The storm-drake went on the offensive.

  The crystal embedded in its forehead flared, bright and icy-blue, and a bolt of lightning tore through the air. Catherine threw herself sideways, but the drake didn’t aim for her. It aimed for the stone.

  The bolt struck the floor in front of her with a violent crack, exploding water and residue into a blinding spray. The shockwave kicked her boots out from under her, and she hit the slick ground hard, her breath knocked thin from her lungs.

  Before she could roll, the drake lowered its head, charging its crystal for another strike.

  “Ivarr!” Catherine gasped.

  The Hraevnar didn’t hesitate. A jagged shard of ice snapped from his palm and slammed into the drake’s face, striking just beneath its eye. The impact made the creature twitch, but it was enough to make it miss. The lightning ripped past Catherine and scorched the stone some distance from her.

  The drake’s head whipped toward Ivarr, eyes narrowing, spines bristling. Then it fired again.

  Ivarr sprinted, boots skidding on the wet floor as he kept moving, forcing the creature to track him. Bolt after bolt snapped toward him, yet he stayed light, keeping the monster’s attention away from Catherine.

  Catherine sucked in air, forced her hands to stop shaking, and pushed herself upright. Her grip on the polearm was careful now. She raised the weapon and reached inward, dragging heat from the ether in her veins. Flames erupted in a broad sheet, an actual wall this time, rolling outward across the slick stone like a living wave.

  “Ivarr, move!” she shouted.

  He dove off the ledge of broken stone just as a bolt struck it, blasting chips and steam into the air. The wall of fire hit the drake a heartbeat later, and the creature shrieked. Not a roar, but something sharper, more furious, like metal tearing. It thrashed like a living storm, swinging its head and tail in furious arcs, claws scraping, stomping until the sheet of fire thinned and broke apart into ragged tongues.

  Steam roiled around its legs, but the creature didn’t retreat. It only waited until the heat weakened enough for it to move again. Then its icy-blue gaze snapped back to Catherine.

  Saliva threaded from its jaws, sizzling as it hit the scorched stone. It lowered its head, then lifted it higher, throat expanding as if drawing in the entire room’s air. The crystal on its forehead flared, and a sphere of lightning swelled between its jaws. Dense, bright, and humming so loudly Catherine felt it in her teeth.

  She wasn’t even fully upright when it hurled the ball at her.

  Catherine reacted on pure instinct. She slammed her palm to the and a wall of ice rose in front of her. The lightning detonated against it with a deafening crack. The impact broke the wall. The shockwave blasted through the ice and into her body, hurling her back. It threw her off the ground, her boots and polearm skidding across the floor.

  Ivarr tried to pull the drake’s attention again, but the creature’s response was immediate. Its forehead crystal pulsed, and the dorsal plates along its spine lit one after another, like a chain of storm-lamps waking.

  A sustained, continuous beam of lightning snapped out, not a single lash this time. It raked across the chamber, forcing Ivarr to sprint faster along the wall. He dodged it twice. Then the third sweep clipped him.

  The bolt struck his shoulder and threw him sideways. He skidded across the wet floor, boots carving useless lines in water and shimmering residue until he slammed into stone and went still for a heartbeat, stunned.

  The storm-drake’s predatory gaze remained on him.

  It stared, head tilting slightly, almost curious. Then its crystal brightened again.

  Catherine’s vision tunneled. She launched herself forward before her body could protest, sprinting across slick stone.

  Her hands found purchase between ridged plates as she clambered onto the creature’s back. Before it could buck her off, she drove the pike-tip down into the softer seam near the base of its neck.

  The point bit.

  Dark blood welled instantly, hot against her gloves.

  The drake shrieked and bucked hard enough to jolt her teeth together. Its tail whipped, its head snapping wildly, trying to reach her. Catherine didn’t let go. She twisted the weapon, aiming for unarmored flesh, but the creature’s muscles rolled beneath her like cables. It wrenched its neck in a violent, unnatural angle, and the polearm tore loose from the wound with a wet rip.

  Catherine lost balance.

