The dragons circle high above. A few come down to test us once more after I had sent five to their deaths.

Tim watches the dragons, his lips pulled in a grin. I can’t make out what he’s saying over the din of the road and screech of dragons, but I sure hope he hurries it along.

The dragons are almost upon us.

I sweat as I make out the distinct forms of dragon riders on their backs and the way their claws flex. I can smell the sulphuric ash of burning dragon fire in the wind as their wings narrow to bring them ever closer to the city.

I look back at Tim, raising a brow.

He grins at me, and it’s altogether quite annoying how happy that man can be at such a time.

He drops his hand just as a head of sweat pops onto my brow, and the ballista rip into the dragons.

My heart aches as the majestic creatures plummet from the sky like burning comets.

They are not the black of my dragon. They are golden, red, and I even see an albino white.

It hurts to kill such beautiful animals, especially when I know their intelligence. But I cannot afford to have mercy. Not today.

The dragons circle, but are not trying to infiltrate again. They have lost too many and retreat to watching from high in the sky.

“Can you do it again?” David asks, his steely eyes on the dragons above as he rubs his thumb on his chin.

I shake my head, sweat flinging from my chin. I hide a wince as a coldness seeps from my soul and tries to numb my limbs. I rub them to keep them warm. I need all the strength I can get this day, and numbness and tingling extremities will not help on a field of battle.

“No. I just hope that will make them think twice before employing that tactic again,” I reply at long last, clenching my jaw. If they aren’t more cautious, I will need to try again… and that may be enough to take me from the battle altogether. I remember going unconscious the last time I overtaxed Beast, the numbness threading through my veins. I hope to avoid that today for as long as possible.

“It will have to be enough.” David polishes his sword with his thumb, his jaw tight and eyes narrowed at the army a mile out.

I nod. It will have to be enough.

The dragons circle, probing for weakness. The soldiers manning the ballista follow them with the sharp tips of the huge arrows. Watching. Waiting.

Then a robed man steps from the milling soldiers across the water glistening red with the blood of many.

He and ten others raise their hands.

Rocks, flame, and trailing vines that tear at the earth as they thread their way to Videlia’s wall. The vines are an ugly purple with teeming thorns and the fire is a blazing ball of blue and white. The rocks are as large as a grizzly bear or skrisour, at least two dozen of them streaking for us.

I hold my breath, watching each as it gets closer and closer to the city.

“Anytime now, Alicial,” I whisper, the wood protesting beneath my fingers as I squeeze the railing. Is this how everyone felt as they watched the dragons come with no recourse? I feel for them a bit more now than I did when I was in control.

A flash of light and the fire collides with something glowing white, and with a resounding crack and muffled sound like rumbling thunder, the fireball dissipates into smoke and hissing steam.

The rocks are shot through, crumbling into much smaller boulders that falter in their flight. They still smash through a few places in the wall, but nothing near what could have been.

The vine that's as big as a dragon’s foreleg shoots up the side of the wall. It glides up, breeching the top of the wall. It waves back and forth like a snake sizing prey, then darts over the top as soldiers dive out of the way. The purple and sickly green vine pulses with a strange inner light.

I clench my teeth as more fire comes and Alicial must focus on it for now.

Either I act or the wall crumbles beneath the squeezing fury of the vine even now wrapping around supporting beams and trying to take it down.

I hope this works, I think, letting Beast burst from the shadows at my feet. He howls like a deranged wolf, happiness and contentment leaking through me.

He barrels into the vine, and the vine screeches like a banshee. I cover my ears, expecting to feel them bleed as the sound drills through my eardrums to my brain. I barely realize wolves are yelping in pain and cats are screaming as the humans look at us with fear in their eyes, as if they cannot hear it.

I close my fist and the black tendril that had wrapped around the vine squeezes until the vine snaps into two, spurting a red liquid. The part behind the wall crumbles to the ground, cut off from the mother plant, and the rest still attached to the mage across the water thrashes, knocking men and woman from the wall even as they try to stab it or dive from where it weaves.

