“I’ll kill him,” Pelzyq spat as the dragon flew off, veins popping on his neck. “I’ll tear him apart and feed him to his own dragon!”


    “Not if I get there first,” Zyryxa said, glaring at Coryza as it swooped down in the vast distance.


    “Neither of you can touch him,” Natazia mumbled, lying on the ground where Hatrox left her, facing away from them with her top exposed to the elements. Her back was a mess of scars and the various tattoos trying to cover it up. Zyryxa noticed one was a Blizzardmane, though it looked nowhere near as majestic as the real one. Most of them involved musical instruments.


    Zyryxa breathed, trying not to kick Natazia while she was down. She didn’t want Hatrox to win but she didn’t know how much patience she could have for this bitch. She felt trapped between two unpleasant options but she’d take the lesser of two evils and deal with the wretch rather than the monster.


    “Maybe not now,” Lexyn said, shivering despite the mild weather. “But someday we will give him the ending he deserves. First, we need to complete these trials, then get our dragons. We can do this. We just have to keep moving forward and believing in each other.”


    Lexyn was right. Whether she could count on Natazia or not, she’d rather not face Hatrox without a big dragon at her side. All she needed to do to still her urge to race to Riverwatch was remember how impossible it was to move his hand from her face. Like Vaztyma, Hatrox was stronger. It was a simple fact. That was all there was to it. For now. She’d have to be stupid to think now was the time to strike. That was exactly what he wanted.


    “No,” Pelzyq said, stupidly. “I’m going to Riverwatch and I’m going to kill him.”


    Natazia snorted. “As always, you’re nothing but talk.”


    Zyryxa’s mouth fell open. Natazia wasn’t completely wrong. But she was a divinedamned bitch.


    Pelzyq stomped toward her. “What did you say to me?”


    “I said all you do is talk. Maybe if you listened you would’ve heard the first time.”


    Pelzyq stormed toward her red-faced and puffed out. Zyryxa wasn’t going to stop him from giving Natazia what she deserved. It was Lexyn that tried to hold Pelzyq back, hugging him from behind.


    He pushed her off him, sending her tumbling to the ground. She looked up at him, hurt flashing on her face. Pelzyq stalled his charge. He lowered his eyes, but Zyryxa caught a glimpse of his horror before he hid his face. He looked at his hands, turned them over, shaking, then met Lexyn’s tearful gaze.


    “I’m no divinedamned good. You’ll be better off without me.” He grabbed his axe but nothing else but the clothes he wore. “Don’t follow me.”


    Pelzyq dashed into the tundra, running as fast as Zyryxa had ever seen him go.


    Lexyn shouted after him, begging him to come back. She chased him into the tundra. Zyryxa called out after him to no avail.


    “Let him go,” Natazia said. “He’s useless.”


    Zyryxa bit her lip, but she couldn’t let this one pass. “You keep treating us like drakeshit and you’ll prove Hatrox right. We will leave you.”


    “Then leave.”


    Divinedamned bitch. Instead of throttling Natazia, she and their three drakes chased after Lexyn. Lexyn didn’t get far before she stumbled, unable to keep up Pelzyq’s pace in her weakened state. Zyryxa screamed for Pelzyq until her throat felt raw. He didn’t even look back. He was so far away, he might not even be able to hear them anymore.


    She looked behind them. Natazia hadn’t moved. She wanted to leave her, to let her face the wilds alone with her last spear, but if Hatrox caught them abandoning her, he’d have the authority to send them to Riverwatch. But if she didn’t leave her, would they lose Pelzyq? Zyryxa hated today so divinedamned much.


    Lexyn wept, head in her hands. “I hate this,” she said. “I hate what he’s done to us.”


    Zyryxa rubbed her shoulder. “Me too, Lex. But I know I can count on you and you can count on me. As long as we’re together, we will be okay.” Just saying the words somehow made them feel true. Lexyn wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t fail her. She could count on her to do her best and her best was more than enough.


    Lexyn leaned into her hand, setting her head against Zyryxa’s thigh. Pelzyq’s shape grew smaller in the distance. Zyryxa had to admit he was pretty divinedamned fast when he wanted to be. He couldn’t have picked a worse time for a tantrum though.


    Dryxl licked at Lexyn’s tears. She pushed the drake away. “It was an accident. He wouldn’t really hurt me.”


    “I know he wouldn’t hurt you.” Zyryxa sighed. “I don’t know how much longer we can stick with her but if we don’t…”


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    “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to make each other stronger.”


    “You have made me stronger,” Zyryxa said, rubbing her head.


    “And you’ve made me stronger.”


    “A lot stronger,” Zyryxa said, smirking. “You’re a beast now.”


    Lexyn shook her head. “I’m getting better.”


    Zyryxa sank to her bottom, nestled beside Lexyn, and wrapped her arm around her. She rested her head against Lexyn’s and tried to think of how this could still have a happy ending. Even if she didn’t believe it herself.


    “Here’s what’s going to happen. We will sit here until Pelzyq comes back—which he will once he realizes he’s being a dumbass—then we will drag Natazia far from Nix Tezyk, farther from Riverwatch, we will get her drunk, knock some sense into her, and finish the rite without seeing Hatrox again.”


    “You think it can happen?”


    “Certainly. Anything’s possible when you have a Lexyn. Even Pelzyq isn’t stupid enough to leave you. Natazia can get better again, like she was before Hatrox found us, because you are who you are. This is our lowest point, not our endpoint.”


