Chapter Fourteen

Horde

Raz’zor the Unbroken

Top of the Northern Voloi Mountain Range, north of Voloi

Sixteen days after Xishlon

Raz’zor is bowed down, his head lowered to the purple-veined, isolated cavern at the top of the Voloi Mountain Range, Ariel Haven beside him. His battle-scarred wings are fanned out in supplication, as he and Ariel wait for Naga the Unbroken’s answer to their Erthia-shattering request. Only the chill wind breaks the silence as Raz’zor holds his position, stridently ignoring the wounds the Mages lashed across his scaled hide when they briefly captured him along with Or’myr and his horde mate, Elloren.

Before Lukas Grey blew the top off the Vo Mountain Range.

Now, Naga the Glorious Unbroken One, Liberator of Dragon’kin, stands before him and Ariel in all her gleaming, onyx glory. Naga’s horde of sixteen unbroken Western Wyverns encircle them, the Wyverns’ black scales gleaming like opals even in the East’s Shadowed light, their eyes a uniform, golden blaze.

“You ask much, unbroken ones,”

Naga hisses in the Wyvern tongue before drawing her head back, two tendrils of smoke rising from her nostrils.

The horde’s combined heat sizzles through the air, and Raz’zor’s vermillion fire leaps with yearning to be bonded to it. But still, a hot tension remains. Because as much as he yearns to be part of Naga’s horde, he can’t abandon his chosen horde mates. His bonded ones.

Elloren and Yvan.

Raz’zor remembers how hastily he had to horde-bond to Yvan to give the Icaral the power to track Elloren through that bond. Raz’zor remained behind, to surrender himself to Naga, heal from his wounds, and, in a leap of ferocious faith, work to gain the trust of this powerful horde in the hope of bringing them to his small horde’s side.

That quest has proven to be prescient.

Raz’zor was hit by the change in Elloren just after dawn—hit by the sudden greening of her fire, a line of verdant flame shooting straight through their vermillion fire connection as she was blasted free of Vogel’s corruption by a Tree of Power, a vision of the Great Tree flashing through his fire.

“You ask us to horde to the entire Prophecy?”

Naga hisses, her eyes like two suns. “Elloren Gardner has been overtaken. She is Vogel’s Black Witch . . .”

“She does not belong to him!”

Ariel snarls, the golden fire in her eyes sparking with a force to match Raz’zor’s own flame, the raven kindred on her shoulder ruffling its feathers.

“My horde sistren is no longer the Black Witch of her vile people,”

Raz’zor growls with blistering vehemence. “She has risen from the rooted ground as the Dryad Witch!”

The fire in Naga’s eyes intensifies, and Raz’zor’s internal fire gutters, his whole world suspended in the radiating heat of Naga’s volcanic internal flame.

“Then come forward, unbroken one,”

Naga hisses to Raz’zor, her eyes narrowing to molten slits. “Come forward, and I will read your fire.”

Raz’zor’s internal fire rears, vermillion-hot. His pulse a powerful hammer, he approaches the Great Unbroken One. Stilling before her, he tilts his horned head, exposing the side of his long neck to Naga the Unbroken.

Naga closes in on Raz’zor, opens her jaws and clamps them down around the base of Raz’zor’s neck.

Raz’zor stiffens as the tips of her sharp teeth press in, then puncture.

An oceanic roar of golden fire races through Raz’zor. He shudders from the force of it, Naga’s glorious heat singeing through his every vein. Both of them still as Naga’s fire whips around Raz’zor’s power and she reads his vermillion, green, gold, and purple fire—reads the essence of Yvan the Unbroken and the Dryad Witch in it. Then ripples her fire along Raz’zor’s slender line of purple flame, gifted to him by his runic liberator, Or’myr Syll’vir—the Sorcerer of Stones.

Raz’zor waits, breath suspended, as Naga’s fire whips outward toward her entire horde, her teeth still lightly piercing his hide. He can feel the heated conversation happening through their horded fire, the flaring of flame from different horde-points leaping toward her, including Ariel’s sparking-hot advocacy for Elloren, followed by the darting connection of Naga’s answering flame.

Stillness descends once more, tension high as Raz’zor waits. And waits.

Naga’s jaw suddenly clamps down harder, her teeth fully impaling.

Raz’zor inhales as Naga’s golden fire bolts into him, his vision flashing to molten gold as the fire of the entire horde blazes through his core. Flame breaks out all over his ivory scales—world-melting, glorious flame, his heart expanding to the point that he fears he may be undone by joy as Naga and the horde not only accept him, but send their horde link out toward his bite-bonded Witch and Icaral. All of them soon to be bonded as horde. Naga’s horde.

Naga’s mouth unclenches, and Raz’zor shivers as the flame on his scales is drawn into his core of fire. He can feel Naga’s horde mark burning at the base of his neck, a twin to the bright, glowing gold mark on Ariel, the raying fire mark like a glorious, longed-for star. He can sense the invisible, reverberating line of hot aura fire pulsing out to Elloren and Yvan, ready to fuse them to Naga’s powerful horde once it spans the great distance to reach them.

Overcome by a mingling of hot emotion and pride, Raz’zor drops to the stony ground, wings splayed out before the entire horde, as he sends out his powerful vow.

Fealty.

The strength of the entire horde flares, their combined fiery alliance rolling through him, a euphoric burn tightening the long column of Raz’zor’s throat.

