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Lithian took three startled, staggered steps back when the drakein’s temper flared up, and only Syrikk caught him on the last couple, keeping him from falling backwards into the sand in his clumsiness. His brother immediately proceeded to drag him further away from the angry creature, but Lithian felt he was watching the entire scene in a daze, panic and an overwhelming sense of helplessness welling up as he watched the events unfold.

He loved his sister, but Ysette had an undeniable knack for poor timing, harsh words when none were needed and a stubborn and fiercely prideful streak that reared its head at the most unfortunate of times. At the outset of their encounter, he felt as though he was watching them prep themselves to tear each other apart, heat rippling — invisible yet — at Ysette’s fingertips and her stance lowering, rooting itself in the sand as her jaw grit. But the drakein spoke so true.

Daraka would have understood. Either of his parents would have understood. Perhaps even Ysette saw sense in the words, but couldn’t bear to back off now since that would cut against the core of how she upheld herself.

Before Lithian could lose himself in the overwhelmed sway of his own thoughts, panicked questions of, ‘How do I stop this before its too late? Should we run? We can’t fight now, again, surely? Will I attack the drakein if it attacks my sister?’ were all lost under the cutting screams of dragon calls overhead.

And a low knot of dread sank low in Lithian’s gut.

‘One, two, three…’ He squinted as he counted mentally, the dread in his chest blossoming again into fully fledged fear as the numbers went on. ‘Four, five, six, seven…’ “Eight,” he breathed aloud, barely managing to not let his voice crack on the single word.

“One kiandri, seven firanis,” Syrikk confirmed, and though his voice sounded more even than Lith’s, he could feel the increased tension in the places where Syrikk was still holding to him and read the dread in his face.

If the drakein did not stay to help, they were likely as good as burnt carcasses on the desert.

“Stay,” Ysette said, and Lithian blinked, startled out of his terror by the sheer fact that his sister’s voice was shaking. Not much, but still audible. Her eyes were rooted on the drakein. “Stay and fight with us, help protect my little brothers and you can have half the orbs if you…” She swallowed, gritting her teeth and then shaking her head. “All of the orbs if that is what you require to keep your peace. Please…” Her stare was hard, though her fists still quivered when she clenched them, eyes darting, narrowed, to the dragon-blotted sky. “They are everything to me, and I do not trust my strength to protect them against this many on my own. I need your help.”

Lithian watched, fascinated, as the drakein took to the sky — fierce as a dragon, but intelligent and capable of rational thought as anyone he’d ever met in the Plane: how could they be treating these creatures as slaves? Was it really as the drakein said? Were they like pets to the Magescians who bonded with them? He had always imagined it as more of a partnership of magical strength, but he’d never experienced it.

Perhaps he never ought to, if this was the opinion the drakeins themselves had of such connections.

Lithian took a step sidelong, away from Syrikk, and readied his stance, drawing two coiling orbs into the palms of his hands. His eyes flicked to Ysette, watching her jaw set as she eyed the sky. The temptation to retort something back must have burned at her, but she kept her words to herself for the most part, saying only, likely too quietly for the drakein to even hear: “I always keep my bargains.”

Then she was up, rotating her stance and whipping out two ribbons of fire. Beside her, Accucius rooted himself, dropping low and then rising up, lifting a wave of sand the size of himself up like a pillar at his side. The instant one of the firanis dove in reach, Ysette was on it, lassoing it in her fire, and Accucius cut his hands sidelong, sending the pillar down like toppling a column and binding the screeching dragon to the sand with it.

“Drown it, Lithian,” Ysette ordered, and Lithian fumbled for a moment, surprised. But after only a a moment’s hesitation, the dragon breathed a pillar of fire from its snout, streaming past Ysette’s leg, and the instant she cried out, Lithian was in, already regretting his hesitance as he took all the water at his arsenal and guided it like a battering ram of current down the beast’s mouth and nostrils.

The dragon shuddered, giving a brief, sputtering wail, and then dissipated to dust. Lithian’s immediate instinct afterwards was to dart towards his sister, but Ysette shooed him off, gritting her teeth instead at the injury and nodding her chin towards the sky.

“More where that came from. Survive first, then dress injuries,” she said.

Though Lithian nodded, all his mind could scream at him was, ‘My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault…’

Lithian shifted his center of gravity, lowering his weight to his back leg and drawing together half the water at his disposal in an undulating orb. Breathe in; breathe out. His eyes darted messily over the various conflicting sources of action and noise. There was still so much to take in, part of him wondered if he would ever grow used to this.

Then, Ysette was a step in front of him, taunting a dragon from side to side with small, firecracker-esque balls of exploding heat, and seconds later the beast was diving in, plummeting towards her, jaws open. She dive rolled sidelong, pivoting her body in the sand like she was made for it, and Lithian felt he would forever wonder how she managed to align herself so smoothly with battle. How she seemed to mesh into it and match its ebb and flow like he did a current on a river.

Fire spun off of her like a light show and she wove it around the body of the dragon like a seamstress twining threads. At her instruction, he followed her in, guiding his water into a sharp, blinding splash at the dragon’s eyes to distract it, and then Accucius buried its roaring open mouth full to the bursting point and beyond with sand. Moments later, it dissipated, dissolving to dust, and not a moment too soon.

“Ysette!”

Three pairs of eyes darted Syrikk’s way as he called out, looking just in time to see him swirl up — an impromptu tornado of air lifting him briefly off the ground and out of the way of a diving dragon. The resulting ‘splash’ of sand rose up in a circle under the pressure of the shove of air like water darting out of the way of a falling pebble, and Lithian shielded his eyes, drawing up a magical half-sphere of water in front of him to still the approach. Then, he and his other two siblings were moving in, fighting the writhing beast as it spewed a searing column of fire towards them. By the time they felled it, sending it scattering to dust like the others, Lithian’s heart felt like a wild beast in his chest, trying ever more desperately to beat its way out.

He could only imagine what it might have been like had they not had the drakein on their side.

Lithian watched the last dragon fall, taking a step back when the drakein snarled out, “Mine!” and watching as she felled it with apparent ease. They were gone. All of them, defeated. In retrospect, it felt almost like a dream sequence, and he found himself devoting most of his dazed focus to keeping his body upright despite his knees’ perpetual desire to cave in relief, even as the drakein clawed at the sand, vines springing up and drawing ‘her’ orbs to her.

“Bow.”

The word caught Lithian off guard and he blinked upwards to his sister: her face stony, but expression and posture resolute despite her wounds in lieu of the battle.

“The drakein has earned our thanks,” Ysette continued, her attention rooted on their unanticipated ally. “We owe her our lives. Bow.”

In choppy unison, Lithian, his brothers, and sister, dipped into a bow.

“The Bhardvaris family owes you our gratitude,” Ysette said, voice steely but sincere. “Should you need our aid, you need only remind us of your deeds today, and you will find us at the ready.”

Lithian glanced from Ysette to the drakein, stepping out from behind his sister to eye the creature in full and trying to memorize her. Such promises of allegiance were rarely called upon, he knew, but if he ever ran across the drakein again, he wanted it to be on peaceful terms.