Sage and the rest of her Bonded Group arrive shortly after, moving over to us as Sage mumbles quietly to Oli, “I hate Transporting with anyone who isn't Kieran. It feels gross.”
Oli nods, quietly slipping her hand into her best friend’s as she offers her what little comfort she can.
The entire situation is manageable right now, but it’s teetering on the edge of becoming worse.
Gryphon murmurs to Sage, “Can you feel anything? Can you feel if he's nearby, or anything from him at all?”
She scowls a little as she closes her eyes, but she shakes her head pretty quickly. “He's blocking me out. Whatever's going on is probably not pleasant, but it's not strong enough now to leak through the way it would if he's in too much pain.”
Oli sighs with a nod. “That makes sense, but at least it’s survivable. Is it strange that I already know exactly how much pain that is? Never mind. He’s going to be okay. I promise you, Sage.”
Gryphon frowns at the mention of the torture that Oli had endured, and I understand that completely sick feeling sinking into my gut at the very idea of it. Before I can spiral too much about the torture she’d endured, Gryphon starts directing everyone.
The teams are made up of a fifty-fifty split, half of them being Tac operatives and half being the newcomers we've had to train. That way, when he starts using hand signals, at least half of each team understands what he's saying and can direct the rest.
The shield that's in place is strong, but not strong enough to give us a clear vision of what's happening outside of it. We already know that it's going to be bad from the surveillance footage that we had, and Nox sends one of his shadow creatures out to get eyes on the situation before we let the shield down.
He curses under his breath for a moment and then sends through the mind connection,Prepare yourselves. It's so much worse than what we were expecting.
I watch everyone square their shoulders. Oli squeezes Sage’s hand right before she drops it, widening her stance and rolling her shoulders back as she prepares herself for whatever is to come. I swallow roughly for a moment, and then I reach out to the Draconis, making sure that it is not only awake but prepared to shift the second that I might need it.
It isn't just ready, it's hungry.
Hungry to do everything that it can for our Bonded to prove itself to her, to let her know that even though it had the longest cycles between lives, it loves her just as much as any of the rest.
The moment the shield drops, I shift without fully processing what's happening, the god-bond taking over and shredding through my Tac gear as though it’s nothing but tissue paper.
Atlas curses and moves Oli into his arms to get her away from me, but I'm grateful he does when a bullet whirrs past him and buries itself in my scales. It must be a reasonably low caliber because it doesn't quite penetrate my skin, but I feel it all the same.
My bond lets out a roar. I hear the chatter of everyone around us, but the Draconis doesn't care for any of it. All it cares for is my Bonded and eating every last one of the Resistance until we're sure that she is going to be safe.
There's a rumble all around us as we begin to move, and I have to prompt it not to step on any of our own people. I remind it that they are just as invested in keeping our Bonded alive as anyone outside of our Bonded Group can be. It's not particularly happy about making such concessions, but it does tiptoe around them until it has enough room for our wings to take flight.
I get the same rush as we take to the air as I did the very first time I’d shifted into a small bird when I was a teenager, the same shot of adrenaline to the blood. It’s addictive in the best way.
The Draconis looks around the area, hunting for our prey. Curiously, the buildings here aren't burning. Every other fight we've gone into has been full of ash and fire and smoke that burns my lungs for days afterwards, the taste of it sticking in the back of my throat.
It's not until we do our first pass over the city block that I see it. The god-bond is an Elemental, but it's not using fire, if it even has access to it.
There's an entire suburb here that’s been frozen solid. Watch out for ice,I send through the mind connection to everyone, and the Draconis is very unhappy with this.
I reach out to it and it sends back a small snippet of memory, something that it can't explain in words but can show me through images. A god-bond sent icicles that were sharpened to a point flying through the air. They skewered the Draconis that was already injured and unable to access its fire. Then there was a long, slow arc through the air until it came crashing down to the ground, a slow and painful death at the hands of a god who murdered our Bonded.
A vengeful god who wants nothing more than everyone to suffer, the madness of living so many lives alone having eaten away at it until there was nothing but chaos and destruction left.
The Draconis doesn't want to kill the god.
It wants to find it, snap every bone in its body, disable its power, and then deliver it to the Eternal to feast on. It wants to destroy it in such a way that it will never exist again, and with the painful memory of the impact of those icicles fresh in my mind, I can't agree with it more.
Let's hunt.
* * *
I leavethe Draconis to hunt as it knows best, instead shifting my consciousness to keep track of where Oli and the rest of the Bonded Group are. I do it just to reassure myself that she’s safe at all times, because honestly, letting the god-bond take over makes me feel a little bit useless. I watch, though Atlas and Nox stay with her at all times. They make a surprisingly adept team at protecting her while she moves through the rubble with Sage and her Bonded Group as they work together to find Kieran.
He's in there somewhere, trapped by the god-bond as bait for the rest of us.
Gryphon and North take up the mantle of finding it, using the path that the Draconis is taking as a guide for where to look. I find myself surprised for a moment that Nox isn't also insisting on proactively looking for it as well, until it occurs to me that he doesn't have to; the Draconis fills in the blanks here for me.
