The Hulda Cleft split the horizon like a scar—a jagged chasm where the earth had torn itself asunder in some ancient, forgotten war. Its cliffs glistened with veins of prismatic ore, their surfaces pocked with bioluminescent fungi that pulsed faintly in the storm's gloom. Zaiden leaned into Vyrinth's neck, the dragon's magma-lit scales searing away the rain as they dove. Below, the cleft exhaled a metallic mist, the air thick with the tang of vapor and iron.
"Keep formation!" Zaiden barked, though the wind stole his words. Cassis, flying double with Miles on Valor's back, raised a fist in acknowledgment. Her wyvern banked sharply, silver wings shearing through a tendril of fog. Behind them, Vadim and Collan clung to Nyx's saddle, the wyvern's obsidian scales blending with the storm.
"This looks like a bad decision waiting to happen," Collan shouted, his Glowmark tattoos flaring as Nyx juked a sudden updraft.
"Good decisions are overrated," Vadim shot back, though his grin faded as shadows coalesced ahead.
Six cloaked figures on wyverns materialized from the mist, their mounts armored in blackened steel, eyes glowing like forge-coals. Three broke away, spiraling down toward the cleft's base. The rest charged.
The first attacker came at Zaiden with a serrated lance. Vyrinth roared, her molten breath melting the weapon mid-thrust. The rider veered, but Zaiden's dagger found their thigh—a shallow cut, but enough. "Eyes up!" he snarled, though the warning was for himself as much as Cassis.
Valor screeched, talons raking a rival wyvern's wing. Miles clung to Cassis's waist, his compass glowing feathered gold. "Left!" he bellowed. Cassis yanked the reins, narrowly avoiding a net weighted with dungeon-forged iron.
"You're welcome!" Miles grinned, though his face paled as another net unfurled above them.
High above, Zander and Cora danced a lethal waltz. Zander's airborne blade found a rider's throat, the man toppling silently swallowed by the sky's depths. Cora, flying double with a Celestaviel tamer, pressed a rabbit's foot to her lips—a prayer or a curse—before hurling a salt pouch into an enemy wyvern's maw. The beast bucked, dislodging its rider.
"Show-off!" Rainer spat, scrubbing wyvern blood from his sleeve as Sloan's mount banked into a dive.
"Think we can do better than that!" Sloan lobbed a caramel—rigged with ember powder—into an attacker's hood. It detonated in a burst of harmless sparks, blinding the rider. Their wyvern careened into the cliffs, shattering a column of prismatic ore. The debris rained down, glinting like cursed diamonds
Vadim and Collan wove through the chaos, Nyx's wings slicing fog. "They're herding us!" Vadim shouted, pointing to where the three cloaked figures had landed. Below, at the cleft's heart, stood a stone plinth etched with the same sigils Astris had faced—a crescent moon cradling a star.
"Distract them!" Collan roared, unsheathing his blade.
"Distract this," Vadim muttered, unslinging a crossbow. His bolt struck a rider's wyvern in the wing joint, sending both beast and rider spiraling.
Zaiden swooped low, Vyrinth's talons scraping the plinth. The sigil pulsed, and the dragon recoiled with a hiss. "Cybele's teeth—it's a beacon!" He'd seen that symbol in the Spire's undercrofts, in the grimoire's cursed pages. The three figures below raised their hands, chanting in a guttural tongue that made the ore veins hum.
The cleft shuddered.
Fissures split the cliffs, disgorging winged horrors—dungeon-spawned hybrids of bat and scorpion, their tails barbed with venom. One latched onto Nyx's flank, stinger poised to strike. Collan lunged, severing the tail with a Glowmark-lit strike. The creature screeched, dissolving into ash.
"Charming pets they've got!" Collan yelled.
"Less talking!" Vadim knocked another bolt. "More killing!"
Cora's clairvoyant pendant flared as a horror dive-bombed her wyvern. "Duck!" she barked, yanking the reins. The beast folded its wings, plummeting just as Rainer's blade cleaved the horror's skull.
