TurtleMe

Soul Forged: Chapter 6

Added 2025-08-22 17:57:06 +0000 UTC

Taj’s raden half blinded me, flaring over his body as I clung to his back. He hit awkwardly on hands and knees, his raden buttressing his limbs and scattering soil. The impact sent me somersaulting over his head. A pain shot through my cut left calf as I smacked down on my back beside a short, gnarled tree.

“What the hell, Torrin?” Taj snarled, the remnants of the raden he’d used to survive the fall just beginning to fade. He rubbed a welt on his head, probably from cracking it against mine, as his eyes lifted to trace our fall. His mouth dropped open in shock at the jagged red rift above us.

Dark shapes materialized in the rift, and I’d barely thought to roll clear when Seth landed beside me in a perfect crouch. For a second, his eyes bulged in his head as they roved over me.

“I’m alright,” I said, and the stern frown returned.

Seth’s hand on my upper back propped me into a sitting position, and a wave of nausea followed a hammer-thud inside my skull. Digging my fingers into the crumbling soil of whatever hell we’d dropped into, I tried to ground myself as I waited for the dizziness to pass. When my head had cleared, I looked down and let out a sharp cry.

A set of fingers lay partially curled mere inches from mine, attached to a savaged arm that ended in a bloody, protruding elbow joint.

I scuttled away from the severed limb but was unable to make my eyes do the same.

A high scream heralded a tumbling boneforger who hit the ground nearby with a nasty crunch, his neck a knotted ruin and legs curling over his back like a scorpion’s tail. My horrified cry was drowned in a thunderous roar.

I twisted, adrenaline sparking like live wires through my legs and my head, and popped to my feet, staring down a parabeast unlike anything I’d seen or read about.

The thirty-foot beast slithered out of a hole in a cliffside of blue-tinted rock, the circular entrance lined with hunks of raw raden resin that protruded in rows like leech’s teeth. The beast’s sleek lizard-like body had golden veins running through its midnight blue skin. I had no name for it, but my first thought was “dragon.”

The creature’s sides undulated, and glowing golden steam radiated from a sort of vent in the right side. A large wound bisected the left-side vent, leaving the flesh deflated and collapsing the vent itself. Other cuts dripped dark, gold-flecked blood as it opened its mouth at the oncoming flood of charging, shouting ardents and revealed raden-gold fangs the length of my forearm.

“Shit!” Taj yelped. “What is that thing? A naga?”

Once clear of the cave, the parabeast’s body shuddered, and its skin hardened into a rocky armor before my eyes. It stomped its forefoot, and smaller gold vents opened along the limb. The impact shook the forest we’d fallen into, rustling lavender shrubbery and the spiny gold leaves on the trees.

I staggered, and my legs tangled in my fallen pack. Seth’s steadying hands gripped my biceps.

A loud crack rang out as the dragon’s thrashing tail felled a tree. An ardent sliced clean through the oncoming knotted trunk with a war cry only to have his head and shoulders ensnared in the dragon’s glowing jaws. There was a flare of raden as the ardent tried to protect himself, but a haze of golden steam billowed from the dragon’s mouth, sinew and fangs lighting up, and the jaws snapped together like a bear trap. The ardent’s aura shattered, his blood splashing over the dragon’s muzzle.

Seth flipped me around to face him and shook me. “Torrin.” His steady voice cracked through the cold terror icing my limbs. “Stations.” His fist knotted in the back of my jacket, and he practically tossed me toward a cluster of a few boneforgers gathered beneath the farthest edge of the inner rift. Most were calling or waving to their shell-shocked fellows, but a few had begun to set up the fold-out worktables.

The runesmith, donning safety goggles, loomed behind the scrambling boneforgers and medics. He watched the carnage with only a slight furrowing of his brows to signal distress. My damaged calf screamed at me, but I limp-sprinted the rest of the way to the first readied station and plopped my pack on top, preparing to set up, when an arm swept it away.

