“Well, they’re about to be distracted by a purple moon festival,” he returns, a hard glint to his gaze. “And a rather odd weather disturbance. I need a weather Wyvern for that.”

I cross my arms, eyeing him shrewdly as I struggle to hold the surge in my power back from him. “What did you have in mind?”

Trystan doesn’t hesitate. “Something that will make it quite difficult to follow anyone.”

“You want me to hide her with fog?” I postulate.

“I do,” Trystan rejoins, a lethal edge entering his tone. “So she can get hold of her power, then go west with all of us. To strike down the Magedom before it can decimate Amazakaraan and advance on the East.”

In answer I send out a slim line of fog and roll it around his form. Trystan shivers, his magic shimmering loose to encircle mine in rock-solid alliance.

CHAPTER TEN

WARRIOR’S RETURN

Valasca Xanthrir

City of Cyme, Amazakaraan
Two days prior to Xishlon

Valasca Xanthrir falls through the portal’s golden mist and is thrust into a world at war.

A nightmare forest surrounds her, its gigantic, undulating trees made of Shadow. Ground-shuddering explosions sound and she flinches, dragons shrieking through a distance that’s obscured by the strange, curling gray mist rising from the ground.

Valasca’s eyes flit to the weapons in her rune-tattooed hands and a rush of alarm crackles through her. Not only has her blue skin shifted to a pewter hue, the sapphire Noi runes on the blade gripped in her left hand are stripped of their glow. Only the blade in her right hand—her most powerful, favored blade, with a wider diversity of runes—has maintained its charge, but, bizarrely, the single emerald Smaragdalfar varg rune on its hilt is feeding green into the variety of linked runes, turning the blue Noi and scarlet Amaz runes emerald.

Remembering how easily Vogel struck down Chi Nam’s runic barrier, she gives a quick glance at the retrieval runes marked on her palms. Relief washes through her. Still there. But there’s an odd coating of emerald green edging the Noi rune’s lines. An odd green coating edging all her runic tattoos. And the small Smaragdalfar varg rune on her wrist—the ward she had the Amaz-Smaragdalfar rune sorceress, Vestylle, mark next to her weapons-amplification rune well over a year ago—its glow is unusually bright.

The ramifications of this circle through her military mind as Valasca swings around to find the portal she just flew through fading to an almost imperceptible imprint on the air.

A cyclonic roar sounds directly above. She jerks her head up, eyes widening as she takes in the funneling circle of Shadow streaking down toward her, like a giant’s incoming heel.