"You're welcome," he said, though his gloves trembled—too much filth, too much chaos.
Sloan whooped, riding their wyvern upside down beneath an arch of stone. "Try that, you overgrown pigeons!" His embers swirled, forming a smokescreen that sent two horrors colliding midair.
Zaiden circled back, Vyrinth's breath incinerating a swarm. "Cassis! The plinth—now!"
Valor dove, Cassis's braid whipping like a battle standard. Miles hurled his compass—not as a weapon, but as a fey-charmed decoy. It glowed, mimicking Valor's silhouette, drawing the horrors' gaze.
"Clever!" Cassis shouted.
"I've got moments of genius!" Miles retorted, clinging tighter as Valor's talons slammed onto the plinth.
The battle pivoted as Cassis's wyvern slammed onto the plinth, scattering the chanting figures. Valor's talons cracked the sigil, the beacon's light guttering out. The horrors dissolved mid-strike, their ashes swirling into the mist.
Zaiden landed beside her, Vyrinth's growl a promise of violence. The surviving attackers fled, their wyverns' wings beating a frantic retreat.
"Well," Vadim said, wiping blood from his brow, "that was fun."
Miles plucked his compass from the rubble, its needle spinning wildly. "Next time, remind me to stretch before doing so much cardio."
Cassis stared at the shattered plinth, her bracelet icy. "How do we get in? The entrance is blocked."
Above, unseen, the falcon circled—its fey-drenched compass now pointing not to Astris, but to the Spire itself.
*****
The dungeon breathed—a low, rhythmic groan that vibrated through Astris's bones. Its walls, slick with phosphorescent algae, oozed droplets of amber liquid that sizzled when they hit the floor. She stepped carefully, her boots crunching over fossilized roots tangled with rusted chains. The air reeked of iron and rot, like a butcher's shop left to decay.
The crystal ball in her satchel pulsed, its light seeping through the leather to cast jagged shadows on the walls. Astris clutched it tighter, the warmth searing her palm. What the hell? But the ball had a will of its own. With a sound like shattering glass, it erupted in a blaze of silver light, projecting a constellation of runes onto the damp stone floor—a magic circle, its edges crackling with arcane static.
Astris staggered back, shielding her eyes. When the glare dimmed, three figures stood within the circle's perimeter. Cloaked in void-black fabric that drank the light, their faces obscured by masks of polished onyx, they moved with unnatural synchronicity, their boots silent against the stone.
"No," Astris breathed.
She spun and ran, her pulse hammering in her ears. The dungeon twisted, corridors bifurcating like a spider's web. Behind her, the figures glided, their shadows stretching and warping across the walls, always closing in. She ducked beneath a low arch, the crystal ball's light revealing glyphs carved into the ceiling—Cybele's Canticle, a hymn to the goddess's mercy. Mercy won't save you now.
Astris skidded into a chamber where stalagmites rose like petrified sentinels. She wove between them, her breath ragged, but a figure materialized ahead, blocking the exit. She whirled—another behind her. The third stepped from the shadows, its mask reflecting her panicked face a dozen times in its obsidian facets.
"I won't do what you want!" she demanded, voice steadier than she felt.
The central figure raised a hand. Astris's satchel tore open, the crystal ball levitating into their grip. The light died instantly, plunging the chamber into near-darkness save for the faint glow of the algae.
The second figure knelt, pressing a palm to the floor. Runes ignited beneath their fingers—the same constellation from before, but inverted, its lines bleeding crimson. The air thrummed, and the ground dissolved into a vortex of swirling ash and embers.
Astris lunged, but the third figure seized her wrist, their touch icy. "Don't struggle," they murmured, voice echoing as though spoken through water. "He is waiting."
The portal swallowed them.
They reappeared at the Hulda Cleft's hidden entrance—a fissure veiled by cascading sheets of liquid shadow, one of many veilfalls that dotted the chasm. The cloaked figures shoved Astris to her knees, the crystal ball now concealed in a lead-lined satchel at their leader's hip. Above, the rescue party's wyverns circled, their cries muffled by the veilfall's dampening magic.
