Page 188 of The Demon Tide

With mounting urgency, Mora calibrates the ship’s control runes as the first dragons reach the shoreline. Her neck tightens as screams rise, dragons throwing bolts of dark fire onto the First Tier. Forcing an even breath, Mora keeps Nym’ellia in her sights as scattered civilians stream onto her ship and the Shadow tide reaches Voloi, rapidly coursing over the pier, and Mora notes, with horrified astonishment, that it’s cutting out all color in its wake. She glances over her shoulder and spots Olilly dragging aluminum and copper cookware to Fyon while Kir Lyyo and his hateful father run onto Mora’s ship along with a few more civilians just as Nym’ellia releases the rune ship’s final tether.

“Unmoored!” Nym’ellia calls up as the ship bobs away from the cliffside.

“Get everyone inside,” Mora calls to Nym’ellia, then taps a series of control runes. Six huge varg runes blink to life around her ship, three on each side, all of them beginning to rotate.

She turns once more and takes in the deft sweep of Fyon’s arm as he finishes fabricating an additional emerald varg rune just above the ship’s stern. He taps the floating rune, and a translucent green shield flows out from it over the entire ship. Then he turns and meets Mora’s eyes, a look of blazing gravity in his silver gaze.

Ferociously determined, Mora gives the acceleration rune a hard spin, and her ship shoots forward. She glances toward the Vo Mountains at the exact moment that the blue borderline flashes silver then explodes into gray with a lowboomthat reverberates through her very bones. What looks like a spiderweb of Shadow courses up from the newly gray border and ripples over Noilaan’s dome.

The dome’s runes blink out of sight, the whole city cast in a sudden darkness that jolts fear down Mora’s spine.

Screams rise as the blackened forms of every ship in the sky hurtle toward the ground, walkways and buildings collapsing toward the tiers below. A series of explosions sound, and Mora gasps in horror as the rune-supported restaurants all along the Sixth Tier’s cliffside crack off from the street to hurtle downward.

Tears stinging her eyes, Mora guides her ship into a hard swerve northwest. She glances through the glass wall behind her and takes in a distant knot of dragons that have broken off from the main dragon horde, six of the Shadow beasts fly straight toward her ship.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHADOWDRAGONS

Olilly Emmylian

Xishlon night, twenty-second hour

“Throw all the copper kitchenware into this pot,” Fyon Hawkkyn directs as their rune ship soars forward.

He lifts his emerald stylus, crouched with Olilly, Nym’ellia and Kirin at the ship’s stern as he fabricates two plate-size Smaragdalfar runes above the two ceramic pots before him, his silver eyes flicking toward the dragons closing in. Keeping his stylus’s tip on one of the runes, he gestures toward the other pot. “Toss the aluminum into this one.”

Heart thumping in a wild rhythm, Olilly sets to work with Nym’ellia and Kirin, hastily filling the pots.

“Can they get through our shield?” Kirin asks Fyon, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Perhaps,” Fyon answers as he feeds energy into the runes hovering above the pots. “But they’d need to get quite close. And we’re going to keep them from doing that.”

Olilly struggles to keep her breathing even as Fyon deftly magicks the runes into a slow rotation, green magic sparking in the air. She absently notes that his emerald-patterned feet are bare and his tunic is buttoned wrong, but she doesn’t have time to wonder at it.

“All right, get back,” Fyon directs as the lead dragon lets out a malefic shriek and the Mage on its back comes into sharper view. Fyon gestures toward one of the ceramic pots. “The copper in here is about to get quite hot.”

The runes flash verdant light and Olilly is hit by a blast of heat as the copperware is suddenly transformed to black ash and the aluminum is shredded into minuscule filings.

Fyon rapidly fabricates another rune over the copper ash and sets it whirring, an ice-cold cloud puffing out from it. “To cool the reaction,” he calmly explains. “So we don’t blow up the ship.” He waves his stylus over the runes, and they vanish. Then he hoists one of the ceramic pots and pours the copper ash into the pot filled with aluminum filings as the lead dragon soars closer. “All right, Olilly,” he says, raising his silver eyes to her, “I need you to mix this.”

Olilly nods and sets to work, barely able to breathe as Fyon empties his quiver into the space between them and the dragons let out another chorus of shrieks, Fyon’s metal-tipped runic arrows rattling onto the ship’s planks.

“We need to fill the arrows with the metal mixture, andquickly,” Fyon urges.

“What will it do?” Nym’ellia asks as they unscrew the conical arrowheads and fill them with the mixture before screwing the arrows back together.

“These are magnesium arrow tips,” Fyon says as he hastily works. “The runes imprinted on their sides will burst into fire upon impact, which will trigger a copper thermite reaction.”

“Which will do what?” Nym’ellia presses as Fyon nocks a filled arrow in his crossbow and pivots on his knees toward the incoming dragons.

“This.” He levels the crossbow and fires.

The arrow punches into the nearest dragon’s head, and the beast veers east then explodes with a cracklingboominto a churning ball of green flame.

Olilly gapes at the sight as a draft of heat slams into them.

“Holy gods,” Nym’ellia breathes out as two more dragons advance and Fyon nocks another arrow. “I’m glad you’re a metal sorcerer.”

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