Captain Kyle Walker raised a clenched fist above his head to signal for a halt. The sun was drawing close to the snowy peaks, so it was time to pause the march and focus on setting up camp. He waited as word spread down the long, meandering line of people he was doing his best to lead out of the wilderness.
The group was moving slower than he liked. He kept having to remind himself that they were all civilians, and from what he'd learned talking with and getting to know them over the past three days, more than half of them hadn't really cared for the outdoors. At least, not before the lights went out and left all of them with no choice.
He wished Adrian had thought to include a map and compass among the few supplies he'd planned to leave for the refugees from the camp. It was maddening not knowing how much farther they would have to walk before reaching the last ridge of mountains. Worse than that, he was growing more and more concerned about the food situation.
Including himself, Adrian, and the elf, fifty-seven people had escaped from the Skinnies' camp. The dragon had taken Adrian and the elf away, leaving fifty-five mouths to feed on not nearly enough food. Foraging was largely worthless for a group this size and would have slowed them down even more. And the huge group made so much noise that anything worth the effort of hunting was long gone before even the scouts got anywhere near them. In fact, if it hadn't been for that gryphon-
"Captain?" Anton asked, interrupting Kyle's brooding thoughts. A tall, burly man, he cut an intimidating figure which he was all too aware of. He and Kyle had been distant acquaintances when Kyle had just been a semi-regular vacationer in Pineda before the world turned inside out, but since then Anton had appointed himself as Kyle's enforcer and bodyguard. The captain still wasn't comfortable with how the man loomed with quiet menace in his shadow during most conversations, but after the riot in Pineda when the mayor and police chief were beaten to death by a mob of the very people they were trying to protect, he'd also learned to appreciate it. "I've been keeping my ears out while I've been making my rounds today. Looks like the kids are still worried about that... that thing we all saw the other night." Kyle shook his head.
"It was a dragon, Anton," he explained yet again. Some of the people, Anton among them, seemed unable or unwilling to accept what their own eyes had shown them. He understood it was shocking, but given all they'd been through over the past two weeks, he would have thought people would learn to be a bit more open-minded. "I can talk to everyone again, but it's not like I'm going to have any new information. We're on our way out of its territory. If it wants to find us, it can. If it decides to wipe us out, there's nothing we can do about it. And since it hasn't already done that, there's no reason to think it will suddenly change its mind now that we're miles further away."
"You know," Anton grumbled, "That's not as reassuring as you seem to think. Sometimes people- the kids I mean... Sometimes it's better just to tell them some happy bull just to make them feel better." Kyle shook his head again, punctuating it with a sigh this time.
"I'm not going to lie to people. I'm just not going to do it. It sucks that we don't know what that dragon might do, but since it flew off with Adrian three days ago and we haven't seen a trace of it since, I'm personally starting to believe that he was right. It only wanted him."
"You talk about it like..." Anton paused to gather his thoughts.
Kyle, observing the blatant anxiety creasing the man's face, considered that while Anton and most of the adults were quietly terrified by the thought of the dragon, few of the kids he'd mentioned showed signs of the same fear. They were scared too, of course. But for them, being cold and hungry were the biggest concerns. From what he'd seen, they were filled with wonder and excitement whenever he was pressed to give details about dragons, doubly so when he repeated specifics Adrian had told about the one they'd all seen.
"It's a monster, isn't it?" Anton asked. "I don't get how you can be so sure it thinks like you say."
"I think you're confused about the difference between a monster and an animal. Animals are driven by instinct. A monster knows what it's doing, and does it anyways. By definition, monsters think. They have their own reasons for the things they do, reasons that might be senseless or even evil to us, but they do have reasons. Look," Kyle said as he noticed the conversation was starting to draw a crowd of eavesdroppers, "Let's focus on getting the camp set up. If we're going to go through this again, I at least want to do it in front of a fire."
"You still not going to tell us where you learned all this stuff?" Anton prodded bitterly.
"No, I'm not. I said I wouldn't lie. That doesn't mean I'm sharing every secret I know, especially if they aren't even mine." With that, Kyle turned away and focused on helping set up a few fire circles in the middle of the gravel road he'd been leading the group along.
