When Lord Three collapsed a pillar in the main hall, sending the enter western wall of the hall tumbling into a pile of dust, Pirin sprinted to safety.

  He’d been on the eastern side of the castle, of course, watching Lord Three from a distance, but now was his chance to make for the watchtower. The old castle was already structurally unstable and crumbling, but now, the entire ceiling of the main hall cracked. Grout shattered with puffs of dust, and bricks leaned.

  Pirin and Gray sprinted up a stairway two steps at a time, reaching the second level of the main hall and its surrounding chambers. The cracking bricks and crumbling castle masked his footsteps, and he and Gray hid behind nearby pillars or ducked into rooms. The less time they spent out in the open, the better.

  As the roof collapsed sloughed off the main hall, allowing orange sunrise into the hall, Pirin and Gray sprinted into the watchtower’s staircase.

  Inside, there wasn’t nearly as much room as he’d expected. Only a central pillar and a spiral staircase winding up around it.

  They took the stairs up two storeys before Pirin stopped and pressed his back against the central pillar. Not good. He’d been expecting extra rooms near the base of the watchtower, where he could hide once more, but there was nothing except a staircase.

  We have to climb! Gray exclaimed. We need to get back in the air!

  If they went quickly, they might still have a chance to escape without Lord Three noticing.

  Pirin and Gray continued winding up around the staircase. The higher they climbed, the more rickety the tower became. Holes in the wall let in gusts of wind, and entire steps were missing altogether. They leapt over them easily, until they reached a winding gap that they couldn’t cross with a normal elf’s legs.

  Pirin fed his enhanced body just a touch of Essence, allowing himself the strength to jump off the step, run a circle around the edge of the tower, and wall-run up to the next stair. He immediately veiled himself a moment later, and Gray fluttered across.

  Lord Three’s core surged in the distance, then blasted upward.

  “No!” Pirin hissed under his breath.

  But there was no point in keeping his veil. He sprinted up the stairs, using the wind to push himself faster and harder than ever before, and spiralled up the stairs to the top of the tower in a matter of seconds. Gray emerged right behind him.

  As they ran, Pirin glanced out the holes in the wall. A battering ram trundled up to the gate of the Dremfell Wall. A moulded silver fist clung to its front, and the entire structure was nearly three storeys tall. It smashed the gate over and over, splintering the wood and sending booms pulsing through the whole valley.

  Meanwhile, on the walls, Essence flashed. The five hundred Flares had joined the fighting. Bright multicoloured Essence launched out as they fired off techniques, and the sparks clouded the early morning air, muddling into an overall brown hue. The weavelings surrounded them, jabbing with their strength and encircling with their numbers.

  Each weaveling was about the strength of a late kindling-stage wizard, maybe even a spark, and though they couldn’t use techniques, they could overwhelm wizards with sheer numbers.

  For now, they were holding the wizards off, but they wouldn’t be when the gate fell. They’d done what they could, but soon, they’d have to retreat.

  And Pirin still needed to keep control of Lord Three.

  The top of the tower was a simple, round outlook with crenellated bulwarks at its edges and an old, bare post where a standard would’ve once hung.

  “Ah, there you are!” Lord Three exclaimed. He floated up along the outside of the tower, holding himself up with the strength of his tattoos, then dropped down on the watchtower’s ramparts. “I was going to give you mercy, but now I think I’d rather watch you suffer. You think you’re such a wonderful king, but I’ll show you what the reality of this little rebellion is. First, you’ll watch your wall burn, then you’ll stare upon the agony of your nation as you slowly fade away.”

  But, despite his bluster, his chest heaved, and his dragon-bat clung to his shoulder limply.

  Even an Unbound could get tired after chasing Pirin for a whole night, and his ability to fly must’ve been severely diminished.

  Now was their chance.

  Pirin jumped up into Gray’s saddle and pressed his elbows down on her neck. She took off with a flutter, wings creating a downdraft, and Pirin pulled her back toward the Dremfell Wall. He needed Lord Three to know that he’d escaped, and to chase after him, but not so fast that he caught Pirin.

  But Pirin hadn’t used much of his Essence supply at all. He pushed with wind, speeding them up, and—

  A blast of greenblood caught him in the shoulder and struck with such force it ripped him out of the saddle. A burning sensation covered his shoulder, like thousands of tiny teeth shredding his flesh at once. It tore a hole in his light armour and tunic before he even registered the damage.

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  And then he was plummeting through the air. He pushed a current of wind up beneath him, catching himself and slowing his fall until he hovered in the air—only a few feet above the spiky peak of a mountain. “Gray! Are you—”

  She tried to turn and swoop back toward him, but another column of greenblood surged through the air and blasted her in the wing. She spun, then spiralled out of control and fell. Pirin pushed the currents of wind holding himself up, then shot after her. She tried to spread her wings, to control her fall, but the blast of greenblood ripped off a swath of flight feathers, and the wing bent upward at an unnatural angle.

  Pirin, I can’t turn! she exclaimed.

  “I’m coming!” he shouted.

  Lord Three, who still stood on the rim of the tower, launched another blast at Pirin, but it skimmed past his feet, only barely missing.

