The shriek of the first diving Ashdrake was the sound of the sky itself tearing open.

  It was a razor blade of pure, predatory intent that sliced through the howl of the wind, a sound that promised a swift and brutal death from above.

  A split second of frozen terror hung in the air. Then my Citadel training kicked in—drills ran against imaginary foes in perfect weather. It screamed a single, desperate command into my mind.

  “SCATTER! FIND COVER!” I roared, my voice raw.

  It was a useless, pathetic order. It was an echo from a textbook that had no chapter for a flat, featureless road of solid iron, miles from anything resembling shelter.

  “Cover? Where?” Willow cried out, spinning around. Her eyes were wide with terror as she looked at the empty, windswept plains around us. “Under a rock? We're not beetles! There’s nothing here!”

  “I’m not hiding from overgrown lizards!” Faelar bellowed.

  The dwarf planted his feet defiantly in the middle of the road. He hefted Bessie onto his shoulder, his stance a challenge to the heavens. A manic grin of savage joy spread across his face.

  “Let the beasts come! I’ll meet ‘em head-on! I’ll shave ‘em!”

  “Don’t be an idiot! Get down! Spread out!” Liam yelled.

  He was already moving, dropping into a low crouch and sprinting away from the group to make himself a smaller, separate target.

  “Make them choose! Don’t give them a single, giant, stupid, bearded target!”

  “My beard is magnificent!” Faelar roared back at him.

  Elmsworth, ever the scholar, was watching the drake’s descent with a look of academic fascination, completely unfazed by the imminent threat of a fiery, acidic death. He was holding his thumb up, measuring the creature’s wingspan.

  “Note the aerodynamic profile!” he shouted over the wind, pointing his staff. “A classic wyvern-class predator! Their dive angle suggests a ‘strafe and spit’ tactic rather than a direct physical assault! The G-force on that turn is remarkable! Fascinating!”

  The lead drake swooped low, a leathery shadow moving with impossible speed. We could see the malevolent, yellow-slitted intelligence in its reptilian eyes. We could see the rows of needle-like teeth in its gaping maw.

  Its long, serpentine throat pulsed. A thick, steaming glob of greenish-yellow liquid shot from its mouth.

  It wasn't just spit; it was a sizzling, airborne curse, arcing through the air directly towards Faelar.

  For all his bravado, Faelar was not slow. With a surprisingly nimble dive that would have been comical if it weren't so desperate, he threw himself to the side, his armor clattering against the iron.

  The glob of acid hit the road where he had been standing.

  HISS-CRACK.

  The sound was vicious, like a thousand snakes plunging into water. A dinner-plate-sized hole melted instantly into the black slag. The edges glowed a cherry-red, and a foul, acrid smoke poured from the wound in the ancient road.

  We all stared at the smoking hole for a stunned second.

  “Alright,” Faelar said, scrambling back to his feet. His face was suddenly pale under his beard. “New plan. Don’t get hit.”

  “I’m open to suggestions!” I yelled, raising my shield as two more drakes began their circling descent.

  A frantic, shouted conversation erupted—a chaotic storm of bad ideas born from sheer panic.

  Liam was the only one with any means of fighting back. He nocked an arrow, his face a mask of concentration.

  Twang.

  The arrow hissed through the air. It struck the lead drake in the flank.

  Ping.

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  It skittered off the thick, scaly hide like a toothpick thrown at a stone wall.

  “Damn it!” Liam hissed. “That was a Bodkin point! That cost me four coppers!”

  He nocked another arrow. Twang. Ping.

  “It’s no good!” he shouted, his voice tight with frustration. “Their hides are like stone! It’s like trying to shoot a moving rock covered in grease! I’m not getting any penetration, and I’m burning through my inventory!”

  “Cowardly worms!” Soul-Drinker screamed from Liam’s belt, the voice audible only to the elf but clear from his wince. “They fight from the sky because they fear the steel! Demand they land! Insult their ancestors! Tell them their hoard is small!”

  “Shut up!” Liam yelled at his hip.

  “Then aim for the wings!” I yelled, trying to track three different targets at once. “The joints! The membranes! Something soft!”

  “Oh, is that how it works?” Liam yelled back, dripping with sarcasm as he dodged another glob of sizzling acid. “I was trying to shoot them in their tiny, hypothetical feelings! Thank you for the clarification, Commander! I only have twelve arrows left!”

  “I’ve got an idea!” Faelar roared. He was spinning Bessie in his hands. “I’ll throw my axe at one! A proper dwarven anti-air technique! It’s all in the wrist! I’ll knock it clean out of the sky!”

