Chapter 791: Four Hours to Dawn (5)
"Deren!" Sylvanna’s voice cracked raw.
He swung, steel bar meeting stone with a bone-thudding clang. The fragment veered, splashing harmlessly into black water. Spray hissed off hot rubble. Deren flashed her a grin that looked too white in this dark. "Still breathing, captain!"
A fresh downdraft slammed the wyvern sideways. Sylvanna’s vision filled with sparks as her shoulder snapped against the saddle bark. Pain lanced her arm; lightning fizzed out in ribbons, spraying into the clouds. For a half-breath the world tilted, and she saw twin images: the real forge below and a hallucination hovering just above it—her father, cloak flapping, hand outstretched in welcome. The vision stank of Orvath’s meddling. She blinked hard. The phantom guttered like a candle in wind and was gone.
Azra hammered her fist on the saddle. "We need that breach, Sylv!"
"I said—" She sucked air, steadying the storm boiling in her chest. "—not yet!"
The submerged forge’s topmost hull plate rotated, exposing a narrow seam that pulsed with sick green light. It reminded her of a wound that refused to clot. That was her window.
She loosed the wyvern’s dive signal. Raëdrithar tucked wings and fell. Wind shrieked. Wraiths blurred past like inverted comets. Sylvanna’s heartbeat hit a staccato roll, every pulse radiating needles of electricity down her arms. Her fingers curled around the notched arrow—storm-glass forged from lightning sand and Draven’s proprietary binding salts.
"Azra—now!"
The engineer hurled the demolition charge. Flame blossomed beneath them, a sunflower of orange ripping a slab from the forge exterior. Turbulence bucked the wyvern; Azra clung with both arms, teeth bared in a snarl. The blast tore open a jagged corridor of air straight to the amplifier mirror just lifting from its cradle.