Page 115 of The Dryad Storm

Tierney snarls, teeth gnashing, thrust into a maelstrom of outrage by their timidity in the face of their River’smurder. Darkness strobes through her vision, obliterating reason, the sight of the grayed waters and poisoned creatures fueling in her power the rush of a night-dark, cataclysmic force she’s never felt before.

She pulls in a harsh breath, readying enough water power to blast through Viger’s bonds, just as Viger tightens his hold and Or’myr raises his wand and levels it at her while Fyordin wrests hold of her magic through their Vo bond and yanks its flow toward his center.

“Control yourself, Asrai!” Viger hisses, his claws biting into her arms.

Unable to contain her rage, Tierney wrests her invisible tempest from Fyordin and blasts it at Viger, obliterating his Dark bonds to mist, their powers shuddering against each other with vibrating force, the whole world seeming to tint to midnight.

“It’s the Void Death of no beginnings!” she snarls at Viger. “They’re bringing Void Death tomy River!”

“Yes,” Viger hisses back, “and they’re going tosucceedif you can’t get your power under control.Look!”

Viger flicks one clawed finger northward, and Tierney turns and peers through a gap in the stones of the rocky embankment. Her breath stutters as she takes in the huge demonic creature rising from the distant water, just below the arc of Shadow runes.

The beast’s horned, pale gray form unfurls and rises higher than the arc, higher than the surrounding tree canopies. Two huge gray insectile eyes bubble out of the creature’s eggshell-flat face, smaller eyes bulging into being around the two main ones. The creature sways over the River, its unnaturally long arms extending to embrace the runic arc.

The gray demon shivers, its neck arching back in a grotesque show of ecstasy, and Tierney’s outrage crackles through her inner storm as she senses the thingfeedingon the Vo’s power through the killing gray tide.

“What is it?” she demands of Viger, engulfed in pure horror.

“A primordial V’yexwraith demon,” he hisses, his solid-black eyes fixed on thething, a flicker of cold fury running through his Darkness. “Summoned from a runic Striike Void somewhere holding monumental power to the west of here.” He turns his Dark gaze on her, a formidable urgency in it. “This demon will be difficult to best.”

Tierney fixes her gaze back on the V’yexwraith as her magic continues to surge and darken, whipping stronger and stronger, rapidly drawing on what feels like a line of Viger’s Darkness and churning toward reckless violence. A seething tremble kicks up inside her. She canfeelthe tang of the demon’s vast power in the air. A sliver of rational thought breaks through as she realizes why her allies are trying to keep her power from visually manifesting—because the only advantage they have is surprise.

Her storm of magiccannotbreak free.

“Help me control it,” she rasps to Viger, grabbing hold of his arm. “I think our bond has opened up a pathway from your power to mine...”

A faintclick clicktaps over the embankment’s stone just above them.

Viger lets out an unearthly hiss as a Marfoir’s salt-pale head rises above the stone’s apex, the Marfoir’s huge, bone-white spider legs bursting up. Four more Marfoir-spider Elves explode from the adjacent purple woods and run toward them in a blur of scuttling legs.

Viger releases Tierney and lunges at the beasts in a wild blur of Darkness, ripping off Marfoir heads and limbs with Dark claws and elongated teeth, while Tierney swiftly draws her power into her palms, and Or’myr levels his wand at a Marfoir coming in from the side. Growling out a spell, Or’myr blasts a bolt of purple fire clear through one of the insectile Elves while Fyordin throws out both hands and punches three more incoming Marfoir with a potent blast of water, sending them tumbling back toward the trees.

Frantic for her Vo, Tierney springs out of the sheltered rocky inlet.

The huge V’yexwraith beast’s malefic gray head angles toward her.

Tierney’s rage fires through every nerve as the V’yexwraith’s insectile eyes meet hers, the demon’s great slash of a mouth pulling back to reveal row upon row of sharp teeth as she’s overtaken by the sense of her Watersscreaming.

Tierney’s Asrai warrior energy turns tidal, her River’s distress creating a whirlpool in her rage, spiraling it into a frenzy. With a growl, she leaps over the remaining boulders and makes for the multi-eyed V’yexwraith demon.

She can sense Viger’s Dark swoosh of alarmed awareness. He hurls his powerinto hers through their bond at the same moment Fyordin releases his full Asrai might into her and Or’myr’s purple lightning aura flashes urgently to her through the connection.

Latching tight hold of their power through Viger’s bond, Tierney races toward the V’yexwraith, an edge of her storm escaping her hold and blasting into existence, dark clouds roiling to life and overtaking the sky, a violent wind whipping up, Or’myr’s purple lightning cutting from cloud to cloud as she breaks into a faster sprint toward the huge demon.

The V’yexwraith opens its fanged mouth and releases an otherworldly hiss. It springs toward her, a second mouth appearing inside its maw, then another, more mouths telescoping outward, each holding a cavern of teeth as the throngs of Mage soldiers massed along the bank nock iron-tipped arrows and fall to one knee, all aiming at Tierney.

Gritting her teeth, Tierney runs straight toward the Mages and demon, drawing on the Vo’s full power, Fyordin’s and Or’myr’s might, and Viger’s line ofDeath.

Every arrow is loosed and whizzes toward her as the V’yexwraith closes the gap between them, and Tierney realizes, in a flash of Asrai reckoning, that the iron onslaught will hit her before she’s drawn enough power to take down the beast.

Or’myr springs past her, surprise jolting through her as he slashes his geo-wand through the air.

A crack of purple lightning scythes from his wand’s tip, the bolt bifurcating and crackling sideways to collide with the violet-veined stone edging both of the Vo’s banks. The stone’s veins blast into purple incandescence,blazingwith light as every iron-tipped arrow is yanked from its trajectory and pulled toward the stone of the eastern bank, along with the iron spikes encircling Tierney’s dissolved kelpies.

A chorus of clangs sounds out, the arrows slamming into the purple-lit stone, quickly followed by every iron sword, axe, spike, and blade.

Magnetism, Tierney realizes in a shock of comprehension as Or’myr wrests every last iron weapon from the Mage forces. Emboldened, she quickens her pace, the Vo River rising within her as the V’yexwraith thrusts its hands forward.

---