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“What are you doing?!” Dax yelled over the howling wind.
I didn’t answer. I drew my obsidian dagger, slicing the heavy leather sleeve into three long, thick binding straps.
I grabbed Dax’s broken left arm, pressing his hand flat against the hilt of his own obsidian dagger. I took the first leather strap, wrapping it frantically around his palm, his fingers, and the weapon’s hilt; binding his dead grip directly to the iron guard of the blade. I took the second strap, wrapping it tightly around his wrist and forearm, securing the blade like an extension of his arm. Finally, I tied the third, thickest leather strap around his torso, leaving a long, heavy loop hanging at his side.
“Listen to me,” I rasped, gripping his face in my hands, forcing his wild green eyes to lock onto mine. “If a flyer catches you, you don’t use your hand to grip. You jam that dagger straight in between their back scales! You let the binding take the weight! Do you hear me?!”
Dax stared at his leather-bound hand, the obsidian blade now fused to his grip like a permanent claw. A slow, trembling breath left his lips. He looked at me, the terror in his eyes melting away, replaced by a fierce gratitude that burned brighter than the cold wind.
“You’re brilliant, Taur,” Dax whispered, a faint smirk touching his bloody lips. “Completely unhinged... but brilliant.”
“Don’t you dare die, Dax,” I commanded, my voice trembling despite my best efforts. “I’ll see you at the bottom.”
“Count on it,” Dax said.
He didn’t give himself time to doubt. Dax turned on his heel, took three running strides across the obsidian ledge, and launched himself off the edge of the world.
My heart stopped. I threw myself against the lip of the precipice, my hands gripping the cold black stone, staring down into the void.
Dax fell like a stone. Fifty feet. A hundred feet. Two hundred feet.
The wind ripped his hair, his bound dagger flailing at his side as he plunged deeper into the suffocating crimson fog. Three seconds passed. Five seconds. Seven seconds. Nothing emerged from the clouds.
“Catch him!” I screamed into the abyss, my voice tearing my throat. “Catch him, dammit!”
It’ll work.
It’s going to work.
At the absolute last possible second—just before his body disappeared into the boiling sulfur mist of the valley floor—a flash of brilliant emerald erupted from the petrified canopy below.
A Sylvanis launched itself horizontally out of the black forest.
The beast was a Forest Whisper—a medium-sized, incredibly agile flyer covered in smooth, iridescent emerald scales, allowing it to blend seamlessly into the foliage of woods. It was sleek, fast, and lithe. The Sylvanis twisted its body in mid-air, sweeping its broad, webbed wings back, and dived straight beneath Dax’s falling frame.
Dax slammed hard into the beast’s lower neck. Through the distance, I saw his bound left arm swing forward, his blade driving straight into the thick scales. The leather bindings held. The dagger anchored him. Dax threw his right leg over the ridge, locking his body against the emerald scales as the Sylvanis pulled out of its dive, banking gracefully into the canopy of the black forest.
He survived.
A shuddering, breathless sob of pure relief broke from my chest, but I was given no time to process it.
“Next!” the High Priestess’s voice echoed through the cold air, completely indifferent to our terror.
One of the transfers stepped up to the edge. He was shaking so violently his knees were knocking together. He looked down into the abyss, let out a whimpering cry. He tried to step back but his boot slipped on a patch of black ice along the lip.
He lost his balance. He tipped backward over the edge, screaming hysterically as he fell.
He tumbled out of control, spinning like a ragdoll through the sky.
He waited for a flyer.
He prayed for a bond.
But no dragon rose from the clouds to answer his terror.
He fell three thousand feet, his fading scream abruptly cut short as his body shattered against the jagged basalt spires of the valley floor below.
Cold, immediate death.
