Chapter 138: Wings Over the Bulwark

"Is that Unrivaled up there? On the bone dragon?"

"He’s a Beastlord. When did he turn into a Dragon Knight?"

"Maybe the dragon’s a new companion. He must have picked it up in the last ten minutes."

"That would explain it, actually."

"I’m green. Actually green. I’m a warrior with no mount, not so much as a pony, and the man next to me is riding a dragon through the Hollow Legion like it’s a Sunday stroll. Is there no justice left in this world?"

"Look at the breath on that thing. It’s scouring the ground clean."

"I’d settle for the smallest, sickliest wyvern in the kingdom. Just something with wings."

"Unrivaled! A hundred million gold for one ride! Name your price!"

All along the Bulwark of Ash, thousands of players watched a single rider climb and dive across a sky thick with the dead, bone wings burning blue, a trail of frost and shattered ranks marking every pass.

Warriors especially stared, hungry and dazed, as if they had just seen the game’s best-kept secret.

On the fourth gallery, Alexis Kane had been mid-swing against a pack of ghouls that had scrambled over the lip of the platform when a cry went up at her shoulder and she turned to look.

Kael was on the back of a bone dragon, riding high and hard in pursuit of another of its kind, his spear dark against the white sky.

She forgot the ghoul.

Beside her, Frostbloom had stopped fighting altogether, one hand pressed to her chest, her face soft with open adoration.

"He’s perfect," she breathed. "He is absolutely, completely my type."

"Who says a Beastlord can’t fight up close? He took four of the government’s secret teams apart with a sword last night.

And today he’s up there on a dragon, more of a knight than any knight on this wall."

"The Silversong I remember is back. It’s him, Lexi. Do you see it?"

"I think I’m going to marry him."

Alexis felt something small and sharp twist beneath her ribs, and she didn’t care for it at all.

She turned a cold look on her friend. "Have you no shame? You can’t just say things like that out loud."

"What’s there to be ashamed of?" Frostbloom replied, completely serene. "Who wouldn’t want someone strong and handsome? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t."

"I would not." The heat in Alexis’s cheeks betrayed her before she’d finished the sentence. She lifted her chin, haughty, blazing.

"What a ridiculous thing to suggest."

"Then why are you blushing?"

"I am not blushing. Kill something, would you? And heal me while you’re at it."

High above them, Kael bent low over the dragon’s neck and drove it down toward the stricken creature ahead.

The target was another of the Hollow Legion’s Frost Bone Dragons, but this one bore no rider.

A level 77 Legendary quasi-boss, savage and enormously strong, it would have been a nightmare for any ordinary party to bring down.

But Kael was fused with Valen under Warden’s Mandate, and every bit of that borrowed weight rode on his shoulders.

The wild dragon was losing, and it knew it. It dove, wheeled, spat frost at him in great desperate gouts, and he sliced through the cloud of rime and closed again, his spear flickering at its flanks, its spine, its wings, until its health bar finally emptied.

The skeleton came apart in midair. Equipment and gold burst out of the wreckage and rained toward the snowfield below.

Kael banked his mount in a long, easy curve and plucked two glittering pieces out of the air as they fell.At the same moment, two chimes sounded in his ear.

[Notification: Companion (Wraithlord) has reached level 51.]

[Notification: Companion (Wraithlord) has awakened dormant bloodline potential on level-up. New A-rank skill awakened: (Crimson Talon).]

"Another one." Kael’s eyes brightened, and he opened the panel at once.

[CRIMSON TALON]

Skill Grade: A

Effect: Gather the wraith-lord’s power into a gigantic blood-red claw and rake a single target, dealing 270% attack damage and ignoring 25% of the target’s armor.

Mana Cost: 200

Cooldown: 30s

A simple single-target strike, nothing fancy, but the armor penetration was a real prize, and against heavily plated enemies it would make Wraithlord noticeably more dangerous. A solid addition.

More importantly, it meant the Genesis Heart was finally proving itself.

The Empyrean admitted no one above level fifty, which meant that now that he had hit that mark, Kael had decided to hold himself there.

Every point of experience that his own kills generated was being redirected to his companions instead, and with a battlefield this size and a horde this endless, they were ripening fast.

In little more than an hour, Stormwing Sovereign and Wraithlord had both awakened new skills, and the pace was only going to rise as the levels climbed. The longer this event lasted, the stronger his entire roster would become.

A good trade.

Still, flying a dragon over a battlefield was as intoxicating as anything he had known in this life or his last, and it took him a few moments to remember what he was actually here to do.

He had one overriding duty today: to keep Elara alive.

With a pull on the reins, he turned the Frost Bone Dragon back toward the Bulwark and glided down to settle on the rampart, folding its burning wings.

Void Cataclysm and Wraithlord already stood at her side, and Sir Gareth Thorne kept his sword drawn a pace behind her.

Any undead that so much as approached the wall in their vicinity was cut down before it touched stone.

By now, the battle had reached a new pitch.

Ever more of the Hollow Legion poured out of the blizzard, an unbroken tide of bone and rot.

The entire Bulwark groaned under it. Whole sections of the fourth gallery had fallen, and the first creatures were scrabbling and clawing their way up the face of the wall toward the very top.

Overhead, the great dragon duel was beginning to go badly.

The Solarian Empire’s Imperial Dragon Knight, mounted on his golden sovereign of the sky, had clashed with Malachar for what felt like an age, but the gap between them was showing.

His strikes had slowed. Each exchange left him a little more battered, his dragon’s golden scales dulled and cracked in places, gasping out smaller flames. He was holding on out of pure will.

On the highest platform of the wall, a company of human warriors stood quietly, their faces grim, watching the sky.

They were clearly men of great power, and they saw exactly how the fight in the clouds was going. Not one of them stepped forward to help.

They waited, guarded and alert, prepared for whatever else might come.

They were right to be wary.

A long, rumbling roar rolled in from the heart of the storm.

Out of the whirling white came two enormous black shapes, hurtling toward the Bulwark with a heavy, rushing thunder. They were not creatures.

They were mountains in miniature, raw jagged boulders the size of towers, flung by something vast beyond the snow, trailing white streamers of frost as they screamed across the sky like falling stars.

They struck the wall with a crash that shook the world.