Chapter Five

Golden Star

Elloren

Northern Forest

Eighteen days after Xishlon

Raz’zor’s blaze of warning sears across my eyes, his red, gold, and purple flame briefly cutting Yvan, the Dryads, and the giant ravens surrounding me from my vision once more.

“Can your warding of the Northern Forest stand against a military attack?”

I demand of the Dryads.

“Our Forest is encircled by both Dryadin and primordial Varg’uuth’nile shielding,”

Sylvan details, his gaze boring into me. “Shielded aboveground and below. The warding emits two invisible dome-shields that protect both root and canopy of our entire Northern Forest.”

Yvan gives him a piercing look, the alarm blazing through our bond unassuaged. “Can your wards hold back a combined attack from multiple Eastern Realm armies,”

he presses, “including Vogel’s Shadow forces?”

“Yes, Dryad’khin,”

Sylvan answers, adamant. “Our Forest’s warding held fast during all of Erthia’s wars and every last attempt to break through it.”

“How fast is what you sense approaching?”

Yulan asks Yvan and me, her lichen-lashed gaze fraught with tension, her heron kindred agitatedly flexing its fog-hued wings.

“I’m not sure,”

Yvan answers. His violet eyes meet mine, a stronger line of heat firing through our bond. “I’m going to try to source Raz’zor’s fire from a higher vantage point. I might be able to gauge how far away he is.”

I nod, and he launches himself at III’s wall of black trunk and effortlessly scales the majestic Tree. A shiver courses through me as I take in his powerful grace, the dark Wyvern claws that have formed on his fingertips. I’m suddenly filled with the urge to leap onto III and follow. III’s encircling power tugs on my rootlines, and my need to ascend with Yvan doubles in potency, every one of III’s deep-green leaves emitting an almost magnetic pull.

Urging me up.

A sense of my entire Forest taking up III’s call and tugging on my rootlines overtakes me. Even the mosses at my feet unfurl, as if seeking to spring me upward.

I leap toward III on faith and throw my hands onto the Great Tree’s wall of trunk only to be swamped by a flood of stunned elation when my nails sharpen and lock into III’s richly crenelated bark. A wave of strength courses through my body, and I find myself gracefully hauling myself up into an assured climb, my Dryad limbs stronger than they’ve ever been before.

Built for climbing trees.

Joy expands in my chest, and I rapidly scale branch after branch, my dark purple, moon-decorated Xishlon tunic and pants allowing freedom of movement. Yvan turns, his eyes widening as he finds me rapidly closing the distance between us. An impassioned tension fires through our bond before he resumes climbing, his wings pulled in tight.

I match his pace, emboldened by a sense of the entire Forest’s magic flowing through my lines, my Northern Forest’s power merging so intimately with my rootlines, it’s hard to tell where my power stops and my Forest’s begins.

Climbing at breakneck speed, Yvan and I soon reach III’s uppermost canopy of branches and hoist ourselves through it.

Sunlight hits my skin full on, my heart warming with euphoria, Yvan and I poised side by side within the spearing bifurcation of III’s highest, canopy-lancing branch.

Awestruck, I survey the enormity of the Northern Forest, leagues and leagues of green spread out all around us, a verdant living and breathing miracle with vivid touches of early autumn’s coloration painted throughout its breathtakingly beautiful expanse.

My kindred raven, Errilith, bursts from the Forest’s canopy along with the rest of my Errilor flock and Yulan’s heron. A wave of Errilith’s affection ripples through my lines as my Errilor Ravens briefly pulse their powerful Dark aura over the world and they soar through a perfect blue sky, a stiff crosscurrent buffeting Yvan and me. As III’s branches sway, Yvan extends his wings for balance while I move in sync with III, as if caught up in a loving dance.

A falcon darts past, and I follow its southern trajectory, my giant ravens and Yulan’s heron fanning out over the Forest, the green rise of the Caledonian Mountains edging the southern horizon.

“Can you sense Raz’zor?”

I ask Yvan.

“I’ve lost the connection,”

he replies, his face tensed in concentration, his gaze turned eastward.

A rose-and-brown-speckled butterfly lights on my arm, a prickle of the small creature’s love tingling through my lines that prompts a returning rush of affection from me. The small creature’s delicate antennae twitch, and I’m overtaken by awareness of the butterfly scenting the air and gauging the wind through them.

The wind shifts northward, and a sense of wrongness grips hold, a strange, foul scent wafting up from the south.

