Putting points into hydrology

  The spell reduced gravity’s grip on her and the wall of water sent her flying downstream. She narrowly avoided getting crushed between a tumbling Shodai Sen and a rolling log and mao fill her drake ski with air before the water sucked her down. She went limp a her buoyancy drag her to the surface.

  The moment she felt air on her skin, she cast out her silkhook to the darkening sky. A rope of deepspider’s silk attached to a cluster of adamantine barbed hooks, it tched into the high branches flying by overhead, and with a quick tug she zipped up into the trees just before the spell lost its effect.

  With the roar of the river out of her ears, another sound took over. A sound so awful it almost made her scream.

  The magi were still singing. She saw the formation, now over a hundred yards up river, surrounded by a hazy dome, like a thin yer of vibrating water suspended in air, marg up the bank toward dry nd and the trail they had left behind.

  However, their salvation hadn’t been perfect. Over half the n had been washed away, including three of the precious powder carts, the shield line was broken, the rocket carts were sinking in the mud and the remaining Shelled Lizards were struggling to move them deeper into the forest, a lone groaning Donra beast lumbered in the reeds, and the song of the magi was wavering.

  All she could do was watch. The song tihe sappers struggled. Bodies washed in the white rapids, got stu branches, banged against logs, as her force dropped ft bottomed boats from the trees. The river flowed against the knees of the Shodai Sen. The magi focused their song on the wall of water ahead. Their voices cracked. Arrows and bombs fell from the trees. More bodies joihe river.

  Lindsey moved to her arrow stash. Horns sounded from the rocket carts up the trail. The detat led by Pinespine was attag the n across the river. They had id in wait sihe first of the fighting. Swiftly, boats forded the river and more forces gathered upstream and downstream from the n, and still the Magi sung. But it wouldn’t matter. She could feel it in the air. They were going to crush them.

  Then one of Khianron’s lieutenants climbed atop a rocket cart, and blew the dragon horn.

  It was no louder than a stern word from someht o you, but it cut through every other sound the way only dragon sounds could. She knew every living thing for miles heard it at exactly the same volume, and that they had only a matter of mio do as much damage to the n as they could, before the entire forest burned around them.

  “When that dragos here, there’ll be nothing but trees and corpses!” Pinespine yelled, his voice magically amplified. The entire forest roared in agreement, and the final attack began.

  As Pinspine’s forces cleared the river, the magi song died. A few moments ter, the instant Pinespine’s forces threw themselves against the shield wall, the shrieks of the magi returned, now desperate. Man and tree fell in long razor sharp streaks of white.

  Liarted killing Shodai Sen, alo first, but after felling three of them, she got some help with it. Frog men struck out of the water, covered in mud, hooked the Shodai Sen’s shields and sshed them in the ankles with their barbed shortspears. The river boats were ed in a line, and bowmen rained hell from them. Paravel and her druid led a charge as water buffalo. Mossbeard barbaria from rafts and tore into the shieldwall with hooked long axes.

  Lindsey put an arrow through Quetzlefire’s neck as he focused his Psionic waves to throw burning oil at a squad of attag barbarians. A spellsword Frogman cut glowing arcs through a wall of Shodai Sen, until Doublerum dueled him with his long mace. Bombs were thrown as fast as they could be lit. Fmethrower nozzles melted from overuse. Arrows hummed like is. Both sides khe end was close a nothing in reserve.

  The had bee a line once again and the attackers, uo keep up the prodding attacks, due to anpower and a plete absence of surprise, formed into two groups, one infantry g at the rear of the n, with the mosshsields in the front, and the roup, archers in the boats and irees, raining arrows and bombs.

  “The carts! By gods get the carts!” Pinespine screamed. The infantry verged on a single cart, closest to a break in the line, and backed the guards against it. A single magi stood atop it, defleg arrows and bombs and sending white streaks of death into the already withering group of forest infantry. Ani led a charge with his singing sword, and cut Pinespine down.

  Lindsey, as high in the branches as she could get, put an arrow through the magi atop the cart, timing her shot with the ce of his shriek. She drew another arrow, pointed her bow at the sword slinging magi cutting through her routed forces, and had it half drawhe sky exploded.

  The dragon was as silent as the dead leaves rotting into the earth, and as dark as the deep evening sky, and faster than anything else in this world. Its breath sounded like a hurrie had been teleported above the forest, and the fire jumped half a mile from his snout down to the treetops in a matter of seds.

