She could not defend the town against a sliver of the Shade herself; the very thought was laughable. The town square below was decimated, a mere crater where there'd been a courtyard; in the time it'd taken her to rouse, the Shade had leveled buildings and blacked out the sun.
It would destroy the town, regardless of how hard she fought. But that was no reason to give up, not even as she felt despair clawing at her throat and the corners of her eyes.
She threw the flaming shard of wood at the beast and dove down back to the crater, snapping her wings open at the last second to buffet her fall. The air was no longer crackling with magic, in fact it was eerily sparse of any magic at all; so Equinox tugged at her own magic, pulling glowing threads out of her soul to channel towards the other Council members.
The Prodigy