  “And then what, you idiot?” Liam shot back. “We’ll have one less axe and you’ll be a very angry, unarmed dwarf waiting to be melted into a puddle of beard-grease! It is, by a significant margin, the single stupidest idea I have ever heard!”

  “It is not!” Faelar protested. “My cousin Balin once took down a cave-bat the size of a cow with a thrown hammer! It’s a respectable tactic!”

  “Was this a real cousin, or one of the ones from your drinking songs?” Liam grunted, letting another arrow fly. It missed. “Eleven arrows!”

  “The poor road!” Willow cried out.

  She was staring in horror as another glob of acid sizzled nearby, chewing a fuming crater into the ancient slag.

  “It’s in such pain! All those holes! We have to do something to protect it! It remembers being whole!”

  “Their acidic spittle appears to be a biological compound of remarkable potency!” Elmsworth suddenly announced. He was sniffing the acrid smoke with disturbing enthusiasm.

  “Highly volatile! Comprised of at least two hypergolic agents that react with the ambient air! In theory, a significant, localized, percussive shockwave should destabilize the complex chemical bonds and neutralize the acid mid-flight! It’s basic arcane chemistry!”

  Liam stopped drawing his bow. He stared at the wizard.

  “Did you just make all of that up?” he screamed over the wind.

  “Of course not!” Elmsworth huffed, deeply offended. “It is a perfectly sound theory based on the principles of thaumaturgical alchemy! Now, Faelar! Your axe! I need you to hit the ground! Very, very hard! The resulting shockwave should be sufficient to render their noxious projectiles inert!”

  Faelar stared at him for a second. Then his grin returned.

  A plan that involved hitting something very, very hard was a plan he could understand. It was a plan he could love.

  “He’s a wizard!” Faelar shouted, pointing at Elmsworth. “He knows about… wizard things! Hitting things is my specialty! Let me try! For science!”

  “This is the dumbest thing we have ever done,” Liam declared to the sky. “And we fought a ghost with happy thoughts.”

  But we were out of options. Acid was raining down around us, forcing us to dance and dodge like puppets on strings.

  “FINE!” I yelled. “DO IT! EVERYONE ELSE, BRACE!”

  As another drake folded its wings and dove towards us, its maw dripping with glowing death, Faelar let out a triumphant roar.

  “EAT THIS, YOU FLYING NEWT! FOR SCIENCE!”

  He swung Bessie in a massive overhead arc. He put all his weight, all his muscle, and all his frustration into the blow. He slammed the flat of the axe-head into the iron road.

  CLANG.

  The sound was deafening. It wasn't a thud; it was a ringing, metallic shriek, as if the world itself had cracked like a giant bell.

  The road shuddered under the impact. A web of hairline fractures spread from the point of impact. My teeth rattled in my skull. Nugget, hiding in Elmsworth’s collar, flashed a rapid sequence of panic-colors: red, yellow, blue.

  The shockwave rippled out.

  It did absolutely nothing to the incoming acid spit.

  The glob of green sludge missed Faelar by inches and melted another hissing, fuming crater in the road right next to his boot.

  “Brilliant, you two,” Liam grunted, shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears. “You've successfully deafened us and angered the road. The drakes seem unimpressed. In fact, I think they’re laughing.”

  The plan had been a literal bust. Elmsworth looked utterly crestfallen, his "perfectly logical" theory disproven in the most spectacular fashion. Faelar was just angry, his ears ringing too much for him to even form a proper curse.

  Liam was down to his last eight arrows. His shots were getting wilder as frustration set in.

  We were exposed. We were demoralized. We were completely out of ideas.

  Willow looked at the melting road. She looked at us, battered and terrified.

  She ran to the center of our small, panicked group. Her small face was set with a grim, desperate determination.

  “I can’t let them keep doing this!” she cried, her voice thin against the wind. “I have to try something!”

  She planted her feet. She closed her eyes. She raised her hands to the sky.

  She didn't cast a spell. She didn't weave a matrix.

  She spoke to the wind.

  “Please!” she shouted. “Help us!”

  The ever-present wind, which had been our tormentor for days, seemed to answer.

  It began to shift. It began to swirl. It was no longer a steady force pushing against us. It became the beginnings of a chaotic vortex, pulling the loose ash from the plains into a swirling, gritty cloud around us.

  At that moment, the drakes coordinated their attack.

  Two of them, one on each side, folded their wings and dove at once.

  Their shrieks harmonized into a terrifying chord of death. A promise of the acid rain that was about to fall.

  I saw them plummeting towards us, two dark angels of death against the bruised sky.

  I saw Willow in the center of it all, her face a mask of frantic concentration, her hair whipping around her face as she tried to summon a storm from a clear sky.

  And in that frozen moment, a cold, hard certainty settled in my gut.

  She was not going to be fast enough.