“No. We need this clear,” the head boneforger, an older guy with flyaway brows, barked at me. He pointed to a second table, where supplies were being laid out in categorized piles for quick handover to the worktable. “Unpack over there.” As I picked up my fallen pack, he stared right through me and said, “Whoa, look alive.”

A whistle by my head was the only warning that Rhea’s axe was incoming. The head boneforger caught the tossed weapon with ease and clunked it down on the table, assessing the long crack running through the axe blade. He and another boneforger fell on the weapon, dripping calcinated bone resin into the crack. Raden hot in their hands, they started to harden it.

Rhea hadn’t waited around for the weapon. She was already sprinting back into the fray, heading straight for the rampaging dragon. More miniature vents had opened along its limbs, firing out gold steam as it lashed out with its claws, the erratic movements almost too fast for the eye to follow.

As I unpacked my kit, keeping only my personal tools and my custom solvent inside, I watched her shove an injured Gavin clear of a swiping claw and flare her raden into a solid shield-like encasement around her remaining axe, throwing it up to take the blow across the protected blade. Using the impact’s momentum, she parried the claw downward, then threw the shielded axe in an uppercut. It bashed into the dragon’s lower jaw and jowls, but a second before impact, the armor of the beast’s head thinned into a scaly surface that flexed and rippled, dispersing the concussive force. A band of raden, extending between Rhea’s outstretched palm and the axe handle, snapped taut and yanked the tossed axe back into her hand. The dragon reared and stamped, snorting, its earthen armor restored.

Rhea’s axe flew out again and hit… nothing. In a single breath, the dragon had shot across the expanse of its cliffside dwelling and crash landed in a destructive roll that took out trees and ardents alike. Not all of them got back up again as the dragon found its feet. I saw Jace shake off the pain and slash out with his longsword, but the weapon glanced off the rocky armor in a streak of sparks.

A boneforger bumped me as he tried to grab a spare chin strap from the pile of parts, and I winced as the cut in my leg pulled. I needed to quit gawking and start helping, but my calf was going to slow me down, and I was slow enough already compared to these guys.

I looked around for a white-clad medic, but those in shouting distance were preoccupied, so I dug around in my pack and pulled out my tube of paraglue. It wasn’t as strong as the bonding agent we used to attach weapon parts, but it helped in a pinch, and most importantly right now, it was skin-safe. I used a sterile bandage to wipe away the worst of the blood, trying not to gag at the exposed, pink flesh, and put a line of glue on each side of the cut, then squished them together with a groan. It sealed in seconds. I stood and tested my weight on it.

“You. New guy.”

I looked around to find the head forger holding out Rhea’s axe to me. “I’m making you a runner. Get this back to Dunn.”

He plopped the axe handle in my hands, and I grunted at the weight.

My feet faced the chaos of darting bodies across a graveyard of misshapen lumps, and the tang of copper stung my nose. The dragon’s sheer size overwhelmed the ardents; every sweep of its claws terraformed the environment and stirred up golden particles in the air.

I told my legs to move, and for a few awful beats, they refused to obey. I looked down at the axe and set my jaw. The ardents needed their weapons. The faster I could help them, the faster we’d get through this. I could do this.

Sweating, pulse ticking like a bomb, I jogged as close as I dared, standing level with another boneforger runner who was rushing to snag the two broken daggers Priscilla had just tossed onto the ground for pickup.

“Priscilla,” I called to her as she turned her back, “tell Rhea—”

She flared raden around her thick-soled, knee-high boots and sprinted at the dragon so fast she was a blur. She tapped Rhea as she passed, streaking behind the dragon and slashing two new blades across the tendon of its back foot. She dashed out again before the hissing dragon could even turn its long neck to see what had unbalanced it.

Rhea was running toward me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the beast at her back, my muscles twitching, as if I had a chance at dodging if it charged. The dragon had taken one wobbling step on its slashed back foot and roared its frustration as the ardents formed a closing ring around it. Colter barked orders I didn’t quite catch as a thick spout of golden steam began to puff from the giant wing-vents on the dragon’s right side. Its right legs rose off the ground, but the gashed left vent only spit a thin haze.

