Chapter Eleven: Wyverns
The wyverns were approaching fast. The huge creatures were far faster than they looked. The dragons in his flight screamed again, roaring a challenge at the intruders.
The wyverns roared back. Though there were only four of them, to the six Silver Wings, their roars seemed almost impossibly loud. Joseph twisted in his seat, trying to see the other pods, see what the other dragons were doing, maybe hoping reinforcements were coming, though he knew they were not.
When an awakened wrack secured an egg from a shard, it matured into a wyvern instead of a dragon. They were bigger, meaner, and stronger than dragons, though most agreed they were less intelligent, with more animalistic minds. They had only two legs, but much larger, sturdier wings, with clawed digits extending from their wrists. When grounded, they were ungainly, as they used their wings to walk.
Joseph watched as the wyverns pulled up just outside the city. Closer now, he could see that great nets had been strung beneath them. They crashed to the turf, throwing up explosions of soft soil as they landed, and disgorged the contents of the netting.
Joseph could barely see them at this distance, but he could make out small figures wriggling free from the netting and spreading out, heading towards the city. The wyverns waited less than a minute before leaping back into the air. They banked, rising, and then turned towards the Silver Wings.
Joseph craned his neck for all it was worth, but he could not see his dragonrider. He could just make out the rider at the back of the diamond though. Her face was set in a grim expression, giving quick nods at what he supposed were orders. She unslung her lance from its holster below her saddle, and the Silver Wings moved into action.
They turned to face the oncoming wyverns, striving higher, higher still. They needed the altitude desperately. If the wyverns were allowed to strafe them from above they were done for.
The wyverns, crude though they were, obviously realised the same thing. They, too, battled for more height. It was unclear which of them would win.
The wyverns loomed large in the window. The Silver Wings were higher than them, but only marginally. Joseph gritted his teeth, wanting to screw his eyes shut but unable to stop watching out of some dread, morbid fascination. Sweat ran freely down his back.
The wyverns open their mouths, maws distending. Joseph saw the soft interior of their gullets flexing. Then they breathed.
Two great gouts of flame poured forth. From one of the wyverns’ mouths, a plume of superheated ash burst. From the fourth, a cloud of deadly looking black, like thousands of buzzing insects. The Silver Wings would be completely engulfed.
A wind kicked up, a gale. It gathered the wyvernbreath and threw it back towards the hulking creatures. The Hurricane dragons! Joseph thought, and then he cringed into his straps, bracing himself, and the wyverns were among them.
The two flights clashed as they passed, the Silver Wings with the slight height advantage. Joseph’s HALT pod was jostled about, and he flailed as he bounced around inside. He caught a snatch of claws tearing down flanks, of a huge cloud of icy breath being released, of a wyvern’s massive, terrifying eye, just outside his pod, so close he could reach out and touch it.
Then they were past. His pod, still swinging, began to slowly even out. The Silver Wings continued forward, then wheeled, striving for more height as they turned to meet the wyverns again. He frantically twisted about in his seat, trying to see.
They’d lost one of their Hurricane dragons, the outriders. Joseph watched it tumble out of the sky towards the city, and his heart fell with it. Its rider was nowhere to be seen. This was not good. The Silver Wings were supposed to be invincible!
The wyverns were approaching again, just three of them now. One was dead, at the end of a long furrow it had torn into the turf as it crashed. Its body smoked gently where it lay.
The flights straightened up, course correcting for another clash. They gathered speed. The wyverns grew larger, quickly, quicker still. Joseph braced himself once more, praying to the Heavens for victory.
Joseph saw an open maw, fire kindling in its depths. Scales flashed in the sun, a tail lashing past the windows. His pod jolted as the wyvern collided with the dragon carrying him. A thunderous roar split the air. His pod hitched, turned, and tumbled, and then he was in freefall.
Desperately, he looked out the windows, but he was flipping, rotating, and he could make out nothing but crazed smears of colour. He saw something that might have been another pod, falling with him.
Seconds later, both longer and more quickly than he would’ve thought possible, he crashed. His head snapped down, his straps biting deep into his shoulders. Long seconds passed, or perhaps minutes. Nothing happened. Slowly, his consciousness started to catch up with the situation.
