Storm of Ash. Michelle Kenney

waging a war on the outside … and we … Arafel, the Outsiders … we need your help.

      ‘You are Hominum chimera, mother of all mythical beasts, and the most ancient of all creatures described in the Voynich. But you are also Lake, a loyal friend with the bravest, truest heart I’ve ever known.’

      She tilted her head so suddenly, Eli and I had to jump aside to avoid a sharp stream of boiling acrid steam.

      ‘Cassius wants to control you,’ I continued stubbornly, ‘to use you as a weapon to change the outside world. But there is another way. A way to live freely, to live the life you deserve on the outside … Help us, Lake. Help us stop Cassius, help us free the Prolets – your people … and Max.’

      I finished on a whisper, and though Eli was signing fast, translating my words as swiftly as I spoke, I could tell she was so different from Brutus, the griffin and the vultures. Because for once, the only control in the world was standing right beside him.

      And I knew Lake understood every damned word, and not because of anything she was doing, but rather because of what she wasn’t doing. Her giant scaled head was still angled to one side and though her honey eyes were blazing, there was something else too.

       She was listening.

      Somehow it was working.

      Just as a new sound cut the air, a groan I only half-recognized as belonging to Unus it was so shot through with shock. In that moment we all shared the same instinct – draco, Cyclops and Outsiders alike – to turn our gaze upon the valley at the bottom of the North Mountain slopes. Towards Arafel.

      And I barely acknowledged Lake’s last violence as she shook out her draco wings, each one the length of three stallions, and thundered off the mountain shelf – because my sights were locked on a serpent much closer to home. A serpent that took the last of my hopes, and crushed them to ash before my darkening eyes.

      Arafel was in flames.

       Chapter 9

      I felt only the scorching jaws of a dark curse. As acutely as though it were slowly gorging itself on my own feral heart. Raw and bloody, bite by bite.

      Instinctively I slowed as the charred skeleton of Arafel’s forest rose up before us like a giant desiccated spider; its appearance as alien as Pantheon’s Eagle aircraft disappearing over the North Mountains peaks.

      Eli and I picked our way, among the handful of survivors on the outskirts of the village, in silent shock. The Eagle Stealth Sweepers had dived silently and without warning, using laser fire technology to obliterate most of our forest home within seconds. No one heard them coming, and for most, there was no time to escape their individual treehouse furnace.

      The air was dead, broken only by the splitting and cracking of disintegrating trees, hanging over what was left of our home village like a funeral shroud. As we entered the village community area, a handful of disparate people emerged from different directions – Komodos, Lynx, Eurasians and my people – their faces as mutilated as the landscape surrounding us. No one could give voice to the sudden and absolute devastation shattering our village home. It was too much like admitting it had happened; that somehow we had to process this horror.

      There were bodies everywhere, people and animals, limbs entwined, as the laser fire had prompted that most human of responses. Raven and Mathilda lay face down by the grazing ground gate, cut down in a desperate attempt to set the grazing animals free. To give them the fighting chance Cassius had denied them.

       And an ocean of blood was staining the earth beneath our feet.

      The ground was sodden, rivulets converging and painting my feet with the fate of so many innocents. My mind recalled the moment we glimpsed the vampiric eyes of the basilisk in the Isca Prolet, watching and waiting. A single drop of the basilisk’s acidic venom had reduced the ironmonger’s tool to nothing but a pool of molten metal. It was just the same now, only the acid was Cassius, and the molten iron my family and friends, children and animals alike. Nothing and no one had been spared. We were staring at a massacre.

      Eli regained himself first, breaking into a run that blurred into the splintered trees within seconds. It pulled me back into the moment, into conscious thought, and I flew after him, not needing to ask where he was headed.

      I tried to keep my eyes focused on the unrecognizable ground in front, conscious only of a dull thump in my ears as I sprinted. The communal buildings were just a series of dusty, blackened rises, their top layer already scattering to the wind. And as I willed the violence and destruction to blur behind my eyes, I was already aware of a muted resemblance to the Dead City.

      We entered what used to be the perimeter of the forest at a speed neither of us knew we possessed, but were then forced to slow. Because nothing was the same. And where before there was a network of treehouses, now there was only chilling, empty space. It was as disorientating as it was devastating. Most of the outlying homes had stood no chance against the intense heat of Cassius’s weaponry. My chest strained as though a vortex was growing inside, a whirling gut-slicing vortex. If I even gave an inch, there would be a storm to pay.

      With no trees left to run through, we were forced to keep our path on the ground, circumventing any ominous smoking remains. I kept my gaze locked forward, pushing my feet until we reached the scorched embers of Art’s treehome. It was where the Council held meetings on the last working day of the month, a tradition Grandpa started when he was Village Leader.

      Now I could only stare at the twisted blackened remains of a tree stump, with bile burning up my throat.

      We stood together dully. There was unrecognizable debris, and the same oppressive smoke everywhere. The guilt of survival volumed up from my core, threatening to swallow me whole as I turned slowly, trying to force my clouded brain to work.

      Then a voice, calling through the smog. It was a familiar voice, from behind the remains of a Norwegian fir. Blindly, I ran towards the sound, and skidded to my knees beside a trapped, skewed person. And even though she was covered in blood, and my senses were suffocated, I knew her instantly.

      ‘Ida,’ I whispered.

      She turned her glistening head, only now the tongues dancing around her fading eyes were choked with dust.

      ‘Tal,’ she whispered with the glint of a smile, as I pushed my arms beneath her soaking back and pulled her close.

      Then she closed her proud Komodo eyes and breathed her last.

      I cradled her tightly as though that could make a difference. But I was too late, far too late. It was only when Eli took her shoulders to lower her that I realized her legs were skewed because they had been severed by the indiscriminate laser fire. Numbly, we straightened her so the division was barely visible. Then she lay there, with as much dignity in death as she had in life, and I watched as the scorched ground darkened around her body, as though it too knew it wasn’t her time, that this warrior belonged to the sun.

      A quiver of her pared hand-darts rested against her still hip, and gently, I reached out to unhook the small weapons she always used with such accuracy. Each one had an immature Komodo tooth set into its tail, weighting it precisely, so it flew with the tribe’s honour.

      ‘I promise,’ I breathed, placing my palm over her cooling forehead the way she used to mark respect, before pushing to my feet.

      Then we flew as though our feet could defy gravity. And as the desiccated landscape blurred, all I could think was that if the Eagle Stealth aircraft had reached our white oak, I’d failed Mum in the same way I’d failed Grandpa. And that hurt was just too much for any one body to contain.

      Eli pulled ahead of me, his longer legs giving him the edge over the charred ground. We hadn’t spoken on our flight down the North Mountains, leaving Unus far behind on the slopes, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. We’d left Mum when she needed us most. She wouldn’t have understood what was happening,