Chapter 31

Bailey

My ears rang as the artillery fired rounds over us. Brody and I stood ready, nearly fifty feet in front of the human soldiers behind us. It was nerve-wracking watching the horde of Kandoran steadily get closer. We would be the first to greet them on the ground.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the Patriot missiles began striking dragons in the sky in explosions that cracked the air. They killed their target and injured those near it. The enemy continued to fly closer despite the assault on them and their broken ranks as the sun’s fading rays left us. Only a minute or two remained before it would be fully dark, but we needed that.

The booming sounds stopped, and I heard the commander call for the artillery to pull back. It would have been nice if we could have let them fire from behind the shield, but we’d tried small magical domes before to protect them and found that the spells didn’t respond well to explosive rounds flying through them. No one knew why.

As the dragons approached, I could finally make out the flap of their wings—still a few miles away. The shifters rose behind us, stirring the air as they lifted. They hovered at the rear, ready and waiting for their turn.

I glanced back and caught sight of Aidan. He was so much larger than the others that it was shocking, and I still didn’t know what to think of his huge size. While part of me was concerned that he’d amassed a stunning amount of power since becoming a pendragon, the other part was grateful. He was almost as large as an average pure dragon now, which would give him an edge in battle.

We were fighting a war where we were severely outnumbered. I had no idea how the Kandoran gathered such a massive force, even with the large territory they held, but I’d heard they’d been conquering territory and growing their numbers for decades.

The minutes ticked by, and the wing beats sounded louder as full darkness fell. Past the dragon horde, I could see stars twinkling in the sky. My heart thundered in my chest. Never before had I entered a battle where the odds of winning were so low, and it could take weeks, if not months, to succeed if we did. I had excellent stamina as a slayer, but fighting hours every night would push my limits. Never mind the losses. The fields were going to be littered with bodies from both sides, and I didn’t want to think about who might not make it. My heart ached with the thought.

The Kandoran finally reached close enough that I could make out the details of their forms from the moonlight glistening off their green scales. They flew tightly together, with the space between each dragon being no more than ten to fifteen feet. There were so many that all the weapons launched at them from before only put a slight dent in their numbers, and their eyes glowed deadly red.

I gripped the hilt of my sword, trying to tamp down my nervousness.

“Lights!” the commander shouted from somewhere in the rear.

A moment later, the stadium lights, spotlights, and searchlights we’d positioned all across the front line switched on and shot their bright beams directly at the Kandoran’s faces. The dragons flared their wings and reared up, screeching from the blinding rays. Those behind the front ranks crashed into the ones in the lead, some plunging to the earth as they tried to untangle themselves.

In the next moment, machine gun fire erupted from where we’d mounted the weapons on top of Humvees, buildings, and anywhere else that had a higher vantage point. They zipped through the air as they sped over our heads. The bullets tore into the Kandoran, ripping their wings and puncturing their soft bellies. Those that got deep enough would poison them.

The sorcerersspaced a couple of hundred feet apart along our section, began firing their offensive magic into the air. They filled the gaps where the machine gun fire didn’t reach. Morgan was closest to me, rapidly shooting his electric globes at the Kandoran and knocking them down one after another. Another coalition sorcerer wielded a laser beam that cut through the enemies' bodies like a hot knife through butter, slicing them into pieces. They were still too blind to avoid being hit. I was deeply thankful to whoever thought of using the bright lights and those who worked tirelessly to connect them to the power grid.

As I forced myself to hold still, dozens of bodies across the enemy line crumpled to the ground. There were likely many more, but I could only see so far in the dark. Between the Taugud’s machine guns and the coalition’s, we had nearly a hundred stationed along the border, and they had no mercy for our enemy. Most of the Kandoran in the front two or three ranks were knocked down in minutes.

I itched to run toward the fallen bodies, but I had to wait. If I went out now, one of them could fall on me, and I’d end up seriously injured during the first hour of the war. That would be annoying. I had to wait until the gunners finished their ammo allotment for the night since we had to pace our usage, considering this was only the first of many waves.

It didn’t take long, maybe five or six minutes, but it must have felt much longer to our opposing side. They still couldn’t move forward to attack with the bright lights, and quite a few morecollided with each other in their attempts to back away. As we’d hoped, the infected dragons didn’t adjust to it well, and it brought their destruction.