  She hit the floor in a brutal slide, shoulder and hip screaming as she skidded across water and residue. The drake spun to face her, roaring so loudly the chamber seemed to vibrate.

  Catherine didn’t give it time to lunge. She thrust her palm forward and fired a fireball straight into its open mouth. Flames burst inside its jaws. The drake recoiled with a pained, choking sound, snapping its mouth shut and shaking its head as smoke curled from between its teeth.

  Catherine’s breath hitched.

  The plates. The spines. The crystal. Everything else was armor and lightning. But the mouth… and that seam she’d opened at the neck.

  Her mind tried to latch onto the thought, tried to form a plan.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The drake didn’t let her.

  Enraged, it reared back and began raining lightning bolts down in brutal, successive bursts, fast and repeated, tearing up stone and water alike, turning the floor into a trap of exploding spray and shock.

  Catherine ran. She sprinted through steam and sparks, boots slipping, lungs burning, lightning striking close enough that her skin prickled and her hair rose. She dodged left, then right, but a bolt eventually hit her leg.

  Pain detonated down her calf like a hammer made of thunder. Her foot gave out, and she went sliding again, helpless, leaving a wet smear across the stone as she tried to claw herself upright.

  But her leg wouldn’t answer.

  The storm-drake stalked toward her. Its crystal brightened, gathering power for the final strike. Catherine dragged herself backward with her elbows, polearm half-raised, hands trembling.

  The drake’s jaws opened. Lightning gathered. It rushed her, jaws crackling, lightning crawling over its teeth like living wire. The storm-drake lowered its head to crush her where she lay—then something hit it.

  The drake jerked to a halt, head snapping sideways as a figure clung to the side of its neck. Its claws dug in with a dry, scraping sound that didn’t belong in a living creature’s world. Catherine blinked hard, trying to make sense of what she was seeing through steam and pain.

  “Ivarr—?” she rasped, thinking he’d somehow thrown himself at it.

  But it wasn’t him.

  Her gaze flicked across the chamber and caught a single, bright red glow in the darkness. There stood Ivarr, feet braced wide on the slick stone, staff raised like a standard. The red crystal set in its head burned with a hungry light.

  Catherine’s stomach tightened. Ivarr’s jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the drake with something grim and unfamiliar. He spoke, voice carrying through the chamber like a knife through cloth.

  “Husk of thy fallen brethren, heed thy call!”

  The air around his pack shuddered. It burst open, and something shot out so fast it was a blur, landing on the drake’s shoulder with a crack of bone against armor.

  Only then did Catherine truly see it.

  It glowed faintly crimson, limbs too thin, ribs too bare, a jaw fixed in a permanent grin. Empty sockets stared out at nothing as it clung to the drake’s neck.

  A skeleton.

  Ivarr’s staff lifted higher, the red light pulsing in time with his breath.

  “Hear me,” he hissed, voice shaking with strain. “Move.”

  Another thing tore free from his pack, then another. They slammed into the drake from different angles, skeletal hands and hooked fingers finding seams between plates, claws digging into unarmored flesh, crude knives and jagged bone stabbing wherever they could reach. A small swarm of the skeletons clung to the storm-drake, dragging, hacking, anchoring.

  The creature thrashed, roaring, tail whipping hard enough to spray water in violent arcs. Blue lightning snapped outward in panicked lashes, but the skeletons didn’t flinch. They only held on.

  Catherine stared, breath shallow, mind racing.

  Ivarr sprinted to Catherine’s side and dropped to a knee beside her. Cold seeped from his palm as he pressed it to her injured leg, the air around his hand fogging.

  Catherine hissed through her teeth, trying to sit up. “How did you—”

  “I’ll explain later,” Ivarr cut in, voice tight. His eyes flicked to the storm-drake thrashing under its skeletal swarm.

  The pain in Catherine’s calf dulled from a lightning-burned scream to a heavy ache. Not healed, not fully, but enough. She planted her boot. Her leg trembled, but she held.

  Across the chamber, the skeletons still clung like burrs, knives flashing, bone claws digging into seams as the drake bellowed and snapped at the air.

