Chapter 4 - Flight of the Broken Wing
The first hunter crested the ridge—a brute clad in treated seal-hide and boiled leather, swinging an electrified cudgel. Before he could raise the weapon, Ash, the smallest of the hatchlings, darted from beneath Rowan’s tunic and hissed, spitting a marble-sized spark of white flame straight into the hunter's visor. The man bellowed in agony and tumbled backward over the ledge into the boiling surf below.
The distraction gave Rowan the second he needed. Gathering all his strength, he jammed the iron pry-bar into the leverage point of the hardened sludge beneath Sylva's pinned wing and threw his full body weight downward. With a deafening crack, the resin fractured. Sylva unleashed a feral shriek of liberation, scooping Rowan into her foreclaws and sweeping the three hatchlings into the hollow underbelly of her chest.
With her left wing battered and trailing silver droplets, she threw herself off the precipice into the vertical drop. The sea rushed up to meet them at terrifying speed. Rowan held his breath, his eyes stinging with salt and wind as the ironclads below unleashed a storm of crossbow bolts. At the very last fraction of a second before hitting the white water, Sylva snapped open her intact right wing and beat the air with monstrous fury. They skimmed the wave crests, skimming mere inches above the ocean as they broke through the fleet's defensive perimeter, heading blindly toward the treacherous reefs where no iron hull could follow. But as they crested the swells, Rowan looked down and saw an alchemical tracking bolt embedded deep in Sylva's tail, blinking with an ominous red luminescence.
