Chapter 690: The Brightest In Drakenfell

DRAKENFELL — EAST WALL — FOUR HOURS PRIOR

The dragons were ready. The Draken Forces were ready. The only thing not ready was Gavriel’s magic, which was about to become everyone’s problem.

Two hundred and twelve members of the Draken Forces stood in formation along the east wall. Full combat armor. Blades drawn. Faces carrying the particular expression of warriors whose king had said "zero casualties" and whose king did not make statements he considered aspirational.

Below them, on the field, their dragons waited in mirrored formation. Scaled bodies lined up in rows so straight they could have been measured with a ruler, each one radiating the low, steady heat of a predator whose body was running pre-combat calculations without being asked.

Gavriel’s green magic still wrapped every single one of them in emerald light. The dragons looked like a goddamn holiday display and the Draken Forces looked like an army that had been dipped in a highlighter.

Somewhere, the enemy fleet was going to look south and think Drakenfell was hosting a festival. They would be incorrect. But the confusion would be understandable.

Tiberon stood at the center of the wall, facing his forces. Hyran at his right. Dexmon at his left. Gavriel beside Dexmon, still glowing, still green, still apparently unaware that "stealth operation" and "luminescent Gamma" occupied opposite ends of the tactical spectrum.

"First order," Tiberon said, his voice carrying the length of the wall without volume because Tiberon Drakenfell’s voice did not require volume the way gravity did not require permission. "We fly dark. Green off. Every dragon, every warrior. If I can see you from the ground, the enemy can see you from the sky, and visibility is the difference between an ambush and a funeral. We are conducting the former."

The distinction between ambush and funeral was, in Tiberon’s experience, entirely determined by preparation. Preparation did not include glowing.

He looked at Gavriel. "Sterling. Turn your green magic off."

Every head on the wall turned to Gavriel.

The turning was synchronized. Two hundred and twelve heads, rotating in unison, aiming at the Gamma whose magic was currently broadcasting their position to every hostile dragon within a hundred-mile radius.

If the enemy had a telescope, they didn’t need it. If the enemy had scouts, they could retire. Gavriel Sterling was doing their reconnaissance for them, free of charge.

Gavriel gave a single nod. Closed his eyes. His brow furrowed. His jaw tightened. His fists clenched at his sides.

Several seconds passed.

"Is it off?" he asked, eyes still shut, voice carrying the cautious optimism of a man whose track record with voluntary magic control was batting below average and declining.

"No," the Draken Forces answered. In unison. Again.

This was becoming a tradition nobody had signed up for.

Tiberon pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Sterling."

"Working on it, Alpha."

"Work faster. The fleet is not going to wait for your magic to develop an off switch."

Gavriel turning off his magic was the equivalent of learning to parallel park a carriage during a hurricane.

His face scrunched harder. The green flickered. Dimmed by a fraction. Then surged back brighter than before, as if his Fae magic had heard the word "off" and interpreted it as a personal challenge.

His magic had the obedience of a cat, the timing of a toddler, and the volume control of a fire alarm. He was beginning to understand why Serena looked tired all the time.

"That was the opposite direction," Hyran observed.

Dexmon stood three feet away, watching his best friend fail at the same thing he’d failed at twenty minutes ago. He should have felt sympathy. He felt entertained. The tactical urgency would catch up eventually.

In his defense, watching Gavriel’s face go through seventeen expressions in four seconds while his magic ignored every single one of them was genuinely one of the funniest things he’d seen all week.

Gavriel visualized turning it off with his full body. He imagined the green magic on. Then he imagined it off as hard as he could. He had tried very hard. He had tried so hard that the veins in his neck had auditioned for a medical textbook. The green had listened to every attempt with the polite attentiveness of magic that understood the request and had declined it.

But his green magic had made a decision and the decision was final.

It was staying on. Bright. Visible. Wrapping every dragon and every rider on the Draken Forces in emerald light with the stubborn, cheerful persistence of a puppy that had been told to sit and had chosen to interpret the command as a suggestion.

"Yeah, I got nothing," Gavriel said, surrendering to the war against his own body.

He was well aware Serena could do this while standing on a dragon in a storm and he couldn’t turn off one color while standing still on a wall. The comparison was going to haunt him for the rest of his natural life and probably the next one.

"Fine. Then we adjust," Tiberon said, without missing a beat, because Tiberon Drakenfell did not waste time mourning plans that failed. He buried them and built new ones on top of the graves. "Listen carefully because I will say this once. If we cannot fly dark, we fly bright. That means we fly fast." Tiberon’s eyes swept the wall. "There are zero acceptable errors tonight."

The wall was silent. The kind of silent that two hundred warriors produce when the king speaking has never once said something he was unable to enforce.

"Spotters are eliminated first. A dragon without a spotter loses its eyes on every angle it cannot see. Their arrows stop and their formation fractures. The rider is second. Without a rider, a corrupted dragon has no direction and no mission. It becomes an obstacle rather than a weapon. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Alpha," the Draken Forces replied in unison.

"Good. Once spotters and riders are eliminated, water dragons are grounded first. Their acid is the highest-yield threat on this battlefield and every second one remains airborne is a second that acid can reach this wall. Storm dragons are second. They are generating the weather cover the fleet is using for concealment. Remove the storm dragons and we remove their ability to hide."

His gaze moved to Dexmon, then to Gavriel.

"But to do that, one of you will remove the corruption. Whoever figures it out will cleanse every dragon they reach. The Commander will issue the command to land."

Dexmon gave a single nod. That part was easy.

"I will command them to land as we usually do," he confirmed. "The landing order will hold. But the cleansing is the bottleneck. If we cannot remove the corruption fast enough, we will have grounded dragons that are still hostile and that is a ground-level problem I would prefer to avoid."