The gravel had been the only indication they were even going the right way. For many, many miles, the winding 'road' they'd been following felt more like a wide path than anything worthy of the name. It was only wide enough for a single truck or van, and it wasn't even paved with gravel. It was clearly just an access route for maintenance of the radio tower, and it had taken them a day and half to follow it down its meandering route to the wider gravel road now taking them generally southwest.
It wasn't the shortest route out of the mountains, but according to Sergeant Washford of the national guard, it was the one with the easiest terrain. It also had the least risk of them getting lost on the hike out. On the downside, if the Sergeant had triangulated their starting location to the correct tower, the route would be around fifty miles. The group was moving too slow, and Kyle had to agree with the kids. The cold and the lack of food were much more immediate threats to the group than any dragon.
As always, it took around half an hour for the last of the stragglers to catch up and complete the 55-person head count. By that time, a few campfires were sputtering to life in fire circles set up near the center of the gravel road. Meager rations were retrieved and shared, mostly consisting of the last scraps of gryphon meat. Steel felt vaguely guilty as he choked down the tough, dry, and mostly flavorless remnants of the beast, like he was eating meat from a whale, elephant, or some other rare and magnificent animal. But it had been an easy decision, and he held no regret for it.
The beast had been pathetically passive even while it watched them draw the arrow that would pierce its heart, but it was still a predatory creature they had no means to feed. It could have easily maimed or killed any number of the refugees with those claws and its wicked beak, and it was large enough to provide a significant amount of food for everyone. Its feathers had been useful in bulking up the insulation of the injured and the children's clothing. And the head and front talons had been saved to prove the beast had actually existed later, when they were telling their story.
But back to food because tonight, they also got to eat some type of sour grass one of the locals, Mark something, had recognized yesterday and demanded the group take time to gather. Mark had confidently eaten a healthy portion the evening before, and since he'd gone that night and all of today without experiencing any symptoms of poisoning, Kyle announced those pickings should be safe to eat. He led by example, doing his best to keep the disgust off his face as he chewed and chewed on the tough shoots until they were ready to swallow. If anyone had asked him, he'd have called the stuff bitter grass, not sour.
While everyone resigned themselves to gnawing through their portions of cud, Kyle submitted himself once again to the nightly round of answering questions and offering all the reassurances he could bring himself to believe in. Yes it was a dragon. Yes, a real one. No, he didn't know what it wanted with Adrian, nor what it might be doing to him now. Yes, Adrian was probably still alive. Yes, magic was really real...
It was kind of amazing, honestly. Most people seemed to prefer being freaked out and worried about the incredible things that he personally believed were now distant concerns rather than the very real problems looming over all of them. None of those issues would be solved just by finding the paved road this gravel one connected to. He thought back to everything Sergeant Washford had told him while continuing to answer the same questions yet again.
There was no relief camp to bring these people to. No FEMA center. Nowhere they could go to escape the implacable threat lurking just past the horizon. The United States, actually all of North America, had gone dark. According to Washford, the story military leadership was telling was that just about everything running on electricity had stopped working all at once, and with no warning at all. And this happened before there were any signs of missiles being launched by any nuclear nation.
Even worse than that and what Washford had clinically described as the limited nuclear exchange, was an apparent loss of contact with the National Command Authority. Washford either hadn't been told or wasn't divulging anything specific on that topic, but just the thought that the military couldn't talk to the president or even anyone in the chain of succession during the worst crisis in the country's history was enough to make Kyle queasy with fear. So, he was also happy to entertain the scared people around him with tales and musings on the supernatural.
Heck, some of them had to understand just how terrible the situation really was, at least in the back of their minds. Kyle wasn't lying to these people he was leading out of the mountains to a rendezvous where he would likely be forced to leave them all behind. But he also wasn't telling them the whole truth as Washford had told it.
A lot of people were going to die, probably among this 55, and certainly among the population of the United States. There was a near-total collapse of infrastructure, and it had struck just as winter was making its presence felt. For at least the near term, most of the nation would have no gas or electric heat. Food shipping had slowed to a trickle since almost all motorized vehicles had been killed at the same time as the power grid. And worst of all, long distance communication was virtually gone. Only relatively primitive equipment that had been in storage seemed to function properly, such as the scratchy, Gulf War radio Washford and his unit were using. The U.S. was never postured to provide disaster relief to the entire country at once, but without the ability to communicate and coordinate on a national level, recovery would be slow and sporadic: limited to whatever local communities could manage on their own. And that assumed Americans were free to act without interference by hostile actors.
