Page 58 of Dragons' Future

“You’ve cut a rift into the blight?” Cyril demands, Quinton and Hauck moving into position to dispatch the creatures. “Are you insane?”

Five more piranha’s start wiggling forward.

“I’m pragmatic,” Salazar replies. “I know how to make use of all the tools in my reach. From mindless Gloom dwellers to the useful idiots crowding the outside of the palace. Bait them the right way, and they will fall over themselves to do your bidding. Geoffrey.”

Geoffrey barks to the priests and they shift to a new chant. The air above us shimmering then re-settles into transparency. I realize what he’s done a heartbeat later when several of the piranhas, who’d been quietly slithering toward Salazar himself, hit an invisible wall.

Salazar smiles. “Ah, yes. You will find a dome barrier now surrounding you. It’s another trick from the trials that I wisely appropriated. What were you saying about draining one’s power again?”

Salazar had been waiting to give the order, letting us expend our strength on his personal shields before trapping us in a bubble of monsters.

“Kill all the corrupt creatures you like, King Cyril. But know more will forever come. There is no end to what will slither forth from the blight. Your only choice, your only path to safety, is to yield to the one person who has the power to order the rift closed. To me. If you won’t bend a knee for your sake, do it for the dame’s.”

Tavais unleashes another volley of lightning, but the worms simply crawl over their downed companions and keep coming. Maws of needle-sharp teeth open and close blindly. Rhythmically. Hungrily.

“You see Cyril, I don’t just want your death,” Salazar says. “I want your surrender.”

I stop listening. Stepping up to Tavias’s shoulder, I add my flame to his lightning as we tackle the growing pile of worms. The slick, viscous fluid covering their bodies ignites easily, leaving a gut-wrenching stench behind. The good news is that these piranha are apparently highly flammable. The bad news? These piranhas are highly flammable. Like slithering oil lamps.

“Watch your flames,” Tavias shouts to me as if controlling the power rolling through my veins is that easy. “A bonfire will burn us as easily as them.”

I try to narrow my focus, but I can’t. So I try the opposite instead. I make my flame hotter, incinerating the piranhas completely. It’s harder work, but it's cleaner. Safer.

Quinton shouts at me to conserve my strength as he pushes to the front, dancing with his sword and shadows.

I don’t argue, but I don’t lighten up either. I don’t need a power reserve if I’m dead. For the next eternity, my focus stays entirely on the rift opening. With each jet of fire I wield, I walk a balance beam between burning myself out and burning the worms dead. The battlefield resonates with the crackle and pop of my flames. The heat building inside me as my heart pounds.

I burn and kill. But more come. The only difference between one moment and the next is how much harder it is getting to wield my magic. There are always more. Always. It’s like bailing water from a leaky boat.

Think, I order myself as fatigue forces me to brace my hands on my knees. What would Ettienne do? Ettienne would be ruthless. He’d rip down the dome barrier and force everyone in the throne room to fight and die—Salazar’s own son included. He’d turn Salazar’s weapon against him. Force his hand. Yes, that’s what he’d do—but how? How did he take out the dome at the final trial? “We have to kill the priests,” I shout.

“I can’t… extend lightning… outside the dome,” Tavias replies between heaving breaths. He has made a mini-shield with his power and is trying to shove it against the rift, as if he can patch the hole in the world with his magic. It’s not working.

Worse, a new shadow falls over the rift, dimming the window into the colorless Gloom. Tavias roars as something shoves against his shield so hard that it lifts him off his feet and throws him clear across the room. Then not one, but three new nightmares emerge from the rift.

These aren’t the mindless piranhas we’ve been contending with. These creatures vaguely resemble grotesquely enlarged hedgehogs. Their six-foot long bodies are covered in pale green skin, their faces mottled in blotches of black and purple. But it's their foot-long quills that send true ice cold fear through me. Quills that look needle sharp and drip with a venomous, luminescent ooze.

“These are Spinecrawlers,” Quinton shouts just as one of the creatures swivels its red bulbous eyes toward me. “Don’t let the quills hit you.”

I move farther away.

That doesn’t help. The creature tightens its body and shoots off a volley of spikes. I dive to the side. There is a woosh of air as several pass mere inches from my face before thudding into the marble behind me. Where they shatter, a trail of corrosive venom starts eating into the stone.

Racing in from my left, Quinton flips over the spinecrawler who’d just attacked me and decapitates it with his swords. The head and body fall separately. The remaining two spinecrawlers let out a shriek of rage.

I think we just made them mad. Really mad.

One of the two remaining spinecrawlers shoots off its quills. He is faster than the first one was, and more accurate.

I throw myself to the side, colliding with the body of a piranha that is mercifully dead. I bounce off the putrid worm, scanning the room as Hauck’s words from earlier ring in my head. Hauck. For my plan to work, I need Hauck.

I find him just as one of the spinecrawlers does. I throw my fire at the creature, but my well of power is running dry. The small streaks of flame that I manage do little more than irritate it further. Hauck raises his sword to move in for the kill, but the creature fires off more quills and this time we aren’t so lucky.

I watch in horror as one of the venomous spikes pierces deep into Hauck’s thigh. He screams and falls to his knees. I sprint to him, aware of Quinton shifting position to guard the pair of us while Cyril moves to help Tavias.

It’s only heartbeats before I am at Hauck’s side, but he is already thrashing on the floor. His gorgeous eyes are wide, the pupils large and unfocused. I force myself to breathe as I kneel by him. To think. The fact that Hauck still has a leg at all means the spike inside him is yet to burst. I saw the venom eat through marble—his leg would be goop if the venom was truly spilling inside his flesh.

Hauck convulses. Even while intact the spinecrawler’s quill is moments from killing him. I need to get it out.

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