Zaiden landed first, Vyrinth's wings kicking up vortices of iridescent dust. "Clear the perimeter!" he barked, though his gaze slid past the veilfall, unseeing.
Cassis dismounted, Valor's talons scraping the prismatic ore. "No sign of her," she called, her wyvern skull bracelet dark.
I'm here, Astris wanted to scream, but the lead figure clamped a hand over her mouth, their glove smearing void sap across her lips. It tasted like burnt honey and sanguine.
The figures melted into the cleft's shadows, dragging Astris into a narrow tunnel where the walls pulsed with bioluminescent fungi. The air grew colder, the sound of dripping water echoing like a funeral dirge.
As they descended, Astris noted the leader's limp—a favor from an old injury, perhaps. A weakness. She filed it away, even as the Spire's growl vibrated through the stone, harmonizing with the frantic beat of her heart.
The tunnel spat them into a cavern where the air thrummed with the beat of leathern wings. Three wyverns waited, their bridles glinting with dungeon-core steel—jagged metal that hissed where it touched flesh. The leader shoved Astris toward the smallest beast, its rider a hunched figure with blistered hands.
"Bind her," the leader ordered, voice muffled by the onyx mask.
Astris twisted, her elbow catching the rider's ribs. "Try it and I'll—"
A falcon's screech split the air. Astris looked up with a smirk. "Miles," she murmured. The leader cursed, hauling Astris onto the wyvern's back. She clawed at their mask, but a gauntleted fist struck her temple. Darkness swallowed her, the last sound the thunder of wings ascending.
The rescue party surged skyward as the enemy wyverns breached the cleft, Astris limp in the lead rider's grip. Zaiden urged Vyrinth forward, the dragon's molten breath illuminating the clouds. "Cut them off!" he roared.
Cassis and Valor dove, silver wings slicing through a veilfall's liquid shadow. "They're heading for the stormfront!" she shouted, but her words drowned in the gale.
Sloan, riding double, lobbed an ember-charmed nugget. It detonated midair, scattering sparks that singed a wyvern's wing. "Pigeons incoming!" he barked, pointing to the horizon where griffon flocks wheeled—summoned by a shrill, unnatural whistle from the enemy's communication crystal.
The storm-peaks of Celestaviel howled as the battle raged, the air thick with the stench of singed feathers and molten ore. Above the Hulda Cleft, where prismatic veins of veilglass glimmered like frozen lightning in the cliffs, the sky had become a maelstrom of claw and steel.
Zaiden Leclair, Crown Prince of Lismore, leaned into the searing heat of Vyrinth's scales as the dragon banked sharply, emerald wings shearing through a griffon's talon-swipe. The beast—a lion-eagle hybrid with plumage the color of rusted gold—reared, its beak snapping at Vyrinth's throat. Zaiden bared his teeth, a feral mirror of his mount's fury. "Now!"
Vyrinth's tail, barbed with volcanic obsidian, whipped sideways with a crack like splitting stone. It struck the griffon mid-flight, slamming it into the cleft's jagged wall. The impact shattered a vein of raw veilglass, the prismatic ore exploding into shards that embedded themselves in the griffon's hide. The creature shrieked, its cry cut short as the glass's cursed resonance—a harmonic flaw known to Lismore's miners as "the Weeping Veil"—vibrated through its body, liquefying organs. The griffon fell, its corpse glittering grotesquely as it spiraled into the mist.
"Next!" Zaiden roared, though the word was lost to Vyrinth's answering growl—a sound that shook the air like magma breaking through bedrock.
Cora Green felt the warning twang in her sternum seconds before her pendant flared. The moonstone—carved with the sigil of Cybele's third eye—burned cold against her skin. "Incoming!" she barked to her Celestaviel tamer, Kael, whose hands were already tightening on his mount's reins.