I caught a glimpse of Seth, his steady frown zeroed in on the undamaged wing vent fifteen feet above his head, sword at the ready, cloak streaming behind him. The shadowy outline of his rune aspect surged around his form, dimming the ring of golden light around his irises. Before he could reach his target, the vent spewed a sudden violent burst of hot raden that shot the dragon through the ardent line, but it lilted left and came down hard. Golden slits opened in the underside of its flailing tail, jetting out steam to try and straighten itself. The wild jerk of the raden-powered tail sent Seth flying, crashing into Jace, and my stomach flipped.

I hardly looked at Rhea as she snatched her second axe from my hand. Seth got to his feet and instantly snapped into a fighting stance, bracing himself in front of Jace, who hadn’t yet recovered. The tail was swinging back the other way, and rather than duck, Seth executed a spinning slash that would have been an unintelligible blur had I not seen the slowed version a hundred times in our training. He brought his glowing bone blade downward in a strong diagonal that carved deep into the meat of the tail. The impact skidded him sideways, but he held rock steady, his aspect’s shadowy outline expanding, then shrinking as he channeled a massive burst of raden down the broadsword, carving through armor, sinew, and bone. The blade might have gone clean through had the tail vents not fired again. The resulting sideways torque snapped off the top third of the blade.

The tip of the tail dangled by a strip of sinew, spilling blood that Seth kept off his legs with an aura of raden, but his damaged broadsword forced him to run clear and leave Jace to take his spot. With that much raden pouring through the blade, it shouldn’t have snapped so easily.

I sprinted to put myself in his eyeline, stopping only to snatch up a fallen short sword lying next to a dark, mangled form. Careful to keep a good hundred yards between myself and the dragon, I waved the blade in both hands, calling my brother’s name. Seth’s head swiveled to me like a magnet. Locked on my brother, I almost bumped into Colter, juking around him at the last second and jogging the last few paces to meet Seth.

I swapped him the short sword, then turned on my heel to bring Seth’s broadsword back to the table, mind narrowing on the task ahead instead of the raging monstrosity at my back.

“Forger!”

I skidded to a stop, searching for the owner of the voice. An ardent with a knife-sharp jaw and dark hair pulled back into a small bun was backing clear of the dragon and searching over his shoulder. When our eyes locked, he tossed his halberd across the battlefield at me like it was a stick. Even with half its long shaft missing, it could knock me on my ass, so I dodged and let it thud to the ground. I grabbed the splintered end, its steel core peeking out from the bone casing, and dragged the rest behind me.

Colter nearly bumped into me this time, pacing like a stalking wolf, his eyes locked on the dragon’s every move, seeking an opening.

I dropped Seth’s sword on the workstation and the halberd at my feet. Already, the blood was drying on the remnants of the sword, and the halberd’s spear-tipped axe looked even worse off. I looked along the workstations, but there wasn’t a single hand free. I knew I’d be kept busy in a live rift, but the number of broken weapons was getting out of hand. That dragon’s armor was even tougher than it looked.

Switching from runner to forger—authorization be damned—I slung my pack off my shoulder, dug out my pitiful supply of solvent and poured it over Seth’s weapon, shaking the last drops out. As I started scrubbing, the well-used muscles in my upper back and right arm firing up, I searched again for a free raden user to help get both these weapons back quickly. The bushy-browed head forger was bent over another sword, hands and whetstone glowing with raden. A few others were repairing cracks and digging around in the spare parts pile, another was making a racket with a hammer. Damn. I really needed—

“Taj!”

He was standing by the supplies, fingers hovering over the bonding agent bottles but wide eyes staring off at the battle. His tawny skin had an ashen cast, and he turned to me as if underwater.

“Taj, grab that bonding agent. I need your help.”

