Page 55 of The Shadow Wand

His eyes snag on something dark perched atop one of the towering obsidian formations, and every muscle instinctively tenses once more.

A bird. Watching him.

A jolt of horror strafes through him as a green eye opens in the center of the bird’s forehead, then multiple eyes open as well around the three central eyes, these filled with swirling shadow. Yvan realizes, in an instant, what this is.

Vogel’s dark magic.

Magic the Vu Trin have warned him to be on guard against.

Vogel has come.

Yvan whips around just as a Vu Trin soldier breaks ranks and rushes for him, a glowing deep-green shield bursting to life around her as the other soldiers shout and draw weapons, the scene thrust into instant chaos.

Yvan falls into a crouch, his accessible Wyvernfire reduced to a small ember, almost all of it spread out behind him over the blazing plain.

The shielded Vu Trin running toward him pulls a wand, and Yvan realizes, in a burst of clarity, that he’s looking at a glamoured Mage as the attacker throws back her wand arm and thrusts it forward, a blur of dark bolts appearing in the air and zooming straight for him.

Yvan attempts to elude the incoming spears, but they’re homed in, curving as he attempts to dodge.

Shocks of pain explode through him again and again as vine spears impale his chest, his arm, his wings, his leg.

His heart.

Yvan falls to the ground, his whole body arcing against the terrible pain as Vu Trin yell and weapons fly and crash against the glamoured Mage’s magical shield in a cacophony of sapphire runic explosions, the glamoured Mage battling back the Vu Trin with a fusillade of vine spears.

Yvan turns his head as the life seeps out of him, cheek to earth, his vision beginning to black out along the edges. He meets the multi-eyed gaze of the bird, only a handspan away from him now on the ground.

Watching.

Watching.

Waiting for him to die.

Defiance rises in Yvan, and he holds the bird’s cruel, horrific stare even as blood flows out of him into the earth below and his internal fire ignites once more, his whole world consumed in pain and flame.

Two last impassioned thoughts fill Yvan’s mind as he surrenders to his internal spike of fire and the bird takes wing.

Be strong without me, Elloren.

And fight them.

Part Two

CHAPTER ONE

COMMANDER LUKAS GREY

ELLOREN GARDNER

Sixth Month

The Keltish Province of Gardneria

Yvan.

He’s all I can think about as I glance down at my fastmarked hands and my carriage speeds forward, drawing me ever nearer to my reunion with Mage Lukas Grey, commander of Vogel’s Fourth Division forces.

Are you safe, Yvan?I wonder ceaselessly, apart from him now for over a month and wishing I could find a portal straight to him.

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