  Pirin threw out a Winged Fist, thrusting Gray to the side, and helping her angle toward a mountainous ledge. It was on the side of a wedge of stone, with a thick layer of snow and gravel atop it.

  Gray tucked her wings in at the last moment and tumbled across the ledge, kicking up a wave of snow. She just barely stopped before she reached the edge, then staggered to her feet. Mentally, she groaned, and audibly, she let out a chain of pained chirps.

  Pirin pushed himself down to the same ledge, then stumbled across the snow until he reached her side. “Gray? Can you hear me? Can you still hop, or—”

  It’s taking over. I can hear it…I can feel it… Her eyes glowed a shade of dewy green, and cat-like slits shone black in the center, staring back into him. Her feathers ruffled, and the dragon-wraith’s twigs erupted out across her wings.

  Pirin held his hand out and immediately used a Whisper Hitch, granting himself access to her mind.

  An misty gray orb of Essence appeared above the palm of his hand, but quickly, it wobbled, then split into two spheres. One tiny orb, barely a fingernail in diameter, and one much larger—perhaps an inch or two.

  The smaller of the two was Gray. It was just a gnatsnapper’s soul, weak, and though it was trying to resist, the dragon was drawing its resources.

  Pirin had erased most of the dragon’s mind, destroyed most of its, soul, but there was still some left, and it had fed on Gray when she was the weakest.

  He considered, in that moment, trying to blast it with Essence and snuff it out, but tendrils of misty Essence bridged the gap between the two souls. If he destroyed one, he’d destroy them both.

  The dragon was just…obeying its nature. But if he ever wanted Gray back to normal, he’d have to destroy it.

  “Gray, you have to resist. It wants you to feed it, but you’re strong. I know you are.” He pulled her to the back of the ledge and pressed his back up against the rock, so Lord Three couldn’t hit them until he moved. “We don’t have time to work on this here. We need to get back to the wall.”

  But Gray shuddered and vibrated. She opened her mouth and panted—which, for a gnatsnapper, was as close as she could get to sweating.

  Reason, reason. He needed to help. His inability had caused this problem, but now, he had the strength to get them out of it.

  If Brealtod was right, and the dragons of old would seek out hoards of gold, or of other resources, then the same had to go for the dragon wraith. It sought a host, some hoard of flesh, soul, and spirit to cling to.

  And now, the remains of its will and soul had fed. He couldn’t just cut out the dragon’s soul, or even parts of it, without shredding material of Gray’s as well.

  No, she had to have a greater will, and she had to take it back on her own.

  The greatest willpower came from wanting something the most. She had to want the soul more than the dragon did, and she had to push it out of its domain. It was a force of nature, acting on nature’s whims. But they’d already defied nature once—Gray should never have been a Familiar, should never have had a mind or a core.

  She shook her head and chirped, then fluttered her wings. Her soul was still resisting.

  Pirin maintained his link and shifted thoughts between them. He used his will to cycle her Essence, freeing up more of her concentration and allowing her to openly duel the dragon. There were no coherent thoughts between them, only a push and pull, a give and take.

  The ledge shook. Lord Three soared through the air with a single jump, spending a burst of Essence to fling himself to the ledge. He landed in a crouch, then pushed himself up to his full height. “Oh, how wonderful. Is the bird hurt?” He snorted, and his dragon-bat chittered. “Perhaps I’ll make its life miserable first, for its sin of bonding with such a horrid rebel king.”

  Pirin maintained the Whisper Hitch, but he turned around to face Lord Three. “No,” he said. He stepped to the side, inserting himself between the lord and Gray. “You won’t lay a hand on her.”

  “All the same, it’ll feel whatever pain you do.”

  “You won’t hurt my bird.”

  Lord Three widened his stance, then punched a wireframe outline of a greenblood dragon at Pirin. There was no dodging; he’d just expose Gray.

  Ripping off his mask, he launched the most powerful Shattered Palm he could muster in such a short time. It rippled through the air, scouring the remaining snow off the ledge, and clashed with the wireframe dragon.

  But it was a Blaze’s technique against a Wildflame’s. It was no contest. The Shattered Palm ripped away the outer layer of greenblood, weakening it, but when it smashed him in the chest and flung him into the rock wall behind them, it still ripped through his armour, tore his flesh and stabbed into his lungs, and cracked his ribs.

  He wheezed and spasmed. His mind went blank from pain, and it took all his subconscious will to maintain the Whisper Hitch.

  He pushed it down, assuring himself that his enhanced body would heal it, then, gasping, crawled toward Gray. He’d put himself between another technique if he had to. He pushed himself up, just in time to take another blast of greenblood to the shoulder. It was a glancing blow, but with nothing to block it, it ripped flesh and flung him into the rock wall behind him.

  It was dislocated. He could barely feel his fingers, and blood poured out from the muscle—which, by all accounts, had been erased from existence.

  Still, with his single functional arm, he dragged himself in front of Gray one last time, ready to shield her. With the Whisper Hitch still active, he held as much of the pain away from Gray as he could, letting her fight the dragon.

  Lord Three prepared one more blast, pulling his arm back. “You just don’t learn, do you? It won’t work.”

  “I’m used to failure.”