‘Deep breaths,’ Landers sent me. ‘No matter what happens, we are all in this together.’
‘Thank you,’I sent him. Hearing him say that meant so much to me.
The moment we were within range, we attacked. My body overflowed with tingles, and I felt the moment my mates drew in air and prepared to blow fire. It was all timed so that the moment my mates breathed fire, the Fae would attack from below. It went exactly as we planned except it didn’t have the intended effect we’d wanted.
Most of the dragons spun away, dodging the attacks as if they were expecting them.
‘Push them,’ Philit commanded and we moved in.
Arrows all turned my way. I created a barrier, and the arrows hit it and bounced back at the dragons, but again, they all moved to dodge the reflected attack.
‘They know. How?’I asked.
‘Doesn’t matter, keep going,’Zilon said. He shot up higher into the sky, as a second group of dragons broke off to follow us.
‘We’ve got company,’I said.
The group worked together to chase us down. My hand crackled, and I was about to send lightning their way when there was a hard tug that took me by surprise. My attack fizzled out; my head felt light.
‘What happened?’Zilon asked.
‘I don’t know.’I frowned, trying to figure it out, but I wasn’t given much time to figure it out. One of the other two dragons took too much power, but everything was chaotic and I wasn’t sure. I just knew it wasn’t Zilon.
‘We have to go down,’Zilon yelled and then dove.
The wind scraped at my face and my hair whipped around it as we descended. The dragons gave chase. We came up to another group fighting against Landers.
Zilon released a wave of fire that was scorching hot. It hit one of the dragons and distracted the group enough for Landers to get away.
We used the chaos to roll to the right and break away from the group chasing us.
‘This isn’t right,’ Zilon remarked.
I looked around to see what he meant, and my eyes widened.
‘We’re losing,’ Landers sent us.
He was right. The dragons were winning. A lot of the Fae were stuck to the ground now, and there was even an army of dragons on the ground fighting back against them. We so often fought in the air that I didn’t even realize the dragons knew how to fight on land. But they were there, using their strength to overwhelm the Fae.
Something hard hit us, and I screamed as Zilon dropped down. He quickly righted himself.
‘I think they knew,’ I said. ‘They knew how we were going to attack.’
‘We need to bail,’Landers sent.
‘Philit?’I sent, trying to spot him.
‘Below us,’ Zilon said, bringing us further down.
After a moment of squinting through the chaos, I finally found him dodging dragons, but his motions seemed off. Not as intense.
‘Philit, we need to retreat,’I sent, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he roared and let out a wave of fire that completely missed the dragons.
‘What the hell? He’s better than this,’Landers said, thinking the same thing I was.
‘Keep fighting,’I snapped at them, unwilling to even entertain the suspicion that niggled in the back of my mind. ‘Landers, stay to my right and keep them off me from that position. Zilon, go over to that cluster of dragons. We need to break their formation.’
They didn’t question me, and we flew hard at the cluster of seven dragons. As Zilon blew fire, I sent out my lightning, this time hitting dragons and riders alike. There was some screaming as two dragons lost the ability to fly from the blast and fell to the ground. I wanted to feel bad for them, tried to muster up the energy to do so, but I also knew I couldn’t afford that distraction.