Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

this one last time. We get in there, we bait the worm, we get out.” I worked my fingers on the saddle grips. “We’re nothing but bait until the ships make contact. No attacking, no nothing. I don’t know if dragons bound to Starborn can come back from the dead, and I really don’t want to learn.”

“Me either. Knowing my luck, I’ll respawn in the Eyrie.” Karalti groaned telepathically. Physically, she was focused—pacing herself as the cyclical wind of the storm drove the air up under her wings. She let it guide her course, blowing her up and around the edge of the funnel.

The bow of the Salamander was glowing. Szonja’s circle of power, anchored between three pylons that fed mana into the enchantment, danced and crackled with electricity. The sorceress raised her arms as the power built into a miniature version of the black maelstrom, but spinning in reverse. Karalti banked around the pillar of hissing black sand, navigating the turbulence with grim determination.

There was a deep rumble from the earth as red sand lifted and rose into the air. I could smell ozone—and then an awful, earsplitting shriek tore through the sky. It was like two pieces of rusty metal being scraped slowly across one another, dialed to max volume. There was a clap, a flash, and then a roar as the maelstrom collapsed under the weight of the sorceress’s magic. The wind chopped every which way, blowing Karalti up like a piece of dandelion fluff in a stiff breeze.

“Jesus-!” I clung on at the last second as my dragon yelped, tumbling wildly. I lost direction for a moment as Karalti intentionally stalled, rolled over to her back, and twisted into a controlled dive against the blasts of air that had propelled us up. Clinging to her back like a possum, I looked past her neck and oriented on the scene ahead: Withering Rose, half buried, and the worm coiling over and through the wreckage like the world-eating serpent out of Norse mythology, Jörmungandr.

“AIIIIIEEEEE” The Voidwyrm Empress reared its sightless head, slithering over the half-buried Warsinger. Its maw unfurled like a gruesome blossom of black spines, the sensory tentacles emerging to taste the air as Karalti flew straight toward it. I got back up into my combat kneel, teeth clenched, and concentrated on my vision.

“Hey! Do you like snacks! Look at me!” Karalti bellowed wordlessly aloud as she broadcast her telepathic speech. “Tasty, tasty dragon! Get it while its hot!”

The Voidwyrm swung unerringly toward us, tentacles lashing. I tensed as its throat opened, revealing a fathomless black tunnel. The creature’s neck-hole was at least four times wider than the spine-lined gauntlet of Lahati’s Tomb. Six lines of traffic could have driven side by side down it, like the worst freeway tunnel in the world. She let out a piercing cry toward the sky, then plunged her head into the sand. The earth shook as she burrowed down, smashing through the brittle glass spires that surrounded the corpse of Withering Rose. As she did, her HP ring appeared.

“Get ready to teleport.” I tracked it as it wove under the surface of the desert. Karalti couldn’t easily look down—the shape of her muzzle gave her blind spots in the places that the sandworm was targeting with predatory precision. I stared as the bulging earth swelled like water far below. “Wait for it... wait for it... NOW!”

The mana in Karalti’s body surged, and she teleported about five hundred feet up as the sandworm burst from underneath us, tentacles reaching forward.

I leaned with my dragon as she rolled out of the way. “Suri, Rin, Gar: can you get a bead on her?”

“We need her further out from the storm!” Suri said, her voice tense. “Lure her toward the fleet!”

“I really don’t know if that’s a good idea!” I clung on as Karalti triggered Split Turn and darted away from the Voidwyrm as she rose like a cresting whale before sliding back into sands.

“We have to! The Symphonic Array doesn’t have as much range as the cannons!” Rin added. “You need to be within two hundred yards!”

“Okay, then I’m going down!” The dragon winged over into a spiraling dive. “Keep spotting for me, Hector! I have to know where the ships are!”

I replied by focusing, holding onto the saddle like a windsurfer. I tracked the ships—and then the worm, glancing wildly behind us as the Empress surged through the sand behind us. “Worm is below us on our five o’clock.”

Karalti’s shadow raced along the ground, the rippling hump of sand gaining closer every passing second. I began to silently urge Karalti up: but she ignored me, pulling her wings in and streamlining into the dive. My dragon was fast—the Empress was faster. I watched in horror as the titanic head of the thing rose up, throat gaping, tentacles the size of subway trains writhing out of its maw toward us.

“Brace for gravity!” Karalti snarled with effort, and Split Turned straight up into the air.

The maneuver was so hard and so sharp that it drove the wind out of my lungs. My vision throbbed, greying around the edges, but the Gs were just within range of my mutations. Heat turned to cold as Karalti reached the end of the boost and teleported vertically, reappearing high above the Voidwyrm Empress as it dove for us. The colossal creature slammed its belly into the ground, thrashing and whirling back around. It let out an unearthly shriek and drove itself up to snatch us from the sky—standing upright in the killzone formed by the airships.

The Symphonic Arrays charged with a high ringing sound, gathering a nimbus of golden light centered on the figureheads. Light bled from their eyes, mouths, and expanding seams on their skin as the devices reached full charge, then fired.

We couldn’t hear them – but we felt them, as Karalti see-sawed with the expanding