There was certainly merit in the Guard's effort to reestablish contact with the MilSatCom satellite constellation to understand whether China or even the failing Russia were getting adventurous in the midst of the chaos gripping at least North America. But Kyle knew there was a much more immediate threat his superiors would never consider if he didn't bring them his story and evidence. And the Sylvan could very well be just the tip of a massive iceberg. Monsters were coming back.
Kyle had seen a real dragon scale again, then the living dragon that had shed it. After all these years, he'd learned that his father and those odd friends of his hadn't been crazy, and he doubted they'd been playing some elaborate game either. Unfortunately for Kyle, he had poo-pooed the 'club' often enough as a teen that his father had stopped taking him. He remembered lectures on types and characteristics of monsters, always followed by in-depth question and answer sessions of signs that indicated the presence of the subject monster and the best ways to fight and kill them. Unfortunately again, he'd always been too uncomfortable to pay any attention to the information being shared, and he remembered very few specific details almost fifteen years later. It just always struck him as absurd and embarrassing to see men and women twice his dad's age taking all that stuff so seriously, and he'd never asked his parents about it again after he was freed from attending.
Now, he'd give just about anything to talk to his dad about all he'd seen in the past week. His parents lived in New Hampshire, so that was never going to happen. His only hope was that the Order of the Long Vigil also had chapters on the West Coast, and that he could find a practicing member before it was too late to matter.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Skor strode unevenly through the portion of the camp set aside for his kin, every poorly balanced step, each throb from his stump and the fresh, searing lines etched across his back feeding and strengthening the burning hatred he'd carried in his chest for most of his life. As he'd cynically predicted, the sylvan healers had curtly told him that his treatment was complete barely after sunrise the morning following the riots. It was a lie of course. He wondered if they told it just because all knew he was powerless to object, or if they actually thought he was dim enough to believe them. In either case, once again the Sylvan had sunk to his lowest expectations of them, always arrogantly disregarding and belittling the efforts of his people. He grinned tightly, just for a moment. If only they knew how merciful their slight was, considering the part he'd played in their latest debacle.
Following his dismissal from the Healer's Ward, he'd gone straight into the care of one of his own people's healers. For all he despised the Sylvan, even he couldn't deny that he'd been better off with them tending his wounds. They might have even regrown his arm; he'd seen such miracles performed on injured 'ogern' who earned their masters' fickle gratitude. The root and cloth his people used was a poor substitute for the magic and sheer knowledge sylvan healers called on. The shamans the Sylvan trained among his people were only taught battle magics, and in any case, he probably wouldn't have risked approaching one of those fanatics to ask for help. Without magic, it would be many, many days before he'd even be ready to return to a training ring and begin re-learning how to fight with only one arm and his disrupted balance.
In the meantime, since he wasn't in the Sylvan's care anymore, he was working as a courier to earn his daily rations. The sylvans' thoughts might flit effortlessly between them like so many birds, but they still needed solid items moved around quite often. And why carry those things any distance yourself when you had thousands of 'servants' to do it instead? Never mind whether a parcel is clearly too large to be carried by a one-armed, still-healing courier. And also no excuse for having soiled the package when he'd been forced to choose between painfully steadying it with his oozing stump or dropping it onto the ground. Every slight and injustice was just more fuel for the pyre always burning in his heart, but at least this time the lashes had been easy to endure. He allowed himself another grin, knowing the whip wielded by the 'ogern' boss was a lover's caress compared to what awaited him if the Sylvan ever even suspected his part in spoiling their great prize.
The fire-breather had done as promised, and with the outcast's undeniable cooperation. From what his people were being tasked with and what they overheard, the Sylvan were interpreting the events of that night the way Adrian had predicted. While they still maintained their carefully measured, dismissive appearance, anyone who knew what to look for could plainly see they were outraged that one of their own had betrayed them. They were also blaming the outcast for assisting Adrian to escape in the first place. The only direct connection the Sylvan had found regarding Skor's people was the fact that Sil had abandoned her post guarding the anchors.