  Lindsey didn’t evehe, she just fell. The fire drew a line right for her, the dragon flying parallel to the n, and half a sed after she had slipped off the branch, the trees where she had been hiding were solid white-hot coals. She wondered halfway down if the river was even under her, but realized as the heat scorched her hair, it didn’t matter.

  The fall wouldn’t kill her either way.

  She plunged into the ice cold rushing river and dragotered the surface. The dark river was lit from above, as the thick liquid fire floated on the river above, and she saw the bed of white ash fly by beh her.

  After a frantic swim, she grabbed ahold of a submerged tree, and held on long enough for the dragoo float by overhead. Which wasn’t long. The river too was swift and strong.

  She came up and gasped for air as quietly as she could, and it was burning chaos all around.

  A dripping massive oak as thick as a semi cracked down the ter and half of it fell on the scrambling Shodai Sen. The river boats were now floating pyres. The trees were lit up like Christmas lights and dripping sticky death on everyoh. People were screaming. Pyers were yelling.

  “Stupid fug dickhead piece of shit!” Double rum shrieked, watg half the Shodai Sen turn to ash. He was less than fifty feet away from Lindsey, screaming into an amulet of ghostspeak. Probably ranting to Quetzalfire.

  “How fug dumb do you have to be not to have your dragon use his God damn physical attacks when fighting a fug forest ambush? Does this motherfucker even know what we’re hauling? Did he even look at the battlemap? Bro I am so sick of these rich dudes who brown heir way into being a fug rider. ime I rise I’m rolling with the god damned Deeprock dwarves or something uhe fug ground, holy shit!”

  He hefted his two-handed mace like he wished the Dragonrider would walk out of the smoke.

  The surviving Shodai Sen formed up around him and the three carts, now essentially pletely unopposed. Lindsey’s forces were either all gone or in full retreat.

  “Is he ing back?” One of the guards asked Doublerum while looking at the dark burning forest with .

  “Fuo dude. Every sed he’s not on the field that other dragon’s running train. I’m surprised he even showed up. Frockflower must be—”

  “Get the carts moving! Now!” Siegemaster Garil’s voice slithered over the smoke.

  “Over what fug bridge, bro?!” Doublerum shrieked. “We gotta wait for the rendezvous team from the hill! Form up on the fug carts and de fence!” he yelled the st part at the scrambling forces around him. The st singing magi was wafting the falling embers away from the carts and across the river. The forest was now fully abze, and Lindsey was certain she was all alone.

  She felt heat at her bad turned around. A single dragonfire coated log floated by, roughly the size of a sedan. She sank into the river up to her eyes, hoping the light hadn’t given her away, and ed her cloak of twilight around her.

  Suddenly, she had an idea.

  She pulled a single arrow from her quiver and uned it under water. It glowed softly like the moon shining through blue gss. A deep crystal arrow. She had been saving it for an impossible armored enemy, but she had learned a long time ago, in another world, not to squaoday waiting for tomorrow.

  She reached the arrow out of her cloak just in time to graze the end of the log and collect a single pinky sized glob on fire on the arrow head.

  No time to lose. She pulled herself closer to shore with her leg hooked around the tree submerged o her, and raised her bow.

  “Hey!” Doublerum poi her, but it was too te. She let the arrow fly and ed her cloak around her before it had reached its target. It sailed over Doublerum’s shoulder and disappeared ihe middle cart.

  Lindsey gasped. She had expected it to sink into the hull of the cart a abze, but half a sed after it vanished, she realized things had turned out far better than expected. The crystal arrow had sliced through the wood like paper, taking the sm dragonfire directly to the ps inside.

  The explosion was more violent thahe dragoh, and a lot more localized. It lit up the forest and cast dark razor-sharp shadows off the trees. The shockwave rattled the water around her and kicked up a wave of white dust and ash. The smoke cloud bloomed towards the opy with dark e fmes rolling i and Shodai Sen and bowmen colpsed like dolls around it. Pieing wood went flying everywhere and the remaining survivors of the n scrambled to move the st carts away from the fire.

  She watched them scramble, pletely vulnerable, wishing she had just ten of her fighters with her. She would have ed them up in—

  A light broke across the forest from upriver, blue and bright like a spotlight from another world. A mounted battlemage, with eyes glowing neon blue and a mirror shield refleg the forest in nebue hues, shined a beam from his staff, sweeping it across the river. She saw the water between him and the other bank shimmer, and the water flowing around her dropped ten degrees in an instant. He froze a bridge of solid id led his line of mounted padins across it.

  So, they had sent a rescue team.

  Dragons only roar at each other. ime, Lindsey finds herself the target of some unwatentio episode, Eyes of Skye.