At the last moment, Mitsuru had told them to escape. Escape from what?
“The mirror.”
Wataru looked back toward Solebria and swallowed. An inky black mist was swirling in the air over the city.
The dragons were above flying. Actually, they were fighting—they were fighting that mist. As he watched, the fog wrapped around one, sending the winged beast plummeting toward the ground.
Forgetting all else, Wataru began to run toward the city. Lifting his Brave’s Sword up, he fired a magebullet into the sky. “Jozo! Jozo! Where are you?”
After he had fired several more shots, he spotted a red speck low in the sky. Jozo. He’s coming this way—look how fast he’s flying. Directly behind him, a lump of the black mist had broken off from the rest and was giving chase.
“Jozo! Over here!” Wataru ran as fast as he could, waving his arms and shouting, but the next moment he stopped, speechless. He could now see the mist behind Jozo more clearly.
Wings. The mist has black wings. It’s not a mist—it’s a swarm! Each of the creatures in the swarm was as large as a man. They had sharp talons on their hands and feet, and emaciated bodies. Their skin was the color of night.
Demonkin!
“Wataru!” Jozo shot through the air straight toward him. He came down, flying so low he was only a few feet off the ground. “Get on! Get on! Quick!”
Wataru leaped and landed squarely on Jozo’s back. Jozo wobbled in the air with the added weight, his leg nearly brushing the ground.
“The girl! Get the girl!”
The girl in the white dress was still standing where he had left her. Wataru reached out and grabbed her.
He had succeeded in getting half of her up onto Jozo’s back when one of the demonkin following them lunged, clutching at her leg with a spiky claw. Slung over the dragon’s back, Wataru found himself suddenly face-to-face with the demonkin.
It was a skeleton of bones, black to the marrow. Two holes glared out from above a grinning face. Where there should have been lips gleamed a row of long white fangs. No flesh covered the bones on its hands. It flapped its wings and made a sound like the screeching of twisted metal. Then the thing yanked at Zophie’s leg, trying to pull her off the dragon. Turning her head to look at the demonkin for the first time, she screamed.
Wataru sat up on the dragon’s back, clutching the girl with one hand while swinging his sword with the other. He aimed it at the thin, filthy hide that covered the demonkin’s prominent ribs, thrusting the point in as deep as it would go.
With a grunt, the demonkin let go of Zophie’s leg. Wataru was able to pull her all the way up onto Jozo’s back this time. He took another slash at the voracious creature.
“Fly up! Shake them off!”
Jozo picked up speed, but the two stubbornly clutched the stump of his tail. Wataru slashed them away with his sword and fired a magebullet at the crowd swarming through the air after them. The bolt of light hit, scattering demonkin in every direction. They had gained a lead, as small as it was.
“Jozo, fire!”
Flame gushed right beside Wataru’s face. Bull’s-eye. The demonkin were hit square. They fell to the ground, trailing black smoke. Half of the swarm faltered in its flight, and a few of them began to fly away.
“Where’s everyone, Jozo?”
“Meena and Kee Keema are with the pillars,” he answered between gasping breaths. “I was too tired to carry them much longer. What are we going to do?”
The dragons were still in the air above Solebria. Wataru wondered what had happened to the one he saw fall.
Jozo was clearly exhausted. Blood streamed from cuts all over his body. His eyes swam in tears. He lurched as he flew, his flight path meandering like a snake, occasionally gaining altitude only to drop back down.
The girl in the white dress was rigid with fear. She moved her mouth but no voice came out.
“Take this girl to the forest,” Wataru said pointing to a thick stand of trees ahead of them to the right. “You can hide from the demonkin in there. Stay out of sight until I come get you with the others, okay?”
“O-okay. But what will you do?”
“I’ll be fine. Now, fly and hide!”
Wataru held the sword in both hands and prayed. Take me to Meena. Take me to the dragon she’s riding on!
The warp worked. When the world snapped into focus around him again, he was sitting on the back of one of the seven pillars. The dragon was wearing a crown like a rooster’s crest atop its head. Meena was holding on to the dragon’s neck, but when she saw Wataru she sprang up and jumped through the air to him.
“Meena, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, I’m fine!” She was pale and covered in soot. “Look at it, Wataru, just look at it!”
He looked up to see the mirror being lofted into the air on a pair of giant dark wings. It was a black portal out of which the demonkin armies came streaming, a spring of evil that would never dry up. They blotted out the sky over Solebria, flying to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west. They would soon cover all of Vision.
The leader of the dragons was bravely flying toward the mirror. He breathed balls of flame and beat the air with his wings. He valiantly knocked away all demonkin that dared come too close. Yet there was no hope against such overwhelming numbers.
“We’ll never make it to the mirror like this!”
“Yet we must try—just one breath—I must try!” the dragon’s head whipped around, tearing a demonkin off its neck and tossing it into empty sky.
“We must run for now. We can’t win against these numbers. We have to protect the people below from the demonkin, tell them to run into the forest. That’s where we’ll hide!”
“Never!” the dragon roared, spitting jet after jet of flame at the retreating demonkin. Wataru stood on his back, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Everyone, to the forest! Retreat! We’ll be destroyed out here!”
“Wataru!” shouted Kee Keema atop a nearby dragon. He held his great axe high above his head. Though his face brightened at seeing his friend again, he had never sounded so disheartened. Behind him several of the wounded from Solebria hung on the dragon’s back. The dragon protected them as they clung cowering to its scales, and Kee Keema, howling with rage, cut down the demonkin that came swarming in like insects. “Vermin! I’ll send you all back where you came from!”
“To the forest! Get everyone into the forest!”
“Right!”
Enough demonkin now filled the sky to block out sight of anything else. Wataru flew on, occasionally shouting out Kutz’s name. He watched the back of each dragon that peeled away from the onrushing black cloud, yet could find her nowhere.
Wataru’s eyes swam with fear and anxiety, and he began to worry if perhaps he had already seen her and just not realized it. Calm down. I have to calm down. Wataru fended off a tangled cloud of demonkin with a few wellaimed magebullets while Meena gave the dragon directions.