Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

Soren’s gizzard lurched. He seized the branch that was about to fall from Twilight’s talons. He swung it and with a mighty whack, Skench went spinning down, down, down, her primaries in flames.
    “Watch your tail feathers, Soren!” Bubo shouted. The burly blacksmith was supporting Twilight in flight now.
    Then out of nowhere, flying so fast as to be nothing more than a blur in this night of smoke and flames, came Martin. A deadly ice splinter glittered in his talons. The Screech Owl blinked as if trying to figure out what was coming at him. In that split second of the Screech Owl’s confusion, Martin launched the splinter. Like a missile, it whizzed through the air. The Screech Owl gasped, rolled over, and fell to earth—the ice splinter piercing its breast, a trickle of blood already staining the feathers red.
    “Is Twilight all right?” Soren flew to a shelf of rock where Twilight perched next to Bubo.
    “I’m fine. I’m fine,” Twilight said grumpily.
    “A little shaky, but he’s all right,” Bubo said.
    “I am not shaky.” And as if to prove it Twilight lifted off and headed toward the stash of ice weapons on a higher ledge. The other owls followed.
    Quentin, an elderly Barred Owl who no longer fought, was the quartermaster tending the weapons at this cache. Battle claws, the branches for ignition, and all manner of ice weapons, from splinters to daggers, swords, and scimitars, were in his care.
    “What’ll it be, sir?” Quentin said, addressing Bubo.
    “Ice weapons for these young’uns who’ve had the training on Dark Fowl. And I’ll take my usual.” Bubo’s usual was a pierced metal ball full of bonk coals attached to the end of a link chain. It was called a flail, or a fizgig, and it was an extraordinarily difficult weapon to use. But Bubo was an expert. The ball became red hot when swung in a rapid circular motion and could wreak havoc in a thicket of hostile owls, scattering them like dried leaves in a crisp breeze.
    “Battle claws first, before picking up your weapons, if I might recommend,” Quentin said in a soft voice.
    “Of course, Q.”
    Quentin was a very formal owl. He picked up the battle claws that Ezylryb had given to Soren. “If I may, sir, it would be a great honor.”
    Bubo sighed. “All right, Q. Assist Soren, but the rest of us shall claw ourselves. We must get to the front as fast as we can.”
    In a matter of minutes, the owls were clawed and airborne with their weapons. Smoke roiled through the night, but rain pelted through the thickness of the smoke and when a loud clap of thunder broke, the lightning appeared like a fuzzy white filament in the grayness. Soren thought that this was the oddest atmosphere he had ever flown in. But did it seem familiar to him in some way? Had there not been another time when a strange thickness in the air surrounded him? No, it had not been smoke. Fog! Suddenly, it burst upon him: It was his dream. The dream he had forgotten completely. He felt a shudder in his gizzard. In the dream it had been rabbit-ear moss that had swaddled him. And then somehow, in some bizarre way, the moss had transformed itself into fog. The flying was more difficult now. Soren wept tears from the smoke, and his lungs ached. But the dream was coming back to him and, in the distance, he saw something glimmering just as he had in the dream. A dim, golden pulsating glow. I must fly on! he thought. The glow intensified. His eyes watered. He coughed. But he flew on.
    “Dasgadden gut vrinhkne mi issen blaue,” said the little Pygmy Owl.
    “I’ve never seen anything like this, either,” Gylfie replied and squinted through her own issen blaue goggles. The twin peaks of the Great Horns lay just ahead, wrapped in a soft fuzziness almost like rabbit-ear moss. Was it smoke? She blinked. It was all coming true. The dream was coming true. Ahead in the smoke she spotted him, her dearest friend in all the world. Soren! Her heart, her gizzard, her mind cried out.
    And, in that same moment, a sudden blast of frigid air blew a tunnel through the smoke. At the other end of this tunnel, Soren saw something astonishing. “My dream is coming true,” Soren whispered to himself. “I have found her at last.” As the smoke thinned in the scattered light of the moon, two dreams were about to merge.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Battle of Fire and Ice
    I t’s the Frost Beaks!” Twilight shouted.
    “The Frost Beaks,” Ruby echoed, “and look what’s behind them! The