I clench my teeth and send another tendril along the side of the wall and send the blackness to wrap around the plant.

It seems to take forever to make it to the base of the wall. With each moment, another life is lost to the screeching and bleeding plant.

Looking over the edge of the wall, I track the point, and this time, I spear through the center and push.

Flashes of light and darkness pulse behind my closed eyes as the power of Beast is pitted against an otherworldly plant.

It screams. A sound that drops me to my knees along with every other wolf and cat along the wall. The humans glance at each other as if wondering why I am suddenly on the ground, my forehead pressed to the rough wood as I feel Beast threading himself to the source.

I feel the plant fester and decay around Beast as if I were him, feeling the push against slime and ropey parts of flesh as Beast coils and arrows to where I want him.

And with one final yell, I reach the mage.

He stumbles back as his plant disintegrates, his hand blackened with rot where he didn’t sever his connection to the plant quickly enough.

But now I am here.

And I will not let these mages keep attacking what is mine.

The tendril coils through the mud and grime, racing for the first boot it can find.

It’s the fire mage if the eyes shimmering with red and gold have anything to do with it.

I let the tiny tendril coil around his feet and then I force a tinier tendril to branch off and then another and another.

I have one foot each, all unaware, when I clench my physical fist.

One reacts before the others, putting up a wall of some sort between me and his foot that I cannot penetrate.

But each of the others goes down with a bloodcurdling scream as they are wrenched from their feet and thrown into trees and rocks. I try not to kill them outright, I have enough blood on my hands, but knock their heads against things until they stop moving. Hopefully they'll live.

Soldiers and others in robes rush to the mages, but the one who blocked me looks directly at one of my tendrils, a grin turning his eyes and tightening a scar from his eyebrow to his chin that curves in a half-moon shape.

“I see you,” he whispers.

He reaches out, and I gasp as something grasps the slippery tendril of my soul.

It writhes in his grip as I feel something like a vice clamp around the throat of my soul, cutting off the warmth and making my physical body wracked with shivers.

“You are untrained. Interesting. But powerful,” he muses, as if to himself. Then, without warning, he releases me. “Young and strong. Soul of two worlds yet master of none. We shall see if you are the chosen one, young king.”

I come back into myself with a gasp, shivering and cold to the depth of my core.

A bundle of furs is wrapped around me and two wolves press to either side of my body to share their heat.

Their whines meet my strained ears and I blink to put everything back into focus.

The one on my right has mismatched eyes and a black coat streaked with grey. Hiphrate, the commander of the freed Shifters. The one on my left is a deep brown with dark eyes and an ear missing its tip. Sir Rey.

I still my shaking with a force of will and rise to my knees, puffing out a breath of air that fogs despite the air being too warm for such a thing.

David kneels in front of me, handing me his canteen.

I sip, grimacing as the cold water seems to chill me to the bone.

“Are you alright, son?” he asks, watching me closely.

I nod, not responding for fear my teeth would chatter.

He shakes his head, then looks up. “I fear we have done all we can.”

Following his gaze, my blood runs like ice through my veins.

The dragons have become ever closer, drawing nearer and nearer, becoming more bold with every second the black wall doesn’t appear.

And I know I don’t have a second wall in me. Not yet.

My teeth chatter and my limbs shake as I stumble upright, watching one dragon taken from the sky with a ballista bolt but three more replace it.

The dragon’s roar, their slit eyes narrowing, and one lands on the parapet with a screech and bathes the men in flame, their bloodcurdling screams cut short.

More land all along the wall, circling Videlia with flame and ash.

Some land on the back wall, and the Berserk there use their mighty trunks to knock dragons from the wall and send them hurtling into the sky. But more land, both along the wall and in the city.

Horror threads through my veins as I can do nothing but watch as more dragons land and hundreds of men burn as the wall is lit like a funeral pyre.