The comm went silent. Gill’s cold logic was much more painful than Brath’s boisterous complaining. Gill had hit the nail dead on the head. Then a voice cut through the comm. It was Jollies. “That’s not true,” she squeaked.
Gill took a deep breath and said, “Please explain to me where my argument is faulty.”
“Alex has been making tough calls. She got us out of the Nest because she was willing to take risks. It has nothing to do with ignoring what we’re capable of. She’s willing to risk it all, and that’s what’s gotten us this far. And that’s what’s going to save Roy and Toppinir.”
No one replied. Alex was surprised and glad Jollies had spoken up. It was all Alex needed to be reminded of what she was doing. She was making a call, and it was the right one. “Trust me, guys,” Alex said. “I’m not going to ask you to do anything crazy.”
Brath scoffed and countered, “Anything crazier than what you’re already asking, right?”
“Right. Nothing crazier. Now come on. We’re getting closer. We need to focus.”
Alex took the lead, pushing Chine ahead of the others. The dragonriders followed, Jollies moving up toward the front with Alex. They looked at each other briefly, and Jollies smiled brightly. “Thanks, Jollies,” Alex said gratefully.
Jollies’ smile brightened as her body shimmered yellow. “No problem,” she said. “You see things we don’t. I get it.”
That was when Alex remembered Manny. He was close to where the action was happening. She mentally told Chine to keep going in the same direction as she closed her eyes and focused on seeing through Manny.
Alex slid into darkness for a second, but when she opened her eyes, she was seeing through Manny’s many eyes. She took the situation in. It was worse than she’d expected from her first viewing, but it wasn’t anything Boundless couldn’t handle.
Slipping back to her own eyes, Alex took the reins back from Chine and pointed to a hill in the distance. “Right over there. That’s where we’re going,” she told the other riders.
The dragonriders crested the hill in no time, and all of them stopped at the scene that unfolded before them. There were dozens of dragonriders in the sky fighting bats nearly the size of dragons with no visible riders.
The sky was blood-red, and the clouds were black. Jagged streaks of lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Above the clouds, there was a meteor that looked roughly the size of the Wasp’s Nest. Lightning was flying from the meteor, but there was something inside.
Gill wiped his eyes as Jim popped out of his cockpit. “What the hell is that thing?” Gill asked.
Alex pointed at the meteor. “That’s where we’re going. That’s what this whole battle is about.”
Jim looked at Alex, confused. “I thought they weren’t sending any reinforcements to get Roy and Toppinir?” he asked.
“Sort of. They couldn’t afford to send any more reinforcements. Myrddin’s been throwing everything he can at this battle. There’s just no one else left to go. That’s why we’re here.”
“You really think we’re going to change the tide?”
Alex nodded as she gritted her teeth. “It doesn’t take much to turn a storm into a hurricane. Come on.”
Alex sped upward, and the rest of the team followed her. As they were closing in, Brath said, “Shouldn’t we be going over there? That’s where the fight is. If they need help, that’s where they’re going to need it.”
Alex doubled down on Chine and sped up. “Not yet. Trust me. We’re going to get to the fight. Just not yet. There’s something else we have to take care of first. We have to get under it.”
“Under the meteor? Are you crazy?”
Alex didn’t respond and kept going. They were getting closer. She could smell sulfur in the air from the dragons and bats above. It was impossible to see who was winning, and she had no idea where Toppinir or Roy was, but she knew that meteor was the whole purpose of this mission.
Team Boundless was directly under it. “All right, now!” Alex shouted as she ascended, heading straight for the hunk of space rock. She zoomed in between dragons and bats who were fighting, not letting herself lose any speed.
The rest of the dragonriders were right behind her, Jim taking the rear and Gill staying next to him. They fired at any bats that tried to take advantage of Jim’s lack of maneuverability.
Team Boundless burst through the last dregs of the battle beneath them, heading straight for the falling meteor.
Chapter Eight
The meteor was still a couple of hundred feet from Team Boundless, and the battle raging beneath them was trying to fight its way up. Bats had seen the new dragonriders and disengaged to attack Boundless.
Alex did her best to avoid the bats, trying not to get distracted from the meteor. It was difficult, though. The bats were out for blood. Even with her speed, Alex still had to fall back a few times to blast bats who were getting too close.
It didn’t look like the bats had riders. They must have been creatures whose only purpose was to serve the Dark One.
At the rear, Jim was taking the most heat from the bats. Luckily, his mech was built for this kind of thing. He deployed his concussive shield, which created a barrier around him so bats hit him and fell away, like birds flying into a window.
Jollies was also doing her best to keep the bats away from the group. She flew, faster than the other dragons, in a circumference surrounding Boundless. As she circled them, Amber generated electricity, creating a sort of lightning cage to ward off the bats.
Brath flew up to Alex’s side. He didn’t look happy about what was going on, but Alex could tell the gnome was all in. You only took point if you were ready for whatever was coming.
When Alex had watched through Manny’s eyes, she had seen the meteor, but there had