Fuck! He thought. Fuck! I need to get out! If the wyverns catch me on the ground, I’m fucked!
He struggled with the numerous buckles with numb, unsteady fingers, trying to unclasp them, trying to straighten them. He got some, couldn’t manage others. His left arm didn’t seem to be working properly. He couldn’t really feel it. He tried looking out the window, but the pod was tilted slightly from upright, and he could see only a section of the sky, and a haze of dust. He was lucky the pod hadn’t fallen on its top.
Suddenly, the door burst open, and fresh air and grit swirled in. A figure loomed in front of him, silhouetted against the late afternoon light. He flinched, cowering, trying to raise his hands to ward off the intruder. His left arm would not obey him.
“Joseph!” The figure yelled at him.
“Genn?” he answered. Relief washed over him. “Help! My straps are tangled!”
Rough hands plucked at the strapping, twisting them, pulling at the buckles. Steel flashed in the sun, Genn’s sword, and suddenly Joseph was slumping forwards out of the pod. Genn caught him, the bigger boy steadying him.
“Fuck! Your arm!” he said. Joseph glanced down. His shoulder flared with pain, and his left arm was bent the wrong way at the elbow. He threw up on the ground.
“Shit…” Joseph mumbled weakly. “Shit, shit…”
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“Hold on!” Genn said, and then white fire spilled from his hands and burned across Joseph’s body.
Joseph screamed, raw and primal, as his shoulder popped, and a grinding started from within his elbow. His arm straightened, though it felt like millions of ants were crawling around inside. The fire winked out, and Joseph was left gasping for breath.
He was not completely healed, aches and bruises all over his body still clamouring to make themselves known. But his arm was working again. He flexed it, and found it was only sore. He’d rather that than broken.
“Thank you!” he gasped. “It’s better. Shit!” Joseph cowered, looking to the skies. He could not see anything flying, no dragons, no wyverns.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did you see?”
Genn nodded slowly, uncharacteristically serious. “My pod fell straight. The riders dropped me at the last moment. They… They’re dead, I think. The wyverns got higher than them on the last pass. Mauled them.”
“We need to go!” Joseph said. “We can’t be out here when the wyverns come!”
“That wyvern with the black swarm breath, the Hurricane blew it back onto the other wyverns twice. They fell out of the air. I think they’re dead too.”
Joseph felt some relief. No dragons was a massive blow, but no wyverns either was a small blessing, at least.
“Where are the others? Did you see them fall?”
Genn nodded at that too. “Bobbie fell a little that way.” He pointed east. “Lauren even further in the same direction. We should go find them.”
“We should hurry,” Joseph agreed. “Did you see? Before the battle? The wyverns dropped wrack into the city.”
Genn’s expression fell. “I only saw the wyverns when they were almost on us. I was watching the shard fall.”
They both looked up, finding the shard hanging in the sky above the city still. Burning, looming.
Joseph looked around, taking stock of his surroundings now that the haze had settled somewhat. They were in the ruined city. His pod had landed in a wide open, green space. It had smashed into a tree, which had toppled, snapped in half, its crown lying defeated on its side.
Taller buildings lay to their east, some with shattered sides, others mostly whole. Steel poked from exposed walls like bones. Bricks and rubble mixed with moss and bushes and grass to form craggy slopes at their feet. The smaller buildings were the same, half hills, half ugly, industrial looking boxes.
Joseph picked out a faint dust cloud rising a short distance away. He turned to his pod, and fished out his sword and lance. Both were luckily undamaged.
“Let’s go,” he said, and the boys started towards the other pods.
They crept through the ruins, starting at every small sound. They could not tell where exactly inside it they had dropped. Joseph kept imagining wrack bursting from shadowed, gaping windows, or howling from around piles of rubble. None came.
They found Bobbie’s pod, lying on its side, door ajar, open to the elements. A short distance away, the light red dragon lay broken, its wings twisted at obscene angles. The lower half of its rider was still strapped into its saddle.
Bobbie was nowhere to be found. They inspected the pod, found it empty of all its contents. No sword, and no lance. They scoured it, and found there was no blood. No blood anywhere nearby. It was a good sign.
