“Digger! It’s time.” Arthur couldn’t hear himself over the scream of wind as they fell almost straight down, but Brixaby could, and must have relayed the message to the brown dragon.

Their dive was so fast—wings tucked and noses pointed down with the riders pressed against their dragon’s necks—that none of the attacking dragons could reach them. And if they could, they would have surely been bowled out of the way.

No one bothered. To all outsiders, the dive looked entirely suicidal. Some hopefuls watched with partial attention, for when they hit the ground there would be cards to harvest.

However, before they’d even left the hive, Arthur had made sure to get an outline of Digger’s general card powers aside from Stone Skin.

He had been named aptly.

Under them, the onrushing ground seemed to swell up and then part and reshape itself. It was an open maw that led to a tunnel—a pitch-black tunnel, until Sams’s scales shone like a miniature sun and lit the way.

No doubt, all the true entrances to the hive would be guarded by mind-controlled dragons, and perhaps even scourgelings—though there hadn’t been any sign of them so far.

So Arthur had elected to make his own entrance straight into what he hoped was the heart of the underground hive.

As a brown dragon with natural earthen magic, and a local, he knew his hive inside and out.

The tunnel must have opened close to their target because despite the mind-block card and Arthur’s Mental Shield, a slithering lyrical voice rang through his head. Kill the pink, the brown, the silver, the yellow, the red. Leave the Legendaries to me!

Don’t worry, Arthur thought. We’re coming.

A moment later, they entered the mouth of the tunnel.

The air stank in a way that immediately threw Arthur back to his childhood in his borderland village. This was the stink that the scourge brought. Only this was magnified because, unlike the deadened lands at the edge of the kingdom, the presence of the scourgelings was actively rotting away all life down to the unseen nutrients that lived in the soil.

It was worse than the humidity, plugging up his nose and driving out every other scent.

Joy whined but held steady as they flew through the tunnel, though slowing from their dive.

“Opening ahead,” Digger called.

Sure enough, the rocky soil parted into a large open space that must have been part of the hive proper.

Open, but not empty.

Below them, from wall to wall, sat clusters of dragon eggs. Some were patterned. Most were a flat matte color that ranged through the rainbow, though a few special eggs glimmered as if they held a particularly good secret within.

There were hundreds and hundreds of clusters, all containing two to five eggs with occasional singles placed here and there. The majority sat on the stone ground, completely bereft of a nest. Others had twigs or bits of sand swept up and piled around to cushion them. These were the ones that were guarded.

Mother dragons with blank gazes hissed and spread their wings in threat at the newcomers.

Arthur braced himself for an attack, knowing how fierce the females could be. But nothing came.

The answer came from Joy’s agonized cry. “Scourge-touched. Oh . . . look, they’re all scourge-touched, even with cards. We have to help them! Cressida? We can’t leave them like this!”

For a moment, he didn’t understand what she was saying. Dragon eyes were better than human eyes in many ways.

Brixaby shuddered under him.

“What—” Arthur started, but at that moment they flew over a blue who stood on her hind legs to hiss up at them, snaking her neck back and forth. Her color wasn’t uniform: She had a pale white stomach, which was an indication she’d linked with two riders in her life. And one was a mind-mage.

To his horror, Arthur saw red and brown lesions on her pale belly and even more spots that looked like the start of mold . . . or rot.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Arthur muttered. His hand landed on Brixaby’s neck as he grew sharply concerned for his dragon.

Everyone knew that having a card protected against scourge-sickness and scourge-rot.

Except that Joy had been born scourge-touched. She’d had an unformed card in her core, and the Mind Singer’s presence in a nearby guild had been enough to infect her, even through the egg. So it was possible in certain circumstances.

Had he just put Brixaby in additional danger? What about himself? Everyone who followed him? Sometimes the scourge-sickness took root in the lungs, and every breath reeked of the rot.

No, Arthur thought sharply. They all had whole cards, multiple cards. That had to provide even more protection than a hatchling with a half-formed, defective card.

And perhaps the nesting mothers had multiple cards, too, but they had been living in this enclosed tunnel with the scourge-rot in the air for some time. Furthermore, their minds had been taken over by a scourgeling. The Mind Singer might have done something to suppress the strength of their cards.

Behind them, Laird muttered, “This whole blighted hive will have to be razed to the ground.”

“What about the dragons trapped down here?” Joy snapped. “Their eggs?”

Arthur’s hand clenched on Brix’s neck ridge. “Brix, go down to the blue. Don’t let her bite you.” Who knew what would happen if he got an open wound here?

Brixaby immediately switched positions, buzzing diagonally in a way no other dragon but a purple could. He shot close to the blue-white dragon, who bit at them but missed by a wide shot.

Interestingly, she wasn’t using her card’s powers. Perhaps his guess about the Mind Singer weakening them had been right, or she was striking out with the anger of an animal with no higher thought at all.

It didn’t matter. Arthur readied a riveted mind-block card and fired it. It shot out and struck her under her jaw.

Instantly, the dragon’s eyes cleared. She blinked and looked around and in a hazy voice said, “What? Where . . . My eggs?”

“Collect your eggs and fly out of here!” Joy yelled, circling above her. “Others, too, if you can carry them. Go!”

“Use this.” Digger gestured, and a dragon-sized bowl made of hard-packed earth rose from the ground.