His hand curled around the bottle, but an ear-splitting roar made his head twitch back around like a startled rabbit, and his body locked up.

“Taj!” I snapped in my best impression of Seth. “I need you. Now.”

That got his feet moving, and when he reached me, I stared hard into his face, keeping his focus on me. “I’ve got a broadsword with a snapped blade and halberd in need of a new shaft. The point needs sharpening, too. And they both need cleaning. Can you start on the halberd?” I kicked it with my foot, drawing his gaze. “I’m going to check the spare parts.”

I handed him the abrasive sponge and ran to scour the supplies. I found a spare shaft no problem, but a broken blade was another issue. Mind screaming at me to hurry the whole time, I passed over a few badly damaged dagger blades, completely avoided the raw, unformed bone, and landed on a Norse-style spearhead, at least seven inches long. It was a tad slim, but it would restore the original length of Seth’s sword. I headed back with it, then rattled off my thoughts to Taj, who’d already cleaned both weapons.

When I got to the part about Seth’s sword, Taj cut through my explanation with a curt, “Got it,” and snatched the spearhead out of my hand. He started gliding the nozzle of the bonding agent bottle on the two pieces, preparing to press them together.

“No,” I cut in, nudging the bottle aside and blocking his view of his work with an outstretched arm. “That will work on the halberd’s handle no problem, but that fusion won’t hold the broadsword. The break is at a stress point, and the spearhead is half a centimeter narrower. It’ll just snap right off again.”

His forehead wrinkled, but his hands moved to the shaft pieces. “So why even grab it?” The golden tones of the raden he infused into the bonded halbert shaft gave him back some of his color, but I thought I saw a tremor in his fingers.

“Just trust me. I’ve got an idea. You start shaving down the ends of both pieces, get them as even as you can.”

Running at top speed, I charged back toward the body of the dead ardent whose short sword I’d taken. The closer I got to the battle, the harder my heart pounded and the more difficult it was to tear my eyes from the gore and destruction wrought by the dragon’s every move.

The raden vents in its body made every strike hit hard and swift as a cannon. One slash, and a claw drove up through an ardent’s jaw and poked out of his skull. One stomp of its hind foot and a spine snapped.

Putting one foot in front of the other became an internal wrestling match, but I reached the cold corpse and crouched beside him. Careful not to look too closely at his face, I unbuckled his leather vambrace and slid it off in one swift tug, but the arm nearly came off with it. Tamping down nausea, I looked at the clean, deep tear through the shoulder. His armor and his raden had both failed to protect him.

What the hell am I doing out here?

I gritted my teeth and shoved the thought away. Everyone else had already questioned my ability to be out here enough. I wasn’t going to start questioning myself, not after all the thought I’d put into this. I needed to be here. I could do this.

Cries and roars echoed in my ears, but I blocked them out, diverting to grab a cast iron bowl and another chemical agent from the supplies before returning to Taj. The halberd stood upright, braced against the table, and he was standing back to assess his work on the ends of the spearhead and blade.

I shoved the vambrace at Taj. “Cut me a strip, please.”

He squinted at me, but used his raden to help carve through the vambrace in one clean slice of his utility knife. I put the strip in the bowl, poured the chemical agent on the parabeast leather, and watched it break apart the sinuous bonds.

“What good is that going to do?” Taj asked as it started to wrinkle, then crack into smaller, curled pieces.

I restrained a frustrated scoff at the back of my throat. Seth didn’t have time for this, out there using a blade with half the reach of his usual. I took out my welding torch and gave Taj the clipped version as I secured my goggles over my eyes, then dipped the blue flame into the bowl. “This is venator hide. It turns to a liquid at just a little over two thousand degrees, but when it starts to re-solidify, it’ll make the bond stronger.”

Cutting off the torch, I studied the viscous liquid within the bowl and nodded my satisfaction. “Add the bonding agent, quick.”

Taj poured in a capful, and I mixed it, then smeared it on the blade pieces.

