Chapter 25: Sealing the Ruin

The dragon came back over the northern cliff at sunrise, exactly where the Dean had said it would.

"Positions," Grant said, and three thousand people moved at once.

James stood at the lip of the cliff with his boots on the right feet for once.

He felt strange.

The Stage Two copies hummed in him, sky and tide and root, each with its own beat.

"Odds?" Felix asked, beside him.

"Thirty percent."

"That's up from four."

"I lay awake all night and had a very good time."

Felix laughed, high and nervous, and bumped his shoulder against James's.

The dragon dropped out of the clouds.

Its first breath struck the cliff and every tide-singer in the front rows lifted a hand.

Rain fell out of a clear sky, a warm sheet of it, and the fire hissed out in white steam.

"Griffins," Grant called.

Two hundred riders went up in a rush of wings, and the dragon swung its head to follow them.

"Growers."

The cliff grass stood up and became a thicket.

Green cables as thick as a man's waist shot out of the ground and wrapped the dragon's left wing.

It screamed and beat the wing, and the cables held.

Felix dropped to his knees with both palms flat on the rock.

"I've got the wing," he said. "James, I can't hold both."

"You don't have to. Nobody does two jobs."

"Right. Right. I keep forgetting that part."

"Everybody does."

The dragon tore free of one cable, then another.

It was strong enough to pull the whole cliff apart, and it knew it.

Harry stood at the edge with his arms spread, calling water from the sea three miles below.

The waves came up the rock face in a long gray wall.

They broke over the dragon's chest and the stone hide cracked, and the cracks went dark.

"It's cooling," Harry said, through his teeth. "It's slowing."

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