Howling, shrieking with savage bloodlust, the revenants were closing in. They had already reached the edges of the crater. Ellysetta stared up in horror at their round maws, filled with row upon row of needle-sharp teeth, that gnashed and bubbled with frothy green slime. They moved with shocking speed, their clawed hands and feet gouging into rock and dirt for traction. The monsters would be upon them before she managed to do more than stop the worst of Steli’s internal bleeding.

«Rain!» she cried. «Help us.» “Hang on, Steli,” she begged. She’d cut her fingers throwing Fey’cha at the dragon queen, and she wiped the blood off on her armored leg before holding her hands over Steli and summoning her healing magic. Please, gods, please, she prayed in silence as she sent her consciousness and healing Light into her beloved pride-mother.

A golden light gleamed at the corner of her eye. Ellysetta turned, expecting to find one of the Elves, only to gasp at the sight of a Fey warrior, gleaming bright as the sun. But it was the sight of the warrior’s radiant, unearthly beautiful face that left Ellysetta stunned.

“Varian?” It was him. The dahl’reisen—one of the first thirty-six who’d sacrificed his life for her in the Verlaine. She’d felt him die, heard the song in his soul as he passed through the Veil. And yet, here he stood, impossibly beautiful, unscarred, unburdened by the shame that had weighed so heavy upon him. His skin shone like the sun, and eyes were filled with such boundless love and serenity she wanted to weep with joy.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How can you be here? “

“None shall harm you while in life or death I have power to prevent it,” he said, and his voice tolled like a great bell, resonant and pure. “This I did swear with my own life’s blood, in Fire and Air and Earth and Water, in Spirit and in Azrahn.” He drew his sword. The blade blazed with a radiance so bright Ellysetta had to cover her eyes. “Summon the others, kem’falla. Touch your blood to the bloodsworn steel. Quickly.”

Rising to her feet, Ellysetta pulled a Fey’cha from the harness across her chest and sliced her palm deep. Pain stung for a brief, sharp instant, then blood welled, bright red and plentiful. She coated both hands and smeared them across her armor’s shining steel.

All around her, bubbles of strange mist appeared like clouds of sunlight, golden bright and radiant. The clouds expanded until they became a ring of light surrounding Ellysetta and Steli that coalesced into the forms of a hundred shining Fey warriors, former rasa and dahl’reisen lu’tan, standing side by side, each clad in golden armor that gleamed like the sun.

“Heal her, kem’falla,” he urged. “We will keep you safe.” Varian raised his sword high overhead. “For love and for Light!” he cried. “Miora felah ti’Feyreisa! ”

The ring of Light Warriors echoed his cry, and together, they plunged towards the oncoming revenants. Their swords sliced through the unholy throng, and unlike steel which merely split the hideous creatures and left them to regenerate into twice the threat, the Light Warriors’ swords, like the arrows of the Elves, turned the revenants to clouds of harmless black dust.

Steli gave a panting whimper of pain, and Ellysetta tore her gaze from the Light Warriors and set to work healing her pride-mother. Rain arrived a few chimes later, heralded by clouds of boiling flame that incinerated the revenants around the crater’s rim.

«Beylah sallan, shei’tani,» he sang. «I was worried I wouldn’t reach you before the revenants did.»

“You almost didn’t,” she told him. “Varian and the others kept them at bay.”

«Varian who? What others?»

She looked up from her healing. There was no one in the crater but herself, Rain, and Steli. Varian and the Light Warriors were gone.

After healing Steli’s shattered bones and organs, Rain flew Ellysetta to tend the other injured tairen. The dragons were dead, but the two youngest tairen had perished with them, and Fahreeta had lost a wing to the dragon queen’s flame. The rest of the pride managed to lift her wounded body and fly it to safety. With his mate wounded, Torasul’s fierce, protective instincts were on full display. He would let none of the Fey or shei’dalins approach Fahreeta, leaving Ellysetta to weave a new wing for Fahreeta on her own. With Rain’s help, she managed, but when she was done, they were both near-staggering from exhaustion.

As she and he paused to eat and regain their strength, Ellysetta sliced her hand and rubbed it against her armored thigh and tried to summon Varian again. An army of Light Warriors would be a huge asset to the allies. But none of the Light Warriors answered her call, though to her embarrassment, several of her lu’tan came running.

“Sieks’ta,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to call you. I was trying to reach someone else.”

Commander Silverleaf, who had taken a brief respite from the sky to rest her Aquiline and heal the wounds that marred his white hide, watched Ellysetta. “They do not come because you are not in peril,” she said.

Ellysetta looked up in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“The spirits of your lu’tan. The ones who have passed beyond the Veil. They are not your army, to fight on your command. They bound themselves to you in love, by their own free will, not to kill for you, but to defend you from harm.”

“So they won’t come when I call, but if I walked out into a pack of revenants, they would?”