The three wizards attacked. They each unleashed a blast of wind from the palm of their hands, like the Winged Fist but more concentrated. Pirin sprang back. The blasts of wind scoured the stone, eroding tiny craters in it where each blast hit.

As he retreated, he analyzed his foes. They were all Flares, all with enhanced bodies. Only one had visible enhancement markings—the veins across his face were mud-brown, like he’d pressed a fishing net across his skin.

All used birds as their Familiars, but they were tiny steppehawks. They manipulated the wind to carry themselves up over the ramparts of the flak castle, then dropped down into a crouch.

They thought that together, they could overwhelm Pirin?

Let’s show them how wrong they are, Gray said.

“Don’t get cocky,” Pirin whispered.

I think we’ve earned a little cockiness.

Pirin rolled his eyes, but he didn’t deny the sentiment. These wizards were overconfident, and he’d use that to his advantage. “Distract their Familiars, and I’ll deal with their masters.”

My pleasure! Gray exclaimed. With a flap of her wings, she took off, and all four wizards manipulated the air, preventing the downdraft from sweeping them off their feet. Come, little birdies! Let me show you how superior I truly am!

Gray swooped over the wizards’ heads, slashing at them with her talons. The wizards whispered to their Familiars, and sent the little hawks chasing after her.

The lead wizard, the ostal with the enhancement markings, launched a stream of condensed wind at the central ballista turret of the platform. It would’ve hit if Pirin hadn’t pulled off his mask and launched a Shattered Palm forward, disrupting and overwhelming the technique. It blasted into the wizard and flung him back through the crenellations at the edge of the tower. The stone shattered and he fell, but caught himself with a bed of air.

While the strongest wizard recovered, Pirin lunged forward, activating the Fracturenet. He caught up to the nearest wizard with a few steps. The ostal flung another blast of air at Pirin, but Pirin leaned back. Then, calling upon his Reign, he sharpened the stub of his sword and rammed it into the wizard’s chest. He fell limp.

The second wizard activated a pseudo-fortification technique, like Pirin had learned with his own wind techniques, but more rigid and defensive. It wanted to push him away and repel his weapons. Failing that, it wanted to erode whatever touched it.

A destructive aura? He could deal with that.

He pulled his mask back onto his face and manifested gnatsnapper Essence along the stub of his blade. It filled the fuller, buffing out the cracks and scars, and made the blade glow with a faint greenish brown light.

He slashed through the aura in one direction, and in the other, he exerted his authority over wind, pulling it away and weakening the fortification technique. With each of his own swipes, he manipulated the air to remove resistance to his arm and push from behind.

The stub of his sword flashed in one direction, cutting across her wrist, then back the other way, batting aside her sword.

Then, one final cut across her neck. She fell back, then dropped, writhing and gurgling. Then, abruptly, she fell limp.

Gray killed the wizard’s hawk in an instant with a swipe of her talons, and the tiny bird’s corpse plummeted from high in the sky.

The last wizard lifted himself up to the castle roof again. It had only been seconds, but his company was gone. His eyes widened, but he gave a furious shout and charged. The air around his fists blurred, and he unleashed a flurry of powerful blows. Echoes of his hands pummelled Pirin from all directions. The more he punched, the more arcane fists of wind he created. Feathers of unintentionally manifested Essence filled them, giving the technique volume and weight.

A fist struck him in the chest, and it sent him skidding back across the ramparts. His heels brushed the rotating ballista turret mount.

Lucky, perhaps, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He activated his Reyad, slid his mask onto his face, then launched one more Shattered Palm. It chewed through the fists in an instant and impacted the wizard in the chest. He must’ve been ready for it, because it didn’t fling him off the tower.

Only knocked him onto his back.

Pirin leapt forward and reversed his grip on the stub of his sword, then drove it down into the man’s chest.

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The wizard fell limp, and at the same moment, his Familiar spiralled out of the sky.

Pirin jumped back to his feet. Above, the rest of the Sirdian bombing squadron was approaching the wall, and if he didn’t clear the way for them, the flak castles would blast them out of the sky.

Working with Gray, he turned the flak castle’s main ballista turret in a circle. It swung around, aiming at the other towers and destroying them. One bolt, sometimes two, was enough to disable most of the castles’ weapons.

There were other castles in other quadrants of the city, but they were out of this turret’s range, and likewise, couldn’t hit the Sirdian squadrons even if they tried.

When Pirin destroyed the last tower, he climbed back up into Gray’s saddle and urged her to take off. She fluttered up into the sky, giving Pirin an overview of the battle.

