Ashen is on the deck.
Far from where he should be.
I shoot him a glare, and he wilts slightly, shoulders slumping.
“He is mine, remember?” Amara says. She lifts her chin toward the sky.
Without hesitation, Ashen leaps into the air. With his teeth bared, he tears through the Ithranor like he’s at a banquet, limbs and blood flying in every direction.
Zyphoro watches, jaw tight. “Who knows how many more are on those ships. Even with the demon kitty, we can’t keep them back.”
“You’re right,” Amara says softly. “We’ll need something bigger.”
She turns to the railing and places her hand against the wood.
I move to stop her, whatever madness she’s considering, I know that look, but Zyphoro shakes her head.
I freeze, watching.
Amara closes her eyes.
A faint glow leaks from her skin, threading through the veins in her arms, green and pulsing like the roots of something ancient. Her hair lifts in the air, as though caught in a storm only she can feel. When she opens her eyes, they blaze a fierce green.
And on her brow… a mark carves itself in light.
This is power.
Real, old, wild and it’s about to be unleashed.
From the depths, the ocean splits with a roar.
A massive shape rises, long as a warship, scales black as oil-slicked stone. Its jaws open wide, revealing rows upon rows of serrated teeth, and those eyes, massive, yellow, slitted, lock onto the Ithranor vessel.
Screams rise as the stormwyrm dives.
It rushes the ship like a harpoon loosed from the gods themselves. Wood shatters. The hull splinters. Ithranor Fae scatter in a frenzy, but not fast enough. The wyrm punches straight through the side of their ship, a wet, grinding crunch of bone and timber echoing across the sea before it disappears beneath the surface, leaving only chaos in its wake.
But it isn’t alone.
Another stormwyrm bursts from the waves, scales glinting green-blue in the dim light, a hiss like steam escaping its throat. It coils mid-air before slamming down across the enemy deck, snapping its massive head down to pluck a screaming Ithranor clean from the ship. Then silence, save for the gulp as the wyrm swallows him whole.
Then another rises and another.
The sea becomes teeth and scales and screaming. Stormwyrms tear through the enemy like vessels of vengeance, dragging Ithranor Fae from the skies, crashing onto the deck with impossible force. One leans over the railing and drags its fangs along the wood, shoveling soldiers into its mouth like meat swept from a cutting board.
“They answered her call,” Zyphoro breathes, her voice both reverent and terrified.
The Ithranor ship groans.
“They’re sinking,” Reon says as he touches down beside me, blood dripping from his blade, caught somewhere between awe and disbelief.
Amara turns toward us, toward me, and for a moment, there’s nothing human in her face. Just raw, unrelenting power. Old as the deep. Cold as the grave.
The last of the Ithranor retreat, vanishing into the night, but I wonder how far their wind will carry them before their strength fails and they’re swallowed by the black sea in the middle of nowhere.
Orios and Solena land nearby as we watch the enemy ship split clean down the middle, its hull groaning before it’s slowly devoured by the waves. The stormwyrms circle once, then slip back beneath the surface, the ocean closing over them as if they were never there at all.
Amara watches a moment longer, then smiles, the glow of her power receding.
