Alarm tightens my throat. Or’myr’s purple coloration is gone, as is the purple of his geo-wand, no color remaining on him save the Gardnerian green of his gaze.

Which means Or’myr’s purple-oriented power is shut down.

Or’myr curses as his bindings tying us to Raz’zor begin to give way and Raz’zor arcs straight up out of the Shadow tide. I fall back against Or’myr’s chest as we blast through it, the breath whisked from my lungs as another Mage zeroes in, his aura of cold icing through me.

“Ice!” I cry, and Raz’zor pitches left as a dark spear lances through the air beside us in a frigid whoosh, barely missing Raz’zor’s wing. Another Shadow-ice spear zips past our right and Raz’zor tilts to evade it, the spear just missing Or’myr’s head.

Raz’zor swoops upward, the river’s surface to my back, the ghoulish Void moon directly above like a giant, all-knowing Vogel-eye.

We level off and I look at the crater-slashed mountain before us, dragons spilling out of its gaping maw. A bloodred conflagration ignites within Raz’zor as he accelerates toward the incoming horde, his scaled hide growing feverishly warm.

He opens his jaws, whips his head to one side then lashes it forward, spraying a line of red fire in a punishing arc, the incoming dragons exploding into balls of ruddy flame.

Death to Gardneria, Raz’zor snarls into my mind and I draw in a hard breath, Yvan’s magic crackling hotter under my skin as we zoom forward, more than halfway across the river now as Raz’zor begins to restore his depleted flame. Vogel’s Void tree shudders into the back of my mind, silvery-black fire crackling all around its gnarled form.

Oh, you sense me, do you? I seethe.

Rage firing through me, I reach into my grayed tunic’s pocket and grab my wands. A cataclysmic wave of power rushes toward my wand hand and I ready the Fire Strike spell, my quivering hand fusing to the wood as the wands take on a red-hot glow.

We zoom over the grayed borderline and Raz’zor darts through a gap in the Shadow-net dome rising from it. My emotions tighten as I take in the pillars of Shadow smoke coursing up from the decimated tent city, but then a spot of relief lights—I can make out mist-obscured people rushing toward several varg-rune-encircled holes leading directly into the earth, a green-hued Vu Trin soldier who I’m certain is Bleddyn ushering people into one of them, Smaragdalfar aiding people into the others. Subland escape routes.