Page 25 of The Dryad Storm

Urgency overtakes Gareth’s expression. “I feel a connection to an incoming kindred. Marina, it’sstrong—”

Above them, the dome-shield’s Noi runes flash out rays of sapphire, cutting off Gareth as they both startle. They jerk their heads up, gray light rippling through the dome’s runes.

Marina’s octopuses retreat toward the Ocean floor, and she swims out of the grove with Gareth just as the Eastern Realm’s protective dome blinks out of being.

Marina’s gills flare in a hard gasp as the runes marking every runic vessel and every runic supported structure on the heavily populated distant coast go dark.

A chorus of screams rises and Marina stiffens in horror. She grabs Gareth’s slick arm as every runic airship falls and every rune-supported structure collapses, their great, shuddering crashes sending shock waves through the water.

An earsplittingCRACKsounds to the south, followed by a rumbling roar.

A surge of shock tightens Marina’s gills as a churning barrier of storm rises, spitting white lightning.

“The Sylphan Fae,” Gareth says, “they’re trying to wall off the Shadow sea.”

Another Ocean-jostlingBOOMstreaks pain through Marina’s sensitive ears as the Shadow sea crashes into the Sylphan wall of storm. The world flashes bright white then dark gray as the Sylphan stormwall is rapidly consumed by the Shadow sea.

The Vu Trin naval ships launch themselves backward in a swirl of Fae wind power, rapidly retreating toward Marina and Gareth as the Shadow sea slowly advances.

Marina climbs onto a broad root with Gareth, and he breaks off and readies a mangrove root at the same moment that a winged swarm blasts out of the incoming wall of Shadow sea, soaring toward the retreating Vu Trin vessels.

“What is this evil?” Marina growls, terrified for her kindreds, for the mangroves, for every living thing in the path of this advancing abomination, the feral instinct to fight rising.

The leading winged beast soars toward the ship closest to Marina and Gareth, easily dodging Vu Trin arrows and bolts of power.

Marina flicks out her blue claws and readies her sharpening teeth as she surveys the beast. It’s the size and shape of a man, with a gray body and bat-like wings. It swoops toward them before arcing back toward the nearest ship, and Marina gets a glimpse of the creature’s four bulbous, gray eyes, bony ridged head, two telescoping mouths, and six insectile limbs. It darts toward the side of the ship and hovers there, soon joined by its swarm, their wings beating the air. Long, black tongues flick out of their mouths, along with a spray of what looks like Shadow liquid, the gray spray splashing against the ship from all directions.

The ship explodes in an inferno of silvery fire, its wood seeming to melt instantaneously.

“Holy gods, Marina,” Gareth rasps out as disbelief strikes through Marina, all of the Vu Trin on that ship, murdered.

Her emotions slip into chaos.

If these Shadow-sea demons can take down an entire naval ship so quickly, then she and Gareth, her octopus kindreds, and the mangroves... as well as all of Southern Noilaan... none of them stand achance...

“The kindred I sensed,” Gareth chokes out, “it’s still coming toward me... its energy is flowing around mylines.”

A huge gray whale suddenly breaches the water’s surface nearby, and Marina’s eyes widen, the whale’s trajectory an arrow straight toward them. Before Marina or Gareth can get a word out, several other whales—a whole pod of them—surface in dramatic sprays and glide toward the mangrove forest.

Static sizzles through Marina’s mating bond to Gareth, and she’s filled with the overwhelming sense of the pod’s energy clicking into Gareth’s lines like a lock engaging, as strong as Erthia’s axis.

The portentous realization hits—these are Gareth’s kindred.

Incredulity leaps through their bond as Gareth dives into the water and launches himself toward the lead whale, the gigantic kindred sliding through the waves to reach him as another Vu Trin ship explodes.

The whale and Gareth make contact, and he slides aboard his kindred’s back then turns to Marina, his mangrove root in hand.

“Go!” she calls to him, sensing this kindred bond fused to Gareth and Gareth alone, the link clearly enabling him to withstand the whales’ monumental stores of power, which she can feel spitting static through the very air.

Stores of electric power that no whale should have...

What are they?Marina marvels as Gareth and his pod of whales turn and start for the swarm of Shadow demons and the incoming Shadow sea in the distance, lightning crackling to life all over the whales’ skin.

Marina’s gills flare with awe as realization detonates through her.

Storm Whales.

The Great Blessed Ones of her people’s religious fables, fated to return when the Great Unbalancing comes for Erthia’s Life-giving Waters.

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