Page 242 of The Dryad Storm

A ripple of Deathkin Darkness eddies through my rootlines, and I tense, swept up in the fleeting sense of my Errilor Ravens’ auras coursing through me in a warning shudder, as I’m caught up in an awareness of the Deathkin collectively struggling to hold Erthia’s Reckoning at bay.

“If the Vo River’s shield falls,” Wynter cautions, “the Shadow Wand will feed on the corruption flowing into the weather here and amplify the chaos.”

“And a Reckoning will sweep over the entirety of Erthia,” Wrenfir bites out, his aura a lash of fire, fear edging into his tone. “I can sense Hazel throwing every ounce of his power against it. But he’ll soon lose that fight.”

The awful truth of both Wynter’s and Wrenfir’s warnings lances through me, fear for my spark of a child resurfacing, both Yvan and Soleiya protectively reaching out to me.

Soleiya was overjoyed to the point of breaking into tears when Yvan and I told her of the child taking root inside me, her fire aura steadily blazing around us both with a loving heat rivaled only by Yvan’s.

Large tendrils of Shadow curling through the storms catch my eye, my concern mushrooming. “I’m picking up what feels like a line of Level Five wind mageryamplifyingthe storms,” I warn. “Someone is actively pulling Shadoweast.”

“I sense it too,” Vothendrile affirms.

Bleddyn curses, as I exchange a fraught glance with fellow power empath Vothe.

“Can you identify the power at play?” Andras asks.

Vothe and I shake our heads in frustration as we struggle to parse out who this remaining Mage enemy could be, a look of dogged concentration tightening Vothe’s features.

Angrybooms suddenly sound against the Vo’s shield, wresting our attention, clusters of Shadowed clouds turning ghoulishly dark as their curved, dark lightning strikes against the shield like a barrage of knives.

“Holy Vo,” Trystan breathes out just before three sick-looking Noi Herons fly out of the surrounding Vo Forest. They land around Yulan and her heron kindred, traumatized looks in the graceful birds’ eyes, their lilac feathers and eyes edged in gray.

Anguish brimming in her gaze, Yulan drops down and gently makes contact with the frightened herons, her expression tensing before she lifts her gaze to meet ours. “This land has no chance of recovering if the weather cannot be rebalanced and stripped of Shadow.”

“We need a mass planting of trees to drive off the Shadow,” Sylvan states from beside Iris. He pointedly holds up his III-marked palm, the black Noi Fire Falcon kindred perched on Iris’s shoulder fluffing out its feathers, as if heralding their agreement. “Our numbers have grown,” Sylvan says, “but we need the help of more Dryad’khin to have a chance of achieving this.Many,manymore.”

He’s right, I empathically sense. But it will be an almost impossible challenge to quickly align the East with the Forest. I zero in on the desperate chaos of the riverbank spread out before us in the distance. It’s covered, justcovered, with a refugee tent city, Noilaan’s towering runic border just beyond, a large Vu Trin military presence visible before it.

Luminous runic portals the Verdyllion crafted are scattered throughout the refugee encampment, and I can just make out the lines of Western refugees streamingout of them, new portals popping into existence faster than the knots of Vu Trin military can explode them into sapphire mist. I draw in a harsh breath, hit by the daunting reality of such huge numbers of people fleeing the Shadow horrors of the West, only to find themselves in the hostile East.

There’s a stark look in Gwynn’s golden eyes as she grips Mavrik’s arm. “Ancient One, Mavrik. Do you think my parents could be amongst those people portaling in?”

Mavrik’s invisible lines of twinned magic embrace her more intently. “If they are,” he responds, “we’ll find them.”

“That refugee encampment,” Yvan says, exchanging a charged look with me, “it’s already at least ten times larger than it was last time we were here.”

“It’s about to get alotlarger,” Jules interjects, a troubled current flowing through the water aura Lucretia is streaming around him.

Vang Troi’s aura gives a visible sapphire flare. “Well, it’s time to stir up the chaos a bit more.” Vang Troi turns to Hizar’drile and Queen Freyja. The three of them conjure voice amplification runes and set about directing the bulk of our forces—along with the Smaragdalfar army—to remain here to protect the recovering Dryad Fae and other rescued Subland civilians. They direct the Mage and Alfsigr Dryad’khin who have abandoned the Shadow to remain here, as well, to avoid giving the appearance of a military invasion when a segment of our forces portal into Noilaan.

With that accomplished, Vang Troi recharges her voice-amplification rune and succinctly commands a small portion of our original army forward.

We make our way off the ledge and through the Vo Forest, eventually emerging from the tree line to stride into the tent city.

Gasps rise all around us as we enter the encampment, people recoiling with evident fear as we follow Vang Troi through the sea of emaciated-looking refugees, many of the surrounding Kelt, Urisk, Elfhollen, Ishkart, and Verpacian people clearly thrown by the point-eared Dryad-Fae appearance of myself and the other Mages among us, as well as the astonishing purple Strafeling aura encircling Sparrow and flowing out to embrace Thierren beside her, Thierren’s arm defiantly wrapped around Sparrow’s shoulders.

Naga leads our horde of Western Wyverns in her onyx-scaled human form, the wounds on my horde mates’ wings splinted and stitched with Lasair healing fire,their cores of fire rapidly strengthening. Oaklyyn remains staunchly by Raz’zor’s side, his pale arm wrapped around her for support, his left wing dragging.

A spark of worry for him ignites through my fireline, and he turns to me.

I will rise again in strength, he hisses through me, eyes burning red-hot,as will Erthia. He bares his teeth, and some of my worry dampens.

The refugees’ disquieted murmuring gains momentum as we move, en masse, toward Noilaan’s enormous runic border, which runs along the edge of the Vo’s western bank, the Goddess Vo’s starbright dragon form emblazoned on its expanse.

I glance up toward the border wall’s high apex with trepidation that I feel mirrored in the flow of Yvan’s fire around mine.

“That wall is twice as high as it was before,” Yvan hisses in Wyvern.

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