The world became a roaring, blinding vortex of grey.

  Willow’s scream of effort was swallowed instantly by the hurricane of her own making. A swirling, chaotic maelstrom of wind and gritty ash erupted from the sides of the iron road, curling up and over us like a crashing wave of solid earth.

  It completely engulfed us.

  I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I couldn't hear anything but the deafening roar of the wind and the sting of a thousand tiny particles peppering my armor like hail. It felt less like a spell and more like a natural disaster had decided to personally target us.

  “I can’t see a bloody thing!” Faelar’s voice was a muffled bellow somewhere to my right. “Is this helping? It feels like being eaten by a sandstorm!”

  “It’s better than being a puddle of acid!” Liam’s voice shot back from my left, sharp and strained. “Just stay down and try not to breathe too much of the scenery! My lungs feel like sandpaper!”

  “Willow!” I shouted into the gale, shielding my eyes with my arm. “How long can you hold it?”

  Her voice was a thin, ragged gasp from the center of the storm. “Not… much… longer!”

  From within the swirling cloud, the shrieks of the drakes shifted pitch. They went from predatory cries of triumph to sounds of enraged confusion. They were aerial hunters, evolved for clear skies and sharp vision. Now they were flying blind in a blender full of rocks.

  I could hear the hissing of their acid, but it was dispersed now. It fell as a sizzling, corrosive rain that pitted our armor but lacked the focused, melting power of a direct hit. The foul, acrid smell of burnt metal was everywhere, a choking miasma of chemical fury.

  Then came a sound that was not wind or acid.

  It was a horrible, grinding screech of metal on bone—the sound of immense weight and speed meeting an immovable object—followed by a wet, percussive CRUNCH.

  The iron road beneath my feet shuddered violently, nearly knocking me over.

  The vortex dissipated as quickly as it had formed. The wind died with a final, mournful sigh, dropping the curtain of ash and leaving a sudden, ringing silence in its wake.

  Willow collapsed to her knees, her breath coming in ragged, exhausted gasps, her face pale as the ash that coated her robes.

  The scene the storm left behind was one of pure chaos.

  One of the drakes was pulling up, disoriented and furious, circling at a higher altitude to reassess.

  The other was on the iron road with us.

  It had collided with its twin in the blinding storm and slammed into the ground. Its left wing was bent at an unnatural, sickening angle, torn and mangled. It was grounded.

  It thrashed, its claws gouging deep furrows in the iron. It was incandescent with pain and rage, its yellow, reptilian eyes fixing on the nearest, largest target.

  “Finally!” Faelar roared, a savage, joyous grin splitting his beard. “A proper fight! No more flying about, you oversized gecko!”

  He charged to meet the screeching, wounded beast.

  My mind, finally catching up with the chaos, began to function again. The threat had changed. It was no longer just above us; it was right here, in our faces, and still circling overhead.

  “Faelar, keep it busy!” I bellowed, my voice raw from the grit. “Liam! Elmsworth! Keep your eyes on the sky! Don’t let the other one get a clear shot!”

  The battle split.

  Faelar was in his element. He was a whirlwind of steel and fury against the grounded drake. He ducked under a wild snap of its jaws, Bessie’s sharpened edge scoring a deep, bleeding gash along the creature’s flank.

  “That’s it, you lizard! A proper dance!” the dwarf laughed, a wild, booming sound.

  But the drake was massive, and its tail lashed out like a whip.

  “Watch out!” I shouted.

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  I lunged forward, planting my feet and raising my shield just as the heavy, scaled tail swept toward Faelar’s exposed back.

  SLAM.

  The impact drove me back three feet, my boots skidding on the iron. My arm went numb, but I held the line. Faelar didn't even notice; he just kept chopping.

  I recovered and thrust my spear, aiming for the soft tissue under the drake’s neck, keeping it distracted so Faelar could work.

  Meanwhile, the second drake in the air had recovered its wits.

  It swooped low again, spitting a glob of acid that forced Elmsworth to dive behind a ridge of slag for cover.

  “It’s toying with us!” Liam shouted. He loosed an arrow. Ping. It sparked harmlessly off the creature’s stony hide.

  “Five arrows!” Liam cursed, reaching for another. His hand trembled slightly. “It knows it has the advantage! It’s waiting for an opening!”

  The drake, seeing its companion locked in a desperate struggle below, seemed to swell with arrogance. It didn't dive immediately. It circled lower, its wings beating heavily against the air.

  Its grating, hissing voice cut through the wind. It sounded like grinding rocks.

  “Look at you,” the drake hissed. “Worms. Squirming on the Master’s road.”

  We all froze for a split second.

