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I blocked the cavern with a shield so she’s still trapped, but we should return to make sure no others escape.
“How are they getting out?” Liz asks. “Isn’t it weird that when I leave they’re able to squeeze through?”
That’s what I think we should look into. You obviously are connected to this barrier of theirs.
We need to find out why they’re trapped, I say. The last thing we need to do is release a plague of villains we’ll need to contend with.
“You’d think they might be immune to your fire-blasts,” Liz says, “seeing as they’re living in a pool of lava.”
I wonder whether they’re not in the lava, but somehow beneath it, I say. Perhaps they’re underneath the barrier and pushing against the lava.
It would explain why they’re scorched when they escape through, Hyperion says. The female that escaped this time was smoking, and what looked like remains of clothing clung to her, blackened and charred.
Hyperion’s too keen on us investigating this, and he’s in a huge rush. Liz needs rest. It’s time to head back.
Father’s deadline is tomorrow.
I want to burn something down. I want to destroy something—anything, really. I’m tired of being set impossible tasks and then being pressured into doing things faster, faster, faster. We will not tell him about what they said. We have no evidence that it’s even true.
Those lava blessed are saying that the heart is there—that it’s what is keeping them in that volcano, Hyperion says. I don’t trust them, but it’s definitely the largest clue we’ve encountered by a wide margin. They speak our language, even. They might be able to tell us what happened in the first place and why we left the heart behind if it’s so important.
Dad should have told us that, I explode. Why didn’t he give us all the information in the first place? We crest the ridge of the mountain range we’ve been following on the return trip to Selfoss. . .and that’s when I see it.
“Whoa,” Liz says. “What is all that?”
On the far side of the city, barely visible from our far west side, there are human forces gathered. Tanks. Long columns of troops, and huge machines like nothing I’ve ever seen them bring.
“Those look like huge crossbows,” she says. “And what’s that thing loaded into it?” She sounds nervous, and the bond is tight.
That makes me nervous. Their exploding weapons have never worked on us, but if the bright blue spears on the end of the massive crossbows are what I think they are, they might harm us.
Alert! I trumpet. Hear me and report. The humans have mounted an attack.
“It looks like an ice spear to me,” Liz says. “Is that what it is?”
I swing in a wide loop around Selfoss, which looks untouched so far, and watch as blessed pour out of buildings, swoop through the sky, and stream out of the Ölfusá river and the ocean, far, far away.
The humans are ready, but they’re not attacking. What are they waiting for? Why are they hesitating, allowing us to assemble our forces?
But then, as we’re finally gathered, with storm clouds mounting on the horizon behind us from the impending storm, a dozen strike blessed fall from the sky, their bodies rolling, end over end, and then crashing into the ground below. When they hit, they explode, spraying lightning strikes all around, taking out dozens of the surrounding earth blessed as they die.
“What’s going on?” Liz asks.
They’re killing the human bonded, Hyperion says.
“How would they even know to do that?” Liz asks. But I can sense the moment she realizes the answer.
Gideon.
He must have sent them a message or left them one when we cleared out. And they’re following his advice, and the gift we left them—sixty human-fused time-bombs to massacre the blessed.
“We need to figure out where the other human-bonded electro dragons are,” Liz says. “It looks like they’re killing the humans when the dragons are in the air, knowing that if they fall to the earth, prone as they are, they could die.”
They’ve weaponized my people, because they know that killing the humans won’t kill them outright. It’ll just incapacitate them, but waiting until they’re in the air makes them into weapons that are flying among us.
Who cares about them? Hyperion asks. You and I can destroy the humans ourselves. We’ll show them what happens to puny creatures who challenge Princes of the Flame! He banks and heads right for them, fire already billowing out from his maw.
“We have to talk to Gideon first,” Liz says. “If he?—”
