Nightbound: Curse of Shadows

6

   Everything was too loud. 

   People fought everywhere. Phoenixes and stone griffins and sky dragons descended on an army of Shadow Guardians. Araktine himself was there, the Tenebris-Malum by his side as always. Araktine was truly a terrifying force. A massive army responded to every directing point of his black and golden wings. Now they lay folded by his sides as he watched from a mound of sand from the desert held together by his power, every once in a while sending a bolt of darkness at the Light Guardians or doing something else to help his army. But mostly, he watched. 

   Someone near me shouted, “Watch out!” 

   I looked up. A massive ball of rock was falling toward me, almost on me already. I couldn’t get away, I’d be crushed-

   The boulder crashed into the ground. I opened my eyes. I didn’t feel hurt. Just… weird. 

   I looked down at myself. I was still standing. The boulder was in hundreds of pieces beneath me. My legs were sky blue and my chest didn’t have the scar like it usually did. I looked at my back and shifted my colors, from blue and gold to black and back, and had the same tingly feeling it usually brought. I was just… me. Normal dragon me. But a rock was crushed at my feet like it had gone straight through me. 

   “Sundri!” someone yelled. My head snapped up. I knew that voice. I flew to its source. Three sky dragons were dragging something across the desert sand toward a small oasis under a shield of stone that hid their faces and whatever they were carrying. Or whoever, anyway, I thought. This is a battle after all. 

   I followed from the air, barely paying attention to any of the other flying rocks. Whatever was going on here, it was weird, and I had a feeling nothing was going to hit me. 

   The three dragons reached the oasis. The noticeably smaller of them said something I could barely hear. A sea wolf with a reddish color moved away from a griffin she was tending to on the other side of the pool, who gave her a small nod as she turned. 

   One of the larger sky dragons lifted the stone and buried it into the ground, keeping anyone fighting from seeing them or the dragon they'd been moving. I landed near them, not leaving a hint of a footprint on the sand. Nobody seemed to notice me. Maybe I was invisible? It had to be something like that. 

   The dragon on the ground was turned away from me. The sea wolf checked her over, her slender red face creased with worry. 

   “What's wrong?” Moonshade asked urgently. “I tried healing her, but something blocked my power. What could do that? Mehrra, please, do you know?” She turned to the smaller dragon. “Garzeriki, what happened to her? You were there, weren't you?” 

   “She saved my life,” he said shakily. “This dark thing reached up from the ground and did something. I think it was stopping my heart from beating. I blacked out after a few seconds. She zapped me with electricity and restarted my heart. Then the thing came back and attacked her. I don’t think it did same thing as it did to me, though. It just attacked her, you see what it did.”  

   “Who was it?” 

   “I don't know. It just came up from the ground.” 

   Moonshade turned to the other dragon, another I knew all too well. “Who was it? I know you can't tell me everything, but can you at least tell us this? It could save her life if we know exactly what kind of power it was.” 

   Cloudstrike closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “It was Araktine.”  

   Mehrra pulled water from the pool and started working on something on the fallen dragon’s other side. “I imagine so. Only Araktine’s power could completely block yours like that, Cael. Cirrus only confirms it. I can try to save her.” She pulled more water from the pool, energized it until it was glowing, and went back to work. “This really was a bad idea, splitting like this.”