Urla had never fought alongside a Knight of Caadron before—there were only seven in all the empire—but it was more remarkable than anything she had ever beheld.

The glowing godblade was sharper than any forged steel, its shimmering edge shearing clean through wing and bone, even the shapeshifters’ weapons themselves. The Lady Knight’s movements were fluid as a river, lithe as one of the emperor’s ceremonial dancers. Forms perfectly executed.

The first wave of attacks were strung out. Two or three creatures soared after each Attican as they made their diversion for the shaman.

Urla took on one beast, managing a blow to the creature’s shoulder, which sent it careening down the dock. It morphed back into its human form, and charged her with a saber, injured arm loose at its side. Urla bought the severity of the injury a moment too long, narrowly missing a fatal error when the shapeshifter slashed with a stealth blade protruding from the guard on his injured hand.

She staggered back, parrying a saber blow with the end of a spear she’d retrieved from a fallen creature. The greater reach of her weapon won out in the end.

When Urla looked up from her kill, two more creatures were slain, and the Lady Knight was braced for more diving from the deck of the runeship overhead.

“Two more coming our way,” the knight shouted.

Urla spun around, whipping the lance in her hands and thrust the end up, then slashed it hard, shredding the webbed skin of the next creature’s wing. An Attican guard leapt in to finish it off with a length of lumber.

The knight needed no help. She barked orders to ready a long boat, though their ship was sinking in flames and most of the other ships were already fleeing the harbor. The Attican guards did not question her.

Hopefully the ruse will draw enough attention if it appears we are defending the boats.

Another trio of beasts descended on them, bony wings jutting out at a span of a dozen feet. They rushed from the harbor, wings roaring as they flapped and dove. Urla shifted her grip on the spear and braced for impact.

At the last moment, the creatures shifted.

All three shot past the docks and soared over the square.

Urla spun, chest convulsed.

The shaman and his son emerged from the forest path, brandishing weapons. Ruan and a Faltari girl followed, carrying the limp form of General Campos.

Cries echoed across the water. Urla sprinted away from the docks.

***

Malik thrust out with the bonespear, but the hideous creature shifted at the last moment, and before Malik realized what was happening, his weapon wrenched from his grasp. His body lurched from the ground. Pain lanced through his shoulder.

The world hurtled end over end.

Ships, the village walls, flames, all swirled in his vision.

More pain.

The world went black.

***

Joren’s spirit raged.

Riese dropped Campos’s legs and let loose a terrifying surge of hish that sent the next beast off course.

Joren slashed with the cane weapon, splitting the creature’s neck with a razorsharp blade jutting out of the end.

Runemarked Kirithian steel. He’d never wielded such a blade from so strange a weapon before, but it was no less effective.

Joren spun to find the boy Ruan lifting into the air, talons plunged through his shoulders.

Riese shrieked, focusing another surge of magic.

Joren reached for the same spiritual threads, and pushed with all the strength in his spirit.

The shapeshifter lost its grip on the boy, and Ruan dropped

Joren reached out with hish to slow his fall, but another creature flashed in his vision. Reaching for Riese in the same instant. Joren sent the creature shooting past her, tumbling across the square.

He turned. Ruan had fallen twenty feet or more. He did not move.

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Riese gasped for breath beside Joren, as though she’d just hefted the trunk of a tree. His own strength was also fading. It had been a decade or more since he’d drawn so much power in so short a span. Even longer since he’d seen such combat.

He could not afford to draw much more hish, and Riese could not manage another magic attack. Riese dropped to her knees, the satchel of eggs still on her shoulders.

Joren spun. His spirit searched for his son’s resonance, and relief swept over him, though he could not see where Malik had landed in the trees.

One creature was dead.

The other two regrouped over the trees, both unharmed.

Joren focused his vision on the beasts as they banked back toward him.

***

Urla watched helpless, halfway across the square, as her son crumpled on the hard-packed ground.

The creatures arced in the air for another attack.

In the corner of her vision, Captain Rykus sprinted from the village gates, a bonespear in hand, joined by one of his personal guard. A young woman with stark black hair.

But he also could never make it in time.

The Faltari girl struggled to her feet, hands searching for something she could use for a weapon. Her movements were slow and languid.

Urla sprinted as fast as she could as the second wave of creatures descended.

The shaman brandished the splintered remains of a crude weapon.

The shapeshifters dove at the shaman.

And Urla let her spear fly.

***

Malik’s vision swam. His back shuddered in waves of pain, temples throbbing as he pulled himself to his feet. A hand helped steady him.

“Now, we’re even, shaman.”

“Ulgar?”

