Page 232 of The Dryad Storm

“Justdo it!” I cry.

Yvan and I exchange an urgent glance before he and my horde blast another Wyvernfire stormwall into being, cutting the incoming army from sight even as their oceanic roar builds.

The V’yexwraith lets out an earsplitting shriek, and I blast a dark purple line of earth magic toward the huge creature, my vines whipping around the V’yexwraith’s unshielded lower legs. Sounding out the Zhilaan Forest’s force-amplifying spell, I yank my branch back,hard.

The V’yexwraith arches its head back, screeching as it falls, its cavernous slash of a mouth gaping open with fury. Another mouth telescopes out of its maw, then another, all of the mouths gnashing sharp gray together with enough force to split the sky.

The demon’s towering body slams onto the Shadow-smoking earth with a ground-shakingBOOM, and I tether it there with thick purple vines.

Narrowing its multiple eyes at me, the demon swerves the Shadow Wand’s point toward my horde’s wall of Wyvernfire and blasts siphoning fog toward it, just as I lift my branch and grit out Errilith’s spell and pull on the power of NaturalDeath.

A line of Deathkin deflection runes flash into existence inside the wall of Wyvernfire, their suspended forms rippling with midnight Darkness that turns the flames black, the shield-wall’s upper edge enlarging high into the sky.

The V’yexwraith’s vaporous gray magic hits our runic wall, flashes to black then streams back toward the demon in a midnight tide, blasting its orb shield into Dark mist.

The V’yexwraith snarls out its fury and swipes the Wand toward us.

Before we can stage a counterattack, a rippling, gray half orb of Void power bursts from the V’yexwraith’s Shadow Wand and surges outward to monstrous size.

The pulse of power slams into us with bone-jarring force, the breath punchedfrom my lungs as my feet leave the ground and we’re all hurled into the air once more, my branch torn from my hand.

My back hits the ground, and I hug my abdomen, desperate to keep my baby safe.

Yvan growls and quickly rights himself, then leaps between me and the demon.

I lunge for my branch and grab it just as the V’yexwraith thrusts the Shadow Wand toward Yvan and deploys another half orb of gray magic at the same moment Yvan and the rest of my horde blast huge bolts of chromatic lightning at the demon.

My horde’s lightning slams into the demon’s half orb, which rapidly crackles away to dark gray smoke. The smoke drifts to the ground and darkens to steel, snakelike portions of veiny gray power darting out toward Yvan, our horde and me, frightfully fast.

I let out a protesting cry as one of the steel-hued segments collides with my foot and slithers around my ankle, morphing into a smoking bracelet. The taste of poisonous tin coats the back of my tongue, and I sense my power, along with Yvan’s and my horde’s, being drawn into the Shadowed earth and toward the parasitical V’yexwraith. Fear snaps through my blood as I’m filled with the line-stretching sense of the V’yexwraith rerouting the bulk of our power’s flow toitself, our magic graying as it’s absorbed.

Yvan thrusts his palms toward the unshielded demon once more, while I force myself to my feet, my alarm compounding as I sense most of Yvan’s power doubling back from his palms and being yanked down into the earth and toward the V’yexwraith before he can release it.

Teeth gritted, I futilely attempt to deploy a Zhilaan spell, horror surging as I find my magic’s flow also rerouted toward the demon.

Yvan shoots me an urgent look over his shoulder, the fire in his eyes guttering. “Can you access your power, Elloren?”

“Only a trace,” I shout back, struggling to stave off burgeoning dread. “The V’yexwraith has rerouted our magic’s flow!”

The V’yexwraith gnashes its teeth as it takes a parasitical hit of our power, its stretched-out form enlarging even more. It snaps free of my graying bindings, and Yvan protectively backs up toward me as the demon rises to new, impossible heights, far larger than III.

The Void tree punches harder into my mind, and a clearer sense of the Shadow tree’s size and scope overtake me, triggering a gut-clenching alarm.

Yvan fans out his wings to shield me as my growling horde readies tooth and claw.

The V’yexwraith lets out a sky-shattering cry that has me recoiling as it lashes the Shadow Wand toward the heavens.

Glowing metallic gray spheres blast into being throughout the entire expanse of visible sky, suspended high above us like hundreds upon hundreds of Shadow moons. The metallic tang of sorcery overtakes the air, Yvan’s and my power, along with the power of our horde mates, now swooping upward as it’s siphoned toward the sky.

The V’yexwraith hisses, fanged smiles forming on all its mouths, spite glinting in its multiple eyes as it narrows them all on me. The image of the Void tree assaults my vision once more in a painful pulse, and I freeze, a stifling fright gripping hold. As I’m filled with the awful realization that the V’yexwraith is fully sentient and purposefully making a mockery of the East’s sacred Xishlon moons by conjuring these Shadow orbs, just like Vogel did on Xishlon.

A lethal mockery.

There’s Fae-killing iron power in these orbs. I can sense it. And it’s not natural iron. It’s some type of Void iron, its leaching force on our elemental power increasing, like the pull of hundreds of magnets.

Explosive Shadowfire forming in the moons’ cores.

“Those spheres,” I rasp out to Yvan, “they’re Shadow-iron explosives. Your iron-protective rune isn’t strong enough to survive them!”

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