Page 252 of The Dryad Storm

Recognition lights inside Or’myr. This is Asra’leen—Tierney’s gentle, foam-haired Wyvernguard roommate. Asra’leen pulls Tierney into an embrace as Tierney begins to sob in earnest, a surge of violent relief coursing through her and Or’myr’s joined power.

Attempting to blink away his own tears, Or’myr watches as Raz’zor’s tear-blurred figure suddenly contracts into the form of a young man with alabaster scales and horns, glowing crimson eyes, and pale, leaf-speckled wings.

A joyful laugh escapes Or’myr. “Hello, Shifter,” he says, only slightly surprised by Raz’zor having gained the ability to morph into human form.

Ready for the miraculous everywhere.

Raz’zor shoots Or’myr a sharp-toothed smile and snaps his pale wings out to their full breadth. “Greetings, my Runic Liberator,” Raz’zor growls, the red fire in his eyes burning hotter. “We have need of your geomancy.”

“I’m Mavrik Glass,” the male Mage says to Or’myr, holding up a palm marked with the image of an Ironwood tree. “We’ve been sent on behalf of the Eastern Realm’s new Dryad’khin forces to bring you to Voloi. Your Strafeling geomancy and Mage powers are needed there,urgently.”

Or’myr and Tierney exchange looks of confusion. Reluctance to part is suddenly roaring through their bond, its strength tidal.

“What do you need me for?” Or’myr asks Mavrik Glass, a momentous tension circling down as he takes in the grave look in everyone’s eyes.

“Our Dryad’khin forces have taken hold of the Shadow Wand,” the golden-eyed young woman tells them, tone urgent. “We need you to go to war with it.”

Hunched low on Raz’zor’s back, Or’myr speeds south over the Vo, the twinned Dryads, Mavrik and Gwynnifer Glass, pressed in behind him. The damage the East’s magic visited upon the briefly unshielded Forest bracketing the Vo is hard to take in, large tracts of trees decimated by the East’s Unbalanced storms, but here and there, defiant groves hold on to prismatic color, still standing.

Vogel wasn’t able to destroy it all, Or’myr rebelliously considers.

The spots of color whiz by as Mavrik and Gwynnifer fill Or’myr in on everything that’s happened, while Raz’zor flies them south fast as a sustained crossbow shot, his speed accelerated by Gwynn and Mavrik’s layered wind spells.

A sudden ache twists at Or’myr’s heart, triggered by his separation from Tierney, his beloved having remained behind to help anchor Asrai’kin water magic to the Vo shield’s northern focal rune. He can feel Tierney’s ache for him as well, swirling through their bond, a raw longing suffusing it that’s a struggle for them both to suppress.

Or’myr and his companions reach Voloi the next evening, Or’myr’s magic nearly fully restored by the amplification runes marked on him by Gwynn during their journey, purple lightning now crackling through his lines and out toward Tierney through their bond in potent flashes.

They round a bend in the Vo River... and a gigantic tree comes into view.

Astonishment forks through Or’myr as he realizes that this is the Great Tree IV that Tierney sensed and that Mavrik and Gwynn described—the Tree whose power is now anchored to their shielding—a resurgence of III, the Great Tree emblazoned on Gwynn’s, Mavrik’s, and Raz’zor’s palms.

Raz’zor soars past the Great Tree, and Or’myr notes, with a quickly cast detection spell, that his glamoured mountaintop Vonor refuge is still blessedly intact, everything in him longing to bring Tierney to it.

The sunset has deepened to indigo hues by the time they’re descending toward the base of the Voloi Mountain Range just past Voloi’s southernmost edge, where a small, surviving Vu Trin military base is located.

Or’myr takes in the large military presence assembling on the base’s central sapphire-torchlit courtyard, Vang Troi in its center, many Urisk and what appear to be Dryad Fae among them. Beside Vang Troi stands a young woman with deep-green shimmering skin, a shock of green in her long black hair, a crimson-haired Icaral beside her.

Emotion seizes hold of Or’myr’s chest.

Elloren. And Yvan Guryev.

And... his mother, Li’ra, beside them.

Or’myr’s heart leaps as he meets his mother’s gaze, a look of profound relief and love on her lilac face, a lilac-quartz stylus in her hand. Or’myr thrills to the sight, overjoyed at hearing that the women of Uriskan have regained their geopower.

He wishes with everything in him that Tierney was here, but is heartened by the sight of so many other friends and loved ones—Effrey and Bleddyn Arterra, Sparrow Trillium and Thierren Stone, and a whole host of his other Urisk’kin, friends and family members from all backgrounds, along with a few tattooed Amaz Urisk, one a blue woman with short black hair surrounded by silvery goats and an Icaral Elf who must be Wynter Eirllyn, holding something wrapped in cloth in her pale, green-tinted hands.

A cold dread rises inside Or’myr because he knows what that must be.

The remaining threat that could destroy them all.

That could destroy his beloved Tierney, the love of his life, as well as her bonded river.

Or’myr’s hands loosen from Raz’zor’s shoulder horns, and he quickly climbs off his friend’s back along with Mavrik and Gwynn and strides toward his mother.

“You’ve regained your geomancy, Maam’yir,” he says to her, raw emotion crackling through his power as he embraces her.

“I have, my son,” she says through joyful tears.

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