The large boy knelt beside him in the woods, at the edge of the square. “What in the Abyss is going—”

Malik seized his wrist. “My father! Hurry!”

Ulgar braced him with his shoulder, and together, they hurried through the foliage and back into the square.

The waterfront was a raging swirl of violent hues. Screams of fear and death.

Malik and Ulgar staggered forward. Ulgar held a bonespear, but Malik’s weapon had been lost in the attack that had landed him in the woods.

Dark wings flashed over his head, spinning. One of the shapeshifters hit the ground, tumbling, then, went still, a lance protruding from its chest.

Ulgar leapt in as the creature struggled to its feet, driving the point through the beast’s neck.

Blood spurted, and the monster transformed into its human form.

“God’s breath!” Ulgar roared, jerking his weapon free.

Magic surged through Malik’s body. And one of his father’s shamanic mantras came to him.

Without the mind, the body fades.

Malik focused all the hish his spirit could muster, channeling the healing energy into his mind.

The world slowed, sharpened, blurs coming into focus.

Twenty yards ahead, his father leapt into the air, meeting one of the creatures in an incredible twisting aerial attack. For an instance, his father looked to be flying. The creature wasn’t ready for the attack either. It attempted to shift midair, but Joren’s weapon drove into its side, sending them both reeling.

One more monster descended, straight at Riese.

Malik leapt into action, movements guided by pure will. He sprinted past Ulgar and reached the creature he’d finished off.

He jerked the spear free and sent it flying with a surge of hish.

The beast collided with Riese, both of them tumbling on the ground.

A dark-haired woman reached the spot ahead of them both and attempted to shove the creature off Riese as it shifted back to its original form in death.

Malik and Ulgar sprinted the remaining distance.

The glowing mass of the runeship blotted out the moon. A horn blared, but no more creatures appeared.

His father reached the spot first and tried to help the dark-haired woman pry the body off of Riese.

Beyond them, Urla knelt by her son’s unmoving form.

An Attican man hurried to help Joren and the girl. They shoved the beast, now back in human form, and pulled Riese free.

The Attican man pulled the bonespear from the creature’s chest, turned, and horror filled Malik’s gut as he realized who the man was.

Malik shouted. “Father, no, he’s a—”

But it was too late.

Captain Rykus whipped the butt end of the bonespear around, clubbing his father over the back of the head.

Joren slumped over.

The dark-haired woman transformed into one of the winged creatures. And Rykus and the dark-haired woman picked up an unconscious Riese and, beyond all possibility, shot straight into the sky with a surge of magic, taking Riese, and all three dragon eggs with him.

Rykus and the creature disappeared over the deck of the runeship as it lifted higher.

“Holy shit!” Ulgar said. “He just flew with no bloody wings!”

Malik crossed the remaining distance and knelt at his father’s side, the warmth of his resonance blessedly still radiating from Joren’s spirit.

He looked up as the ship disappeared into the thickening clouds.

Holding his father’s head, Malik screamed an incoherent torrent of curses.

The eggs were gone.

Riese was gone.

Malik had failed.

The Lady Knight reached them, magic blade glowing. She swung the sword in an arc that cut straight through the fabric of the world.

A window seemed to open in the air itself, showing something beyond the village behind it. Malik could see through the hazy opening to an immaculate hall, painted pillars and tapestries and oil lamps flickering. Red-cloaked Attican guards in runemarked armor rushed down a staircase across a vast hall.

Urla Pelasius thundered past Malik, and leapt through the sorcerous window, bearing Ruan’s unconscious form in her arms.

Ulgar pulled Malik to his feet, yelling in his ear, voice tremulous.

“Shaman!” Ulgar pointed to the knight.

The dark-skinned woman met his gaze, filled with pain and urgency. “The general!”

Malik nodded, and together, he and Ulgar hefted the man between them, body even more heavy than before. They inched the man through the portal, laying Campos’s body on a pristine tile floor beside Ruan and his mother.

White-robed servants came rushing to help. Soldiers shot past, weapons flashing in the light. More Atticans poured through the portal.

And Malik felt as though everything were happening in the haze of a dream.

“Shaman, back through! I can’t hold it much longer.”

The Lady Knight’s voice was strained. She held her shining godblade out above her head, one foot in this immaculate place, one back in the square in Faltara.

In the corner of his eye, Malik spotted a man in elegant black robes, descending a staircase.

No, its a throne.

The golden seat was shrouded in dark stone dragon wings that cast an enormous shadow across the entire hall. He was flanked by a retinue of guards.

Ulgar gaped. “Is that the Dragon—”

Malik grabbed his wrist and pulled him back to their own world.

A surge of magic pulsed behind them.

When Malik turned back, the portal was gone.