The Sylvan expected that all three of the guards that night should have been killed before allowing such a disaster to unfold, or at least both of the ogern. Sil, the other resisters, and Skor himself had all known this. That was why Sil had fled into the wilderness after freeing the first of the humans. While it seemed the Sylvan only suspected Sil of cowardice or incompetence, that would matter little if they were able to pry open her mind and pillage her thoughts and memories. Their people lacked the humans' bizarre natural defenses against the Sylvan's mental powers. Skor hoped with his whole heart Sil was fast and skilled enough to elude the dozen or so packs seeking her. And if not... Well. She was certainly good enough to ensure the right pack caught her. Sil could not be questioned by the Sylvan or all would be lost. She knows that...
"Oi!" Skor's musings were interrupted by the abrupt greeting from Gren, the wizened healer he was bartering a quarter of his rations to in exchange for treatment. "What..? Why the hells are ye leakin? Again?!"
Skor glanced over his shoulder, noticing for the first time the deep red streaks he'd trailed behind him on his hike from his 'admonishment.' He turned back in time to catch Gren standing on his toes and squinting at the spot where his back had been exposed.
"Five? What, did ye sneeze on someone?" Skor waved his stump, trying not to wince at the fiery lance that thrust straight up the bone every time he moved it.
"Seven," Skor corrected, his voice a warning growl. "Touched a parcel with this." Gren squinted again, his gaze focused on Skor's forehead this time.
"Feh!" He spat, shaking his head. "The good masters are still pissed about losin yer catch. That'd be why I'm stuck closin up so many stripes." He squinted at Skor again, then spun on his heel and shouted, "Tross! More stripes! Ye just got to watch, now git out here and take the lead wi' this one!"
Skor grimaced with distaste as the reedy apprentice poked his youthful face just past the worn tent canvas to cast a nervous glance around. He actually flinched when he caught sight of his patient, who had to clench his jaw to avoid sneering. Antagonizing the jumpy youngster would be a very bad idea if Gren was serious about having Tross practice stitching on his own back.
"Can't believe the asshole made me bleed with just seven," Skor muttered, hoping to break past the awkward moment. Tross just threw a worried look at Gren, who snorted with impatience.
"Git yer ass out here and git to work! This is what healers do! If ye can't take the knife and needle to someone's flesh, tell me now, and I can start lookin for yer replacement!" Tross paled, but his face hardened into a much more appropriate expression for their people: grim determination.
"Of course, Healer Gren. Pack leader Skor, please step inside." The apprentice withdrew back into the shade of Gren's tent. Skor gave a resigned sigh and started to follow, but a firm, wiry grip on his good shoulder stopped him short.
"No charge for this. Tross is sharp. Steady hands. Strong stomach. Need to see if that extends to treatin real wounds. If not, ee'll never be more than an assistant, and I don't have time left to be wastin on someone who can't replace me." Skor glared, unconvinced.
"I wasn't antagonizing the masters. Dropping a parcel would get me lashes and cut rations." Gren raised his hands, a guiltless smirk creasing his face.
"Did I say sumtin? The lad does need practice." Gren's face turned stony. "But since ye brought it up, lemme just say that ye'd be wise to avoid notice of any kind from the masters or our own zealots. Never forget how the Sylvan feel about reminders of their failures."
Skor said nothing, but nodded respectfully before following Tross into the dimly lit tent. He was the leader of a secret rebel pack. He didn't need any more reminders to keep his head down. The biggest regret of his life was ignoring that wisdom when he had the brilliant idea to capture Adrian right under that dragon's nose. He couldn't have anticipated that human's true significance to the Sylvan, or that the fight immediately after would go so badly for him. But he'd known as he was opening his mouth that showing initiative before the Sylvan was a gamble with bad odds and uncertain rewards. No one would have noticed or cared if he had done the smart thing and stayed quiet until ordered otherwise. He'd taken a risk, and so far, it had been a near complete disaster.
"If you could just lie down on the free cot, Leader Skor, we can get started." Tross mercifully interrupted Skor's brooding, gesturing toward one of the two cots taking up most of the ground space beneath the musty tent canvas. He couldn't stifle a pained groan as the motions to kneel and then lay chest-down on the cot flexed and stretched both his back and his shoulder. The man laying in the same position on the other cot heard the noise and turned to look at its source. Skor was surprised to recognize the face, but did nothing to acknowledge his comrade with the healers present. "Three cuts," Tross muttered, lightly tapping around Skor's abused back. "Long and rough, but pretty shallow-"
"Shut the hell up!" Gren barked. "How many times..? Don't be thinkin with yer mouth unless ye want yer patient to pass out!" Tross fell silent but continued tapping. Skor waited passively, while he quietly hated the sadistic boss who had been so disappointed by the low number of lashes Skor's 'light reprimand' called for. The bastard prided himself on his aim with a whip, and he took special care to overlap his strikes to make sure Skor still walked away from the post dripping red.
