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ESSA

G limpsed images flashed past as I flew along in the flowing water. Lure catching sight of me, shouting and pointing. The sky above, crisscrossed with dragons and monsters and airplanes, choked with drifting smoke. And finally, the edge of the basin, rushing toward me with inexorable speed. I swam frantically in the opposite direction, grasping for something to hold onto. But there was no resisting the powerful flow of the water, and nothing to grab. I sped toward the edge. Closer, closer.

Over.

For an instant, the palace and the city and the sea beyond were all laid out before me, a vivid tapestry. My home. My last sight.

I fell, a moment of horrible weightlessness that made me scream.

Then, I wasn’t falling.

A chill burned through the entire right side of my body, so cold it hurt, and I looked down to find myself half encased in a wave of ice. Razune and Pocha winged up from below me, and I understood—they’d frozen the water and saved me.

Now, Razune descended to roost upon the ice chunk and Pocha locked arms with me.

“Good timing,” I said, barely able to find the breath to speak.

Pocha flashed a smile.

Razune whipped the ice outcropping with her tail. It shattered, freeing me, and Pocha pulled me onto Razune’s back. As we retrieved Lure from the nearby bank, I noticed Lure’s hand on their belly, blood on their fingers.

“Lure. What happened?” I asked, pulling them onto the Razune’s back behind me.

“One of the golenae,” Lure grunted. “It’s nothing.”

But Lure’s ashen face showed that was clearly a lie.

“Just hang onto me,” I said.

Heavy with three riders, Razune spread her wings and soared us downward.

As we descended, I surveyed the chaos below. The Lacunae had attacked the Skrathan, their ranks pressing my riders back and into a waiting pack of golenae. The result was chaos, a desperate melee. Planes buzzed over it all, strafing mercilessly with their machine guns.

It's going to be a slaughter, Lure said in my mind.

But there was reason for hope. The water we’d freed had indeed inundated the hatchery dome. Smoke had replaced the blue flames that had flickered there minutes before, but still, no dragons were emerging.

The fire is out, I told Othura. See if you can get free.

We’re trying, but the magical barriers are too strong, she said.

I cursed.

The only way to save my Skrathan was to free the dragons. If I couldn’t do it soon, there’d be no one left to save.

“Look out!” Lure shouted, pointing left as a biplane banked and flew toward us, machine guns blazing.

Razune tilted hard, shielding us, and I felt the thuds as bullets struck her body.

“Razune?” I shouted.

Fine, she replied in my mind.

But even without speaking aloud, she sounded breathless. She was hurt.

“Just get us to the ground.” I told her. But it would be easier said than accomplished—because biplane was turning for another pass.

From over toward the palace there came the boom of an exploding bomb and I looked to see one of the citadel’s opal walls collapsing in a sheet of rubble.

A wall that had stood for ten thousand years…

No.

Everything was slipping away. The palace. The crown. Kit. My Skrathan. Everything. I’d been Irska for less than twenty-four hours and I was already losing it all.

The biplane buzzed past again and we all flattened ourselves against Razune’s back as bullets whistled past us. This time, she managed to dive out of range.

What do we do? Pocha asked, her words brimming with desperation.

Thinking. I told her.

A bright flash lit up the day. I looked to the palace, bracing for some new calamity, in time to see a billowing cloud of flame blast over the palace wall, leaving three planes and a golenae burning in its wake. Autan, the greatest stellhan to ever live. Mother’s dragon.

Clearly her hibernation had done its work, for she was a third larger than any dragon I’d ever seen. Her golden scales scintillated like diamonds in the firelight and her majestic wings spread like the sails of a clipper ship upon the sea.

At the sight of her, planes and golenae alike veered away. Even the Lacunae paused in their attack.

Mother! I called in my mind. The dragons are trapped in the hatchery.

Not for long, she said, and Autan pinned her wings and dove toward the hatchery dome, lowering her horned head just before impact. The boom seemed to shake the world, and when the dust cleared, I saw the top of the ziggurat was cracked open like an egg. Dragons poured out, leaping, clambering, soaring down to save their Skrathan and attack the Lacunae and golenae below, their furious roars rending the air.

“Yes!” I screamed.

But my excitement was short-lived, for just as we touched down on the ground, I felt Lure’s arms slip off my waist. I turned to find their head reeling, eyes fluttering shut.

“Pocha. Get Lure to the healers,” I slipped off Razune’s back and to the ground.

Othura landed next to me and I bounded onto her back.

“What are you going to do?” Pocha asked, shifting Lure so they were in front of her.

I looked to the smoke-streaked heavens. “Mother and I are going to tear every plane and monster out of the sky,” I said, and we took flight.