“Fuck!” Genn said. “Where’d she go?”
“She must have gone for Lauren. If she’d come for our pods, we would’ve seen her on the way here.” He was not sure though. The ruins were a chaotic place, full of strange angles, and odd pathways. She could have walked right past them.
They made for Lauren’s pod, going purely off Genn’s memory of where it had landed. The dust from their crash landings had settled now. They walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, when they heard noises on the wind. It sounded like screaming.
They burst into a run, skidding around the corner of a building. Both of them stopped in their tracks.
Lauren’s pod was standing upright, almost perfectly straight, right in the middle of what looked like a convergence of old streets. And gathered around it, was a group of wrack.
They were stocky creatures, shorter than the average human by a couple of feet. Their small, scaled forms reminded him of wyverns, with their blocky, lizardlike heads. Wide jaws and sagging skin at their necks made them seem perpetually unhappy. Beady little eyes peered from under small, almost vestigial, spiky crests. Their scaled skin was mottled a rotten looking brown.
Strong, muscular arms flexed as they tried to work open the door to the pod. They were howling into the air, their jaws wide open as they released their frustration at not being able to get inside. Then one of them clipped the enchanted release on the side, and the door popped.
A shrill, terrified scream split the air. The wrack threw themselves at the open pod. A soulshield sprang to life in the gap.
Joseph and Genn both surged forwards at once. The bigger boy was faster, and he began to pull ahead. They needed to get there, now. Lauren’s shield could fail at any moment, and that was all the wrack would need to kill her.
Genn let out a roar as he closed. The startled wrack turned to face him, but too slowly. He lopped off one of their arms with a great swing of his sword, then smashed a great, ugly wound into another’s face with his backswing.
The wrack abandoned the pod to face their new foes. There were about ten in all. One circled behind Genn, its legs tensing, about to leap on him while he warded off the ones in front of him.
Joseph gathered mana into his hand, just like he had practised, and hurled it at the wrack about to leap at Genn’s unprotected back. Black lightning flickered, and the wrack gave an odd gurgle, toppling over, dead.
Genn had skewered another by that point, but they were quickly overwhelming him. Joseph threw another strike, and another, missing the first, but hitting the second. Another wrack keeled over.
It was not enough. Genn was about to be swarmed.
A tiny pink line prodded one of the wrack. It did not react. Not until the line flared bright, coppery red, and the wrack fell into chunks.
Joseph turned, and found Bobbie crouched in some rubble. She was already raising her hand to throw another strike. Desperate hope surged in Joseph’s chest. He gathered mana for another strike as well.
Black lightning and copper light each speared a wrack. Genn bisected one from shoulder to hip. One surviving wrack fled down the street, and was cut down by another copper beam. Silence fell.
Joseph ran to meet Genn. He was breathing heavily, but otherwise uninjured. Bobbie jogged over too.
“Bobbie, thank Heavens you’re alright! We looked-” The pale girl ignored them, striding to Lauren’s pod. The soulshield was still snug in the doorframe.
“Lauren.” she said flatly. “Lauren!” The soulshield persisted for some seconds, then wavered and fell, revealing Lauren, safe and unharmed, still in her straps. Tears rolled down her face.
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” she said, over and over.
Joseph rushed over. “It’s alright, Lauren. It’s okay. We’re all here. It’s alright. We’re gonna get through this together, okay?” He grasped her shoulder as Bobbie and Genn worked the buckles securing her into the seat. She clutched at his hand like a woman drowning, but she nodded, and her breathing became more even.
They had her out in short order. The four of them moved to a nearby ruined building, and climbed onto its roof so they could see around. None of them wanted more wrack sneaking up.
“What do we do?” Lauren asked shakily. “The dragons, they’re all gone…”
No one had an answer for her. They were over a day’s flight by fast dragons from their kingdom. In the middle of a city filled with Heavens-knew how many wrack. They would have to walk through reaver-held territory to get home.
“Fuck,” Genn said, wearily.
Just then, a burning streak of white flashed past, perhaps a mile or two away. The ground shook, and they stumbled into one another. A second later, a huge boom rumbled through the city. A plume of dust rose into the sky.
The shard had fallen. Their one shot at a dragon egg had arrived.