"Drink this," Tross instructed, holding out a small mug smelling of strong alcohol. Skor grimaced, but leaned up stiffly and drank. The bitter liquid stung his eyes and nose as it burned all the way down to his stomach, but he was grateful for it. Whatever Tross planned to do, it was going to hurt.
Tross spent half an hour proving Skor's fears correct. Cleaning the wounds, spreading a stinging poultice, and of course, threading a number of stitches he deliberately avoided counting. He was no stranger to pain, but there was something especially disturbing about laying still while someone touched and poked and scrubbed and stabbed his already wounded back. He was very, very grateful for the drink. It was only a few mouthfuls, but strong enough to make him a bit numb and cause his head to swim. It just about made his treatment bearable. After Tross finished, Gren took a second look and gave his grudging approval.
"Well, ye didn't bleed him like a boarsk. Stitchin is passable, but ye were damned slow. Start workin on yer speed during yer drills. Skor," he barked. "Ye've got til sundown, or whenever someone else we need the cot fer shows up. Take a rest." And with that, Gren and his apprentice gathered a few things and went back outside, leaving the two injured warriors to themselves.
"Thought they'd never leave us alone," Jex complained hoarsely. Skor turned to glare at the only other rebel pack leader he knew.
"Aren't you supposed to be out there, finding Sil?" Skor hissed. "The hells did you do to get your back peeled?!" Jex sighed roughly, angrily.
"Found her," he spat.
"Oh... Shit..." Skor understood, and he felt sick.
Jex had been leading his pack in the chase for Sil. The Sylvan's orders were to capture Sil alive so they could question her. She must have gotten cornered. Skor wondered if she'd done the deed herself, or just ensured that Jex's pack would be the one to catch her. The fact that Jex was laying here recovering from a brutal lashing suggested it had been the second option, but he knew all too well how volatile their masters were. It was possible all the pack leaders had received such punishment for their shared failure. Either way, Sil hadn't managed to escape, and now she was dead.
"That is..." Skor trailed off again, not sure what he should say. "That is hard to hear," he tried a quieter voice. "She was a brave warrior and a friend I could rely on. If I knew her at all, she was proud she got to strike a real blow against the Sylvan before her end." Jex sighed with bitter disgust. "What?!" Skor snapped, offended. He knew he wasn't great with words, but he'd been trying dammit!
"Sorry," Jex muttered sourly. "You're right. She thought she'd made a real difference." Skor stiffened, sending a jolt of fiery pain through his freshly stitched wounds.
"What do you mean, 'she thought?'" he demanded. "She did make a difference!" Jex sighed that disgusted sigh again.
"I was afraid you hadn't noticed. It's why I came here to get my stripes sewn up after the bosses were through with me. Something's real wrong..." Jex trailed off. Skor waited for a bit, then just as he was about to lose his patience, Jex continued. "It took me longer than I wanted to get assigned to chase for Sil. Before then, my pack was still guarding Vaa'len. Only we weren't taking our orders from her any more. She did something, Skor. Pissed the other Sylvan off bad. She's basically a prisoner now. She's wearing a collar, and it seems she isn't allowed to talk to us, but they've still got her working on something..."
Skor felt an all too familiar dread returning to his stomach. It was the same mix of horror and sickening regret that had settled onto him as he laid in a different healers' tent, listening silently as the Speaker explained exactly what he'd delivered into their hands.
"Vaa'len? But... I thought she needed the fire-breather or his blood to do anything! The Sylvan haven't been so pissed these past few days just because of the riot, have they?!" Jex raised a hand, then let it flop back down to the cot.
"I don't know, Skor. Vaa'len did something they hated; that much is clear. There's only one other thing I know for sure, and it's... It's creepy. They've been bringing humans in to Vaa'len. It's always sylvan martials escorting them, and they always made us leave when they showed up. I don't know what's being done to those humans since we weren't ordered back until they were ready to leave. But I haven't seen any of those humans again. The martials always left alone."
