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N YX SWEPT ABOVE the burning expanse of black glass, nearing the spread of rolling dunes, but the approach of the wyldstrom had not gone unnoticed.

Ahead, the sky filled with bronze sentinels, blazing brightly under the sun, soaking in the heat of the Father Above. More shot off the sand and swept high, with energies vibrating under them that defied the pull of the Urth.

She leaned over Bashaliia, who continued to burn with the fury of Khagar. Emerald flames raged under her, lapping at her golden armor, trailing in their wake. The entire sky seethed with the same fire, carried across a thousand hearts, screamed from a thousand throats.

She cast her vision across the roiling expanse. She fixed on each shining bronze torch, assigning two or three mankrae to every ta’wyn.

Then they were atop the enemy.

She watched the battle from a jangled, turbulent perspective.

Screams—stoked hotter by the fire of Khagar—spewed emerald flames at the ta’wyn. Figures writhed in the firestorm. Bronze boiled away, revealing crystalline skeletons and arcane energies. Then came claw and fangs, which ripped and tore.

Soon, ta’wyn fell out of the sky. Several exploded in midair, burning nearby wraiths in their blasts.

Other mankrae suffered fates as brutal. Metallic fingers snatched bodies, breaking bones and gouging hearts. Several ta’wyn sharpened their limbs into spears and impaled more wraiths.

Flashing across the storm like lightning, communing throughout, Nyx felt each death like a stab into her heart. Her pain grew as fiery as the sky.

Before long, bronze and bones littered the glass in their wake.

Still, her horde vastly outnumbered the enemy. The storm eventually blew through the ta’wyn in the air. With the sky clear, she led the way onward and over the rolling dunes.

Below, a hundred more glints roamed the sand. Many dug into trenches.

She let her wyldstrom crash down upon them. Still, it quickly grew clear that the ta’wyn had an advantage. On the ground, with such close fighting, the wraiths’ wings and agility became impeded. The battle devolved into pained snippets, no victories, just savagery delivered by both sides.

Blood rained from the sky.

Explosions cast sand.

Screams carried on the wind.

Amidst the chaos, trying to orchestrate this maelstrom, Nyx struggled to hold her sanity. Her heart pounded. Breath gasped between strangled chords. She felt herself losing control—of herself, of Bashaliia, of this storm.

It was too much.

Then words reached her, a whisper buried in the chaos, maybe a memory, maybe a final song left to her.

Be the wyldstrom.

Only now did she understand the import of those three words.

I must stop fighting and open myself to the ferocity of the storm.

She had to let go of its reins or risk being torn apart by it. She had to recognize a simple truth, a lesson it had taken the Dr?shra centuries to learn, even longer to accept.

Rage forged its own path.

She had to let it free, to stop trying to force her will upon it.

She had to simply be the wyldstrom.

To that end, she loosened her grip on the saddle and leaned back. She lifted her arms to the storm and let herself be cast to its winds, to its savagery.

As she flew, the battle grew both more distant and more intimate. Time blurred into a wash of blood, bone, and blasts of crystalline alchymy.

Still, as the fighting raged on, she slowly came to realize it was grinding into an impasse. By now, hundreds of wraiths littered the rolling sands, broken, burning, many still writhing.

Even worse, more of the ta’wyn kept coming, sweeping south from the Dragon, likely emptying it out. Worst of all, they came not just with the strength of bronze. To her right, pairs of ta’wyn landed, carrying cannons between them. The weapons glowed with strange alchymies. Then from those batteries, fire lanced into the sky, casting out beams of burning light. They swept the sky and sliced through wraiths. Other beams brushed lower, slashing across the tops of dunes, burning wings and melting sand to slag.

Nyx knew what she was seeing.

The infernal weaponry of the Roots.

Similar to what had blasted the desert.

Her mount recognized this, too, and screamed with renewed fury.

Nyx fought to control Bashaliia, who thrashed wildly, raging under the fierce surge of Khagar’s fury. She struggled to keep herself anchored, to both her saddle and to herself. Grasping for anything, she gripped fistfuls of rough fur. She used the pain of her injured hand to draw herself back into her own body, to separate herself from the chaos and agony around her.

As she did, she recognized that being the wyldstrom —while it had gotten her this far—would not be enough.

While rage might forge its own path, it also grew blind, striking wildly. Against this enemy, during this stalemate, that must not be.

To that end, she sang louder, stoking her armor brighter. She cast herself across the remaining colony—now reduced to hundreds, not thousands. She took over those reins again, knowing the risk. She concentrated through those myriad eyes, forging countless hearts into one.

Once ready, she sent the mankrae crashing toward the battery of cannons. She followed behind, using their bodies as a shield. A part of her wailed against the deaths, experiencing each one, but she held firm to the cruel steel inside her.

Under the protection of that fraying shield, she dove toward the ridgeline. Still, the dread energies of the cannons tore through the mankrae. A beam shot past her, close enough to feel its singe.

More followed, burning the air all around her.

She had to accept the truth.

We will not make it.

Below her, Khagar must have recognized this, too, and bellowed his despair. He surely remembered his past failure and what it had cost him.

Still, she intended to fight on against the hopeless odds.

Then a piercing sound rose from below. A strident blare of a horn cut through the wraiths’ cries and the thrum of fiery beams—followed by countless more horns.

From all around the dunes, shaggy shapes pounded into view. Atop the beasts, riders carried spears, lances, and curled horns—the latter blasted with the potent echo of the wraiths’ screams, as if the land itself had risen up.

The Chanr? legion struck the cordon of ta’wyn around the cannons.

Nyx lunged down to join the battle. She broke through the last of her shield and roared across the ridgeline, unleashing Khagar’s wrath, melting bronze to slag. Riders pounded along her path, attacking with spears and lances.

She swept around again and ripped across the battle with claws and fangs.

In another two passes, the firestorm atop the ridge ended, leaving the dune bubbling with molten sand, with the remains of ta’wyn sinking into it.

Nyx cast off the last of her wyldstrom, sending the mankrae to hunt bronze stragglers. Chanr? riders followed, too.

As they left, one rider crested a dune. His headscarf flapped from his face. She was shocked to recognize Arryn as she swept over him. He lifted his spear in greeting, then turned and thundered down the dune, off to cleanse his desert home.

Nyx was surprised to find him here. She looked to the east, toward the distant cliffs, where she had last seen Arryn. He must have raced back when the attack started.

She swung a circle, fighting the fury under her saddle. Despite the victory, Khagar still raged with bloodlust. And not only him. Carried through scores of eyes, she watched a wraith dive upon an ürsyn and rip a rider from the saddle. A spear thrust freed the man, sending him tumbling back into the sand.

Nyx remembered her earlier fear about rage being blind.

Even with the bronze threat over, the storm’s fury persisted, raw and untamed. Recognizing this, Nyx wrested a firmer rein on the remaining mankrae and drove them skyward. As the dunes fell away, the black sea spread outward. She caught a flash of fire circling the smoky remains of the Fyredragon.

The sailraft.

The others at the cliffs must have retreated there.

She winged toward them with the last of her wyldstrom, now a mere squall. As she flew, she stared past the crashed ship to the black mountain to the north. The Dragon’s crown, still huffing two columns of dark smoke, floated above black glass.

She felt its smoldering gaze and knew the truth.

As did Khagar, who bellowed a challenge through Bashaliia’s throat.

This battle is far from over.