Page 238 of The Dryad Storm

Yvan’s embrace around my trembling form tightens. “I love you, Elloren,” he says against my cheek, his tone shot through with defiance as he slides his hand down over my womb. “I will love you forever.”

“I love you too,” I say through my pooling tears, grief splintering my voice as dark wings gently flutter through my mind and Yvan and I send a blaze of love to our Icaral Light Mage child.

Our child who will never see the light of day.

“Yvan! Elloren!” Soleiya cries over the distance between us as the moons’ attack magic fully snaps into place and I flinch, my hand closing around Yvan’s wrist.

“I love you,” Yvan cries out to his mother, as the moons fall, a cry escaping me as they rapidly enlarge to terrifying size. Holding desperately tight to Yvan’s strong arms, I tremble against him, bracing myself for impact.

A sudden earthquake rumbles to life, the ground beneath my feet shaking, my balance giving way.

Yvan abruptly takes flight, lifting us just off the ground as my allies are knocked off their feet, a great fissure forming beside the V’yexwraith, a magnificent purple light raying up from its depths in brilliant purple rays.

The huge demon screams against the sudden color-assault, which feels like a pulse of powerful geomancy.

Strafeling-levelgeomancy.

The purple light fills the sky and wraps around the moons, bringing them to a screeching halt only a few handspans above us.

I gasp, the ground continuing to shiver as the moons slowly recede upward, all of them taking on a bright violet glow as they’re filled with the incoming geopower.

Appearing now like a sky full of Xishlon moons.

“It’s geomancy,” I rasp to Yvan as the V’yexwraith lets out a bloodcurdling shriek and teeters, cracks beginning to appear all over its solidifying and crystallizing form, its huge body shot through with reflected violet color as the ground continues to shake.

A bolt of what looks like purple crystal spears up from the fissure and rapidly expands into a huge, crystalline tree. My eyes widen as a smaller explosion of violet light detonates along the violet geo-tree’s base, forming a passage.

Sparrow Trillium steps out. She’s gripping a purple stylus in her hand, a diffuse halo of violet energy surrounding her body—the telltale aura of an Urisk Strafeling.

Erthia’s most powerful class of geomancer.

“Sparrow!” Thierren cries as she thrusts her geo-stylus toward the V’yexwraith and calls out an Urisk spell.

A bolt of pure purple light blasts from her stylus and into the demon.

The V’yexwraith lets out a ground-vibrating scream, its violet glow heightening as its limbs flail and its body begins to crack apart.

“You’ll never be rid of me!”the V’yexwraith screeches as Sparrow angles her stylus down, another fissure opening in the earth beneath the demon.“I will re-form around your conflicts and CONSUME EVERYTHING!”the demon shrieks before its fragmenting body drops into the crevice.

As it falls, I’m hit by the sensation of the demon’s poisonous essence streaming back into the Shadow Wand gripped in Wynter’s hand, a shiver coursing through me.

Sparrow looks to the sky and slashes her amethyst stylus upward.

The suspended moons liquefy into a suspended sea of molten purple before Sparrow swipes the amethyst down toward the fissure she’s just crafted.

The purple sea follows her motion, waterfalling into the fissure’s abyss before Sparrow murmurs another Urisk spell and the ground closes up and stops shaking, the moons now gone from the Shadow-poisoned sky as Yvan’s magic and mine surge and snap back under our control.

Yvan lands, and my feet touch ground, a cry of stunned relief bursting from me as I catch sight of Rafe and Trystan, Diana, Aislinn, and so many other loved ones.

Still alive... all of us still alive.

Euphoria surging through me, I whirl around, and Yvan sweeps me into an embrace, the two of us clutching each other, his hot lips now pressed to my temple, his tears warm against my cheek. “My love,” he hisses in Wyvern. “My beautiful, Dryad love.”

My hand slides between us and over my womb, my own tears suddenly falling.

We’ll live. We’ll live to meet our child.

After a moment, I step back from Yvan and turn to face the Forest-linked Mages and smatterings of Marfoir Elves, Verdyllion in hand. They’re all still down on their knees, eyes closed.

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