  “It talks?” Faelar asked, parrying a claw swipe. “Why does it talk? I prefer them when they just scream!”

  “Do you feel his gaze upon you even now?” the drake continued, its voice booming with theatrical menace. “He is laughing at your pathetic struggles! Your flesh will burn and your bones will be scattered on this pathetic, dead world! The age of flesh is over! The age of the Hand is—”

  Faelar, who had just narrowly avoided being disemboweled by the grounded drake’s snapping jaws, roared back at the sky without missing a beat.

  “Tell your master to come down here and say that to my axe, you talkin’ lizard! And your mother was a salamander with loose morals and a skin condition!”

  “He’s monologuing!” Liam yelled. He scrambled atop a rock, taking advantage of the drake’s hovering posture to line up a shot. “They always monologue! It’s a sign of weakness! And poor time management!”

  Liam drew the bowstring to his ear. He exhaled.

  Twang.

  The arrow hissed through the air. It struck the drake in the soft flesh of its underbelly, right where a scale had been knocked loose in the earlier collision.

  It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was a painful one.

  The drake let out a furious, agonized shriek, its grand speech regarding the "Age of the Hand" forgotten.

  “Amateur,” Soul-Drinker hissed from Liam’s belt, loud enough for me to hear over the din of battle. “Never gloat until the entrails are on the outside. A rookie mistake. He should have led with the screaming, it’s much more intimidating. I give it a two out of ten.”

  “His rhetorical structure is surprisingly robust for a lesser draconid!” Elmsworth commented critically from behind the dubious cover of Faelar’s broad back. “Note the use of condescending imagery! However, his reliance on clichés such as ‘worms’ and ‘pathetic struggles’ is disappointing! I’d give the speech a C-plus at best! He shows promise, but lacks originality!”

  The talking drake, enraged by the arrow, the insult to its mother, and the poor critical reviews, decided to end the conversation.

  It swooped lower. Its eyes burned with a hateful fire. Its maw gaped wide, and its throat began to glow with a sickening, yellow-green light. It was preparing to unleash a torrent of acid that would melt us all into a single, screaming puddle.

  “Incoming!” I screamed, raising my shield to cover Willow.

  Elmsworth, seeing this, knew he needed to do something big. He scrambled out of cover, his robes flapping.

  “The atmospheric pressure is all wrong for a major conjuration!” he shouted, his hands beginning to weave a complex, shimmering pattern in the air. “But I must attempt the Ninth Syllable of Abject Neutralization! The incantation is rather complex—a multi-layered invocation of phase-shifting arcane frequencies designed to destabilize and invert the target's biological processes! It might take me a moment! Ahem... By the roots of the world and the—”

  He was too slow. We were out of time. The acid was coming.

  Just as the drake opened its mouth to its widest, its throat glowing with corrosive energy, Nugget moved.

  The chicken, who had been hiding in Elmsworth’s collar, suddenly erupted in a flash of what can only be described as furious, fire-engine-red indignation.

  She launched from Elmsworth’s shoulder.

  She didn't fly away. She didn't fly for cover.

  With a squawk that was pure, condensed, and utterly suicidal rage, she flew directly into the Ashdrake’s open, acid-dripping mouth.

  The drake, completely surprised by the feathered projectile rocketing toward its tonsils, instinctively snapped its jaws shut.

  Gulp.

  It swallowed.

  The world seemed to hold its breath.

  Elmsworth’s spell sputtered into nothingness. His hands fell to his sides. His face, which had been a mask of frantic concentration, crumbled into one of pure, heart-wrenching anguish.

  “NUGGET!”

  He screamed the name. It was a ragged, broken sound that was more terrible than any drake’s shriek.

  “HE ATE MY CHICKEN!”

  The sheer, unmitigated absurdity of the moment was so profound that the fight on the ground momentarily halted.

  I was poised to thrust my spear. Faelar had his axe raised high. The wounded drake before us was ready to lunge, its own reptilian head tilted in confusion as it looked up at its pack-mate.

  But all three of us paused. Our heads turned to the sky.

  We watched the bizarre, terrible spectacle unfold.

  The monologuing drake hovered for a second, looking confused. Then, its throat began to pulse.

  A faint, but rapidly intensifying, multi-colored light began to shine through the scales of its neck.

  The drake made a choked, confused, gurgling sound. Its triumphant dive became an uncontrolled, wobbling descent.

  It looked less like a fearsome predator and more like a man who had just swallowed a lit firecracker and was beginning to regret every life choice that had led him to this moment.

  The glow brightened. It shifted from red to blue to a dazzling, impossible green, illuminating the beast from the inside out like a paper lantern.

  “Oh no,” Liam whispered, lowering his bow. “It’s happening.”