as though it were made of pure light. Long, curled horns stuck out of its head, and spikes adorned the length of its spine. They trailed all the way down its back—from the crown of its head, to the tip of its tail.
Its whole body buzzed, a low and steady sound, like a humming Magitech generator. The sound mixed with the crack and sizzle of its magic, like bubbling oil in a hot pan. The whole air was super-charged, a field of static electricity popping and biting at my skin.
The blue dragon’s wings resembled the tattered and torn cloak of hell’s reaper. Its eyes were bright blue, almost white, and so was the stream of lightning-charged magic that shot out of its mouth.
The earth dragon looked a lot like an enormous dinosaur. It was the bright green of a rainforest canopy. A thick, muscular body shifted beneath several layers of shiny emerald scales. Its spine was covered in spikes: red, orange, and yellow, the colors of leaves on the cusp of autumn.
The green dragon smelled of fresh earth and growing things, of the forest after a rainfall. Its wide, translucent wings were a canvas of colors, as soft and saturated as a watercolor painting. The horns on its head shone gold; its talons and teeth too. With every breath that the dragon drew, with every lift and lower of its chest, the earth quaked.
The dragons attacked us. And we scattered. Of course we ran. We might have been badass Legion soldiers, but these beasts were big, armored, bursting with magic, and one hundred percent the real deal. Only a fool launched a full frontal assault on a pair of unfriendly dragons.
Do friendly dragons even exist? I wondered as I rolled under the earth dragon’s stomping feet. A quake erupted each time one of its feet hit the ground.
Leila was making a mad dash up the sky dragon’s swinging tail. Damiel was already balanced atop its thrashing head. A flash of lightning lit up the sky. Then Damiel and Leila fell from the dragon. The monster had knocked them off with twin bolts of magic lightning.
It spun around now to face them. Its mouth opened, and it breathed out a tornado. Leila dodged a few more directed lightning strikes as Damiel tackled the tornado. Literally. It took a special kind of madman—or an angel—to grab a tornado with your bare hands.
The earth dragon wasn’t standing idle either. It spat a cluster of metal darts at me. No, make that long, metal spears. If I’d been a little slower—or a little unluckier—I’d have ended up impaled on those cages of spears.
I was so busy fighting the dragons that it took awhile for me to hear the voice of reason in my head.
Monsters cannot exist on this side of the Magitech barrier, said my father’s voice.
The voice of reason in my head often sounded exactly like my father.
Which means these dragons aren’t dragons at all.
So what were they then?
A spell.
I took a closer look at the dragons’ bodies. That’s when I noticed the bright glow wasn’t around the dragons; it was coming from deep within them.
Their bodies are made up of elemental magic, not flesh and bone.
But if the dragons were just elemental spells—
They can be broken. Like all spells.
I considered it a tad crazy to thank my own voice of reason. It was, after all, just a part of me. Normal people didn’t thank themselves. So instead I focused on developing a course of action to get rid of the dragons, now that I knew what they actually were.
My brainstorming session changed tracks when I realized Damiel and Leila had become snared in elemental booby traps. Glyphs glowed under their feet. Leila was trapped inside a water magic bubble, Damiel inside a translucent envelope of fire and ash.
Water and fire. Neither spell could have come from the earth or sky dragons. No, they’d come from Starfire.
Damiel and Leila were paralyzed, suspended inside their magic prisons. They could not fight off the two dragons closing in on them. The sky dragon was mere steps from Leila. And the earth dragon was within easy stomping distance of Damiel.
I tried to pull Damiel and Leila out of the traps, but my body couldn’t pass through the glyphs’ magic curtains. Idris Starfire had designed the traps too well. He’d set this up in advance.
Which meant that he’d definitely known we were coming.
I shook out my hands, prepping my magic to blow those glyphs to pieces. I