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Anea glided over the sparkling white of the snowy clearing, no louder than the breeze rustling the branches of the surrounding pines. She even held her breath as she willed the buck deer not to look up for just a few more heartbeats. It was less than a tail-length away from the treeline, and this was her last chance to make a kill today. She did not want to risk her prey escaping into the forest. Just a little further...
There! She was in position to attack parallel to the trees! In a well practiced maneuver, she folded her wings a bit to take a shallow dive to her target. To make absolutely sure the buck had no chance to get away, she avoided her usual tactic of slamming her prey at speed to stun it so she could make a clean landing. Instead of knocking it away, she seized it in her talons and held it just off the ground as she messily skidded to a halt on her elbows and chest!
As soon as she came to a stop, Anea lunged forward to snap her jaws shut with precise aim, tearing out the throat of the struggling buck clutched in her talons. It was a slower kill than she liked. The poor thing had plenty of time to understand it was caught and to panic helplessly. But she made sure it wasn't in pain for long. It flailed once, twice, then went limp as its lifeblood gushed out of its ruined neck to stain the snow crimson.
The once routine feeling of a life ending in her grasp now made her shudder with guilt. Because the sylvanni Glanaveer had felt no different on that awful day. Anea closed her eyes and shook her head. She didn't want to relive the event again, but she couldn't stop the flow of memories. Adrian had warned that trying to do so was a bad idea anyway. Gritting her teeth, she laid down in the snow and let the images and emotions wash over her.
Glanaveer had screamed just like most prey did when Anea grabbed her and Tohnaal and slammed them to the ground in her rage at Adrian's disappearance. Anea barely heard it over the sound of her own heart pounding in her chest, her blood rushing through her ears. She certainly didn't notice just how hard she was pressing on the sylvanni's chest, didn't consider what it meant that she only screamed once. But furious as she was, she'd only intended to frighten the sylvan pair, not kill them. She just wanted them to give Adrian back. She'd roared at them and even allowed them to touch her thoughts so they could understand her exact demands. It wasn't until Glanaveer went completely limp under her paw that she remembered how fragile little creatures were, how easy it was for her to crush them.
She'd gotten off of both of them immediately, but it was too late for the sylvanni. Tohnaal was also badly injured, but he was well enough to talk and return himself to the place they'd taken Adrian. He left Glanaveer's body behind, apparently too weak to bring it with him. Anea wasn't able to stay in the town much longer since her incubation fire needed tending before sunset. None of the sylvan returned before she was forced to leave. She'd left Glanaveer where she lay, having no idea what to do with her broken body...
Anea shook herself as the intense memory receded, though her feelings of guilt and self-loathing remained, thorn-pricks in her heart. What bothered her most was how pointless Glanaveer's death was. It hadn't even been vengeance. It was just an accident. She and Adrian had talked about it, of course.
He'd also killed again, even been forced to use his messy, fledgling fire-breath on several ogern-warriors just like he feared. But while she empathized with his guilt over having decided to kill people, she couldn't bring herself to tell him she wished their roles had been reversed. She felt that if she'd killed Glanaveer while rescuing Adrian, if there had been some reason for her death, she wouldn't feel so guilty. Or maybe it was just because she'd never had to kill a thinking creature before, and no reason would have made her feel any better about it.
Well, whatever the reason, Anea had learned a hard lesson from what happened, even though it wasn't worth a life. Anea had been forcibly reminded that she needed to take care around smaller creatures, Adrian and her hatchlings first and foremost. She must never forget her strength could break and end them as easily as the buck she was still clutching.
With an effort, she brought herself back to the present. If these dark musings were still bothering her when she got back, she'd talk to Adrian again. They'd promised to help each other through the pain their encounter with the Sylvan had left them.
Anea sniffed at her buck, unclenching her talons to let it slide to the ground. Normally, it would be time to tuck in and eat her fill, but she wasn't only hunting for herself anymore. She would only eat after ensuring her hatchlings' bellies were stretched taught with the choicest haunches she could strip off the winter-thin deer. And that meant carrying it back to her nest-clearing. So instead of eating the carcass, she gripped the hindlegs and lifted it up to dangle for some time, allowing most of the remaining blood to drain into the muddy snow. It didn't reduce the weight that much, but every little bit helped when carrying things on wing. As she waited a few dozen heartbeats for the trickling red to ebb to individual drips, she found her mind wandering again.
