I’m okay,Ash reassured.But thanks for the help.
He sensed Tyrez exhale.Let’s practice diving while we’re together,he suggested.
Yeah, okay.Ash looked upward, and his body followed, the grasses dropping away beneath him. He gazed across their waving heads, toward where they almost merged with the indigo sky.
The sky lightened, as though the sun had reversed course and risen above the horizon. Seven points of vivid light pierced the sun’s rays. And hundreds of furred bodies poured through, flooding the grasses with impossible rapidity.
Ash, it’s a vision. Close it down. Pay attention to your flying.
But he couldn’t kick himself free. Horrified, he watched as bounding, slavering forms turned the ground black. The frontrunners were Dires, but not anything he was familiar with.
With sickening certainty, Tyrez knew what they were.
Derangers,he hissed in Ash’s mind.Dires that have been injected with a poison that stripped away their human side. Vicious and lethal.
Shock and dismay flooded Ash. The monsters were pointed straight at the Gryphons’ home... Details. He needed details and pushed for them.
He was only peripherally aware of his wings losing coordination. Of slowly tumbling through the air.
ASH!It was a shriek through his brain, high pitched, not like Tyrez at all. But Ash was too locked in the vision of the future, he couldn’t find his way back to the present. Past, present, future—they all collided in disaster...
Once again, the ground came at him, but this time, he was helpless to do anything about it.
Something crashed into him, and for a moment, he thought he’d hit ground. Then talons sank into his shoulders, and his entire body jolted as huge wings blocked the moonlight and the air cracked like thunder.
Tyrez might have saved him from death, but nothing could save them from hitting the ground damned hard.
Flying earth and shredding foliage—it seemed to go on forever before they finally stopped in a final cascade of displaced dirt.
Ash spat gravel out of his mouth and raised his head. They’d plowed a furrow a hundred feet long and three feet deep. Everything hurt, but he was alive.
Tyrez snorted grass blades from his nostrils and rolled a turquoise eye at him.
Splat,Ash commented.
The big Dragon sighed.At least we aren’t in a tree. But perhaps solo flights should hold off until this is all over.
Ash swallowed.It was worth it.
Yeah, eating gravel is the highlight of my day.
I got a timeline.
The big turquoise body went rigid.How much of it do we have?
Ash pulled his body out of the dirt and flicked it off his wings.Not enough,he said.
* * *
Dani clutched the rock beneath her talons. Her heart hammered.
They were fine. They were okay. Alive, just bruised.
She’d been with Sirki, getting the Dragonas’ component of the army settled in the upper caves. Ash and Tyrez’s casual banter bounced around in her brain, something she tried her best to ignore.
Until Ash dove and nearly planted himself. Breathing a sigh of relief when Tyrez intervened, she’d excused herself from the bustle and wove her way to the nearest entrance.
Dani had just emerged into the open air when images of the attack assaulted her mind. For a second, she thought it was real, and that the grasslands were flooded with savage Dires intent on mayhem.
