“We can help,” the two mated darkfallen said together.
“Do it.”
Grand Summoner Dre’Kariston D’Vaire and Delaney wasted no time. The air grew dark as they blasted their black spells toward Ellery.
“Idris, twist my magic through the bubble so I can heal him,” Dra’Kaedan ordered High Arcanist Idris the Indigo. Idris’s magic was neither light nor dark, which allowed him to manipulate between the two disciplines.
“His wing is broken,” Dra’Kaedan groused.
The globe surrounded Ellery completely and despite the waves of fire he blew into it, the magic held.
“We can’t keep him like this forever,” Delaney said once he dropped his hands. “This will hold him for a bit, but we need to figure out what’s wrong.”
“I don’t care what they’re doing, get the rest of Sorcery D’Vaire over here,” Chrysander demanded as he crossed the distance between the deck where he stood and the bubble that now contained Ellery. Sorcery D’Vaire was a group of the most powerful sorcerers and brilliant minds in the Council, and if there was a mystery to be solved, Chrysander wanted them to be at the forefront of discovery.
“We’ve got his injuries healed,” Lichpriestess Saura D’Vaire remarked softly. “It’s impossible for him to hurt himself anymore. At least for the moment.”
Chrysander was close enough to lay a hand on the semi-translucent black bubble containing his mate. “Ell, what’s going on?” he whispered to the elf-dragon raging inside of it. The question seemed to finally take the fight out of the beast. The bursts of fire stopped and for several seconds there was nothing but silence. Ellery smacked his head into the wall of the ball right where Chrysander’s palm was resting. He huffed out some smoke and simply stayed that way, as if he relished the almost contact between the two of them. It forced a reluctant smile from Chrysander. Somewhere inside that wild dragon was his Ellery.
From the corner of his eye, Chrysander noted the sorcerers creeping toward Ellery. Hoping to keep Ellery calm so they could ascertain what had made him act so peculiar, Chrysander continued to hold his hand up, not quite against Ellery’s skin. “Relax, Ell. What happened? Are you okay? We’re here at D’Vaire. Let these magic-weavers get to you, so they can figure out how to help you. Try to shift back if you can,” he whispered gently. Ellery banged his skull against the bubble but didn’t otherwise react.
The half-demonic leader of the Order of Necromancia handed his smoky crown to the most elite assassin on the planet who doubled as the Arch Lich’s mate. “It’s difficult to tell what’s wrong when I can’t touch him,” Chander complained.
“We can’t let him free. This is the calmest he’s been,” Dra’Kaedan argued.
“Then we’re going to need a more powerful sorcerer than me.”
“You’re the strongest entity alive,” Dra’Kaedan responded dryly.
“There are other dark sorcerers here. Let’s funnel our magic into Chand to see if he can sense anything,” Lichpriest T’Eirick D’Vaire suggested.
Chander gave a wry grin to Lich Sentinel Alaric Daray. “No complaining about the pain it’s going to cause me, mate.”
“Let’s just figure out what’s wrong with His Majesty,” Alaric responded, which echoed the same thought that kept rumbling through Chrysander’s own brain.
The two members of the Darkfallen Court, T’Eirick and Saura, as well as Delaney and Dre’Kariston, shot dark beams of magic into Chander. He barely even reacted to the pain it caused him as he set his hands onto Ellery’s bubble. His eyes glowed red and his black-and-green chartreuse wings tore through the fancy cloak he was wearing. “Nothing surrounds him but I’m getting a sense of wizard magic. Inside him maybe? Hard to say without touching him.”
“Wizard magic?” Prism Wizard Vadimas exclaimed.
Chander stepped back and the black air around him dissipated as the other sorcerers stopped casting.
“How would he get wizard magic inside him?” Zane demanded. “I was sitting with him in his office when this started.”
Vadimas’s expression was grim as he turned to Chrysander. “Wizards use potions. If whatever is bothering him is due to a wizard, it would’ve been something he drank. We need a blood test. How are we going to do that when he won’t let anyone near him?”
Zane sputtered. “Coffee. He had a cup of coffee.” His eyes closed. “I brought it to him.”
“Call the Order of the Fallen Knights. I want them as well as the Sentinel Brotherhood to go to our office and scour the entire area. If someone put something in his drink, I want to know who, and I want to know why,” Chrysander demanded.
“I will gather my men, and the Skeleton Seven will be there shortly. Gavrael and Gedeon, you can interview Zane from here,” the Lich Sentinel replied.
Skeleton Lord Gavrael and his mate, Gedeon both nodded at their leader. “Zane, we can talk on the deck,” Gavrael stated.
Zane’s jaw clenched, and he glanced briefly at a damp-eyed Tiri standing next to him. “Of course,” he replied as he followed the two sentinels.
“Zane,” Chrysander called out.
“Your Majesty?”