These days since the hatching had been a strange mix. There was so much pain, sorrow, and guilt she and Adrian were trying to understand and come to terms with. Yet these moments of deep darkness could only nip at the shadowed corners of what were otherwise the happiest, most joyous times Anea could remember experiencing. There was so much for her and Adrian to revel in and be grateful for!
Her little ones had arrived safely, and she and Adrian had the means to keep them safe, fed, warm, and hopefully happy. Adrian himself was back, and more confident and happy about deciding to help them than she'd ever seen him. And he'd even managed to gather many of the human-tool-things he'd hoped for from that town that caused them so much trouble. He was already using them to make other things he promised would help keep the little beauties safe and happy.
And if she was bold enough to make a judgment, her hatchlings were truly beautiful, not just in her and Adrian's eyes. Nonah's scales were black of a depth she'd never seen before. They drank in light so completely that it was impossible to see the edges of his scales except in direct sunlight. When the sun did strike them, they glimmered faintly with a deep red reflection, and she suspected that if his scales did show color, it would have been red. His eyes were golden like hers, but with flecks of ruby glinting around the edges of his pupils.
His sister Gem was just as striking, and very appropriately named. Her scales were a brilliant turquoise, the blue of a bright and cloudless winter sky. As Anea had noticed when she was first cleaning those magnificent scales in the dying firelight, whenever light of any source struck them, it shattered into countless flecks of all colors, though it seemed to favor reds, oranges, and golds. The colors of fire. When Adrian had seen her clearly in the light of the first morning, he'd been just as entranced as Anea had known he would be, commenting that Gem's scales reminded him of a gemstone he called a 'fire opal.' Anea doubted those rocks could compare to her daughter's scales. Her eyes were a vivid emerald green, though again, when Anea had first seen them she struggled to remember why any mere stone would be considered precious.
Of course, not everything was complete bliss, even discounting the nightmares the Sylvan left them with. Her partner in raising the two of them was brave and clever, and he loved the little scraps with an intensity that could break her heart. But things were complicated between herself and Adrian, and that might never change. He was a human, and she was a dragon. Back when they first met a bit more than a moon ago, she had taken advantage of her physical superiority over him and his vulnerable, injured state. Nothing could ever change that fact. She had also Altered him without his permission and with the intent of exploiting him even more. She hadn't thought of it that way at the time, but Adrian was absolutely right about what she'd been doing. She had hurt his body, his mind, and his heart, and he carried an entirely justified wariness toward her because of what she'd done.
For her part, Anea understood that Adrian hadn't intended to leave forever when he went back to the Sylvan camp with Faolin. But as he'd readily admitted in their discussions about all they'd been through in their days apart, he'd known he was taking a great risk not only with his own life and freedom, but the lives of her little ones as well. He loved the hatchlings completely, and she was beyond grateful to find his unease and wariness toward her didn't taint his attitude toward the little ones. She didn't doubt his intentions or his commitment, but she still firmly disagreed with the judgment he'd made that night. She couldn't help but worry what he would choose to do if he was ever faced with a choice between the dragonets and his people again. And there was another problem, maybe even worse, still quietly festering from that night.
Anea hadn't mentioned it to Adrian yet for various reasons. When she first sensed it at the tower where she found him and the others, there had been too much happening, and not enough time. Then, when she remembered the next morning, she'd decided to conduct a more extensive Scrying of Adrian's body while he slept off the exhaustion of his ordeal. She wanted to verify that she hadn't misunderstood what she'd sensed with her flash-Scry on the mountain side. No such luck. Somehow, her original Alteration spell, the one she'd created to be self-sustaining and largely unguided, had been reawakened.
It must have been the Sylvan, most likely this Os'tarell speaker-monster Adrian had spoken of with such disgust and hatred. The Sylvan had lusted after the changes her spell had wrought on Adrian's body. When he'd told her about the Speaker's final attempt to capture him and the outrage he'd felt from that sylvan when the attempt failed, she understood the true purpose of the pain he'd caused Adrian as Faolin whisked them away. It wasn't simple vengeance.
