Chapter 15 - Crown of Smoke
Ignis turned her head slightly, her purple eye sizing him up from snout to tail. The hatchling was still half her size, covered in soot, dried blood, and scars that would never fade.
"He'll rip that right wing off if you overshoot," she warned.
"He can try," Zephyr replied, his voice dead-level.
Ignis didn't smile—dragons didn't have the lips for it. But the violet fire along her spine flared in silent approval.
"Dive on my mark," she commanded. "Three... two..."
Zephyr didn't wait for one.
He launched off her shoulders, kicking hard with both hind claws, punching through the thin mountain air. He didn't spiral this time. He didn't panic. He locked his crooked wing into the slipstream, cutting the night sky like an obsidian blade falling from the heavens.
Behind him, Ignis banked left, a rolling thunderstorm of black scales and ultraviolet doom preparing to herd the trespasser into the kill-box.
Ahead of him, the southern drake caught the scent of ash too late, banking hard in a desperate attempt to climb.
Zephyr opened his maw.
Deep in his throat, behind the needle-teeth and the scarred tongue, the violet node cracked wide open. The cold iron feeling in his chest exploded into liquid sun.
He didn't chirp. He didn't squeak.
A high-velocity, violet flare erupted from his jaws, lighting up the clouds for ten miles in every direction, painting the jagged peaks below in the stark, terrifying color of the apex.
The Ashlands had tried to swallow him. The mammoth had tried to crush him. The cages had tried to break him.
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Zephyr closed his wings, diving through his own trail of fire, falling faster, sharper, and deadlier than the world had ever seen.
The hunt had just begun.
