Ariel tore across the field in lion form. On her right forepaw the dragon bone bracelet Jeremiah had lent her tightly hugged her tawny fur.

She zigzagged left and right as she advanced, just as Mathis had taught her and the others. While she didn’t yet have the skill to sense the raw Strengthworks that the witches launched at her and the pride, the Wayfarers would have difficulty hitting her if she kept moving. Some Strengthworks did have a visible component: fireballs and lightning bolts could all be readily seen, for example. But pure Weaves of Air, those were invisible. And though the other lions and shifters zigzagged, more than a few had already been snatched up by Air traps, and dangled helplessly until Mathis or her could cut them down with a counter Weave.

That’s right: Mathis had taught Ariel the counter, and she used it to release any ensnared lions in her line of sight. She could use that same Weave to negate a witch’s own Air defenses. It wouldn’t affect the highest level witches, but it worked on all low, and most medium level Wayfarers. So as her pride fanned out in front of her, she targeted the witches each lion headed for in turn, so that when a given lion leaped at a target, he or she wouldn’t be met by a body-jarring shield of Air.

The lions focused on the witches of the warrior class. Mathis taught the pride to recognize them by the bone necklaces they wore: several small shards of dragon bone threaded together by a cord. In that first rush, several surprised witches of the warrior class fell when their Air shields failed and lions jumped them.

Every other witch was assumed to be a professor or scholar of the Steel Tower, and Ariel had told the pride to show mercy if they could by biting off their bone gauntlets, necklaces, or rings rather than killing them outright. If the professors were smart, they would flee.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like anybody was running, except for the few apprentices who had skipped out on liberty. Third and Fourth Years, mostly, it looked like. She didn’t know them.

She headed in the general direction of the stage, where Jett stood, seemingly in a daze, his eyes directed skyward. But apparently the witches had picked her out as a Strengthworker among the lions, because the attacks soon seemed to focus on her. She dodged a lightning bolt, a fireball, a stream of acid, and a series of sharp spikes that erupted from the Earth. The grass abruptly grew around her, trying to ensnare her. She leaped away, dodging behind an outbuilding. It was one of the servant’s quarters. She could see frightened men and women cowering inside behind the windows.

She hurried to the far side of the building and carefully peered past the edge.

Mathis had descended from the wall to the field and faced off against two high level Wayfarers. They had him on the defensive: he was struggling to deflect the Weaves they rained down on him. Those deadly Strengthworks were slowly getting closer to his body: a few more seconds and he would be burned to a cinder.

Ariel tried a Weave that only worked for her about fifty percent of the time. As she finished the final arrangement, she directed it toward the ground underneath one of the Wayfarers facing down Mathis. She prayed it would take.

The Wayfarer detected her work as it floated his way and he shot her a glance. But by then the Weave had already passed into the ground underneath the man.

It took.

The earth opened up and the Wayfarer plunged from view. The second witch was distracted and Mathis used the opportunity to wrench the bone accessories off of his opponent using invisible Weaves of air.

Ariel sensed motion at the periphery of her vision and realized a witch had followed her behind the outbuilding. She leaped out from her cover.

An explosion hit the ground where she had been standing moments before, and dirt and grass rained down on her.

She continued away from the outbuilding at a sprint.

Ahead, another Wayfarer was looking right at her. The movements of his arms told her that he had released an invisible work of Air.

She dove to the right, hoping to avoid it.

But then a massive form crashed to the earth between her and the witch. It was Brazen. At first she thought the White Sword was trying to protect her, but then she realized the beautiful dragon had a gaping red wound cut into his side. Ariel’s heart went out to him, but she couldn’t tend to him, not now. There was someone else she had to reach, first. She didn’t think there was much she could’ve done for Brazen, anyway.

She raced around the huge dragon and reached the stage, then surmounted the stairs to the platform with a single leap.

Jett turned to her and his features filled with joy.

She leaped at Jett and transformed in midair so that she was human by the time she landed in his arms. She hugged Jett with her naked body, pressing her head into his chest.

“My lioness,” Jett said. She could feel the tears splashing onto her hair. “My beautiful, amazing lioness.”

Ariel pushed him away. “I love you. So much. But we’ll catch up later. Turn around.”

Jett obeyed instantly.

A huge red dragon slammed into ground behind the stage. At first Ariel thought it was Savanna, but there were no streaks of black along the body.

Flame.

He was in bad shape, his wings nearly burned off.

Once more the sight tore at her, but she couldn’t help the injured White Sword. She forced herself to look away from the horrible wounds and concentrated on Jett.

The loose-fitting bone bracelet slid up and down as she moved her arm, gesturing to the ground beside the stage. A sliver of rock thrust from the earth a moment later. With a Weave of Air she broke away the tip, and floated the rock to her hand.

Her chisel.

She positioned the tip at the back of Jett’s neck, over the silver band, above the featureless release spot all dragon collars had. At least, she hoped all collars had a release. It had worked for Gwendoline, Flame and Brazen after all...

She slammed the open palm of her other hand into the base of the chisel.

A sound like a bell tolling filled the air and Ariel was thrown backward.

She glanced at Jett. His collar was open, and it fell away as she watched.

The dragons inked into his forearms flared with black and gold light, and Jett stepped off the stage as if in trance. He began to enlarge. His clothes tore off, his shackles broke away. Visible Strengthworks thrown by witches struck him but sloughed off.

