Page 206 of Cast in Conflict

“Would she hear you?”

Not apparently, Chosen. But...you were not here then. There was a note of accusation in his words.

“Can you try again?”

Hope pushed himself off her shoulder. He didn’t follow Mandoran into the air; he moved down the street and began to transform, the tiny delicate familiar becoming the enormous, draconic familiar in the space of a few seconds.

Mount. He roared—at this size there was no squawking. Mandoran sprinted toward them as Hope pushed himself off worn cobbles and into the air, his wings snapping out to carry his greater weight. Mandoran joined her, sliding in behind, rather than in front, as Hope headed in a straight line for Bellusdeo.

No, she thought—not Bellusdeo.

The outcaste.

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Kaylin didn’t have a wing-eyed view of the conflict she was rapidly approaching; she was seated on the familiar who usually offered her that advantage. She did, however, have Mandoran.

It was Mandoran who shouted in her ear; Mandoran who made clear that the outcaste was not the only thing in the air. Most of the Aerians—all, to Kaylin’s view—had been brought down one way or the other. Teela and Nightshade could fight aerial creatures with both feet on the ground.

She could see the three Dragons—Bellusdeo, Emmerian, and the outcaste. But Mandoran’s tone made clear that he could see something she couldn’t. Whatever it was, it wasn’t aiming for Kaylin.

No, Hope said, his voice more a physical sensation than a sound. He then followed the word with a roar.

“Got it!” Mandoran shouted—not bothering to move his mouth away from the vicinity of Kaylin’s ear.

Hope approached Bellusdeo, edging under the cone of the flame she unleashed against the outcaste’s fire—a fire that had always looked purple to Kaylin from a distance. This was not enough of a distance; here, she could clearly see the sparks of other colors, limned in gold and silver and orange, as if each were alive and struggling for dominance. Green collapsed into blue; blue gave way to red; red was destroyed by yellow and green. The colors didn’t merge; it was as if they couldn’t coexist, couldn’t transform.

The flame, however, was hot.

Emmerian approached the outcaste from the flank. Mandoran cursed under his breath. “Don’t fall off!” he shouted, as he failed to follow his own advice. He ejected himself—she could feel the bunching of muscles at her back—and rode towards the silver Dragon, alighting on his back.

This is a bad idea, Hope said.

“Why?”

Neither Lord Emmerian nor Mandoran has native resistance to the outcaste’s power. Mandoran can see. I do not believe he has enough influence on Emmerian.

If Kaylin had been less tense, she would have wilted in place. She didn’t think she had much influence on Bellusdeo, either. Bellusdeo’s fire pushed the outcaste’s fire back—but not all of it.

Not all of it. Strands of purple, eerily reminiscent of the tentacles that rose from the ground in Ravellon, appeared to be slowly threading their way across the outside of Bellusdeo’s flame cone, and inching up, and up again.

“Hope, do something!”

Silence. She knew what the silence meant; knew that this was not something she could do herself, and not something he would do for free.

It is our nature, he said, agreeing, his tone leavened with something that might have been regret.

“Can you drop me on Bellusdeo’s back?”

Not safely.

“I don’t care about safely—can you do it?”

In reply, he flew in a wide arc around the current—and moving—combat. She glanced once at Emmerian; the silver Dragon had allowed Mandoran to mount. If they spoke at all, she couldn’t hear a word. Hope was a far more stable mount than Bellusdeo had been; she could pull her legs up, tuck them beneath her, and still maintain her balance.

That went out the window when she pushed herself off in Bellusdeo’s direction. From this distance, she could see that the gold Dragon’s eyes were crimson; the color was reflected off the scales closest to those eyes. She fell short of a perfect landing. Sadly, she fell short of any landing.

She trusted Hope to catch her on the way down, but it wasn’t Hope’s claws that caught her by the shoulders. Bellusdeo couldn’t breathe fire and speak at the same time—and she couldn’t stop breathing fire under the outcaste’s assault. While Dragons were immune to the effects of Dragon fire, the outcaste was not a normal Dragon. Kaylin was absolutely certain that his fire wouldn’t burn Bellusdeo.

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