Page 108 of The Dryad Storm

Vogel’s figure takes shape through the maelstrom beyond the shield, his black-clad form obscured by the wall of churning magic between us, but his silver, rage-bright eyes shining through. Shadowed magic pounds through his lines as Dryad might fills mine, our powers fully and viciously aimed at each other.

Vogel’s eyes flick over me in leering appraisal as he draws his storm’s full strength back into his Wand, the terrible truth inescapable.

Our power is an even match. But as more Forest dies, mine will be depleted.

Whereas his will grow stronger.

Vogel’s lips lift in a slow, mocking smile as his Void tree shimmers to life in the back of my mind. I stiffen against it. And against the shivering premonition that has always been brewing, from the moment of our first encounter...

Vogel and I are destined to battle for Erthia.

But then I look past Vogel and his forces. At the leagues of charred trees and grayed, poisoned sky, the Natural World’s vulnerability constricting my heart. Millions of years of complex beauty—beauty that I’m only just starting to meet, to root to—gone in the span of a few hours. The power to destroy Life so much more potent than the power to protect it.

Vogel clearly detects the flicker of fear in my gaze. His eyes narrow to slits, and his slight grin turns malefic as he glances toward the destroyed Forest behind him and then back at me. “Your defeat has already begun,Fae Witch.”

And then he raises the Wand and releases his Shadow storm, his figure instantly engulfed in the churning gray.

When the storm clears, Vogel and his forces are gone, along with the distant sky portal. Only the leagues of dead Forest and poisoned sky remain, splayed out in front of us in dark warning.

Chapter Eleven

V’yexwraith

Marcus Vogel

Shadowed stump of III

Marcus Vogel speeds west through the overtaken Vu Trin sky portal then emerges to soar over the destroyed Northern Forest, righteous fury running silver-hot through his lines. Damion Bane and his forces fly in just behind him. A forest of charred, Shadowed trees speeds by beneath them all, the trees reaching spectral limbs toward the steely sky.

The Shadow-smoking stump of III comes into sharper view. The heathen tree’s stump is wider than the base of the sprawling Valgard Cathedral, a dark abyss now swirling in its center.

The Shadow Wand gripped in Vogel’s fist gives a firm pull toward the stump, and Vogel sends a mental order out to the multi-eyed dragon beneath him. The Shadow-tethered creature immediately obeys, angling its trajectory down toward III’s corpse, Damion and his forces following.

Vogel takes in the additional Mage forces already encircling the colossal, hollowed-out stump, several of his high-level commanders and Mage priests standing in an arc just before it. Vogel glowers at the huge, destroyed Tree that broke his Shadow fasting to Elloren Gardner Grey, stripping the gray lines from both his hands and hers.

Breaking his control over the Dryad Witch.

But in the end, your might was no match for the Magedom, was it?he sneers at III’s stump, struggling to tamp down his rage over both the Tree’s countermove and the Dryad Witch’s betrayal. And how Ellorenbestedhim with her tree and Icaral-linked power.

He huffs out a contemptuous breath, clear that her corrupted magic will be obliterated soon enough.

“Excellency,” Damion Bane says as he and Vogel land, side by side, “why did you order us to retreat from the Black Witch and her allies?”

Vogel narrows his eyes at the young commander as he dismounts and Damion does the same. Damion’s visage and tone are martially contained, but Vogel can sense the chaotic fury pulsing through Damion’s Level Five power. Fury that’s been well stoked by the slaying of his brother, Sylus, by the Amaz whore Valasca Xanthrir. And Vogel is well aware Damion has another axe to grind, bested as he was by his staen’en bitch of a fastmate, Aislinn Greer.

“Elloren Gardner Grey is lost to us,” Vogel informs Damion, acutely aware of his fastmark-stripped hands. “The Fae Witch was never the Ancient One’s intended Black Witch.”

“Yet you chose not to smite her?” Damion challenges, the surly edge in his tone eliciting alarmed looks from the priests and commanders surrounding them and sending a surge of heat through Vogel’s lines.

Vogel tamps down his fiery anger, choosing to ignore Damion’s insubordination. “There will be no smiting the Fae Witch at the moment,” he says, voice dangerously clipped. “Her power has been linked to the Fae wilds by the dead Tree before us. She allowed the heathen Tree to turn her into a Fae Dryad. As such, her power, combined with that of her heathen allies, is currently an even match for ours.” A faint smile edges Vogel’s lips. “But her Tree Fae magic will soon begin to shrivel, along with the elemental magic of her allies.”

The insubordination in Damion’s eyes shifts to a full-on glare. “How can you be so certain?” he demands.

Vogel’s smile takes fuller form as he points the Shadow Wand’s tip at one of the charred trees encircling the clearing.

Damion turns and takes in the unconscious Dryad female hanging limply from the tree. The Dryad bitch’s grayed face is marked by steely lightning-bolt patterns, the mushrooms growing from her Fae head shriveled, her body pierced by multiple Shadow branches. Dark tendrils of power encircle her, one of the tendrils flowing from the Dryad’s unconscious body to the tip of the Shadow Wand.

Vogel breathes deeply, the hidden workings of Dryad power shivering through his mind via his Shadow tether. Vogel lifts the Wand. “The Magedom’s Holy Tool can read the secrets of Dryad magic,” he explains to Damion. “Through it, I have learned that Tree Fae power is amplified in the autumn by the explosion of light power in fall foliage.”

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