The hippogriff descended like a meteor, its stallion's body armored in dwarven-forged plates, eagle wings snapping taut. Cora didn't hesitate. She hurled a pouch of saltspire—dungeon-mined salt mixed with powdered wyvern bone—into the creature's face. The hippogriff screeched, blinded, its dive veering wildly.
Kael, his olive skin gleaming with sweat, leveled his lance. "For the Grounded!" he cried, invoking Celestaviel's shunned caste of failed wyvern-tamers. The thrust pierced the hippogriff's breastplate, the force wrenching the weapon from his grip as the beast plummeted. Cora's pendant dimmed, its price paid: a trickle of blood seeped from her left nostril, the toll of Cybele's foresight.
"Still with me, Green?" Kael panted, retrieving his lance from the carcass.
"Wouldn't miss this for a royal pardon," she spat, wiping her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief—her mother's last gift.
Zander Valin moved as the night itself did—a ripple, a sigh, a blade parting flesh. His wyvern pilot dove at his silent command, talons grazing the armored flank of an enemy rider's mount. Before the foe could turn, Zander slid from the creature, landing cat-light behind the rider.
His dagger found the gap between helm and pauldron, severing the carotid. The rider slumped, and Zander caught the communication crystal slipping from their lifeless hand—a pulsing orb of void amber, its core swirling with captive starlight.
"Nighty-night," he whispered, pinning the crystal to the wyvern's saddle with a blade. The beast bucked, disoriented by the sudden silence in its bridle's control runes. Zander backflipped onto his ride, his smirk hidden beneath a scarf dyed with shadowvine—a plant that drank light, and laughter.
"Left! Left!" Collan Doran bellowed, his Glowmark tattoos blazing like captured comets. The enchanted ink—a cocktail of stardust and bioluminescent mushroom spores—cast jagged light over Vadim's crossbow scope.
"I'm not your damned spotlight!" Vadim snapped, but he adjusted his aim, breath steady. The bolt, tipped with spirethorn (a metal that hummed in the presence of dungeon magic), struck true. It shattered the pain-rune on a wyvern's bridle, the beast roaring as its will returned.
The wyvern bucked, dislodging its rider—a masked figure who clawed at the air as they fell. "One less puppet," Vadim muttered, reloading.
Collan's laughter boomed over the din. "Told you my Glowmarks'd come in handy!"
"They're tacky as hell," Vadim retorted, though his lips twitched. The duo had fallen into some sort of sync during their short time together: Collan's brute-force brilliance and Vadim's surgical spite, a combination that could topple warlords and tavern brawls alike.
The battle raged, a symphony of fire and shadow, but high above unnoticed, the Spire's pinnacle pulsed—once, twice. A signal, or a warning. Somewhere in the chaos, Astris Doran stirred, her fate balanced on the edge of a dragon's claw.
The griffons hit like a hurricane. Feathers razored through the air, and a hippogriff's talons grazed Rainer's arm, tearing his immaculate sleeve. "Filthy vermin," he hissed, decapitating it with a stroke so precise its headless body flew three more paces before falling.
Miles, with his wayfinder abilities, wove through the chaos. "They're herding us toward the storm!" he warned, but his wyvern lurched as a griffon latched onto its tail.
Zaiden shot past, Vyrinth's jaws snapping the griffon's spine. "Stay close!"
The skies above the Hulda Cleft had become a tempest of feathers and fury. Griffons, their prismatic plumage shimmering with the refracted light of Celestaviel's cursed veilglass, circled like living storms. Below, the chasm's walls pulsed with veins of the same ore, its jagged crystals humming with the dissonant resonance that drove lesser beasts to madness.
Sloan Taner, his leathers singed and hair wild from the gale, balanced precariously on the back of a bucking wyvern. Embers danced in his palm—pale, smokeless flames that defied the wind's wrath. He locked eyes with a griffon diving toward Cassis, its lion-like muzzle peeled back in a snarl. "Hey, featherface!" he bellowed, voice slicing through the chaos. "Catch!"
