Rygun follows its erratic path, each gouging sweep of his wings bringing us closer … closer … until we finally draw near enough for him to strike the Elding Bird with his flames.
“Varoughin ail, Rygun!”
He fills his chest with a heave of breath, then throws forward and blasts a spray of sputtering embers, chased by a screeching lament that chills me to the bone.
He can’t produce a flame …
He’s grown too cold …
He tosses his head, growling his frustrations. At the same time, I bellow desperate commands at the pip of a nearby moonstrike, attempting to charm the flaming explosion to rend in our direction. Beg it to douse Rygun with enough heat to melt the ice clotting his blood.
All I get is silence. Like Ignos is too distracted to listen.
“Sheish tah, Ignos. Vush. Vush hiss tha!”
Do something. Please.
Please help him.
“VUSH.”
No response …
With a plowing gust of Rygun’s wings, he presses forward, stretches his neck, and snaps down on the Elding Bird’s spindly tail feathers—the sound reminiscent of cracking bone.
They flickjustout of reach, like a dance.
The beast whips its head around to glance at us, slit pupils tightening in a way that makes me feel hunted, even thoughwe’rethe ones chasing. Arkyn does the same, tensing his body, digging deeper into the creature’s feathered plumage. The only warning we get before the Elding Bird flips,slashing its claws into Rygun’s tender underbelly.
The wall between our shared heartspace tremors with such might a scale chips free. Allows me tofeelthose claws part his flesh and hack through the muscled meat of his abdomen.
Rygun kicks his head back and roars like never before. As do I, looking over my shoulder in time to see the Elding Bird flip around, then dive headfirst toward the Mists, Arkyn still perched upon its back.
No—
“Duin kai. Atáh marus thun atka-ain.”
Don’t chase. Wait for them to re-emerge.
I scream the same request down our bond, into the echoey darkness beyond the tiny hole. Get nothing in response but the tingling sensation of his wild thirst to make me and my family safe.
With a gnash of pain-riddled rage, Rygun tilts forward and skewers toward the Mists that almost took his life so very long ago. Toward the Elding Bird, washing us with the embers dribbling from its plumage.
“Atáh duin. ATÁH DUIN!”
With every pitched beat in my chest, Rygun gains on the sleeker, but much lighter beast, his maw splitting wide.
Ready.
He snaps down, again just shy of the swishing tail as the Elding Bird punches a crater in the Mists and disappears. A foggy mouth we powerinto, like one of the falling moons. Encased, as though we’re caught in an avalanche of white and lost, fluttering larks—a few not diverting in time to avoid slapping against my face, arms, or hands, leaving the odd paper cut.
I’m crushed beneath nauseating fear, picturing Rygun bogged in the ground beneath Miel Et Muíem so many phases ago, thrashing into a deeper grave.
“Hals, Rygun. HALS.”
HALT.
He throws out his wings.
