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W ind howled and blew Vahly’s hair out of her face. Rubbing her sleep-puffy eyes, she jumped to her feet to see everyone else doing the same. Night had wrapped the world in black, and they’d all fallen asleep exhausted.

“What is that horrible sound?” Nix asked.

“My air magic ward,” Arc said.

Vahly squinted. A light bobbed over the choppy waves, bright in the weak starlight.

“That’s not the light of dragonfire from a distance, is it?” Arc asked.

“No.” The rhythm of her pulse grew increasingly erratic as the strange, round light floated ever closer. “I don’t think so.”

The water exploded.

Three tentacles rose into the air, towering above everyone, even Kyril.

Her heart hung useless in her chest, her fingers going numb.

A creature blinked its three eyes and opened a wolf-like snout to snarl, a sound like hundreds of trees cracking in a storm.

One tentacle smashed into Arc’s wall of dark magic.

The creature had a mouth the size of a full-grown dragon and three rows of teeth, the smallest of which was larger than Vahly’s fist.

Amona spoke into her head. The air magic will only hold him for a few moments more. I have seen this beast before. And I don’t believe that wall will keep him away. We must fight it. They are a bloodthirsty kynd, always hungry .

Vahly answered aloud. “You lived through the attack, so you know something about it.” The cacophony of the creature’s screeching and the sound of its tentacles battering Arc’s barrier grew louder with every moment. “What are its weak spots?”

The creature’s head rose then thrust to the side as a barbed fourth tentacle speared through the water and into the air.

“What in the Blackwater is that?” Aitor asked.

“It’s the creature’s tail,” Arc said. “I’ve seen a drawing of this beast in an old scroll. The tail is tipped in a spine that holds a venom that paralyzes on contact.”

“Delightful,” Nix said before disrobing and changing into her full dragon form.

Vahly, Amona said inside her mind, we must go for its lead tentacle. That is where its three hearts lie.

“How do we know which one is the lead tentacle?”

Slicked in moonlight, the creature thrashed against the wall of gray-black air magic, and a flash of blood-red blinked through the chaos.

“There!” Arc pointed. “Aim for that tentacle.”

“Yes!” Vahly shouted. “Amona has seen this creature before and she agrees. I’ll distract it by raising myself up on a new peak.

The rest of you fly around the creature and hit that blood-red tentacle with everything you’ve got.

Kyril, go with them and strike out with your claws when you see the opportunity.

Try to drive the creature toward the dragons’ fire. ”

Kyril shrieked, obviously unhappy with the plan to leave Vahly, but he rose into the air seemingly prepared to follow her orders.

Arc was spinning more dark magic into his wall, trying to hold the sea creature back while Vahly called up the earth under her feet, the dirt trembling through her boots.

Arc called out, fell back. The barrier of air magic exploded in an array of sparkling black crystal and stars golden with power.

A tentacle lashed out at Arc and snared his foot, lifting him into the air. Vahly’s throat closed as she poured her magic into the earth. She couldn’t lose him. The ground rose under her until she was on level with where the beast held Arc above its great, horrible mouth.

“Kyril!” she shouted, throat raw.

The gryphon tore through the sky, and she leapt onto his back, holding her breath, praying to the Source that Arc would survive this. She inhaled the scent of the newly turned earth that she’d pulled above the oceans and commanded the scrub pines to rise up.

All five of the small trees withdrew into the ground, then burst back from the earth in the shape of gryphons with vines for tails and roots that formed wings that spread as they soared into the air to join her and Kyril.

Magic like sunlight spun around Arc’s hands, stronger on his left than on his right. Wind roared around him, lifting him and pulling him away from the sea creature. He was using his air magic to try to escape.

“Attack!” she shouted at the scrub pine gryphons.

The earth creatures snared the sea beast’s head with pliable wings that then became bindings, tightening around the creature’s three eyes.

All of the dragons released blasts of fire that rippled and smoked against the beast’s body and tail.

The shimmering, fish-scale tail thrashed like a great snake, escaping the fire, while its venomous spike narrowly missed Aitor’s scarred face.

Nix, a blur of lighter blue against the night sky, zipped into the space between the creature’s head and the tentacle that held Arc still.

She unleashed rippling orange dragonfire along the sinuous limb, and the creature released its hold on Arc.

Eyes closed, face gray, he fell into the sea.