    Lexyn didn’t say anything. So Zyryxa just held her until she fell asleep in her arms. Surrounded by a trio of tense drakes, Zyryxa carried Lexyn back to her tent. She shook her head at Natazia, who was still lying where Hatrox left her, then set Lexyn down inside her tent. She covered her up with a tenderness that helped her feel less angry at life, hoping that the world gave Lexyn a better day tomorrow. That shouldn’t be too much to ask for. How could a day be worse than this one?


    Instead of her mind finding peace, Zyryxa lingered on Hatrox’s parting threats. She sat in the darkened tent, massaging Lexyn’s sleeping head, while her own thoughts spiraled. He told her not to plan on sleeping, to beware monsters but what could he do other than come back and harass them more? She couldn’t shake the idea of him returning while she slept, binding her up, strapping her to Coryza, and taking her to Riverwatch.


    Would she ever be able to sleep again? To stop searching the skies for that dark blue shadow expecting to see that sneering madman around every bend and over every rise? Perhaps she could understand Natazia, even if she promised to never be like her.


    It was probably closer to dawn than dusk when the drakes howled as one. Pelzyq, Zyryxa thought rushing out of the tent with a smile.


    What she saw instead was a great black-furred beast taller than any two people stacked atop each other. The monster stood on two legs like an oversized hairy man. Long arms ending in vicious claws and a snow-white wolf-like snout warned of the ferocity they faced. Its snarl revealed a mouth full of deadly fangs. An ulfhedinn. A monster deadlier than most. Zyryxa had never seen one alive before. Nor was the beast alone. All across the tundra, monsters stampeded toward them, closing in on their small camp. The howls of a sabretooth pack, shrieking ice wraiths, an abominable’s growl, lygian wyverns cawing, and above all, a dragon’s roar.


    Zyryxa held her axe, adrenaline kicking in, knowing that she’d have to be a one-woman army to endure this assault. “Lexyn! Natazia! Monsters!”


    The Ulfhedinn attacked with unfathomable speed. It seized Xilliax, lifting the drake up and tearing the head off in one swift motion. Blue blood spraying through the air, it threw the rest of Xilliax into the other drakes, knocking over Maxilla.


    Zyrxl spat ice at the wolfish monstrosity but it weathered it as if it were no more than flakes of snow. Zyryxa hacked at the ulfhedinn with her axe, missing her first several blows as the creature moved with as much battle grace as Matyxal. The ulfhedinn fled Zyryxa, dashing toward a rousing Natazia on all fours.


    Natazia held her spear out toward it, preparing to thrust as the beast pounced.


    The spear snapped in two, swiped aside by the ulfhedinn’s claw as it mauled Natazia. The beast’s fangs on her unarmored chest, it shook Natazia back and forth then spat her out in the snow bloody and torn up.


    Zyryxa buried her axe in the ulfhedinn’s back. The beast stumbled forth, growling hideously, then darted forward. The ulfhedinn twisted, standing on two legs so that it towered over her, it let out a battle roar so loud Zyryxa winced.


    Her blood pumped with desperation. Natazia moaned on the ground, grabbing at her bloody torso. Lexyn let out a cry as a trio of ice wraiths hissed at her, Dryxl, and Maxilla, swirling around them and gnashing with their teeth. The sabretooths and the wyverns were closing in. The dragon, Amarzallax, circled above, her wrath palpable even without a telepathic connection established. She needed to dispatch the ulfhedinn immediately or her friend was going to die. Yet the monster was so fast, so elusive, that hitting it wasn’t something she could rush without exposing herself. She couldn’t lose Lexyn. That was a risk she needed to take.


    Dragon warrior and black-haired monstrosity rushed toward each other, axe versus claw and fang, and Zyryxa didn’t have reach or speed in her favor. But she did have skill. She feinted, stepping under the beast’s ten-foot long arm as it sliced the air. Zyryxa spun, severing the limb clean from the beast’s shoulder. Blue blood spurting from the wound, the ulfhedinn didn’t slow. Baring fangs, it gnashed at Zyryxa coming as fiercely as before.


    Zyryxa braced, hoping to time her swing to hit the creature’s open mouth before the fangs closed around her.


    The ulfhedinn was pushed off course, Zyrxl colliding with its flank. The coldscale tore into the beast’s side with her fangs, latching on. The beast swiped Zyrxl aside, leaving her whining in the snow, a trail of blood where the claws pierced her scales. But Zyrxl had done well, done everything she needed to do.


    The ulfhedinn’s head sailed through the night air, it’s monstrous body collapsing to the ground, blue blood dripping from Zyryxa’s axeblade.


    It wasn’t enough though. The battle had drawn her away from the camp, leaving Lexyn stranded against an army of beasts. Several sabretooths lay dead around the fire and all three ice wraiths were naught but puddles in Lexyn’s wake. Maxilla and Dryxl were on the ground, barely moving.


    The abominable pinned Lexyn to the ground, crushing her in its grip while several wyverns pecked at her


    “This can’t be happening!” Zyryxa shrieked, breaking into a sprint. She threw her handaxe, dropping one wyvern. The second axe thumped into the abominable, but the beast kept crushing Lexyn as the other wyverns tore into her furs, seeking the flesh beneath.


    There was too much space between them, too many monsters, not enough time. Zyryxa went as fast as she could, refusing to accept that it wouldn’t be fast enough.