«Dragons, Rain. Coming from our left, off the Rhakis.»

«I see them. Silverleaf, you deal with the revenants. The tairen will take the dragons.»

Commander Silverleaf raised her bow in acknowledgement, and the Aquiline riders spiraled down. Elvish bows sang and Light arrows zipped towards the ground in streamers of golden light, as if the sky were raining sunshine. Each revenant pierced by the golden arrows went bright and exploded in a cloud of black dust.

Above the fray, Rain’s wings spread wide and pumped to gain loft. Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl raced ahead in a V formation as, with a deafening roar, four more tairen burst from the Faering Mists south of the healing tents. Fahreeta, Torasul, and two younger pride mates sped north across open Celierian land to join their pride-kin above the battlefield.

The dragons rocketed towards the pride, fangs bared, razor sharp claws extended. Great cats and dragons slammed into one another in the sky, fangs and claws slashing, tails whipping as they tumbled through the air. As the ground zoomed up to meet them, they broke apart. Both tairen and dragons were soaked with their own blood, still neither gave quarter. They simply flew back to a higher altitude and reengaged.

The tairen belched boiling clouds of flame, but the dragon queen heeled back and flapped her great wings. Magic swirled in the air, and a brutal gust of wind blew the tairen’s fire back upon them. The monster dove below the pride and rolled onto her back beneath them. The dragon queen opened her own venomous maw and spewed searing jets of green, concentrated acid-flame.

On Rain’s back, Ellysetta cried out in horror as the monster’s corrosive spew sliced through the tairen like Mage Fire, scything limbs from bodies. Maimed and mortally wounded, Fahreeta and the two younger tairen fell from the sky in a shower of blood and smoking gore.

The queen screamed in victory and shot out on a burst of speed only to circle around for a second pass. Fire boiled from Torasul’s muzzle in a searing orange cloud as he dove to the aid of his fallen mate.

Steli roared and burst through the concealing cloud of smoke above. With her white ears laid back against her skull, razored claws extended, she stooped towards the dragon queen. The foul beast glanced up too late to dodge Steli’s attack, and the pair clashed in midair, claws and fangs ripping and rending, wings and tails tangling in a savage battle for survival and supremacy. They plummeted towards the earth, roaring and screaming as each fought to rip out the other’s throat and claw open the other’s belly.

They crashed into the ground with the force of a meteor. Debris exploded upward into the sky, then showered down in a hail of dirt and shattered rock, radiating out from the great crater where the two creatures lay in a limp tangle of limbs.

Steli had taken the brunt of the fall. Wings and back broken, she lay in the pit, struggling for breath. The dragon queen hadn’t fared much better, but she could still move. She dragged the heavy weight of her body towards Steli and lifted herself up on trembling forelegs over the white tairen’s shattered form. The monster opened her maw, yellowed fangs dripping green poison as she prepared to deliver the death-bite. Steli’s pupilless blue eyes, their fierce glow dimmed with pain, gazed up, unflinching, defiance mixed with the grim acceptance of defeat.

“Get away from her, you monstrous petchka!”

Ellysetta’s furious shout heralded a searing jet of tairen flame that enveloped the dragon’s head just before she struck.

The queen reared back, roaring. Ellysetta leapt from Rain’s back, riding a column of Air down to Steli’s side and peppering the dragon queen’s head and neck with Fey’cha as she went.

Rain’s curved tairen claws sank into the tough, superheated hide of the dragon queen’s back, and with a mighty pump of his powerful wings, he hauled the foul creature into the air. Curving tairen fangs snapped at the dragon’s neck but the long, serpentine neck writhed and twisted, eluding him. The dragon hissed and struggled, spewing acid flame. He rocketed skyward in a rapid, magic-powered ascent, carrying the queen far above the earth, to a part of the sky where the air grew thin and so cold a drop of water would freeze in an instant.

The abrupt change in altitude and temperature acted like ice shot on the dragon’s hide. Steaming scales cracked, ripping fissures down into the vulnerable flesh beneath. The queen shrieked in agony as the icy cold of the high atmosphere seared her.

At last, Rain managed to sink his fangs into the dragon’s long neck. The touch blistered his muzzle and tongue, but he held on with grim determination and pumped venom into her veins until the creature went limp.

With a roar, he released her.

The dragon plummeted earthward. Limbs limp, dead wings fluttered like pennants tied to a falling rock as down the body of the great beast fell. She landed on the battlements of Orest with a mighty crash, shearing the whole of Maiden’s Gate off the side of the mountain and taking four full batteries of bowcannon and thousands of Eld troops with it.

With a scream of triumph and vengeance, Rain followed close behind her, tairen fire boiling from his muzzle to scorch the remaining bowcannons.

* * *

Ellysetta laid a hand on Steli’s broken body and flooded her with a wave of healing and strength to ease the great cat’s labored breathing. From beneath half-closed lids, the cat’s dimming eyes regarded Ellysetta with mute suffering. The dragon had struck a mortal blow. Steli’s body was shattered and losing blood rapidly. What wasn’t pouring out through the gaping holes ripped into her hide was flooding her lungs and chest cavity. Steli was dying.