Silence finally fell, and then a horn blew. That was the cue for everyone else who’d been waiting to charge forward and attack. It was effective since it made hearing from a long distance easier.

I took off running, already eying a pair of fallen dragons that stirred.

“Take that one,” I said to Brody, pointing to the one on the right.

I targeted the one on the left, only ten feet from his. Over my head, the shifters surged ahead of us as they moved to attack the remaining Kandoran in the sky. Their orders were for them to go farther to avoid dropping dragons on those of us below. We’d keep inching forward for as long as possible before the battle turned into the inevitable chaos where everyone simply fought to survive.

Meanwhile, half the human soldiers joined us to finish thefallen dragons. The rest stayed back to hold their ground or work to lower the lights and cover them with camrium cloth. That trick wouldn’t work again for a while, but hopefully, we’d get to do it again a few times. It had worked even better than expected to stun the Kandoran.

I fell upon the dragon I’d chosen. Its wings were shredded from gunfire, and one of its eyes had been hit. The creature barely breathed. I could only guess the bullet went through into its brain, and it was slowly dying. Of course, I couldn’t take the chance it might recover. Perhaps the poison had merely kept it down for the moment.

Resting my left boot on its side, I thrust my blade into its body. I sank it deep enough to pierce the heart. The faint gleam in its good eye faded, and the beast let out a final breath.

I looked over to my right. Brody was also pulling a sword from his dragon, having finished it. At least our first kills were easy, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. He pointed at another dragon fifty feet away.

“Let’s go,” I said, running in that direction.

For the next hour, we moved methodically over the battlefield and took out every Kandoran we could find. Many of the early ones were too injured and stunned to put up much of a fight, but eventually, we reached some that didn’t make it easy. They had either recovered from their initial injuries, or the shifters above had only wounded their wings, so they could still attack but not fly.

Brody and I paused to drink some water from our canteens and wipe the sweat from our faces. Neither of us had sustained severe injuries, only cuts and bruises. I ran my gaze across the sky, noting we’d knocked down quite a few of the Kandoran, so the shifters weren’t as outnumbered as before.

Aidan was up there, easy to find, ripping through the enemy like they were paper with elongated claws that met little resistance. Most were dead before they hit the ground. I was stunned by how easily he battled with his new strength and powers.

“Check that out,” Brody said, pointing behind me.

I turned to watch as one of the green dragons made it to the place where the shield should be located. There was no way to see the shimmer from so far away in the darkness. The Kandoran struck headfirst into it, and electric sizzles ran over the beast’s body. A moment later, it fell to the ground in a heap. I couldn’t tell if it was dead, but soldiers were stationed back there to finish any enemies who made it that far. They would handle it if it wasn’t.

“Incoming!” someone screamed.

I spun around and looked to the west. All this time, I’d wondered when the human Kandoran army would arrive. The last intelligence I’d heard was that they’d been steadily marching inour direction but farther back than the dragons.

Now they were here—thousands of them running straight at us with knives and swords. I rushed over to Brody and stopped at his side as he gaped at the incoming flood of people. We’d made a point of staying within a mile of our original front line. On this first day, we couldn’t go any farther. Right now, we were close to it, though.

“You ready?” I asked, lifting my sword.

He worked his jaw. “Not really. I prefer fighting dragons.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We took a knee and waited for the infected humans to reach a line of small bike reflectors stuck in the ground that could only be seen from our side. The first of the humans got within ten feet of them as they ran.

“Here we go,” I said, bracing myself.

Two seconds later, explosions ripped through the air, and bodies went flying. Those who didn’t die right away let out unholy screams as bits of them were torn apart. Between the antipersonnel mines from the coalition and the explosives we’d confiscated from the Sooner Mall weeks ago, we had rigged little surprises for the Kandoran army’s first night. All along the line, as far as I could see, they hit our traps. Blasts of fire lit the otherwise dark field. I couldn’t say how many were caught in them, but it thinned the herd. The more, the better.

They kept coming, though. The first ones ran close enough for us to see their faces, and I knew our reprieve had ended. Their clothes were haggard, their skin pale, and their eyes were rimmed in red. These people were much farther gone than the infected people we’d faced in town.

Back to back, we began hacking and slashing away.