The ember arced through the air, a comet of false fire. It struck the griffon's crest, igniting the volatile oils in its plumage. The beast's squawk echoed across the cleft, half-roar, half-goblin's laugh, as its feathers erupted in a spectacle of harmless sparks. Blinded and thrashing, the griffon veered into its kin, sending both tumbling toward the mist-shrouded depths.
"Lights out, sweethearts!" Sloan crowed, though his grin faltered as the embers in his palm sputtered—a reminder that even his gifts had limits.
Princess Cassis Voclain tightened her grip on Valor's reins, her wyvern's scales icy beneath her palms. The beast shuddered, her silver wings straining against a gust that reeked of charred bone and dungeon rot. "Steady, girl," Cassis murmured, her voice a thread of calm in the storm. "We're not losing her again."
Valor's answering growl vibrated through the saddle, a sound felt more in the ribs than heard. The wyvern skull bracelet on Cassis's wrist—a relic from her first bonding ceremony—pulsed faintly, its carved hollows flickering with the same bioluminescent algae that lit Celestaviel's sacred caves. A tether to the past, she thought, and a chain to the future.
A hippogriff streaked past, its stallion's body armored in dwarven steel, eagle claws raking the air where Cassis's head had been. Valor rolled mid-flight, the maneuver sharp enough to crack a lesser rider's spine. Cassis clung on, her braid whipping like a battle standard.
"Again!" she urged, and Valor obeyed, diving toward the fray.
Beneath the fray, shrouded in the cleft's shadowed underbelly, the masked figure raised a communication crystal—an orb of void amber, its core swirling with captive starlight and whispers of the Spire's rot. The leader's voice, distorted by the crystal's necrotic magic into something neither human nor beast, crackled through the storm.
"Send the horde," they intoned. "Drown them in wings."
The command ignited the crystal's core, its light bleeding crimson. Far below, in the dungeon's throat, a hundred answering shrieks tore through the earth. Hippogriffs and griffons—some half-rotten, their feathers molting and eyes milky with Spire-sickness—surged upward. They moved as one grotesque tide, summoned by the dungeon's siren call.
The reinforcements hit like a meteor shower. Sloan swore as a hippogriff clipped his wyvern's wing, its rider's eyes glowing corpse-green. "Since when do these bastards wear armor?!"
"Since today!" Rainer Vain retorted, decapitating a griffon mid-lunge. His blade, polished to a murderous gleam, contrasted starkly with his mud-spattered uniform—a detail that would've horrified him an hour ago.
Cassis and Valor wove through the onslaught, her dagger finding gaps in hippogriff plate. Each strike sent sprays of blackened blood arcing through the air, the stench of rot clinging like a curse.
Zaiden and Vyrinth carved a molten path through the swarm, the dragon's breath reducing wings to ash. Yet for every beast felled, two more rose—a hydra of feather and flesh.
As the horde tightened its noose, a falcon's cry pierced the din. Talons bared as it dove for the leader. Raking a claw across its face, the void amber shattered in his grip, its death-rattle scream silencing the horde mid-strike.
In that frozen heartbeat, Cassis met Zaiden's gaze. No words were needed.
"Now!" they roared in unison.
Valor dove, Cassis's dagger aimed at the leader's throat. Vyrinth's flame lit the path.
The storm, it seemed, had finally chosen a side.
The sky darkened with reinforcements—hippogriffs bearing armored riders, griffons with steel-tipped talons. Yet as the rescue party faltered, a shadow fell across the sun. The Spire's pinnacle pierced the clouds ahead, its growl shaking the heavens.
Astris stirred, her eyelids fluttering. The world blurred—storm, wings, Zaiden's roar—then sharpened. Her fingers brushed the enemy rider's blistered hand, the one weakness she'd cataloged.
She wrenched the bridle, steering the wyvern into a spiral. The leader grappled for control, but Astris flailed, kicking their mask, the onyx cracking to reveal a sliver of scarred cheek.
"Zaiden!" she screamed.
Vyrinth answered, diving like a comet.
The wyverns collide in a burst of ember and steel. Astris falls—