Page 220 of The Dryad Storm

Darkness washes over the world, save for the green glimmer of my skin, my Wyvernbond mark, horde mark, and the edges of a few runes, which prove to be enough to illuminate the area surrounding me.

I step around brush and move toward the blossoms’ dim white glow, the air chilly, several Winter Dark Fireflies zooming in to encircle me in their constellation of butter yellow light.

I can sense these autumn-loving fireflies’ activity throughout the Forest, the other species of fireflies already settled in for the coming winter, burrowed underground or nestled under tree bark, only these fiery ones able to withstand autumn’s cooling temperatures.

I huff out an elated breath as the Norfure patch comes into sharper view, anticipation sparking, a larger carpet of the blossoms spread out before me than I had anticipated.

Enough to makethousandsof vials of medicine.

A low animal groan sounds somewhere farther ahead, drawing my focus, a sense of the Zhilaan Forest’s call to the sound filling the air.

Taking hold of the branch sheathed at my side, I make a mental note of the Norfure flowers’ location before pushing forward through a dense thicket. I emerge in a small clearing beside a sizable bog, the fireflies swirling out to whirl over thewetland and a deep-purple bull moose that looks to be struggling to free himself from the bog’s dense mud, the rear half of his body submerged.

The large animal’s eyes meet mine, a pleading fear in them that sets my Dryad heart lurching into a faster rhythm.

“I’ll help you,” I vow, raising my branch hand. I murmur the Dryadin words drawn from Oaklyyn’s spell-link rune and thrust my branch forward.

A thick vine bursts from the branch’s tip and bolts past the moose before lashing around one of the huge Zhilaan Cypress trees edging the bog. The vine slingshots around the cypress’s slender trunk then whips around the moose’s body, creating a magic-wrought pulley.

“Draw him out,” I murmur in Dryadin, digging my heels into the soil. I pull in a deep breath, keeping my wand aloft as I’m filled with a sense of the Zhilaan Forest’s elemental force rippling in to work with me. The vine tethered to my branch draws back into its tip with mighty power, snapping tight around the distant trunk and yanking the moose forward.

The bog groans, a pop of released suction snapping through the air as the moose springs free of the mud and shambles onto denser soil. Euphoric triumph leaps in my breast as the huge creature pauses and sets its gaze on me, a rush of palpable gratitude overtaking me before the moose lollops away. I watch him go, expecting the tension shivering on the Forest air to evaporate.

But it lingers.

Strengthens.

Growing uneasy, I turn to make my way back to Yvan as a raven I recognize lights on a nearby branch—Ariel’s raven.

“Hello there,” I say, then glance around for Ariel.

“Elloren.”

I turn and find Yvan behind me, his fire contained, a concerning tension in his voice, his eyes cooled to green.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, gripping my branch, the tension on the Forest’s air turning so pungent I can scent its pine-sharp unease.

“I don’t know,” Yvan says, glancing around at the trees as Ariel’s raven takes flight, soaring toward the West. “Something’s...off,” he says, an odd tightness to his voice.

“I’m picking up a sense of warning and confusion,” I tell him, “coming from the Forest.”

“We should take to the air,” he offers. “And see what’s spooking the trees. If we need to, we can alert everyone.”

I nod and step toward him, then throw my arms around his neck, his power disquietingly constrained. Before I can comment on it, he throws down his powerful wings, and we shoot into the air, his chest Wyvern hot against mine.

The Forest’s aura of tension abruptly surges to ballistic heights—Danger! Danger! Danger!riding on the air.

“There’s an incoming threat,” I warn Yvan as we soar southwest, my gaze darting everywhere for some sign of it. “The Forest’s sense of danger... it just exploded into what feels likepanic.”

“I can read it too,” he grimly agrees.

We approach the western edge of the Zhilaan Mountain Range and soar out of the Forest and over its peaks, the Shadow- and storm-decimated land just beyond Zhilaan’s dome-shield a punch to the gut.

The East’s Unbalanced storms have moved southward, and I can just make out Vogel’s huge stormwall looming in the distant West. Unnaturally deep thunder rumbles through the gigantic band, curling black lightning crackling through it. But there’s no sign of Vogel’s forces.

So, what is the Zhilaan Forest trying to warn us about?

Yvan lands on a broad, stony ledge recessed between two peaks, a panoramic view surrounding us of both the Zhilaan to the East and the Shadowed lands to the West. He sets me down, and it takes me a moment to fully find my balance, an odd tension pulling at our Wyvernbond.

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