“What happens if they miss?” Janel said.

“I imagine they’ll hit the city,” Senera replied.

General Milligreest left the tent, and everyone followed.

Morios still played in the city. Janel shuddered to think how Ninavis and the rest of her crew were doing. With any luck, they’d managed to find the duke and rescue him. And if that didn’t work, well … there was always Dorna and plan B.

“Second rank—load!” someone called out.

Janel forced her thoughts back to the dragon. Putting herself in a position where she could stab him in the head would be the tricky part—he was so enormous. Unfortunately, neither Suless nor Thurvishar had ever taught Janel to fly.

It would have been so handy.

Even as Janel contemplated options, she heard one of the men yell, “Going bright!”

What? Janel looked over at the scorpions. Each catapult-like device’s driver had dismounted, bringing with them the same spheres they’d been using to steer the scorpions. But now that said spheres had been removed from their protective casings, the undersides were revealed—uncovering painfully radiant light beams the soldiers pointed straight down at the ground.

“Front rank—target!”

As one, fifty light rays converged on Morios as he rampaged through Atrine. A few lights wandered off target but were quickly and expertly corrected. Janel had no idea what that accomplished, given that they were still at least two miles from Atrine. The impossibly bright lights didn’t seem to do much more than spotlight the dragon. Maybe they hoped to lure Morios closer?

“Front rank—fire!”

Janel blinked. “That’s too far away. They’ll never hit—”

Each scorpion tail launched a small barrel up into the air on a trajectory that wouldn’t make it a hundred feet, let alone miles. Yet when each barrel reached the height of its arc, it sped away at an impossibly fast speed as if some unseen god had thrown it. Each barrel slammed into Morios at exactly the same point highlighted by its scorpion’s light.

And exploded.

Morios reared back. Yellow-white fire clung to his neck and back, throwing out sparks and globs of molten metal. The dragon’s scales glowed red hot and began to melt and drip.

“Second rank—fire!”

The Quuros army fired again.

Senera leaned toward Janel. “If you ever wondered how Quur conquered an entire continent, now you know.”

The high general smirked.

“And then remember this still wasn’t enough to invade the Manol,” Senera added.

Morios swung his head toward their position on the lakeside and roared, incredibly loud even from that distance.

Then he spoke.

“Ha!” the dragon said. “So you do want to fight!” Then in a conversational tone, Morios added, “It will give me something to do until my brother arrives.”

“Brother?” Janel looked over at Senera. “Who’s his brother?”

The witch shrugged. “Who knows?”