Gloved hands protecting me from the edges, I pressed them together, then looked up at Taj. “Needs a final raden fusion.”

He obliged, sealing the two pieces together. When the glow faded, there was no trace of a line in the blade, but the mismatched size gave it a tiny serration on either side. I propped the flat of the blade on my shoulder to lessen the strain while dragging the halberd and headed out to return the weapons.

My eyes bounced over the battle, searching for my brother in the bright blur of bodies and keeping one eye on the dragon at all times. Seth spotted me first, calling my name as his boots pounded toward me. I shifted course, winding around shrubbery, trying to keep something between myself and the carnage—like these twigs would help. We met on a patch of earth scarred by the dragon’s claws, and the knot in my stomach tightened, looking down at my foot beside a divot nearly as thick as my leg. Seth took the sword and twisted his wrist, inspecting. He made a low sound of satisfied acknowledgement in his throat, handed off the blood-coated short sword, and ran off.

I hefted the halberd in both hands and searched the running forms for the dark bun of the ardent it belonged to.

A bright streak of raden illuminated him as he wrenched on a spear that had become embedded in the dragon’s hardened skin, at the point where the front leg met the chest. He twisted it a quarter turn and threw his body weight against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

I didn’t know his name to draw his attention, but when he abandoned the weapon, he turned toward the boneforger station and noted me as I lifted the heavy halberd a foot higher.

He tilted into a full-on charge, arms pumping at his sides, and I jogged the last few spaces I deemed safe. I failed to notice the dragon’s bright eyes tracking him until I heard the whoosh of its vents.

My eyes bugged, an insufficient warning clogging at the base of my throat. I tried to point and nearly dropped the halberd. The ardent’s hand shot out and caught it as it swayed forward. He ripped the weapon from my hand and spun toward the dragon, bracing the shaft in the ground. The vents belched steam, and I twisted to flee so fast that I ripped the glue seal on my wounded calf. Violent agony tore up my leg, breaking through the wall of adrenaline that had let me ignore the twinges, but I gritted my teeth and ran for my life.

A shadow raced over the ground toward me, and I dove out of its shade, skidding on my stomach through gritty soil that scratched at my exposed neck and flew into my mouth.

The dragon let out a shriek that stabbed my eardrums, and I rolled to see the dark-haired ardent holding his ground with knees bent, his halberd stabbing the armor of the dragon’s belly. The dragon’s one working wing vent was blowing golden steam out in front of it, slowing its oncoming charge and helping it rear on its back legs. The ardent yanked up on the halberd, but the spear tip point broke off. The dragon’s jaws snapped down toward him. He tried to dodge, but the dragon dug its claws into his back to pin him while its teeth clamped around his shoulders and pulled. Blood sprayed in hot rain that hit my cheeks and arms as the ardent’s upper body tumbled over my head.

I swiped at the blood on my face with hands that didn’t feel like mine. My fingertips tingled as if waking from deep sleep, and I struggled to draw more than shallow breaths. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew I was going into shock, but then the dragon’s eyes met mine.

I scrambled to my feet, dragging my hurt leg behind me as I hobbled for the boneforger station, my only thought to run. The ardent assigned to guard the auxiliaries rippled amber-gold light down his arms and fired balls of pure raden out of his palms, trying to drive the dragon off.

“Here, here,” called one of the medics, his hood falling down as he waved me forward and came around the station to meet me. “Let me—”

The dragon’s tail obliterated half the boneforger station as it turned a circle toward its cavernous den. The dangling tip swung independent of the base, wreaking extra havoc and dripping blood over everything. The medic dove, throwing his hands over his head as he landed on his belly. Twisted tables, smashed supplies, and screaming people went flying, but many still might’ve been alright had the vents not opened. Searing steam melted clothes and skin.

