Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(31)
Fire hissed as Jace swung his sword at me. I parried his strike, then turned and butted him in the face with the hilt of my sword. Soren, who was shooting flaming arrows at target boards with Nerissa, spared us a glance—and a soft laugh. Kendra glared at me like I was a demon, but I was hardly even a footnote to the scorn in her eyes when she looked at her brother.
“You are the son of an angel,” she snapped at Jace, whose nose was streaming blood. “You’ve been training with a sword since you could walk. And you’re letting a street urchin best you with her dirty tricks? Our father would be ashamed of you.”
“Nothing new there,” Jace muttered in a low voice.
“Would it help if I let you kick my ass?” I asked him.
The corner of Jace’s mouth quirked up. “Let me? You think I can’t kick your ass by myself?” His voice was half humor, half pride. Conflicted, as always for him.
I smirked at him. “Give it your best shot, hotshot.”
He rushed forward, so fast I could barely track him. He swung his sword. A tone chimed in the hall, signaling an elemental change. It sounded like ice.
A cold wind cut through the room. The frost froze the flames on our swords. Tiny ice pieces sprinkled to the floor every time our blades clashed. After a few strikes, there was nothing left of the frozen flames. Jace and I each took a step back, muttering at our swords. We were trying to cast water magic on the naked blades. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
From the sidelines, Kendra made a derisive noise. “Pick up the pace, Sniffles.”
“Sniffles?” I asked Jace.
“Kendra’s nickname for me. She used to beat me up until I cried.”
“I thought big sisters were supposed to be nurturing.”
“You obviously didn’t grow up in a family with an angel patriarch,” he said darkly.
We gave up on the swords, tossing them aside. We each grabbed a water wand from the rack, weapons that had been spelled to shoot water. Jace thrust his wand forward, and a stream of water burst out of the tip. It hit me right in the face. I stood my ground, enduring the onslaught. I aimed my wand low and fired. A stream of high-pressure water exploded out of the wand, hitting him in the groin. He doubled over but didn’t fall. He turned his back to me, so the stream was only slamming into his back.
The chime sounded again. Rather than a single elemental note, it was a melody of four notes, the signal that it was time for the elemental obstacle course. Oh, goody.
We all waited in front of the door that linked the gym hall with the entrance to the obstacle course. The Dragons could use the castle’s magic to reshape the spells and challenges of the course. That meant there was an infinite pool of possible courses, a plethora of elemental combinations they could use to torture us.
“This time, each candidate will enter and complete the course alone,” Major Valentine announced. “Mentors will wait here.”
“Great,” Nerissa said bleakly, stepping into line. She’d been getting a lot of help from Soren in the course.
I moved into line right behind her. “You can do it!” I said brightly.
She frowned at me. “Has anyone ever told you that your unwavering optimism is annoying?”
I grinned back at her until a smile broke out on her face. Every minute a chime sounded, the signal for the next person in line to go. When it was her turn, Nerissa entered the course with rugged determination. Now it was just me and Jace. He didn’t say anything. He’d put on his game face.
The bell chimed, and I ran into the obstacle course. An open plain awaited. Lightning crashed down from a purple sky. I danced around the bolts. One snapped against my heels, but I was already jumping into the pool of water at the edge of the plains.
I swam as fast as I could. The lightning hadn’t given up. The barrage of charged bolts was closing in on me, and I did not want to be hit while in the water. I considered my options. A small island awaited me after a short-but-potentially-electrifying swim. Option number two was the underwater tunnel below me. Taking it meant avoiding the lightning, but I knew from my roughly two million trips through the Dragons’ obstacle course that the tunnel was the long way there. I’d have to hold my breath for an indeterminate length of time.
Lightning hit the water’s surface just a few feet from me. The resulting jolt of electrical magic made the decision for me. I dove, praying that I didn’t met any underwater beasties this time around.
After several minutes in the tunnel, my lungs burned with volcanic fury. This was the longest I’d ever held my breath. The tunnel spilled out into an underwater chamber. A circular platform waited at the center. Hope jumpstarted my muscles. I swam to the platform and stomped my foot down on it. Magic flashed, and then the platform shot out of the water, catapulting me onto the island.
I landed on the cracked ground, rolling to my feet. I sucked air into my lungs in ragged gasps. My body shook. No, wait. That wasn’t my body. It was the ground. The ground was shaking. Tremors rumbled deep inside the earth. The ground split beneath my feet. I darted away from the emerging canyon—only to nearly fall into another canyon.
I listened for the tremors, feeling them out. Soren had told me how to predict where the next quake would hit. I had to put myself in tune with the magic creating them. A twinge of magic tugged on my senses. I ran to the right, avoiding a new split in the ground. The edges of the first canyon bumped, sealing together with seamless perfection. It was as though there had never been a canyon there. I dashed over it before it decided to open again.