Ariel shook herself. She could watch him transform all day, but she had work to do. She crawled to the dragon bone chest and placed her hand firmly on the side. She reached through it to begin the Siphoning.

She was taken aback by the immense amount of Strength that funneled through her. She barely managed to surrender to that river before it pulverized her, and instead let the incredible current sweep her away.

She used the massive flow to conjure several Weaves of Air, which she directed toward the remaining witches, intending to bind them.

It was time to end this fight.

* * *

Jett waded into the fray as his body transformed. Witches were being bound up in invisible bonds of Air all around him. Ariel’s doing, no doubt.

That’s my girl.

He was amazed by how far she had progressed in only three months. He guessed that some of the Weaves she used Mathis had taught her only recently, probably in the last few days, as he doubted apprentices were ordinarily shown how to bind their teachers.

He finished his transformation and loomed over the cowering Wayfarers in the field below him. They looked like insects compared to him. He felt raw Weaves striking him, likely variants of Air intended to bind him, but they rolled off his body harmlessly: dragons, by their very natures, couldn’t be touched by the Strength, at least not directly. The smarter witches used their Weaves to create tangible flames and lightning, which they hurled at him, but he scarcely felt the blows against his thick scales. He resisted the urge to strike out at these insolent insects, knowing that Ariel would have them bound up soon enough.

His stomach abruptly rumbled. In all the excitement, he had forgotten his ravenous hunger, but he felt it keenly now that he was a dragon once more.

Two witches were fighting nearby with their backs to him, witches Ariel hadn’t yet seized. They were hurling fireballs at members of his pride. Deadly fireballs.

How dare they.

Jett crunched down on each of them in turn and swallowed them whole.

So that’s what humans taste like again. Not the most delectable…

It would take a while for his digestive system to give him any benefit from the meal, but at least the hunger was gone.

A white blur plunged from the sky, slamming into the large wall that surrounded the grounds ahead of him.

Gwendoline.

Her dragon body draped halfway across the field, bent sickeningly down the middle by the wall she had crashed into. Black char marks blemished her formerly pristine white skin in several places.

She weakly raised her large head and said: “Get… her.”

Anger welled within Jett. How dare the dragon witch do this to his sister.

“Nooooo!” Came a human voice from the field below.

Mathis was running toward Gwendoline. The human glanced skyward as he ran and gestured frantically, releasing lightning bolts into the heavens.

A shadow fell across the body of Jett’s injured sister, a shadow that grew larger by the second.

Jett looked up. Savanna was swooping in for the kill.

Jett set his jaw grimly and leaped.

He intercepted the gargantuan red dragon and smashed her aside. The two landed in the trees outside the wall and rolled a large distance, flattening all the trees in their path.

Jett broke free of her when they ground to a halt. She tried to clamp her jaws around his long neck, but he dodged to the side and slammed her in the face with his tail.

She breathed fire. He narrowly rolled to the side. Beside him, the forest turned to ash instantly: her flames were magnified in intensity by the Strength that flowed through her bones. Her breath could melt steel, and easily scorch his dragon scales.

Fiery meteors abruptly fell from the sky, each about the size of his large paws, and pelted him. He dove into the trees for cover. The air became icy cold around him then, and his breath misted.

Savanna was utilizing all her tricks. She knew exactly how to employ the Strength against another dragon. He had to close with her, bring the fight to her body, and refuse to let her attack him like this from afar. She would slowly wear him down if he stayed where he was.

He leaped into the air as the trees around him turned to ice, and landed on top of Savanna. They wrestled once more. He wrapped his jaws around her leg and flung her onto the wall, slamming her ribcage against the upper walkways and scraping her scales across the razor wire.

Savanna howled in outrage and gave him a good kick in the belly, sending him flying backward. He crashed into the ground with a stentorian thud, ripping away the trees he struck. Savanna rolled off of the wall, landing inside the Tower grounds so that she was shielded from him.

But Jett refused to let up the assault. He leaped over the wall and landed on her once more. Lions and witches scattered around them as they rolled about, fighting to the death. He bashed his head into her body, biting down hard each time and tearing away scales. She scrabbled at his face with her claws.

She couldn’t keep up with his pummeling. For every three of his blows, she got one good hit in. She was flagging, her breath coming in ragged pants.

He realized that Gwendoline and the other dragons had severely depleted Savanna. While Jett was weak himself from his ordeal of the past few days, she was in far worse shape, exhausted after all that flying and Siphoning.

Jett saw an opening and he took it. He wrapped his jaws around Savanna’s neck and pinned her head to the ground. He nearly gagged at the taste. It was like he had bitten into a rotten corpse.

She squirmed underneath him but couldn’t break free. Jett held on tight.

Heavy smoke began to fill the air above the courtyard, and it blotted out the sun. Keeping Savanna pinned, he searched for the source, but couldn’t find it. Soon day had turned to twilight; floodlights stationed throughout the field and along the walls automatically activated.

His attention was drawn to the Steel Tower, which appeared a dark finger in the twilight, and what he saw made his skin crawl. From every nook and cranny, every window, tiny figures emerged, like ants fleeing a flooded nest. There had to be hundreds. Maybe thousands. Many of them hooted and hollered, others screeched.

Vampires.