The blue-and-white dragon wasted no time piling eggs into it. Arthur hoped she wasn’t only going to save her own, but he didn’t have time to stick around and see. He prepared another mind-block card anchor and fired it, this time at a green female.

Brixaby helped by getting them as close as possible with his pinpoint flying, neatly avoiding claw strikes and wild bites. Jinking right and left hard enough to make Arthur’s teeth rattle in his skull, he nevertheless got Arthur close enough to practically be at point-blank range.

This was essential because Arthur didn’t have many cards or rivets left, and he couldn’t afford to miss.

Joy trailed as close behind as her flying abilities would allow, screaming instructions at the newly mind-freed female dragons. “Gather all the eggs around—no, not just yours, there’s one right there. Now get out of here before that mind block wears off!”

Some of the female dragons had so many lesions and spots of rot that Arthur wasn’t sure if they were capable of flight.

All were capable of escape, though, and took off in an awkward gallop on foot if they had to.

Digger surged forward to take the lead. “Here. The heart of the hive is this direction.”

If it was, Arthur couldn’t tell. All the twisting, turning, and weaving to get to the nesting mothers had made him completely lose his sense of direction. But this was Digger’s home hive, and he had to trust that he knew the way.

Glancing down at his own mind-block card, Arthur saw that another slice had been carved from the top of the red bar. Perhaps a third remained.

They flew on, and the tunnel around them grew narrower. Soon they were forced to squeeze in and then fly single file.

“I feel earth manipulation all around us,” Digger called back. He’d maintained his position at the front of the line, but his stubby brown wings were in danger of scraping the sides. “Don’t touch the walls!”

As if the walls were listening in, they seemed to flex inward without moving at all. Digger grunted, and the walls shifted back.

Behind them, Laird groaned.

“What is going on?” Brixaby demanded.

The brown shook his head heavily from side to side. But he continued flying on, and everyone took the cue to keep flying after him. None dared stop. “Trying . . . to keep all the earth from caving in.”

“You’re what?!” Laird roared, and Arthur got the impression he would have turned tail at that moment—if not for the fact there was nowhere else to go. Flying away meant being out of Digger’s sphere of influence over the earth. That would be deadly.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Laird wasn’t the only one who was frightened. The light pouring out of Sams to guide their way briefly flickered as he lost his concentration.

“Let me give you a boost.” That was the mana silver, Tannai, sounding entirely too chipper. With a show of agility Arthur didn’t expect, the silver dragon blew on ahead under Brixaby and Digger.

He twisted so he was flying upside down in a feat that no two-winged dragon should have been able to accomplish except by card power. Tannai placed his claws on Digger’s stomach, directly injecting mana into him.

Digger exhaled, and the tunnels seemed to breathe along with him, expanding into a wider, more comfortable size.

They had more room in the tunnel. But to Arthur’s horror, this exposed very dusty eggs that had been previously covered.

Someone had been trying very hard to entrap them and didn’t care much about the cost.

“Digger—” Arthur started to say, then stopped. He was about to ask if there were dragon mothers entombed in the soil as well. Though, unlike eggs, they would need to breathe, and . . . they were very likely behind help.

“Oh, hey,” Joy piped up, “I just got a quest.”

Laird growled. “Is that important right now?” He still sounded stressed.

Arthur glanced back at him. Though dragon faces were not the most expressive, their body language spoke volumes.

Laird flew with hunched shoulders and wide eyes. He’d gathered all his purple candle-top flames close to him, as if needing them for personal warmth. He was not having a good time in these small tunnels.

“Yes, it is important,” Joy called back. “And I think it’s a neat one.”

“I got it too.” Brixaby sounded beyond delighted, almost to giddiness. “Defeat the heart of the rot and receive . . . a Legendary card!”

“Hey, that’s no fair. I only got a Rare, but the good news is, if we live, the rest of you will also receive complementary cards. Don’t you think that’s neat?” Turning her head, she stuck out her tongue at Laird.

Digger suddenly maneuvered to stop hard in the air. He wasn’t one of those dragons who could hover in place, like Brixaby, and there wasn’t room to turn. Instead, he had to quickly dive to spill forward momentum.

As he did, Arthur caught a glimpse of the reason why: a solid earthen wall had risen before them all.

Unfortunately, he only got that glimpse. Brixaby could stop. The others could not, and a pile-up ensued.

The light flickered dizzily as Sams shifted this way and that to lose his forward speed. Joy tried to dive like Digger. Unfortunately, so did Laird, but he’d been a touch too slow. He clipped Joy, sending her spiraling backward into the tunnel Digger had warned them not to touch.

“Cressida!” Arthur yelled and reached out. But he was much too far away and could only watch for a horrified second that seemed to stretch out, certain she was about to be crushed between the stone and her dragon.

Joy hit and half sank into the wall. It was as liquid as mud, but with a sucking power that immediately started to pull her in.

Though she was about to be smothered, and mud already coated her sides and up to her chest, the pink dragon yelled “Cressida!” with horrified, wide eyes, wiggling as if to see her rider.

Brixaby roared in protest but had the good sense not to dart to Joy and risk being sucked in as well. Instead, he flickered his wings and swooped to join Digger.

The brown had turned and was staring hard at the wall—clearly using his power to try to win Joy back.

As Brixaby entered the brown’s aura, he too, picked up the spell. So did Arthur.

New Counterfeit spell obtained: General Earth Manipulation

Remaining Time: 11 Hours 59 Minutes 59 Seconds