the sudden inarticulate outburst of the latest captured seridi—storm clan, Isri had said—brought it rumbling back again.
Isri's own wings flared in response to the cry of her brethren, and she turned immediately, radiating reassurance.
* Jumpy, aren't they? * Ruby observed, and both Isri and Altair turned sharply back to Vidarian, answering his unspoken question of whether they would be able to hear her.
// Ruby? // Altair asked, startled incredulity wreathing his thought with a sharp scent like broken pine needles. // It can't be… // Vidarian felt a sudden warmth and reassurance that the tightly disciplined gryphon could react with his same disbelief.
Isri looked between them, not understanding.
Vidarian tried to explain, but found himself once again overwhelmed with an upwelling of frustrating emotion. “She…when the gate opened…”
Isri gasped in sudden comprehension. “Your friend—with the hair like fire—” And with understanding dawned emotion, also; Vidarian, not for the first time, did not envy her receptiveness to the states of those around her. The feathers around her face lifted with sadness, and her eyes filled with water. It was not the first time Vidarian had seen a seridi weep, but it reached him deeply.
* You all look like— *
“Don't say it,” Vidarian warned, recovering some sternness.
* Fair enough. *
Vidarian pulled the sun ruby from his pocket and lifted it to the gryphon and seridi. Isri reached out to take it from him. “She was—caught—within the stone,” he said.
Isri's large eyes were dark with thought as she gently turned the stone between her hands. “This is well beyond my expertise,” she confessed. “The seridi resisted the use of magical artifacts embraced by gryphons and humans in the Twilight.” Like birds, seridi seemed to pass information at lightning speed, owing to their telepathically mediated nightly connections—and as an elder mindspeaker, Isri was even more linked to their seeming-constant conversations. Only within the last few days had they begun referring to the time immediately preceding the sealing of the Great Gate as the “Twilight,” but he had to admit it seemed appropriate.
“Gryphons and humans seem to share a delight in the dangerous,” Vidarian said.
Altair's head shot upward, his neck straightening to its full intimidating height. His feather-tufted ears flattened against his skull.
“If I've offended—” Vidarian said uncertainly.
The tall gryphon's wordless hiss stopped the words on Vidarian's tongue, and as he listened in the silence that followed, a low growl emanated out of the forest.
// Thornwolves! // Altair cried, and Vidarian had half a breath to imagine the creatures of frightening bedtime stories, and then the pack was upon them.
Three wolves came stalking out of the darkness beyond the torch-line, their movements gracefully coordinated. Easily twice as large as the sightwolves that had ambushed them at the Windsmouth's edge, these were clearly king predators, even more terrifying than their fairy tales depicted.
* An honest-to-Nistra thornwolf! I thought they were imaginary! *
“Not helpful!” Vidarian grunted, drawing his sword and willing his unruly magics into it.
// Don't let the spines touch you! // the gryphon warned, Vidarian thought unnecessarily. Sprouting from the creatures' necks were fearsome weapons that looked like they belonged to a giant sea urchin. Like the wolves' fur, they were striped, each contrasting the individual wolf's color, which ranged from deep red to blue-violet—but the spines were tipped in a lurid green that screamed “I am poisonous!”
Two of the wolves closed immediately on Altair while the third launched itself fearlessly at Vidarian's blade. The gryphon had moved to the center of the clearing, mantling his wings and screaming a deafening battle challenge. Alone, either Altair or Isri could easily have fled to the air, but they dared not abandon either Vidarian or the two captured seridi.
Lashing out with his blade to keep the wolf at bay, Vidarian slowly moved sideways, giving Altair more room to fight and placing himself between the wolves and the bound seridi. Perhaps he could redeem himself, if only in part, by protecting them now.
The advancing wolf suddenly leapt, fangs bared, neck-ruff splayed, and Vidarian danced backwards while letting loose with a wild blast of fire energy. The wolf twisted in midair, avoiding the flames, and leapt again with astonishing agility as soon as its paws touched the ground. This time Vidarian met it with his blade, but again the wolf twisted, leaning low against the ground and mantling its ruff into a deadly armored wreath. The longest spines were half an arm's length longer than his sword, pressing him to the defensive.