  Ivarr stood and drew both hands together. A ball of cold mist formed between his palms, spinning faster, swelling, growing from a fist-sized fog to a churning sphere the size of a barrel. Frost spiraled around it in tight bands.

  He hurled it, and the blast struck the monster’s back and burst outward like a winter wave. Ice crawled across the dorsal plates in branching sheets, glazing the coral ridges, seizing joints, dulling the light pulsing beneath. Catherine raised her polearm and reached inward, calling fire.

  Flaming arrows formed above her in a wide arc, dozens at once, their tips burning white-hot. She sent them down like rain. They hammered into the drake’s plated back and shoulders, exploding in bursts of heat that shocked the ice, cracking the glaze in spiderweb fractures. A few arrows struck too close to the skeletons, and two of them jerked as flame licked through their ribcages, red glow guttering as they fell away in pieces.

  Catherine’s jaw tightened. Sorry.

  The drake whipped around, roaring at them, only to choke as the next volley struck its open mouth. Fire burst against its tongue and throat. Smoke poured from between its teeth. The creature reeled, thrashing its head, focused on the pain, and didn’t notice Catherine move.

  She charged, but this time she didn’t swing into its plates. Her polearm blazed as she closed the distance, the weapon’s shaft hot enough that the steam around it hissed. She slipped under a wild snap of its jaws and struck upward under the jaw first, hammerhead driving into tender flesh. The drake’s head jerked back.

  Catherine pivoted and stabbed the spear tip into the wounded seam at the neck, exactly where she’d opened it earlier. Dark blood sprayed warm across her arms.

  Ivarr followed her in, low and fast, slamming his ring-hand toward the floor. Ice surged up the drake’s foreleg, coating the joint and locking it stiff mid-step. The monster stumbled, weight shifting wrong, claws scraping uselessly for traction.

  “Now!” Ivarr shouted.

  Catherine surged closer and drove the pike down toward its breast where the armor plates met. The tip pierced. She didn’t linger, not leaving a chance for the retaliatory arc to climb into her hands. She stabbed, twisted, and pulled back.

  Then she thrust her free palm forward.

  A torrent of flame blasted straight into the wound, pouring into the creature’s chest like molten breath.

  The storm-drake shrieked, body arching violently. Its lightning sputtered along its spines in broken pulses, uneven and frantic. Ivarr froze its other leg to keep it from lunging, ice racing up the limb as it tried to tear itself free.

  Catherine didn’t give it time. She stepped closer again, teeth clenched, and dragged the pike in a brutal vertical cut, ripping from its chest up through the neck seam with a blazing edge of fire and steel.

  The drake snapped at her blindly in a last, desperate bite, jaws crackling. Catherine twisted away just in time, heat scorching her sleeve.

  Its mouth opened again, gathering lightning for one final shot.

  Catherine answered first. A fireburst slammed into its throat, straight inside it. The lightning died mid-breath. The creature’s head sagged, smoke pouring from its jaws. Its legs buckled, ice cracking under its weight as it collapsed with a heavy, final shudder that shook the wet stone.

  For a heartbeat, the chamber was silent except for steam.

  Then, one by one, the remaining skeletons loosened their grip and fell away like puppets with cut strings, crimson glow fading to nothing as Ivarr’s staff dimmed. Their remains were eventually pulled back into his pack.

  Ivarr rushed to Catherine. She was spent, collapsed on the floor.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “You—” Catherine panted.

  “Yeah?” Ivarr asked.

  “—should’ve summoned those things earlier,” she finished, tapping his head with the handle of her polearm.

  “I suppose,” Ivarr said, rubbing the back of his head. “They cost a lot of ether to use and… I was thinking of explaining it to you first.”

  Catherine huffed something between a laugh and a groan.

  “Oh,” Ivarr added quickly, eyes flicking to her leg. “Let me gather its energy. I can heal you with it.”

  Catherine nodded, and Ivarr went to collect the life energy seeping out of the fallen creature.

  “Nicely done, you two,” Thalia said, voice smooth as ever, approving in a way that didn’t feel like warmth. “You truly are worthy of this prize.”