A burst of screams made Kamayin turn and cry out in despair.
Audric glanced back in time to see a massive wave bearing down on a section of beach some thousand yards away. The wave crested with a roar and then crashed down hard, flattening everything in its path.
“Here!” Sanya rushed over along with another soldier. Between them, they carried a length of huge, sand-crusted chain and a coil of sodden rope.
Audric called out to everyone gathered, “I’m going to release the light! Prepare yourselves!”
Elementals and soldiers alike turned back toward the storm, their expressions resolute. The windsingers raised their arms, and Audric felt the air tighten as they focused their power.
Then he released his hold on his own. Illumenor darkened, as did the beach. The rain crashed back down, and the soldiers resumed constructing their wall.
Audric climbed onto Atheria, shouting over the rain and wind, “The chain! Tie it around us! Tight, but not enough to hurt her!”
Sanya and the other soldier, Kamayin, and Ludivine all hurried forward, helping Audric wrap the lengths of chain around his legs and waist and around Atheria’s stomach until he was anchored snugly in place between her trembling wings.
Then, reading his intentions, Atheria knelt, looked over at Sanya, and snorted.
Sanya hesitated, clutching the coil of rope in her hands. “My lord…the storm will blow your godsbeast from the sky.”
Audric raised his hands, Illumenor gripped between them. “As tight as you can, Sanya. Tighter than you think you should.”
Sanya shot him a single worried look, then hurried to obey, wrapping the rope several times around his hands and Illumenor’s hilt, so tightly his hands bloomed with pain.
More screams rose from behind him, at the city’s edge, but he did not turn back to look.
Ludivine sent him a sharp hot wave of encouragement. Go, my darling.
Audric closed his eyes, sending Atheria a silent apology.
“With the dawn I rise,” he prayed. “With the day I blaze.”
Then he roared, “Fly!” and Atheria pushed hard off the sand and into the air—where the wind immediately knocked them violently to the side. Atheria recovered fast, her wings beating furiously.
The storm was immeasurable, colossal. Wind howled and wailed, pounding against them as the waves below battered the shore. Atheria fought hard to stay aloft, bowing her head against the wind. Feathers were ripped from her wings and went spinning off into the clouds. Her body quaked beneath him, and he knew a lesser creature would already have been decimated.
Ahead of them towered a black wall of clouds, lit with lightning.
Past that, said Ludivine in his mind, lies the eye of the storm. It is calmer than the rest.
Audric closed his eyes, forcing past the fear racking his body to focus his thoughts and envision the task ahead. It was a wild theory, one that was very possibly wrong: that a burst of raw power, if it was strong enough, if it struck true, could shift the empirium itself and break apart the storm at its foundations.
Such an act could also kill him. If he threw every scrap of his power at the storm, what would be left of him without it?
But he could not dwell on thoughts of death. Instead, Audric imagined himself and Atheria flying through that thick wall of clouds, then bursting into light and safety on the other side.
And the vision of Rielle stayed with him like a swell of warmth in his heart—she and Atheria, a small starburst of light fighting that raging wall of water in the Northern Sea.
Audric forced open his eyes and saw nothing but furious black clouds. A blast of wind slammed into Atheria, knocking their course askew and sending Audric’s stomach down to his toes. But then Atheria pushed herself back up, battling the wind’s relentless fists.
A bolt of lightning erupted so close that Audric’s head rang with the crackling heat of it. His teeth ached, and his mouth and nose filled with a sour, hot smell that reminded him of the acrid stench that had scorched the air when Rielle had tried and failed to mend the Gate.
His body buzzed with energy that was not his own. It came from the storm, this Gate-made hurricane. It raged against his skin, it burned his lungs, and he began to fear that he had made a terrible mistake, that whatever he could do would not possibly be enough in the face of such godly power. The Gate was made in a time of bloodshed and desperation. This storm’s very nature, its lineage, was