I crouched, hands over ears, as the dragon shot by on my right with a whoosh like a furnace, then ran the rest of the way to the medic, who’d escaped the worst of it and was rushing to aid others. Though I wasn’t exactly steady, I helped him support the head boneforger, keeping his weight off a horribly twisted broken ankle. Blistering burns ran along the arm I draped over my shoulder, and the boneforger hissed through his teeth as we shambled to a semi-fortified position behind a large boulder further back in the denser trees where many other medics were bringing patients.

I crashed onto my butt behind the rock, and the medic dropped his kit nearby. As he set to splinting the head boneforger’s ankle and smearing salve over the burns, I peeked around our hiding place. The ardent that had tried to save the workstations was one of many crumpled silhouettes in the soil.

The dragon had returned to guard the hole of the resin-lined cavern, thrashing about like a cornered wildcat. Fintan used the blunt end of his glaive like a vaulting pole, leaped high, and tucked into a gainer that let him rake his weapon’s wicked, five-inch tip across the dragon’s side, carving another gash through the damaged left wing vent. His raden aura rapidly shifted from his arms to his legs as he landed and sprinted right, aiming, I hoped, to similarly damage the right side, but the dragon swept his legs with its foreclaws and sent him rolling. Golden patches of raden lit up across his body, protecting his shoulder, head, and knees at the moment of impact.

The dragon’s neck stretched out to end him, but a crackling report rang out, and a streak of sizzling yellow penetrated the beast’s aura and embedded in the hardened skin of its face, making it jerk back and shake its head. Another crack, and a second shard gun bullet created a golden, fissuring wound. The dragon merely thickened its armor into a steely, shining plate along its cheek, resealing the crack, but Fintan had run clear. Gavin, one arm curled around his ribs, holstered his gun and returned the casual salute his brother shot him.

A sharp pinch in my calf made me jump a foot.

“Easy, just an anesthetic,” said the medic, sealing the used needle away.

I relaxed with a sigh of relief as warmth bloomed from the point of the shot and siphoned away the pain. When the medic dug a glorified sewing needle into my exposed flesh, I didn’t feel a thing, not even when he pulled the first weaver-wasp-thread stitch tight.

My stomach, however, rolled over, and I quickly looked away from the bloody work and spotted Colter again.

What was he still doing lingering between the auxiliary stations and the thick of the fight? Had he even moved?

His gleaming boneplate armor appeared untouched, his blond hair free of grit or sweat. He held one pale, pure-parabone spear ready in one hand, another strapped to his back, but he made no moves to approach the dragon. The rest of the ardents were streaks of lightning, racing around the beast for openings, swinging and throwing weapons, most of which glanced off the beast’s armor-like skin or became trapped in its surface. Even as I watched, the dragon’s rocky flesh seemed to double in thickness, growing crests and jutting spikes to keep the weapons further at bay.

“Priscilla, to me! We’ll hold its attention!” Rhea thundered, taking charge as Colter just watched. “Leon, sweep it!”

Colter’s team sprang into action, but he stayed put, eyes bouncing around the battlefield as he cocked his spear over his right shoulder, waiting. Rhea and Priscilla rushed in from the right, but Priscilla reached it first, raden rippling around her legs. As the dragon tried to swipe her, she cut a hard turn and raced parallel to its side, blades slashing and stabbing in quick, short blows. Not once did her daggers bounce, instead sliding cleanly through the rocky armor as if she knew precisely where to strike.

The dragon roared, head whipping around on its long neck toward the source of the cat-claw scratches down its body, only to meet the blade of Rhea’s axe. She smashed one raden-enveloped axe across its injured jaw like a cudgel, breaking more teeth, then brought the other, this one only glowing with a faint aura, down on the beast’s crested skull. The blade sank a couple of inches before hitching in the armor. The dragon reeled back, yanking her weapon out of Rhea’s hand.

The beast never saw Leon as he charged up his raden to a dazzling, crackling gold and pushed it down his massive hammer. In one powerful, sweeping blow, he crushed the dragon’s leg joint. The dragon fell forward, and the tectonic vibrations of the impact raced up my arm. The ardents closest toppled or were sent flying as its body skidded over the earth, digging a ditch.