Rise, free dragon, Naga sends into his mind, her eyes ablaze with golden Wyvernfire. Rise like the strong Wyvern’kin shifter you are. Unfettered.

Confusion over the word shifter darts through Raz’zor’s joy as he remains prostrate before Naga the Unbroken. I cannot shift to human, he sends out to her and his entire horde, thrilling to their newly minted mind connection even as his confusion churns. We are, all of us, locked in dragon form through cruel magicks set down on Western Wyvern’kin during the last Realm War. None of us full Wyvern’kin. None of us true shifters.

Naga smiles, affectionate amusement shivering through her flame. Look to me, brave one, she charges, and Raz’zor does, catching the sly gleam in her searing eyes. She lifts her chin, her heat rising, all amusement whisking away. The Wyverns of the East have broken our bonds. Behold our reclaimed power.

Naga the Unbroken’s whole form contracts, and Raz’zor’s eyes widen as the midnight scales of her head morph into onyx skin, her large dragon form constricting into a tall, muscular human frame. Her lips full and gilded. Her vertically slit pupils set in fiery irises, and her short hair tightly curled and edged with fiery gold. Her scaled hide has turned to scaled armor, their horde’s golden starmark fire-branded on her side where the Mage M used to be. One of her onyx ears is sharply pointed, her other ear ripped off by the vile Mage Damion Bane. Her horns a glorious, gleaming obsidian.

Naga the Unbroken fans out her wings then blasts a shock wave mind-charge to their unified horde that sends heat scorching through Raz’zor’s spine. The horde mates surrounding them suddenly shift to onyx-hued human form as well, the fire-star horde mark emblazoned at the base of their necks. Raz’zor’s multihued fire sings through his veins with ravening elation, as he’s overcome by the sense of his full power unfurling.

“Shift, Raz’zor the Unbroken,”

Naga the Unbroken hisses, her voice serpentine and triumphant. “Claim power over both your dragon form and your human Lazra’xor state.”

Raz’zor grits his sharp teeth and draws in the static, shifter energy coursing through his spine. His limbs tighten, and his pale body contracts with bone-aching force, his wings splaying stiffly out . . . and he finds himself suddenly on his hands and knees.

In the form of a man.

Stunned, Raz’zor rises with serpentine smoothness, thrilling to this new way of consolidating his vermillion flame in such a compact form. He can feel the heightened fire burning in his eyes, the tight sting of his horns against an unfamiliar scalp, strands of short, silken hair tousled around his temples, the nape of his neck.

Raz’zor focuses in on Yvan’s and Elloren’s green and golden flame connections to him, their fire intermingled with his, spitting through his core. His pull to them directional.

Our horde’kin are northwest, Raz’zor thinks out to his new beloved sistren and brethren.

Naga, Ariel, and the entire horde nod in affirmation, horded Wyvern’kin able to track the location of every horde’kin. All of them separate, yet part of a unified whole.

Naga sweeps her golden eyes over her unbroken ones before swiftly shifting back to full dragon form. She breathes a line of fire through her nostrils, her expression turning raptorial.

We fly, free Wyverns, she sends out to them. We will journey to the Northern Forest. To find Elloren the Unbroken and Yvan Guryev, our Icaral’khin. And to battle Vogel and his Shadow horde alongside them.

A collective ferocity rises in the air, the horde’s linked fire mounting in potency, and Raz’zor thrills to it as they all move to the cavern’s large mouth and shift to dragon form once more, save for his Icaral horde mate, Ariel the Unbroken.

A slice of emotional pain singes through Ariel’s fire and Raz’zor’s gaze snaps to hers, catching her feral look of frustration to be so firmly anchored in human form. An unbearable yearning is spearing through her fire that Raz’zor understands on an intimate level. The yearning to be fully dragon.

His heart aching for her, Raz’zor joins Naga and their entire, gathered horde as they send out a hot rush of bolstering fire to Ariel. Sparks light all over Ariel’s wings, and she shudders as the yearning in her fire whips through them all with tortuous force.

Someday, unbroken one, Naga sends out to Ariel. Someday, you will rise in full dragon form. Your true form. Have faith, fierce one.

Ariel holds Naga’s flaming stare for one tortured moment, but then her fire surges, whipping through the horde’s. She flicks her sparking wings defiantly out to their full span and lets loose a teeth-baring growl. Raz’zor’s own growl bursts forth as the entire horde roars out their approval through the horde bond in sound and in flame. A unified army of fangs and claws, muscle and fire. Shadow-burning fire.

Naga roars out a battle cry and throws down her wings, and they take to the sky as one, Ariel’s raven soaring beside her, the mountaintop air deliciously cold against Raz’zor’s fire-hot wings. They soar over the huge Vo River, then north over grayed Vo Forest, their horde taking on a V formation, Naga the Unbroken in the lead. Ariel and Raz’zor exchange a fiery look of alliance, and they all blast through the unnaturally bunched gray clouds and spear forward like huge arrows toward the Vo Forest hiding place of Elloren’s allies, a location Raz’zor is aware of through his connection to Or’myr’s line of purple fire.

We’re coming, Dryad Witch, Raz’zor vows as their horde fans their wings out as one, their combined fire rapidly heating to a churning inferno filled with one unified will.

To save the Dryad Witch and the Icaral of Prophecy before Vogel can take hold of them.

And to burn the Magedom to ash.