she whispered, going oh-so-cold.
As if it heard her, the world rumbled again, and a great and terrible creature rose up from below the earth. Something like a skull, something like a drawing of a terrible leviathan in the abysses of the ocean, something like what lurked in the darkest corners of a nightmare… There were no real words for the writhing, wriggling mass that slowly continued to move up, up, up, until it reached the clouds.
“That…that can’t be,” Yacrist breathed. “Your parents—”
“—died for nothing.”
The creature stopped its ascent, its form rippling and spreading out until it covered a good part of the sky. Another foreboding rumble issued from it, and the sound seemed to resonate across the entire ground.
The monster reacted viscerally, going stock still and then collapsing into the same piles of liquid that had created it. Then, in some sort of bizarre corruption of a rainstorm, the liquid flew upwards, rejoining the Blight’s body.
And with each surge it absorbed, the mass grew bigger and more foreboding. Eist’s stomach twisted in horror and dread. In front of her, her worst nightmare was happening, and she was powerless to stop it.
Was this how her parents felt right before they had given up their lives to lock it away forever? Now that it had broken out, were they free?
She didn’t know, and she supposed that she never would. The only thing she knew was that the Blight was free and a part of her world again.
As if it could sense her thoughts, what seemed like its head turned to them, its eyeless face somehow staring at them all intensely. Eist’s breath caught, sure that it was going to surge forward and swallow them up.
But it didn’t. Instead, it finished absorbing the last drop of inky blackness and then disappeared into the night sky.
“I…” Ain breathed. “That can’t be.”
“It is,” Eist answered, her voice shaking.
“B-but what…what d-d-d-does th-that mean for us?”
“Simple,” Eist said, steeling herself against the despair curling within her. She had her best friend back, she had her dragon back, but she felt like she had just been propelled out of the cauldron and into the fire. “It means war.”
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Magic, the fifth book in the Brindle Dragon series. Things have really been turned upside down, haven’t they?
I really enjoy hearing what readers think so if you could leave a review for me on Amazon, that would be really cool.
The next story in the Brindle Dragon series will be published soon. In the meantime, you might want to check out Oracle, if you haven’t read it already. It is the first book in the Dragon Oracle series which features a normal girl trying to live a normal life. The only problem is that she has visions of the future and finds herself mixed up with shape-shifting dragons.
Get Oracle here:
amazon.com/dp/B079KXS1SR/
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