Page 95 of The Dryad Storm

Demon Storm

Elloren

Northern Forest

Eighteen days after Xishlon

“Use my power to reshield our Forest!” I cry out to the Dryads as a wind coming off Vogel’s incoming Shadow storm band roars through the unshielded Northern Forest. The unnatural gusts crack off branches as they whip through the terrified trees and begin to siphon up their elemental magic, birds and animals in an uproar.

A rustling cry for help courses through my rootlines as the leaves of the surrounding trees begin to gray at the edges. Flapping dark wings, my kindred ravens quickly fan out around III, their urgent Dark aura strobing through the air. A confusing vision of purple, crystalline imagery flashes through my mind as III’s power gives a hard contraction downward, as if the Great Tree is channeling all its elemental might into the soil surrounding its roots.

“Use our power, as well!” the gold-eyed Mage, Mavrik Glass, shouts over the wind, as both he and his equally golden-eyed fastmate unsheathe wands, my empathy detecting how their merged auras orbit around each other in brilliant, golden loops, bright gold fastmarks emblazoned on their hands and wrists, flame-orange hawks on their shoulders. “Gwynn and I possess twinned Level Five power inevery singleelemental line!” Mavrik yells, holding up his wand.

“Get rid of thosewands!” Lyptus spits out with venomous force, her kindred panther snarling.

“You’re not dormant anymore,” Sylvan agrees, his gaze lancing into Mavrik. “Forget what you think you know about magic. Dryads do not wield deadwands. They wieldliving branchesconnected to the Forest through theirrootlines.”

“And your bastardized Mage spells won’t work!” Oaklyyn hisses, her wolverinekindred pacing around her as it growls. “The Balance of words is all off! They’re built for halflings cut off from the Forest!”

Vogel’s Void tree blasts through my mind, reverberating there as the storming roar advancing from the south gains potency.

“That storm band is shot through with Shadowfire,” Yvan warns, his wings stiffening. “He’s going to burn down thisentire Forest.”

“We need to link everyone’s power!” Sylvan calls out to us all as he unsheathes a second living branch and holds it out to me. “Make contact with this, witch. We’ll draw on your magic and that of your allies to shield III, then expand the shield over our entire Forest.”

I grab hold of the top of Sylvan’s living branch, energy from the surrounding Forest streaming into my rootlines as he points the branch in his other hand skyward.

Oaklyyn’s elemental power whips into a raging fury. “It’s a mistake to link to these halflings!”

Hazel bares suddenly darkened, elongated teeth at her, his eyes going fully black before he swings around and sets his gaze on Gwynn and Mavrik with a look of open rebellion. “Tree’kin,” he snarls, drawing two dark branches sheathed at his hips. He thrusts one of them out toward the twinned Dryad’kin, his subterranean Death Fae voice cutting straight through the Shadow storm band’s roar of power. “Make contact with this branch!”

“Come, Icaral!” Yulan cries out to Yvan as Mavrik and Gwynn wrap their hands around the top of Hazel’s branch and Yulan thrusts one of the two branches she’s holding toward Yvan, his surprise flashing through our bond.

“You can’t use Wyvernfire to shield our Forest!” Oaklyyn snarls at Yulan.

“I don’t seek his fire!” Yulan cries against the wind’s roar. “I seek to draw on his Lasair healing energy, which can counter Void Death!”

Comprehension blazing through his fire, Yvan springs forward and grips hold of the top of Yulan’s branch, as I catch a whiff of the acrid tang of unnatural smoke drifting in on the poison wind, the screams of trees blasting through me as Vogel’s fire blazes through the Forest’s southern edge.

Murmuring Dryadin spells in unison, Hazel and Yulan join Sylvan in thrusting one of their two branches toward III’s canopy. Oaklyyn, Lyptus, and Larch cast them damning looks before thrusting their branches upward as well, joining their voices to the chant.

A deep-green suspended line of magic bursts into being, crackling out from the Dryads’ raised branches and connecting them all in a single line of power.

Sylvan booms out a single word in Dryadin.“Linkage!”

A wrenching pull on my power nearly knocks me off my feet as I’m flooded with a harder rush of the Northern Forest’s line-expanding magic. The Forest’s magic roars up through my rootlines and out through the branch I’m holding, before coursing up through the raised branch in Sylvan’s other hand and into the green line of Dryad magic.

Acracksounds in the air above as a dense translucent green wall of power blasts up from the line. Its top rapidly fans out to create a dome-shield encasing III and the surrounding clearing, the Shadow wind furiously buffeting it.

I sense the colossal amount of combined elemental magic flowing into our shield, most of it being drawn from my rootlines. It’s stronger than any shield I’ve felt before. Stronger than the shields that used to encase Noilaan and Amazakaraan, rapidly gaining enough charge to springoutward.

Branch raised, Sylvan turns to me with a look of shocked incomprehension. “Your power,” he gasps, “it’simmense.” His gaze darts toward III’s cloud-piercing canopy, his gaze seeming to sharpen with resolve before his gaze bores back into mine. “Dryad’kin,” he says with measured force, “I need you to climb to the top of III’s canopy to provide an anchor point so we can channel your power and rapidly expand this shield.”

He releases his hold on the branch in my hand, a crackling green line of connection springing to life, flowing from my branch’s tip to the line of green power connecting the Dryads’ upthrust branches as I take hold of the branch’s base. “Once you reach III’s canopy,” Sylvan directs, “we’ll send out spells through our linkage and cast our dome-shield outward to reshield the entire Northern Forest with a barrier stronger thananythingErthia hasever seen.”

Yvan and I share an intense look, our unvoiced agreement in it, his fire flaring to embrace me before I sheathe the branch in my tunic’s belt and launch myself at III. My dark green nails bite into bark as I scramble up the Great Tree, vaulting myself ever higher. My pulse jumping in my throat, I burst through III’s expansive canopy, peer out through our shield’s translucent green surface and come face-to-face with Vogel’s storming nightmare.

The Magedom’s churning storm band is arced around the Forest’s eastern, southern, and western edges, rapidly gaining height, its dark lightning rainingfire onto the trees in explosion after explosion.

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