“Last time I saw her was up near the... chest, I think.”

She nodded, and without speaking the pair altered their flight paths to begin soaring up the enormous, slow-moving mountain fury. More windmanes came at them, these seeming to be random attacks rather than results of some deliberate malevolence—but there were so many of them around the vast earth fury that it hardly mattered. Each windmane had to be countered with windcrafting, driven away, and Tavi found himself thinking that it had really been a great deal less strenuous for him to deal with windmanes when he hadn’t had any furies and had relied upon a pouch of rock salt to discourage them.

Of course, using salt while maintaining his own windstream was problematic in any case—and he didn’t think he’d care to find a spot to land on Garados and craft some salt out of the ground. So he gritted his teeth and concentrated on swatting windmanes out of his path, discouraging the sinister furies from coming too close.

Vast sound shook the air around them twice—Garados, roaring in frustration or simple anger or some other emotion completely alien to such ephemeral beings as Tavi and Kitai. Perhaps he could ask Alera about it later. If there was time. The great fury’s arm swept by, this time much farther away. Pine trees stood up on the forearm like a mortal man’s hairs, and on the same approximate scale. Rain began to fall, heavy and cold.

They soared up past a distorted belly and over the great fury’s chest without seeing the vord Queen—but as they reached the level of Garados’s shoulders, they entered heavy storm clouds. Thick grey haze settled over them, and lightning flickered through the darkness. The wind surged and howled, then died away to a whisper at random—but as they kept going, Tavi was sure he could hear an actual voice in those whispers—a voice that promised torment, pain, and death.

There was another vast sound—and abruptly, the great fury stood completely still. The change was startling. Rock stopped grinding against rock. Tons and tons of earth and stone ceased their rumbling, and only the sound of a few falling stones, bouncing their way down to earth, remained behind. Almost simultaneously, the howling wind within the storm clouds died. The air went still, until they and the raindrops were the only things moving. The flickering lightning began to come less frequently, and the colors changed from every wild hue imaginable to one color: green.

Vord green.

“Aleran?” Kitai called, her eyes flicking around them.

“Bloody crows,” Tavi whispered. He turned to Kitai, and said, “She’s trying to claim them. The vord Queen is trying to claim Garados and Thana.”

“Is it possible?”

“For you or me?” Tavi shook his head. “But Alera told me that her power has a broader base than ours does. Maybe. And if she does...”