Free The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) by M. R. Mathias

druid full on. It turned into Mysterian as they tumbled across the floor. Another old witch came skidding to a stop before she blasted the startled blue-robes into limp sacks of pulped flesh.
    “The girl,” Mysterian told one of her witches before she was struck by Lanxe’s kinetic blast.
    King Blanchard fell into the corner, cracking his head on the blocks. The Eldest of the Hazeltine tumbled across the trampled snow and rolled right back up to her feet. The spell she unleashed shot into the druid and shifted his form into a warbling wavy stretch before drawing in on itself and disappearing in a huge explosion. The blast of orange-purple witch magic nearly killed them all.
    In the midst of Mysterian’s unexpected arrival, Lanxe, and at least one of his red-robed cronies, flashed away. A pair of Sarax attacked then. They came skittering from above into the chamber like roaches. These had been feeding well, for their toothy maws were bright with blood and torn strands of flesh.
    One of the druids who didn’t teleport away with the others tried to command a Sarax. It ignored him and went straight for his head. The other Sarax darted in at the bloody offering lying on the altar, but Mysterian jumped in the way.
    The old Hazeltine was gouged by a claw, but her witchy sisters blasted the creatures into oblivion. Soon, the only sound, beside the alien drone, was the wet wheezing Zahrellion’s breath made as it passed in and out of the knife-hole in her chest.
    Mysterian went about getting Zahrellion away, while some of her sisters searched the temple. Zah’s condition was serious, and Mysterian was so intent on saving her life that she left the unconscious and still hooded body of King Blanchard lying on the floor forgotten. For all she knew, he had been teleported away with the High Druidon.

Chapter 13
    Jenka kicked and squirmed, trying to get away from what was pulling him, but he only managed to hurt his open gut. He was about to start fighting again, but he came out of the suffocating whiteness into the evening and found himself face to face with Tkux the ogre. He blinked the astonishment from his eyes and looked around. Marcherion was a bloody mess, and one of his legs was swollen to the size of an oak branch. They were in a clear area of forest, but surrounded by drifts and scraped-out walls of snow that were twice as tall as a man. It was like the snow forts he, Grondy, and Rikky used to make when they were younger.
    “Where’s Rikky and Aikira?” Jenka managed to ask. His ears were so damaged he couldn’t even hear himself. He may have been shouting. Now that he wasn’t being dragged through the snow with numbing ice against his gut, he was starting to feel the full throb of his wounds again. “Where’s Jade?”
    The ogre pointed to where the young green wyrm was coming down out of the sky. Jenka panicked; his dragon was covered in thick dark blood. After a few moments of watching Jade, Jenka realize that the blood he was seeing was his own.
    He was woozy, and everything swam away from him for a while. When he came to again, it was full dark. There was a small wood fire burning, and the smell of it was comforting. He was awake long enough to hear Rikky crying and Aikira moaning, but thankfully sleep pulled him back under.
    Mysterian’s distant cackling brought him awake the next time. It wasn’t a mirthful laugh he was hearing, though. It was a sorrowful one, and it wasn’t coming from far away; his ears were still clogged. Before Jenka could sit up, Zahrellion was easing down near him, holding her bandaged chest, as if it pained her greatly to be moving.
    “On your back, lass,” one of the witches growled in a harsh, yet motherly tone.
    “Here I will sta… ack... ack... now that hick... ick... his eyes are open.” Zah’s distorted voice was a distant, but welcome sound, and the way she squeezed his hand told Jenka that she had something to tell him. At first he thought she just wanted the