Page 46 of To Sway a Prince
Howls rose from the depths—hungry, furious sounds that made my blood freeze.
The mist churned and bubbled below. the barrier warping and falling. My right arm hung limp, burning with cold fire from where I'd touched the purple barrier. I needed to focus. We needed height. "Up, Zephyrus! Higher!"
He pumped his wings, each beat labored. Blood oozed from his side, slowed by my healing poultice but not stopped. The storm's fury intensified, rain pelting us like tiny arrows.
Another shriek cut through the thunder, high-pitched and hungry.
Storm wyrms. Three emerged from the clouds, blue eyes glowing and serpentine bodies crackling with lightning-blue energy. They spiraled toward us, jaws open, rows of needle-sharp teeth bared. Two more storm wyrms appeared in the thunderhead. They hissed.
Thread rot!
The first wyrm dove at us. Zephyrus banked hard right again, nearly throwing me off. My wrist flared with pain so intense I screamed. It felt like something was sawing through bone and sinew, trying to sever my hand.
Ramiel and Thalorion swooped in from above. The old dragon's jaws caught one wyrm mid-air, snapped its neck, and flung it away.
Ramiel cut a series of silver runes that hung in the air and then wrapped around the other wyrm, sending it plummeting. It struck the surface of the Chasm, landing in the mist and on that strange slick gel-like substance. Its body twitched as it started to sink down with some of the fallen rocks, straining the barrier.
The third wyrm circled back, aiming for Zephyrus's injured side.
Zephyrus's breaths wheezed as he shot around one of the massive tors, talons scraping on the rounded stone. He thrust his wings down harder. The right one wasn't as strong.
I wove a golden knot with my left hand, fingers dancing and shaking despite the pain. "Hold fast, big guy," I gasped as I slapped the spell onto his side. The magic spread like warm honey, rolling along his scales.
Zephyrus made that chirring trill, warning me. I clenched my legs tight and wrapped my arm around his horns.
The world turned upside down. His wings stretched straight up and his body lengthened. We shot between two spires. The storm wyrm behind us followed, devouring the distance.
Ramiel pulled something from his belt—a curved horn etched with symbols. He put it to his lips and blew. A low, piercing call vibrated out into the air. A sharp scent like lightning and sulfur flared through the air, and a long beam of silver light formed in the sky like an eye irising open.
Zephyrus flew through another of the spires, trying to shake the storm wyrm that pursued us. Two more storm wyrmsemerged from the clouds and swept toward Thalorion and Ramiel.
Below, the Chasm's surface bubbled violently. The mist coiled and thickened where... something... pushed against it from beneath the dead dragon at the weakest point in the barrier.
My wrist throbbed. Horror poured through my body. I knew what that was instinctually. Not the leviathan.
No.
Oily claws pushed through the gel, trying to rupture the surface. Where it touched, color leached away, leaving nothing but opaque shapes.
A chasm wraith.
Zephyrus faltered again, drawing up just in time as another storm wyrm cut in front of us. The purple mist boiled around us, obscuring my vision.
"Get out of the mist, Astraia!" Ramiel shouted. His voice thundered in my ears, fear clear. "The barrier is weakening."
"Up, Zephyrus!" I urged him, leaning lower near his ear. "Come on, big guy. Come on. You can do this."
My right arm was still useless, that burning pain through my wrist and my scars throbbing as if I had just burned myself.
The color drained from the storm wyrm as the surface rippled and warped beneath it. The sharp scales of the dead dragon along with the pressure of the rocks cut deeper. A large bubble formed near it—growing—growing.
The rocks sliced through.
Claws swept up at once and grabbed the storm wyrm like it was a toy. All the color faded as the chasm wraith tore through the barrier of the Chasm. It sluiced and slicked off its massive form as it rose from the depths, a creature that seemed to be made of oil and with ever changing features that were impossible to focus on. It gulped the dead creature down in a single bite.
The surface of the Chasm bubbled again as more dark forms pressed up. Zephyrus swept his wings down again in a desperate bid to gain more altitude. Ramiel and Thalorion battled more of the storm wyrms as that column of light in the sky flared and expanded wider and wider.
We had to get higher.
