It's not supposed to snow in the South Forest, but the weather in the second-emptiest corner of Shelha is not the only thing behaving strangely. When an ex-tyrant started acting up again, Sethral had hoped it meant the end of lazy days and monotonou...
This last part was directed at Fletch, who stared at the floor. Taz let out a breath and looked at Sethral. "Now you know."
"And what about the wind thing?"
"No idea."
"Is it new?"
"Yeah," said Fletch. "And as far as we can tell, it's not getting anything but worse."
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In the grey light before dawn, Sethral folded her wings and plunged to a halt in an inner-Rockland hollow. Checking for Drakons, she dumped a last load of grass at the base of a tree. She patted its trunk. "Sorry. It's for a good cause, I promise."
The twisted wood remained silent and thorny. Sethral pulled a tiny knife and a stone from her satchel and smacked them until a spark caught the grass and began to smoulder. Smoke rose from a second hollow nearby as the grass-rope fuse there reached its tinder. Sethral waited just long enough to ensure that the grass here had caught, then flew off.
There was a west wind today. In a hundred heartbeats, smoke was billowing out across the Drakon headquarters. Drakons crawled from their base screeching and clawing at their sensitive eyes. More flew in to help. That would pull in some of the tunnel-rocks guards, and border patrols too.
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Taz and Fletch sprinted after Jay down paths in the inner Rocklands. He took different routes than they usually did, maximizing Drakon cover rather than speed. No wonder he was always so hard to find.
A rock crack loomed ahead. Jay dove at it and wriggled inside. Fletch hung back to check for Drakons, then entered last.
"Hurry up or we'll lose him," grumbled Taz when his twin popped through the crack. A tunnel stretched ahead, a rock gap casting a shard of red on its floor some ways off. Jay's pelt flashed in the light. The twins ran after him.
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