Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [84]
Her attendant nodded. Mayael’s eyes still had some of the white clouds in them from the day at the Relic. Did she still see the vision, even in her waking life?
They heard a chorus of upset snorts, and then shouting. They looked down at the army of gargantuans. The beasts were skittish, braying and scuffing the ground with their massive claws, tearing great gouges in the earth. The godcaller elves were yelling and pointing off into the circle of sky above the clearing.
There was a cloud of small shadows in the sky. Creatures were flying toward them.
“What is it? A flock of birds?” asked Sasha.
“No. Bigger. Far bigger,” said Mayael.
“Are they a threat? Something we should worry about?”
The look on the Anima’s face gave her the answer.
“Your clarion, Anima.” Sasha indicated the long trumpet hanging from the tree trunk nearby.
Mayael didn’t respond. The flying creatures neared. They looked like winged lizards—but as large as a god.
Sasha shook her mistress’s shoulder. “Anima, sound the clarion!”
Mayael stared up at the flyers, her eyes clouded with white. For Sasha’s mistress, the visions of prophecy and her everyday vision had become one and the same.
Sasha raised the clarion, put her lips to the mouthpiece, and blew as hard as she could.
NAYA
Sarkhan surveyed Naya from his perch on the back of the hellkite, Karrthus, at the lead of a flight of other dragons. Seas of green raced below them, the heads of trees rippling in gentle winds. Mist-rimmed mountains moved slowly in the distance, like the bald heads of stern giants who watched them streak across the sky.
Karrthus flew ahead of the rest of the flight. Sarkhan felt the dragon’s arrogant pride at being the head of the pack, which stoked his heart. What greater joy could one feel, man or beast, at being used for one’s true purpose? And what greater service could he himself provide, than to crush a world with the unleashed power of a flight of dragons?
“Let’s start with this valley of trees, Karrthus,” said Sarkhan.
Karrthus inhaled, and blasted a cone of fire down on the trees. His dragonfire coated the canopy branches, swallowing them in fire instantly. The dragons behind them followed suit, breathing fire at random. Occasionally Sarkhan would look back to see birds flying out of the smoke of the burned areas, or arboreal mammals skittering away from the swathe of fire the dragons left in their wake. Most of them died, roasted alive when the flames spread hungrily outward from the flight’s streak of fire.
Sarkhan didn’t bother trying to establish mana bonds to the place. The world of Naya surged with mana of nature and growth, but the charred remains of his forest fires would stifle the mana production there. Besides, he thought, why stop the fun? He was making his mark.
As the flight approached the edge of the valley and the wall of mountains, he willed Karrthus to turn back around. The dragons’ wings tilted and grabbed full sails of air to shoot up into Naya’s sunny sky, then curved back around to do another pass.
That’s when Sarkhan saw the first signs of Naya’s resistance.
Three woolly-furred behemoths had risen above the treeline to bring their massive hooves down on the fires. Their bulk was so vast that they stomped the fire out even as they crushed the trees that were its fuel.
That would not stand.
“Karrthus,” he said, “someone’s trying to interfere with our plans. Let’s interfere with theirs.”
Sarkhan led the flight of dragons straight at the behemoths.