The exposed one must have seen the brothers, but only as other market goers. He would not have realized who and what they were, as the Legion were few in numbers and seldom visited this realm. They were only three predators in a region that housed many.
If the sentry was any good, he would be alert to possibilities, but not necessarily alarmed. And his partner was too far back to have seen anything at all.
Tyrez worked his way across the roof. Municipal planning was not a Riyanic virtue—the buildings along here were built right up against one another. It enabled Tyrez to skulk the rooftops, jumping down to lower stories, and climbing when needed.
At his size, he wasn’t adept at stalking but the sentries were also not great at their jobs—their focus stayed on the ground below; they virtually ignored the neighboring rooftops. It was a symptom of where their danger usually originated. They weren’t accustomed to fending off Dragons.
Within half an hour, Tyrez lay flat on a raised section of roof right alongside their target building. From here, he was a few feet higher than where the sentries stood.
Neither glanced his way. Not even once.
He slid down off his perch and into the deep shadows to wriggle out of his trench coat. Then he embraced the change.
As always, there were two phases to shifting for Dragons. First, the shift in form. Then, the surge of crystal power that boosted it to full-sized Dragon status.
The first part was painful as hell, but it was a familiar thing, and welcome. The wings were actually a third pair of limbs, connected to a complicated shoulder structure that spent its time hidden beneath the bulging muscles of his human shoulder blades.
If he went too long between shifts, the cramped hidden limbs ached. Now, they burst free from his back with a pulse of excruciating pain, first only as bones, ligaments, and tendons, then the membranes expanded between the finger bones.
The wings connected to powerful flight muscles across his chest and back. The front part of his shoulder girdle adapted to a four-legged stance, as did his pelvis. His hands and feet morphed to long fingers and toes with wicked, hooked talons, and his face broadened, the jaws lengthening to house long, pointed teeth. His hair radiated out from his now triangular head, borne aloft on a crest of spikes.
Legion Dragons practiced shifting until they could do it like lightning, calling on the power of the crystal to assist them. In seconds, Tyrez was a Dragon, but he held it at phase one—his full size could never stay hidden in such a small area.
He’d kept the comm unit in place with careful scale manipulation. Now he tapped it with a foreclaw, and said, “Go.”
Seconds later, there was a commotion from the marketplace below, followed by a splintering crash as Razir shifted to his phase-one Dragon and plowed straight through the target building’s front entrance. And, by the shocked yell, also through the guard stationed just within it.
Pandemonium.
Taran obviously wasn’t waiting to nab those popping out the rear entrance. From the sounds coming from that area, he must have mimicked Razir’s front-entrance move. Yells and screams echoed through the building, and the roof sentries ran for the exit door with their weapons drawn.
That those weapons were merely regular swords and not their tail spikes confirmed that they lacked sufficient crystal stores to grow them when they shifted. Not surprising, but a promising sign.
The roof guards had just reached the door when it burst open, and five figures poured from it, their faces lengthening and wings bursting from their backs.
Tyrez clacked his jaws in satisfaction and embraced the crystal in his blood. His beast surged in size, and with a single swipe of his wings, he glided to the opposite rooftop.
All seven Dragons stared at him in horror for the two seconds it took for his tail spike to behead one guard and impale the second on the backswing.
The five escaping from the building staggered away from him, their wings spreading and flapping wildly as they pushed through their shift.
Tyrez surveyed their efforts with a practiced eye as he pursued, but slowly.Aha.Three were shifting faster. The one on the right was far larger than the other two—and in this place, that meant more crystal in his blood—which spoke to someone higher on the pecking order.
A shadow flashed by to land just beyond Tyrez. The scales gleamed indigo—Taran had abandoned the back door to help his brother.
Stubborn as a Dragon wasn’t just a saying.
As Tyrez shot past, he hissed and said, “I’ve gots the one on the right. You take what’ss left.”
Three Dragons were now airborne, flapping madly into the night sky. Tyrez didn’t wait for his brother’s response. He riveted his gaze on the largest and accelerated away from the rooftop.
That his chosen target was a local boss with his bodyguards was verified when the two smaller Dragons dropped back, and one tried sideswiping Tyrez. At less than half the Legion Dragon’s size, it barely pushed Tyrez off course. But the bodyguard then attacked with teeth and claws.
Not at his belly or neck, but his most vulnerable part—wing membranes.
But Tyrez was no rookie. As the Dragons darted beneath his wing, the bigger Dragon rolled, slashing with the razor-sharp talons of his hind legs. The bodyguard hadn’t expected him to be so agile. He tried to dodge, but one hooked into his hindquarters. With an experienced flipping motion, Tyrez transferred the smaller Dragon up to his foreclaws and closed his jaws on the neck.
A twist, a snap, and they were down to one bodyguard. Who used the temporary distraction provided by his peer to attach himself to Tyrez’s back between his wings, where he attempted to tear at the powerful muscles controlling them.
