Mal leaped into the air, spreading tiger’s eye wings, just as the wyrm emerged from beneath one of Scarlet’s cottages, throwing rock and earth out of its path.
Each of its heads was a wedge nearly the size of Mal’s entire dragon, its great eyes lighting white above a snarling mouth full of shining teeth. Coils of his legless body flattened another cottage, and his tail sent white gravel spitting in all directions as it sliced up through the resort paths.
Scarlet had expected the wyrm’s size, but she hadn’t expected the creature’s unearthly beauty. The serpentine body was most similar to a snake, but moved in ways that no snake could ever manage, flowing and pulsing in shimmering waves. Its gleaming body was covered from face to tail-tip in razor-tipped iridescent blue and green feathers, each one reflective and flexible enough to move like a leaf. They sang like tuned windchimes with every sinuous movement.
It was like watching music, shimmering waves of color blazing from its feathered hide.
Mal rose up into the storm and fell down upon him like a sparrow on an alligator, the runes on his dragon’s forelegs glowing as he folded his wings and dropped. Magic-strengthened, he hit the wyrm right behind the nearest head, driving it down to the earth as the ropes whipped up to capture one of its long necks.
The second head dove for the golden dragon, snapping down... on a brilliant blue shield that snapped to life. Through the driving, pounding sound of the storm, Scarlet could hear the teeth screech off of the barrier. The first head was ripping up from the ropes holding it, straining and pulling as the second head changed its tactic and rammed into Mal with all of its strength.
A portal opened behind him, another opening directly above him with the same sweep of his tail, and then Mal was dropping into one and out of the other to dive onto the head flailing through empty space. Claws that gleamed blue light drove through the slithering feathers. The first head had fought its way free of the magical rope and was snapping at Mal in fury.
The wyrm, now free, twisted in a corkscrew into the air like it was climbing an invisible ladder and scraped along Mal’s hide with a sound like metal on stone.
That was when Scarlet realized that the plumage wasn’t merely decorative. Every gleaming blue-green feather was knife-edged, and strong enough that she felt scale slice beneath it.
Mal, she whispered, staggered by his pain.
She could feel the spell that healed the cuts, and see the runes flare briefly on the dragon’s forearms. Flexible as a cat, he twisted away, vanished through a portal, and reappeared above the wyrm once again.
One of its heads turned to snap at him, the other ducked to come up behind him, but Mal dove between them, then made a mid-air turn that no bird would have attempted and came up under one of the chins, digging in with magic-hardened claws as he hauled it back down toward the magical ropes wriggling above the resort below.
The other head screamed and came crashing in against Mal’s blazing shield.
Chapter 27
This isn’t anything we haven’t trained for, Mal told his dragon as they tumbled through another portal to get behind the wyrm again. They both knew he was desperately lying.
The magic from the Shifting Sands staff was nearly as strong as Scarlet’s had been. But it was incoherent, competitive, and using magic that wasn’t his was just different enough than using his own that he was sometimes scrambling to understand what he was doing. His shields were a moment slower than they needed to be, his portals just a little sloppier. His concentration was broken between smoothing the lines of power and setting the spells, all while he fought an angry, razor-feathered, two-headed wyrm who had everything to lose and vengeance to gain... in the middle of a raging storm.
He felt like a boy again, a dragon who could barely fly, in the air being pitted against experienced warriors with the advantage of fire.
We won those battles, his dragon reminded him, dodging a head followed by a swirling blender of sharp feathers. Sometimes.
Mal could hear his father’s voice. What edge do you always have?
Knowledge. What did he know that could possibly help him?
You know nothing, a voice intruded scornfully.
Less than nothing, a second voice chimed.
Then, together, We have all the edgesssssss.
The wyrm cackled in unison at its own joke as it sent the tail that Mal had lost track of to twist around him in a swirl of dark, iridescent feathers. Mal gave a roar of pain, failing in surprise to raise a shield before they sliced into the scales along his side, through the magic-hardening spell altogether. He was poorly positioned for a portal. The driving rain and wind made it difficult to stay steady long enough to accurately dive through a small one and a large one took more power.
A swift healing spell kept the cuts from being deadly, but Mal was keenly aware that he was burning through the magical reserves at an unsustainable rate.
He steeled himself for a phased attack, dropping through a portal just a little above from one of the great heads as he escaped snapping jaws. He took hold of the huge wedge head and used a jolt of magic that burned like alcohol through his veins to drag the wyrm with him back to where the ropes waited to capture it. The other head and the tail twisted to batter against his gleaming shield.
They fought, teeth shrieking over shield, claws digging through feathers, magic will against brute strength and fury.
Harder and deeper, Mal poured the magic that had been given to him selflessly into all of the spells he was keeping alive: the shield, the force dragging them towards the shining ropes he was keeping alive and waiting, the magic hardening of his claws and scales.
For one bright moment, he thought he could do it; one strong push and he could force the wyrm down to his destiny.
But then the wyrm flared every feather in braking power and the free head opened its toothy jaws to roar a command into the storm. Furious wind tore through the shield to Mal’s wings, ripping the membrane. The rain was so dense that it blinded him and Mal, unable to divert any magic to healing, shivered in pain.