Page 182 of The Dryad Storm

But...nothing.

Just autumn’s spectacular foliage spread out over the East in a carpet of glorious Life and light, the leaves rustling in the cool breeze, the energy of alliance in them.

“We fly southeast to the Wyvernguard!” Vang Troi booms, thrusting her sword up.

We launch into the air, the full power of the autumn Forest rising with us. Yvan’s dark wings thrust mightily down from where he soars beside Errilor and me, his fire power and mine twined tight.

We traverse the rocky peaks of the Dyoi Mountain Range, flying from its western side to its eastern expanse. Awe widens my eyes as Trystan and Vothe’s long,lightning-flashing dome-shield arcing over the Zonor River’s expanse comes into view, the Vo Mountain Range just beyond. The Zonor shielding sits a distance below our mammoth Eastern Realm shielding, the river’s protective barrier encasing the entire Zonor and its adjacent Forest from north to south, as far as the eye can see.

I sense an unfamiliar energy and call out to Yvan, “There’s more than just Trystan and Vothe’s power in this shield.” My power empathy activates more fully, reading golden lightning intermingled with Trystan and Vothe’s blue and white magic.

We soar down toward the Zonor River, and a bolt of my brother’s power spears toward their shield from below. A broad oval opening forms, and we all fly through it, the gap crackling closed behind us, three figures coming into sharper view on the riverbank below—Trystan, Vothe, and a winged and horned white-haired female Wyvern with Vothe’s same onyx hue. Golden lightning flashes through her eyes and my power empathy immediately traces the shield’s gilded lightning energy to her.

“Reshield the Dyoi wildsright now!” Trystan bellows as we descend, and I register in a split second my brother’s newly Vo-blue hair, his ears now slightly pointed like mine, and his skin’s hue morphed to the same shimmering deep green. An incandescent silver half-moon mark newly blazing from the inner edge of his shoulder.

A jagged alarm strikes through me as I take in Trystan’s expression, my younger brother’s eyes full of urgency. Trystan is never this rattled, even in a crisis, and Vothe’s and the elderly Wyvern woman’s expressions are just as dire.

“We’ve shielded the entire East,” Ra’Ven calls out to them as we land, a chorus ofthumpssounding. “The Dyoi Forest is safe—”

“No it’snot!” Vothe growls, blue-and-white lightning spitting through his gaze. “Throw a shield around the Dyoi wildsimmediately!”

“We can’t,” Oaklyyn vehemently counters. “We linked the bulk of our power to the East’s shielding. We don’t hold enough additional power to fabricate another shield at the moment.”

“Then contract your shielding back in around the Dyoi wilds!” Trystan insists.

“There’s no contracting our shielding,” Mavrik says. “It took days just to charge it with enough power to expand it!”

Vothe rounds on him. “They’re going to siphon all the Dyoi Forest’s power and use a portion of it to strike down our Zonor shielding and consume this River’s power, as well! Then they’re going to use that siphoned power to form the most powerful storm band Erthia hasever seen!”

Confusion ripples through my Dryad’khin allies’ linked power.

“The Dyoi Forest issafe,” Sylvan insists. “The entire East is nowshielded.”

“Have Vogel’s forces gotten into the East somehow?” Yvan demands of Vothe, the fire in our bond whipped into high alert.

“It’s not the Magedom that’s the immediate threat to our wilds,” the elderly Wyvern woman cuts in. “The threat comes fromour side!”

I’m hit with an invisible wave of power, its electric energy raising the hairs on my skin. I glance up, my pulse leaping as a line of sapphire runes blast into being along the half-destroyed Vo Mountain Range’s apex, our shield’s ceiling far above it. A dark mass of storm power explodes from the runes, and we all flinch. A storm band forms and then rises along the range’s apex, potent energy spitting and flashing through it.

“That’s Zhilaan Wyvern power,” Vang Troi murmurs as she narrows her eyes at the consolidating storm band, “shot through with Noi siphoning runes.”

Vu Trin soldiers soar out of a small gap in the storm band’s base to fly toward us, the Zhilaan Vu Trin Wyverns in dragon form, Noi Vu Trin soldiers astride them.

The magic of Noilaan and Zhilaan united.

Against us.

Part Three

The Great Unraveling

Chapter One

Fracture

Olilly Emmylian

Eastern Realm Sublands

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