“Nina, go, go!” Colter cried, shoving an ardent with a long red braid ahead of him as he charged in. He snapped his fingers at another bearded ardent who instantly got moving when he said, “Braden, to us!”

The dragon’s head was five times the size of Nina, forcing her to step on its jaw as a foothold to launch her and her dual blades toward the dragon’s glowing eye. She hovered suspended in mid-air for one glorious moment, dual blades raised over her head, points perfectly aimed for a devastating downward thrust. Behind her silhouette, I saw the thick armor crumble off the wing vents as they began to shift, one end sealing closed so the other could open. A jet of hot golden steam hit Nina full force and ignited her braid.

Her blistering body was blasted sideways as the dragon skidded backward a couple feet before getting its other three legs beneath it.

Nina hit the ground like a ragdoll, limbs flopping as she rolled. Colter jumped over her, spear still poised but unused, staring down the furious dragon as Braden reached him and matched his pace, running parallel. The dragon lunged, and Colter’s heels dug in, pulling him up short. Braden tried to backpedal, and Colter’s free hand shot out as if to steady him but shoved his shoulder instead. Braden stumbled, and the dragon used a vent in its neck to track him at the last second, crushing him in mangling jaws. My shocked cry was swallowed up in the din as Colter pounced.

Between one flickering instant of motion and the next, a deep gash appeared clean through the dragon’s hide. The wound, opening like the belly of a flayed fish, gushed blood.

As the beast’s answering roar tore through my head, though, I found myself squinting in confusion. My eyes had been following the thrust of Colter’s spear, not into the dragon’s chest but in a sure, precise strike to the neck that slipped between the cracks in its earthen armor. He buried half the shaft inside the throat with a cry of fury and triumph.

The dragon reared back, yanking Colter off his feet as its neck armor rippled, from rock plates, to shifting scales, to a coating of what looked like molten raden that tried to push out the weapon. Colter used the moment to pull his spear free and drop safely to the ground. The dragon staggered, blood hemorrhaging from the wound and spewing from its mouth, pooling around its teeth. Its back slammed against the cavern entrance, shattering the resin spikes into a fine powder that twinkled as it coated the dragon’s sagging body.

I blinked several times. What did I miss? There aren’t any other ardents close enough to have made that wound in its chest.

Colter had to jump back as the dragon’s giant head fell and bounced off the soil, the shining eyes closing.

I pushed to my feet in a daze, thanking the medic only to realize he was no longer beside me. My stitched leg firmly beneath me, I drifted across the blood-soaked ground, unable to tear my eyes away from that devastating wound in the dragon’s chest. I gravitated toward Seth on instinct, recognizing his pin-straight posture and severe profile even in my periphery.

Weaving through the other ardents making their way toward the corpse, I approached from behind, murmuring, “Seth… did you see what happened to Braden?” Had I really seen what I thought I saw? Did Colter actually push him, or was it an accident? It had to be… but it had looked pretty damn intentional.

Colter was on other people’s minds, too. I heard someone whisper, “How did Colter do that last strike combo? I only saw him hit the neck.”

This close, just twenty yards from those formidable, outstretched claws, I could see the barest rise and fall in the dragon’s chest. Blood pumped from the wound in stuttering beats of a dying heart.

Seth twisted toward me. “Torrin.” His brow arched in a question, but a rare warmth underlaid his tone. “You…” His glowing eyes narrowed, focus snapping toward the dragon as a high whine, like a firework’s upward climb, cut over him.

Confusion compressed my features. “What the—”

Blinding light shone from the dragon’s dozens of vents, and golden cracks spiderwebbed through the remaining armor shell. I threw up an arm to shield my eyes with a surprised cry that I couldn’t hear over the ear-piercing squeal coming from the dragon.

Seth crashed into me, encircling arms pressing me against his chest.

Golden light swallowed the world, searing my retinas even through closed lids. A horrendous boom shook my bones, and we were flying.

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