Page 151 of Skyshade
There would be no out-flying them. The creature was too large. Her powers didn’t work up here.
Wraith trembled below, but his wings flared out. He didn’t run. He was ready to look certain death in the face, with her.
She pressed a hand against his spine, remembering him as a tiny bundle of scales. Remembering him crying because of his injury. Remembering him healing. Getting stronger.
She was so proud of him.
So proud that when the beast lurched forward, he did not falter.
He shot toward it without slowing down, his head bent low. Determined. Brave. Knowing he didn’t have a chance but trying anyway.
There were only yards between them.
That was when Isla dragged her sword from her scabbard and grinned wickedly at the look on Lark’s face as she recognized it.
Cronan’s sword.
She lifted it over her head and roared.
And the world itself seemed to tremble. Cries cleaved through the air, through the ground, a scar of land parting somewhere close by. Then, the sun was blocked out by a thousand pairs of wings.
Dreks.
They shot through the air like throwing stars, burying themselves into the creature. It bellowed. Its many heads tried to catch each drek, but they were too large, and the winged beasts were too quick. Too small. Soon, they swarmed the creature and Lark. They ate through the beast’s flesh, infusing it with their poison, the same darkened veins that she had once seen on Grim. The wounds festered before her very eyes, and the creature dropped a few feet, off-balance, blinded by the rush of wings.
Isla stood on Wraith’s back again and shot forward.
Some of the dreks surrounded her, like a legion, illuminated through the storm by the rings they carried in their talons.
Azul’s rings. Hundreds of them.
Hundreds of storms. Power, trapped inside, that she could unleash, even in the metal. That she could control.
She lifted the sword again, in command, and the orbs all shattered.
Energy filled the sky, freed from the stones. Each storm orbited around her like rings of ability, so fast they became streaks of color. With a roar, she shot them all forward at the mountainous beast.
One head was slayed by a blizzard concentrated into a blade. Another by the force of a tidal wave she had morphed into a scythe. A third by a hurricane that went right through one of its throats. Storm after storm attacked the beast at every angle, until there was only one head left.
Wraith flew between two headless necks, turned sharply, and from her place standing on his back, the storm winds she now controlled keeping her balance, she made a blade of monsoons and floods and twisters, and chopped the final head off herself.
The beast dropped from the sky, taking Lark with it.
Her storms raged, painting it her own shade of oceans and snow and hurricanes and sandstorms and ice all controlled by her, all melding together to create the storm to end all storms. Arms shaking with strength and effort, she shaped them all into a single orb that she shrank down before adding it to her belt.
She turned Wraith around in a circle three times, marking the signal. Grim would get Oro. They would meet her at Ferrar’s forge.
First, they needed Lark.
Calder was instructed to find Lark’s broken body below and trap its pieces in ice, so she couldn’t heal.
She needed to meet Oro and Grim at the forge. Their plan was almost complete.
First, though, there was something she needed to do.
Isla took off into the sky, on Wraith’s back. She traveled to the winter palace for one final preparation.
She was walking by the wide windows of the dining room when she noticed the snow. It was increasing. Falling faster than usual.Drops became a flurry, and then sheets, so white and thick she could barely see the gardens through them. It rushed downward faster and faster, and she took a step back, but it was too late.
