Page 98 of The Dryad Storm

A world-shaking explosion of Shadowfire detonates on III and the kindreds, a scream tearing from my throat. A planet-shifting sense of the Natural World ripping apart lances through my every rootline as III burns and Vogel’s army launches itself into motion by land and air.

His entire Shadow force coming straight toward us.

Chapter Nine

Shadow World

Elloren

Shadowed Northern Forest

Eighteen days after Xishlon

My knuckles whiten as I grip Errilith’s dark feathers, despair twisting through my gut with such force, it threatens to undo me. I mentally urge my Deathkin ravens to arrow us toward the living Forests of the East, my semiconscious and unconscious Dryad’kin tied to my ravens’ backs.

Vogel’s airborne Shadow forces spearing toward us.

I glance down at the Shadow wasteland coursing by beneath us—only leagues of charred trees and stumps with Shadow smoke slithering around them remain where the magnificent Northern Forest once stood, millions of kindred plants and animals slain or fleeing for their lives. And the other Dryads who lived in our bonded Forest—were they all murdered by Vogel’s Shadow storm?

Hazel is crouched on ravenback, still morphed into his insectile form, his huge insect legs raised. Misty black shielding emanates from his legs’ tips to encircle us all in a translucent, midnight-hued bubble. Yvan flanks my other side, his violet-fire eyes alight, dark wings beating powerfully against air, our bond ablaze.

I teeter, depleted from having the Northern Forest bond cruelly ripped from my rootlines, my tenuous connection to the too-distant Zhilaan Forest through my bond to Yvan not powerful enough to strengthen my lines past sheer survival.

I glance behind me toward where III once stood, majestic and strong, and a vise of panic contracts my chest. Vogel’s airborne army is rapidly closing the distance between us.

I look to Yvan in a flash of alarm and am hit by a sense of the inferno of fire power he’s drawing from his core, a sizzling flush racing over my skin as his handstake on a violet glow. Yvan and Hazel exchange a quick look before Yvan whips around, midair, lets out a low, vicious snarl, and swipes out his hands in an arc.

Bolts of violet Wyvernfire erupt from Yvan’s palms at the same time that Hazel opens the back of our shielding.

Yvan’s lashings of flame fly through the sky and collide with the southernmost row of incoming Mages. Screams cut through the air as Yvan sweeps his hands from left to right, his line of fire slashing through the entire frontline of soldiers and their broken dragons.

They explode into violet flame, but bile rises in my throat as I take in the seemingly never-ending dark sea of soldiers flying in behind them to our west and soaring up from the south.

Too many for Yvan to take out.

Yvan hurls out another whipping attack of flame before Hazel swipes an insectile limb, closing the gap in our shielding at the same moment three surviving broken dragons spearing in from the west zoom closer.

I take in three salt-white Marfoir astride the grayed, multi-eyed Shadow dragons, and terror singes through me. The Alfsigr Marfoir assassins are even more grotesquely altered than the Marfoir that came for Wynter in Verpacia. Huge, pale spider limbs splay out from their backs, their gray insectile eyes multiplied to horrifying masses that cover their upper heads.

In chilling unison, they flick their spidery limbs toward me.

“Elloren, look out!” Yvan thunders as gray webbing lances clear through Hazel’s Death-mist shielding, sizzling it into black smoke before the webbing collides with me and unfurls to encircle my body.

A cry of protest bursts from my throat, and Errilith lets out an urgentcawas the Shadow webbing singes away my tether to the raven and I’m tugged toward the Marfoir assassins, desperately scrabbling to hold tight to Errlith’s back feathers.

The Marfoir zoom in closer, everything in me yearning for a living branch, fully replenished Dryad power, and the knowledge to wield it and fight back.

Yvan’s rage flashes through our bond as a slim, focused dart of his violet fire sears in from the side and into the Marfoir webbing. The web ignites, the Marfoirs’ yanking pull on me releasing just before I can be dragged from Errilith’s back.

In a split-second blur, Yvan zooms through the air between me and the Marfoir, his power incandescent with fury as he raises violet-glowing hands. Twin bolts of violet light blast from Yvan’s palms and collide with the Marfoir. Two of the Elfassassins and their Shadow dragons burst into purple flames, the Marfoir shrieking as they hurtle toward the ground, but the third Marfoir dodges the blast and flies straight at me.

Before Yvan can attack, the Marfoir reaches me and thrusts the knife-sharp points of its spider legs toward me just as Hazel soars in close, leaps from his raven, and slams into the Marfoir, impaling the pale assassin’s body with his black limbs and shoving the Marfoir off its broken dragon, the two of them free-falling through air.

Errilith lets out another boomingcawand veers us away from their battling forms, the Marfoir’s pale spider legs flailing, steely blood spraying. The Marfoir and Hazel fall away from each other, plummeting toward the distant, Shadowed ground, Yvan’s concern for both me and Hazel firing through our bond as he incinerates another incoming section of Vogel’s advancing army.

“Catch Hazel!”I cry out to my kindred flock.

Their answering aura flare pulses the world black. The raven that was previously carrying Hazel swoops in under him, and he slams onto its back in front of a semiconscious Oaklyyn.

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