Val snapped his wings back and looked back at the undead army for a moment. Xina and Val were both tired and hurt. Early in the battle the flying shadows and the odd shade rider had managed to get close enough to attack, but Xina and Val had learned quickly enough. Nothing had managed to get that close to them for a while, and their wounds had stayed minor.
They were still pressing ahead despite the line that he and Xina had ripped through them on their last pass. Those intelligent enough to understand, like the shades, huddled in fear as the dragon passed overhead. Even they were still bound by their creator's will to proceed.
The sky was speckled with those shadow beasts, but not nearly so much as they had been. The airborne monsters had been especially targetted by Xina and Val. It hadn't taken long to discover that the creatures' incredible speed only applied on a straight line, and they were nowhere near as powerful or maneuverable as the dragon. The last point was that they had no method of attack other than claws and fangs. Since the dragon had taken his natural form again and they had taken to the air, fully a quarter of the abominations had been scattered by fire, light and darkness.
"How many do you think there are?" Xina asked curiously.
"A good twenty thousand," Val grumbled. "My mother told me that the dead of wars from the last thousand years were scattered about the entire continent." Xina nodded.
"And I'll bet he sought out the biggest collections. One more pass?" Xina asked. "And then we go back and say we found them?"
"Sure, why not?" Xina clutched to his scales hard as the dragon carved back around to make another run on the undead. "But we should be back before the day returns."
"So its daylight when we attack," Xina chuckled. "I know we went over this, now let's go kill something." The flying shadows began to converge again and Xina gestured with her staff as Val dived to char through the ground ranks. A shimmer of darkness and silver channeled through the staff and into a clump of shadow beasts, erupting into a burst of white shimmering light. The beasts that survived the light were consequently swallowed by a wave of darkness that absorbed and scattered their essences.
"Another five of those things down," Xina shouted. She had to pause as the dragon cut through the swiftly closing hole, all her effort again spent gripping his scaled hide to prevent falling off. The dragon released a killing breath of energy that ripped through another six of the shadows.
"Make it eleven," the dragon roared. As Xina found her perch on his back stable again she channeled three more of the light and shadow bombs into the masses below. These attacks did nothing to the skeletons, zombies and other physical creatures, but shades, vulnerable to extremes of light and darkness, were eliminated where ever they fell.
"My score would be higher if I had a stable perch," Xina stuck her tongue out, despite the fact the dragon couldn't see her.
"Can't you fly now?" Val retorted, after a combined effort from him and Xina cleared the air path ahead.
"I'm not as fast as you, and you know it," Xina retorted, erecting a shield of force that several a shadow landed on and began to seek a way around. Xina quietly dissipated the force and left only light, which destroyed the shadow beast as it fell through. "Besides, I wouldn't have been to busy doing that to come up with anything new."
"Yeah, that would have been annoying," Val agreed, whipping almost straight up into the air. As he leveled out high over their enemies he laughed at the sensation of Xina thumping him between the shoulder blades.
"Would you WARN me about those maneuvers!" she shouted, as they winged their way out from the undead horde to return to the camp of sorcerers.
"Well I think we weakened them fairly well," Val said later. "But what do we have twenty sorc...." the dragon paused as he saw their camp in the growing light of dawn.
"Um, six hundred humans!?! And I think they're all sorcerers! Where'd they all come from?"
Zangulus cursed as the dragon passed over him, that was obviously his quarry, and he couldn't follow them in the air. His sword could summon a blanket of darkness to slow a descent, but it wouldn't carry him into the blue. He had no idea where they were going and couldn't track them. He would be back to guessing, unless.
The bounty hunter smiled suddenly and he began searching for strategic position. Why would they come out this way towards that shambling army, if were not to scout out their opposition. There was a battle coming, and in it he would have the chance to reach the girl and take her staff. All he had to do was wait for them to pass.
How about that, now his sister was coming back towards him. He shrugged, she was still quite a ways away from him. Tomorrow, he decided, he would be find her late tomorrow. Assuming she moved again, otherwise it would be sooner.
"Are you ready for one more run?"
"Hmm?" Tinuviel asked, looking up from a notebook she had taken from a pouch somewhere. He had caught her trying to steal one of the pendants once. Well knowing Tinuviel, she probably had every intention to return it. The problem was whether it would survive her care or not.
Speaking of the pendants, after the first day he had started taking them off while resting. Which was how she had gotten close to them in the first place. They increased his power, true, but they also put him on edge, made it hard to relax.
"You haven't been asleep for more than ten minutes!" she protested. "You usually sleep for a full hour!" As he snapped the various pendants back in their usual spots he noticed a line drawn around his wrist.
"Umm, what's this?" he asked confused. He then felt at his neck and forehead, rolling his eyes as they came back coated in ink?
"Uhhh," Tinuviel sweatdropped and smiled. "I was planning on cleaning it off before you woke up."
"Why me?" Xalan asked as he smacked his forehead into the palm of his hand.
"Hey, where's Amethyst Sailoon?" Xina shouted as she jumped off Val's back before the dragon went off somewhere to have some privacy in order to change into his human form.
"Stone skin, silvery hair?" somebody asked.
"Yeah, that's her."
"She was attacked by something before most of us got here," the man said. "She's still sleeping it off over there." He pointed off to where Xina thought they had been camped before she and Val went off to camp.
"Attacked!?! What!?" Xina ran in the indicated direction and found Amethyst lying asleep serenly and Jolrael sitting crosslegged nearby. "Is she okay?"
"She's just sleeping," Jolrael answered. "And I've checked her health, body and spiritual, couple of times to be sure." Xina glared at him for not giving her the chance to actually ask the question.
"So what happened?" she asked, grimacing as he shrugged before she could finish. "Think she'll...."
"I'd say it won't be long now." Val was walking up behind the swordsman. "Strange dreams though."
"Do you know..." the dragon started.
"How annoying what is?" Xina and Val glared at him. Then Amethyst stretched and yawned.
"Xina-san," Amethyst said cheerfully, but wearily. "Did you find them?"
"Yes, now we..."
"Okay then let's go and free the souls enslaved by this vile monster!" She stood up and declared it loudly.
"That's what I was going to say," the fox-girl said irritably. Val and Jol looked at Xina in disbelief. "More or less!!" she shouted, annoyed.