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With that thought, their perception of the cloud ray altered. Now they could see a green shroud enveloping its balloonlike form, nearly invisible when viewed straight on, but easily discernible around the edges. Kayan and Jedra climbed toward the creature, talons extended to rip the shroud apart, but when they reached it they found it sticky and resilient rather than easily shredded.
The cloud ray reacted instantly to their contact. Screeching in anger, it expanded its entire body, doubling in size almost instantaneously and slamming into them. They tumbled backward, flapping madly to stay aloft, and when they righted themselves and banked around they could see that the green shroud was even stronger than before.
The cloud ray swooped toward the ground, renewing its attack on the source of the psionic power that had approached it.
Don't let it get close enough to use that tail again! Jedra thought. If the ray made another pass, it could level the entire camp, him and Kayan included.
In the psionic vision the elven camp was a maelstrom of activity, the tiny vortices of intelligent minds darting about and tiny lightning bolts that had to be arrows rising up toward the cloud ray and bouncing off. Jedra and Kayan flew ahead of the ray, ignoring the lightning bolts, which passed right through their bird-of-prey body. They wouldn't feel any physical object unless it hit their real bodies in the tent; only psionic forces had any reality in the vision.
Everything they saw there was a manifestation of their minds. When the cloud ray expanded, it had been resisting their mental contact and strengthening its inertial barrier. Now as Jedra and Kayan tried to stop its descent by projecting a physical force against it with their minds, their own body in the vision grew larger with each wing-beat until they were as big, then even bigger than, the ray. With powerful strokes of their wings they blew it back into die sky, but the ray responded with a blast of wind that drove it back toward the ground.
Quick, push it down instead of up, they thought, and they swooped up and over its back, digging their talons into the sticky inertial barrier and flapping hard to shove it downward. The ray plummeted toward the elven camp, screeching with rage as it tried to reverse the winds, but it didn't have time. Jedra and Kayan managed to steer it away from the camp itself and toward a gap in the roiling vortices below, then they put everything they had into one last colossal wingbeat, driving it full speed into the sand.
They got more force than they expected. The cloud ray streaked toward the ground, and Jedra and Kayan barely managed to let go and veer aside before it hit.
The impact shook even the dreamscape. Thunder rolled across the desert, blasting Kayan and Jedra out of their link only to be tumbled across the floor of the tent by the real earthquake.
Slowly, their minds disoriented and their bodies aching with sudden fatigue, they staggered to their feet and looked around them. Not a single tent had remained upright. Pieces of canvas lay strewn across the sand for hundreds of yards; evidently the wind the cloud ray had produced had had a real counterpart. Elves lay strewn everywhere as well, most of them rising shakily to their feet now that the battle was over. The kank pen had been trampled and the kanks had fled, except for the ones that had been injured either by flying debris or by their fellows.
However, the worst scene of destruction by far was the site of the cloud ray's impact. It had hit with enough force to dig a crater, scattering gouts of sand and chunks of its body all around. Jedra was awestricken by the magnitude of what he and Kayan had done, but then he saw something that sickened him instead: one of the elves hadn't been able to dodge the flying debris. Only his lead and shoulders stuck out from the huge oblong mass of bone and flesh that pinned him down. It was the cloud ray's head, Jedra realized.
The elf wasn't dead. He screamed in pain and tried to wriggle free, but he was trapped. The other elves ran toward him and began digging frantically in the sand, trying to pull him out, but the immense weight of the head just sank it deeper with every handful they scooped away. The elves switched their digging to the downhill side of the head, trying to roll it off their companion, but it was so huge Jedra didn't see how they could budge it.
Kayan took a step toward the digging elves. "Mayb
e we can help now. Push the... thing aside, or..."
"No." Jedra grabbed her by the shoulder. "If we link up again, there's no telling what might happen."
"Then let's help dig. We can't just stand here and watch him die," she said, and she began picking her way through the wreckage of the tents toward the pinned elf.
Jedra followed her, but the elves stopped them when they drew near. "Get back," one warrior snarled, drawing his sword. "You've done enough damage. Harat is dying, thanks to you."
"I'm a healer," Kayan said. "I can keep him alive while you dig."
The warrior considered a moment, then stood aside, but he didn't sheathe his sword. "See that you do," he said, "or you will die with him."
Kayan sized him up with a look that seemed to say, "Not likely," but she didn't push it. Instead she bent down to the pinned elf. He was no longer screaming, but his face was still contorted in a grimace of pain, and his breathing was fast and shallow. His skin was pale, too, for an elf.
"I'm going to make you sleep," Kayan told him. "Try not to fight it. When you wake up, you'll be out of here, and all your injuries will be healed."
The elf shook his head. "I can't... feel my legs. Not even you can heal that."
"Don't be so sure," Kayan said, placing her hands on his head. The elf closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. When he was completely unconscious, Kayan turned to the elf warrior who still stood over her with his sword drawn and said, "You'd be more use to him digging. He's bleeding inside, and I can't stop that until we get him out of here."
The warrior growled something in elvish, but he sheathed his sword and walked around to join in the digging.
Jedra did the same. He had to stifle an involuntary laugh when he first saw how the elves were digging-they had bent down and were throwing sand backward between their legs like a pack of rasclinn burrowing for roots-but when he tried it himself he realized that was the best way to move a lot of sand in a hurry.
The sand was sticky and colored red with the cloud ray's blood. It smelled of metals and exotic spices. Jedra had expected it to smell awful, but the creature had been alive only minutes before; it hadn't had time to putrefy yet. Give it a day in the direct sun, though, and the stench from a carcass this size would be unbearable for miles around.
The ragged wall of flesh above him began to shift, and the elves leaped back out of the way. Jedra slipped and had a horrifying moment as he imagined it rolling over and trapping him, but one of the elves snatched at his arm and pulled him free just as the head rolled into the trench he had helped dig.
It had moved only a few feet, but that was enough to lift the other side off the injured elf and allow the diggers to pull him free. Kayan knelt beside him, running her hands along his torso and legs to assess his injuries while the elves looked on.
The chief had arrived and was scowling at the whole proceedings. Jedra tried to stay out of his way, but he knew he wasn't going unnoticed. Everyone who had gathered there kept eyeing him distrustfully and muttering to one another.
Kayan held her hands against the elf's abdomen and dosed her eyes. Jedra knew what she was doing now: pouring more of her own life energy into her patient while she tried to heal his bleeding and his spinal damage. Everyone else watched the elf for signs of recovery, but Jedra kept his eyes on Kayan. There was a limit to how much energy she could spare.
