Noxis pressed a palm to the trunk of Bitterblight and grinned. ‘Can’t you feel it? The power? It dwarfs the magic from the Undrentree. If we give ourselves over to it, we can crush the Poxpunks and the wyverns. We can make the whole world bow down to us. Why live in pathetic tree houses when we can have towers crackling with dark energy? Why settle for a tiny, hidden city when we can have an empire that rules all?’

‘But at what cost?’ Liska pointed to the blackened, scarred rocks around her. ‘What good is all that power if everything gets destroyed to earn it?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’ He sneered down at her like she was some kind of insect. ‘You’re just a child.’

Just a child. Those words again. As if she was too small, too weak to matter. As if adults like Noxis had the right to throw away her whole life without even consulting her. As if her opinion was worthless.

Well, it was her world too. And she wasn’t about to give it up without a fight. ‘We’ll show you what children can do,’ she said, nodding to her friends. ‘Do it now, Elowen.’

Elowen nodded, throwing out her hands in a gesture that brought down a bolt of lightning right on Noxis’s head. At the same time Liska flipped her hood over, shifting forms even as she leapt into the air. Her body folded into its griffyx shape, her paws clutching the heart of Nammu tightly as she beat her wings, soaring up and around Bitterblight in a tight arc.

From above, she saw Noxis juddering as the lightning ripped through him. She saw smoke stream from his robes and the shadow tree behind him flicker as if in pain.

As it flinched, Embla regained her strength and began to charge forwards. It looked as though she might reach Noxis in time to crush him completely, but Bitterblight wasn’t beaten so easily.

Shoots burst from one of its roots, zipping towards Elowen as she channelled the lightning. Fishbone leapt to stop them, slashing with his claws, but he wasn’t fast enough to block them all. One or two wrapped around the ghost girl, dragging her to the ground.

In the same instant, the trunk of the tree seemed to open, wrapping itself around Noxis, coating him in strands of toxic wood.