The Sirdian gnatsnappers dove along the outer curtain wall, dropping payload after payload and destroying the larger artillery pieces with precise explosives. Pirin was tempted to help, but by the time they would arrive, the Sirdians would have cleaned up the majority of the resistance.

Instead, Pirin guided Gray over the wall and back to the Sirdian army’s landing point. The barges wedged their shallow prows up against the gravel shore of a bend in the river. Weavelings and Sirdian elves jumped off the barges and landed in the gravel, then sprinted up the shore and made a formation on the fields beyond.

Elves and weavelings alternated clusters, and eventually, formed up into neat battalions. Cohesive, but still alternating, with both sharing the front line.

Soldiers offloaded siege ladders and smaller, more mobile ballistae, but there wasn’t time to muster their full strength yet. Their speed and surprise—for what little they had—was their greatest asset.

Pirin activated his windstone headset again and spoke to the squadron. “Apologies for the delay. The flak castles should be out of commission. Keep your eyes out for enemy birds. They could be approaching from any angle.”

Vel Aerdeil had no airfields directly within the wall. The city was too crowded for birds to take off properly. But the fields around the city, or nearby airbases, could launch squadron after squadron. They’d have more than enough to take down the vulnerable bombing squadron.

“I see something to the south,” said a Sirdian pilot.

“Form up into tight groups,” Pirin said. “Protect each other as best you can, and give the ground forces cover. We’ve cleared the wall, and once they take it, the city will be as good as ours.”

Pirin, however, didn’t join a group. He urged Gray to fly straight south—at a small cluster of airborne shapes. Fifty, maybe sixty Aerdian gnatsnappers flew toward them.

Remorsefully, Pirin shut his eyes. Not even enough enemy birds in the first wave to make a dent. They wouldn’t stand a chance, and they knew it.

Aerdia must have been suffering more than he’d previously thought.

Or the Dominion commanders just don’t care about their lives, Gray commented.

“Reading my mind?” Pirin whispered. “And what was that? A sliver of compassion from the dragon’s mind?”

Hah! No! It was…it was simply acknowledging a possible reality!

“Well, I’m going to deal with it before they get hurt. How much Essence to you estimate we have left?”

You’ve been chewing through your pure Essence a lot faster than the gnatsnapper Essence. Your gnatsnapper Essence is about half full, and your pure Essence about a quarter full.

“I’ll make more when we land. Until then…”

He and Gray swung around and fluttered toward the Aerdian cluster. They formed up into tight squadrons, a battle-ready formation, but they had to know what they were up against. He launched a Shattered Palm into the air from a distance as a warning.

“Turn away!” he yelled, enhancing his voice and projecting it farther than a regular elf could. “You know who I am!” Hopefully, they’d heard stories about the battle at the delta gates by now, and what he had done to the enemy squadrons. “If you turn away, I will not harm you. Land in the forests and hide from your Dominion overlords, and when we secure the city, approach and enter!”

At first, none of the birds flinched. Had he projected his voice loud enough? Or had he simply misunderstood the Aerdians’ desires and reasoning.

But then one bird in the enemy squadron spread its wings wide and turned, then circled back. There were no forests directly below to land in, but if they turned away and flew back a few miles, they could land in a thin woodland, and they’d be safe.

After the first rider turned, most of the others followed, spinning their mounts around and retreating. Officers, lower pilots, they fled from certain death.

Only a few of the most extreme kept flying, kept charging. Pirin switched to his gnatsnapper Essence and blasted them out of the sky, or tossed them around and flung them off their birds saddles from a distance. He couldn’t reliably destroy more than one at a time with wind—yet—but he shifted his targets around the five or six pilots who were crazy enough to keep charging.

Concentrated bars of wind knocked them off their saddles. He manipulated the currents of wind to jostle the birds and knock them to the ground or send them spiralling out of control.

When the rest of the riders had turned away, he kept looking for more, but so far, none had come, and he and Gray had drifted far from the fighting. He leaned closer to the saddle and urged her to turn back.

They passed back over the outer wall, in time to observe the siege. Silver-armoured Dominion soldiers armed the wall, launching arrows down into the forces below or defending at close range from the elves who scaled the wall. Siege ladders pressed up against the wall closest to the western gatehouse, and the Sirdians had already taken the gate. The pushed outward like ink diffusing through water, clearing out the rest of the wall. The Dominion garrison, outnumbered, and with all their heavy artillery destroyed, put up a half-hearted defence. Any Aerdians among them had already retreated.

Then, the gatehouse’s portcullis climbed open. Sirdian soldiers operated it, allowing the rest of their army to stream in unopposed.

They’d done it. The city was theirs.