“Stop! Wait!” Jaspar called after him as Sterran stuck his hand in. A portal could lead anywhere – into the vast void of space, into the heart of a sun…
Sterran pulled his hand back out…and he was holding a pink tropical flower that smelled like ripe fruit. “It’s warm,” he said happily.
“You are an idiot,” Jaspar snapped at him.
“Am I? Watch this.” Sterran stepped through, then quickly stepped back. “It is a tropical paradise! The air is breathable!”
Jaspar let out a low growl, and they all hurried through the portal. They emerged in a thick tropical forest, under a purple sky. The moon overhead was enormous.
Before Jaspar had a chance to speak, eight Drakken rushed from the trees, pointing laser spears at them. They looked bedraggled, as if they had just been fighting. Their furs were torn and shredded, and several of them bore open wounds.
“When I give the signal, shift,” Jaspar muttered to his brother.
A strange cry rang out through the jungle, like the cawing of a bird. The Harbingers glanced at each other fearfully.
“It’s them,” one of them muttered.
An answering cry cawed.
Suddenly the air was thick with arrows, and before the Harbingers could shift, two of them fell, clawing at the arrows in their chests and screaming.
Smoke sizzled from their wounds. Jasper could smell something bitter and pungent. The arrows must be tipped with some kind of poison.
Jaspar and his clan mates shifted, their bones cracking and reforming under the pressure of the transformation. Silver wing membranes unfurled from their backs and luminous scales tinged with smoky black rattled over their skin.
Jaspar threw back his head on his long, sinuous neck and bellowed a challenge. He could feel the heat of battle fire rising in his stomach and chest.
The Harbingers shifted too, their skins becoming scaly orange-red hides, wings that looked like gore-streaked membranes beating the air. They had horns that curled like a ram’s, wickedly sharp.
Two of them advanced on Jaspar, their tails thrashing against the floor. He reared on his hind legs, wings spread in challenge as his clan mates took flight around him.
The larger of the two Harbingers charged at Jaspar’s exposed belly, head down, meaning to gore him with its horns. But he’d anticipated that. He leaped into the air, lashing out with his tail and knocking the advancing Drakken back against its clan mate. They tumbled backwards together.
Above him, his brother and their clan were fighting in flight. Drakken wings pounded the sultry air, whipping up a storm that thrashed through the tropical foliage. Streaks of flame cut across the purple sky. With a roar of triumph, Sterran sent his Harbinger adversary plummeting from the air. It trailed fire from its jaws as it fell, like a comet’s tail, then crashed into the ground, leaving a furrow behind it before it slid to a halt, bones broken, eyes glazed and dead.
Jaspar flapped his wings, gaining height above the two Harbingers who were snarling at each other as they tried to untangle themselves. He directed a stream of battle fire at them, so hot and intense that it was a jet of pale blue.
One of the Harbingers shrieked and retreated, rolling and thrashing against the ground to extinguish the flames.
The other, scales smoldering, leaped from the ground and built up speed, then tucked back its wings and used its momentum to speed towards Jaspar like a fiery dart.
An arrow caught it in the throat, and it tumbled from the sky, pungent smoke sizzling from the wound. It clawed at the shaft of the arrow as it fell, and hit the ground with a bone-shaking thump.
Jaspar landed and looked around. More of the Balthazar clan had joined the fight. Korl was there, Jaspar realized. So were his other missing clan mates. Where was Liza? He could not let himself be distracted…
More arrows zinged out from the jungle foliage, striking the Harbingers with deadly accuracy.
Jaspar looked around, rage flowing through his veins. The Harbingers were dead. All of them.