“Yvan . . .”

I start, but my voice cuts off as the butterfly takes to the air and I spot the night-black forms of Errilith and my flock speeding back toward us at a fast pace. Their Deathkin aura pulses through the world, urgent this time, and my sense of gravity wavers as Errilith’s black eyes overtake my mind, everything before me telescoping southward, as if Errilith is willing my attention in that direction.

“What are you sensing?”

Yvan asks, his hand coming to my arm. The image III revealed when I was inside the Great Tree flashes through my mind—leagues of Shadow closing in on the Forest from all sides, ready to destroy everything.

“Something’s approaching,”

I say as Errilith’s low-pitched caw echoes through the sky, the rest of my flock joining in. “It’s coming in from the south—”

A bolt of fire power hits me, punching through my words, but this magic is coming from the east. My breath sears hot, a gasp torn from my throat as everything around me vanishes from sight. The firestorm streaks through my body and vision, burning straight through my rootlines, a cataclysm of golden flame with a line of purple-sparking vermillion flame in it. A surface-of-the-sun level of fire that has my teeth chattering and my body vibrating against its crackling flow. Too much fire . . .

“Yvan,”

I force out in a strangled cry.

Yvan grabs tight hold of me, his mouth crashing down onto mine. My back collides with the branch behind me as I take desperate hold of him in turn, letting out a cry of distress against his mouth, the burning assault through my lines excruciating . . .

Yvan draws in a harsh breath, the fire assault pulling toward his mouth as he wrests hold of it, the potency of the incoming flame almost as strong as Yvan’s full expanse of power.

He draws in another breath, his claws’ tips biting into my upper arms, the sudden elongation of his Wyvern canines pressing against my lips as he consumes the fire, pulling it through me and into him until I can sense the bulk of it churning hot in his core, both of us now firmly connected to it via our Wyvernbond.

The excruciating burn through my rootlines swiftly reduces to a tingling scald, and my thoughts clear. Yvan draws his lips from mine, his eyes brighter than I’ve ever seen them, gold and red flames leaping through the violet, a small, glowing star newly emblazoned at the base of his neck.

“What just happened?”

I barely manage to say, throat parched, mind whirling. “What’s on your neck?”

He hisses out a series of Wyvern words then catches himself, his face tensing as his teeth return to their regular shape, my heart racing in my chest.

“It’s a Western Wyvern horde mark,”

he says in Dryadin, reaching up to brush his fingertip along the base of my neck, his touch trailing sparks. I glance down, catching the glow of the flaming star emblazoned on my skin, as well. “We’ve been connected to a large horde,”

he explains. “Naga’s horde. Which means they can track us both. They’re winging in fast.”

Panicked birdsong rises in the air, a whole sea of birds crashing through the Northern Forest canopy in agitated flight, their wings a beating storm as they flee northeast.

A vision of Vogel’s Void tree punches into my mind and I flinch, just as a band of dark gray appears on the southern horizon, rising over the Caledonian Mountains. It rapidly enlarges, dark lightning pulsing through its expanse, a wave of unnatural storm power emanating from it.

My alarm skyrockets. “It’s a Shadowed storm band,”

I warn as a punishing breeze kicks up, my ravens and Yulan’s heron darting down through the branches beside us, my line of connection to Errilith suddenly urging me down.

“The fire in that lightning . . .”

Yvan says, nostrils flaring. “It’s all wrong.”

The storm band begins to barrel down the mountains in a gray tide.

Alarm blasts through III’s elemental aura and radiates out toward the entire surrounding Forest, a wave of Dryad power flashing through me from below.

Yvan’s gaze swings to mine, our joint flame surging into a chaotic blaze.

“We need to get to the Dryads, now,”

I urge as I take hold of the living branch sheathed at my side, a sense of its connection to my entire Forest surging through my rootlines and washing over me the moment I take it in hand.

Ferocity sweeping across his features, Yvan throws his arms around my waist and launches us both into the air. I cling to him as he angles down toward the canopy, my pulse tripping over itself.

Before we soar through the canopy’s upper reaches, two huge translucent green dome-shields burst to life above and around the entire Northern Forest, one inside the other, the inner shield marked with Dryad runes, the outer marked with Varg wards.

The image of Vogel’s Void tree punches into my mind once more, and I cry out as Shadow thunder booms through the air and Vogel’s storm band races toward the domes’ southern edge in a roaring tidal wave of Forest-decimating power.