Pain exploded through Snow, sharp and ice-cold. It radiated up her leg and into her torso and down to her ankle, her heel, her toes. Crimson blood welled up from the wounds of her and Stormfyre both. Despite the spear of ice impaling it, her injured leg wobbled over the dragon’s scales, slippery with blood.
But Stormfyre’s wings did not falter nor did her flight waver. The dragon held steady. Again, she and Snow sailed through the sky in a straight, easy path.
The spear tried to rip through them.
With a grimace, Snow seized her rider magic and melted that spear into steam that scalded as it cauterized their injuries and stopped the bleeding. She gripped her dragon tighter.
Rage flowed through them.
So did that forbidden magic. It burned its way from Snow into Stormfyre.
It burned away the pain of rider and dragon.
Then it retreated to its prison like it had never left.
A gust of freezing wind rammed into them. Ice shards like biteback flies flooded it.
Like biteback flies, they stung. All over her cheeks and neck, those splinters of ice pricked. If there were any mirrors up here—thank the blazes there weren’t—they’d show bloodred welts speckling her skin.
At least the dragon’s scales and heat protected Stormfyre from the worst of it.
The dragon’s scales and heat couldn’t shield Stormfyre from the frostnado’s relentless gales pulsing against the dragon and Snow. The roars of those gales smothered the usual song of the plains, of the ground squirrels’ yips and chirrups, of the knee-high grass rustling in the wake of tiny paws, of the lilting melodies of the early-returning spring swallows and rust-throated robins.
Snow’s entire universe was the dragon beneath her and the magical midwinter’s wind trying to kill them.
The magical midwinter’s wind caught the underside of one of Stormfyre’s wings.
It flung them backward. Before the dragon could recover, it pushed them again and again.
It forced them to tumble through the air.
It forced them to tumble toward the unforgiving ground.
Snow clenched her jaw, clung to her dragon, and willed Stormfyre to win the war against the wyvern, its rider, and their icy winds. The world spun again. Around Snow and Stormfyre, blue sky, olive-green fir trees, and the plain’s snow-dotted purplish brown dormant grass whisked and merged and melted.
“Rrr-awrgh!” With that groan of determination—or perhaps stubbornness, a trait that Stormfyre and Snow shared—Stormfyre wrenched her body and her rider to the side.
Using all her might, the dragon pulled them out of the frostnado’s gusts.
Stormfyre and Snow erupted into a calm blue sky at odds with the swirling tornado of ice and snow reaching for it. In the distance, the peaks of the castle of silver rock peered, the summer country home of royals and the winter home of the Guard.
Snow and Stormfyre could give up, could fly back there, could be safe.
They could leave this powerful enemy here. Her dogs had stayed away from the frostnado so far, and they would follow her back to their home.
Snow’s upper lip curled. She and Stormfyre would not allow this powerful enemy to remain in their kingdom.
If they went back for help, this powerful enemy would be gone by the time they returned.
Then everyone would think Snow useless at best and a liar at worst.
No, she and Stormfyre would take care of the wyvern and its rider themselves, then bring the proof back to the Guard.
Snow hunched over her dragon and tightened her legs around the dragon’s ribs. Time to try a second time. “Closer, Storm.”
The dragon tilted forward and narrowed her purplish wings. From that calm cerulean sky, Stormfyre plunged, down and over, back toward the edge of Shadowmist Woods and the edge of the abutting prairie.
Back toward the frostnado with its whirling winds filled with snow and ice.
“We’re going to give it everything we’ve got this time.”
Well, not quite everything. But most everything.
Wintry gales assaulted them anew.
This time, Snow was ready. Gripping Stormfyre with her knees again, she slashed her hands through the air. The heat unique to dragon riders poured out her fingertips, glimmering and nearly sizzling. It split the outer gusts of that frostnado, and she and Stormfyre followed in its wake.
Left, right, up, and down, Snow’s magic cut through the outskirts of that tornado of ice and frost. Stormfyre spewed bright yellow flames with whitish centers here, there, and everywhere. The perfume of bonfires and sulfurous, burning metal surrounded them. Not a whiff of winter’s crisp, clean, searing aroma could breach that of their fire-filled magic.
At last, they rent the frostnado itself. They dashed forward, into it, and it swallowed them whole. Behind them, their gash—their entrance and exit—sealed.
The tornado roared. Deadly currents sparkling with snow and ice coiled and corkscrewed around and into and almost through them. It shot spears, arrows, and shards of ice.
Snow and Stormfyre melted them all. With their fire and heat, they carved around and through the frostnado. Mist from all they melted washed over them, cold enough to give goose bumps but not cold enough to hurt.
The battle was a stalemate. No icy weapon could survive Snow’s heat and Stormfyre’s flames, but the frostnado’s circling gales trapped them. Snow and Stormfyre could not reach the heart of that winter’s tornado where the wyvern and its rider hid.
What if no heart existed? What if these whirling winds filled with snow and ice seeking to sting, wound, and kill was all there was?
No. A wyvern and a Wyndaerian wyvern rider must squat in the empty middle, wreaking this havoc.
But she and Stormfyre could progress no farther into the frostnado.
And Stormfyre expended more and more energy to stay afloat and belch flames.
If Snow wasn’t careful, Stormfyre would burn out.
Then the dragon would die. At least one ember of Stormfyre’s magical fire needed to stay lit within the dragon. It was Snow’s job to stop Stormfyre before the dragon exhaled every last drop of her fire.
Stormfyre would do that if left to her own devices.
Soon they’d have to descend to the ground and fight from there.
Unless Snow summoned the magic Stepmother had forbidden her from using lest someone discover who—and what—she was.
No one was out here except Snow, Stormfyre, and her two dogs, and they all knew who and what she was.
Well, no one except them and these Wyndaerian vipers destined to die this afternoon.
Snow could use her birthright safely.
“Hold on, Storm. I need you to manage without me for a beat.” Snow wound her fingers into the fleshy tendrils of Stormfyre’s dragon mane, their iridescent purple, blue, and green scales smooth as fresh butter and as warm and soothing as the hot springs outside the Pyrewing Proving Grounds. She closed her eyes. Beneath her, the dragon zipped and zoomed, climbed and fell, avoiding the attacks of the frostnado.
Her lungs swollen with air, Snow imagined her hand reaching down, down, down.
Deep into her core and up and over those gleaming walls of ice guarding the prison within.
Into the pool of blazing hot, dangerous magic that no one but she possessed.
Not anymore at least.
She dipped those pretend fingers in.
Her molten magic climbed up them. Tame for now, it engulfed her fingertips, her hand, her wrist.
I think I will need more. To my elbow, probably.
In her mind, the lava of her forbidden magic oozed up her forearm. It singed the hairs away.
Beneath her, Stormfyre faltered.
Snow sucked in a breath. But she couldn’t stop. She almost had enough. The dragon could hold. They had time.
Vrrrr-roooosh! Stormfyre spun out, left wing over right.
“Noooo!” Snow screamed. She dropped that forbidden fire, it rippled back to its home buried within her, and her eyes popped open.
The dragon fought to steady her flight while spitting fire at the frostnado’s flying weapons of ice.
The dragon’s fire faltered.
So did her wings.
And winter’s tornado hurled Snow and Stormfyre out, away from itself and back into the world. All Snow could do was hold on to her dragon.
The unyielding, cold, snow-stained plain rose to meet them.
It rose to break them.
***
Yikes, Snow and Stormfyre are about to crash into the ground! 😬
Prediction time: Do you think Snow and Stormfyre will crash-land, pull out of their free fall at the last second, or do something else entirely?
Comment and let me know—one word or phrase is fine!