Dragon necks lowered like dominoes in the sky.
Roughly a third of Kael's force submitted.
The rest kept flying.
Kael stood on the back of one of his own dragons, arms crossed, watching his formation fracture with an expression that held zero surprise and moderate inconvenience.
His iron eyes found Maddox's gold across three hundred yards of open sky, and the smirk that crossed his face said everything: he'd anticipated this move, planned around it, and was still mildly annoyed it worked as well as it did.
"Thirty percent, little brother." His voice carried across the distance, amplified by the draconic register. "I expected better from you. Or worse from them. Depending on perspective."
Maddox's response was the smile Ryker called the murder smile. The one his dragon did when the math tilted in his favor and the other side had yet to notice.
