The wind screeched against Raine's eyelids. His slit vision revealed a spinning hellscape—Garret's fur, gear-spewing hounds, searchlights carving the night—all smearing into delirium.
"Hold!" Garret's shout shredded by gales.
Raine's tattered wings flapped like broken sails. They caromed off a cliff ledge, sparks flying from Garret's back, then got hurled skyward by updrafts. Moonlight exposed airship crew loading silver nets.
"Left vortex!" Garret stabbed claws into Raine's calf. Agony jerked the wings right, barely dodging an invisible trap—frost magic glazed their wingtip.
Tendons snapped in Raine's shoulders. Crimson scales erupted and shed bloody rain. Garret grabbed dead vines, swinging them toward pines.
"Worst... fucking... pilot..." The werewolf cursed through impacts, branches impaling his flank.
When Raine's nail grazed the chest scar, Garret froze.
Chains rasped against raw flesh. A younger Garret hung from lab chains, chest pierced by tubes. Robed priests chanted over astrolabes: "Subject 79 survives. Commence Divinity Infusion."
Agony. Bone spikes sprouted from Garret's palms. Herman's ecstatic face loomed: "Perfection! Beast and Light as one!"
Present-day Garret's fangs elongated. He nearly tore Raine's throat, stopping mid-strike, canines piercing his own lip.
"Touch that..." The werewolf's eyes flickered gold. "...I'll gut you first."
Deep in thickets, Kassan knelt at a mossy altar. Her tribal crystal ball shimmered with journal fragments.
"By Hawksight and starlight..." The chant ignited her tattoos. Thermal images of Raine and pursuing hounds glowed inside.
"Left cave... underground river!" Her voice reached Raine via runic resonance.
Raine jerked up. "Who's there?"
"Hallucinating!" Garret kicked a hound, claws slick with oil.
Kassan bit her tongue, smearing blood on the crystal. The flash dazzled pursuers as Raine dragged Garret into a crevice.
"Northern hocus-pocus?" Garret sniffed lingering magic. "The Church'll shit bricks..."
"Silence!" Raine and Kassan's voices overlapped.