He was ensuring he'd still have a chance to get what he wanted in the future. He'd re-awakened her dormant and dying spell. It was alive in his body again, working further changes she still didn't understand. Much, much worse than that though, the sylvan's tampering had corrupted it! So far, she hadn't been able to make it go dormant again, nor was she able to affect how fast it wrought whatever changes it was working toward now. That stupid, greedy, arrogant thing wearing the guise of a thinking being had ruined the careful balance of her spell and turned it into something much closer to a shaping sickness!
She needed, she wanted to tell Adrian about the problem she'd discovered, but she also wanted to tell him it was something she was fixing, or had already fixed. She understood she had to tell Adrian and soon or she would be breaking his trust again. But she hated the thought of giving him even more to worry about so soon after all he'd learned of all the terrible things befalling his people. And she really didn't think there was anything he could do about the problem except worry. So, she'd been holding her tongue, thinking about the new shape of the spell whenever she wasn't focused on the hatchlings, and carefully examining the spell's effects on him through further Scrying when Adrian was asleep. She would tell him. She just wanted to give him a solution when she did.
Anea's pondering was interrupted when she noticed a drop of blood fall from the neck of the deer she was holding down to the crimson soaked powder below. It was only a single drop, and no more followed it for several long heartbeats. The deer was as drained of blood as it was going to get.
She dropped it onto some snow that was still white, then stood and ambled over to the other edge of the cramped clearing which still received some sunlight. She flared out her wings to gather what warmth she could from the weak sun nearing the peaks to the west. It was getting late, and there wasn't much for her to absorb. She still appreciated every bit of its heat after her recent ordeal flying through the razor chill of a snowy night to retrieve Adrian. She needed to get into the air now if she wanted to avoid repeating that painful experience.
So without folding her wings, she jogged back across the clearing, seized the carcass from where she'd left it, and leapt straight up. She hammered her wings down through the still air, wincing as it raked across their thin membranes like icy water. It was an old and familiar discomfort, but one she hadn't gotten used to in more than eighty summers of flying. In fact, that was one of the main reasons she'd migrated this far south when striking out from her parents' nest. As she climbed up a few tens of wingspans and banked toward her own nest and hatchlings, she idly considered how different her life would be right now if she'd resisted her simple urge to minimize discomfort instead of following it here to this valley.
Even from this mild height, still far below the mountain ridge reaching for the setting sun, it was easy to spot the stark line of darkness creeping steadily east. The ridgeline's shadow had already passed her clearing, meaning her fire would stand out brilliantly against the tossing, shifting black of the needled canopy around it. It also meant Adrian would be getting worried. He was always anxious about her flying in the dark, even though he respected her skill and experience enough that he rarely mentioned it. She didn't enjoy the added difficulty in navigating and landing, but there was nothing to be done.
She'd left for this hunt at noon, and she'd barely make it back before nightfall. Her hunts were taking longer now that winter was tightening its grip on her territory. Her preferred targets, the plentiful deer that herded in this region, were spending less time in the open now that the shrubs and bushes had lost nearly all of the tender green bits that made for easy, tempting browsing. Soon, she would begin to fail hunts altogether, regardless of whether she chose to stay out past sunset or not. When that started, she'd also need to fast much longer than just the flight back to the nest.
There was no question she would go hungry before allowing the little ones to, so during the leanest moons, she would only consume the scraps of the carcasses after she was able to bring home a fresh one. The cold of the snows would keep the meat from spoiling, giving her some much-needed grace following unsuccessful hunts. But of course, eating less and eating less often would gradually weaken her. If she fasted too long, she might get too weak to hunt, so she'd have to take more of the food for herself or risk all of them starving. It would be a contest between her luck and fortitude and the plodding, implacable march of time that determined whether things came to that before spring.
There! She spied a flickering yellow beacon of firelight in the gaps of the bows waving gently in the easy winds below! She waited until the light became steady before starting her descent though. In these conditions, while she was still flying in sunlight above the long shadows of the mountains, she couldn't make out much detail down on the ground. Faolin had set up his own camp rather closer to her nest than she really liked, and she already swooped his spot on a previous evening when she'd just been looking for any fire at all to guide her home. Faolin had taken shelter beneath the forest canopy; however, while her fire was exposed to the open sky. So it was only when the flickering of the light she was tracking ceased and she was able to clearly see the dancing tongues of flame that she was sure this was the right fire. She spilled out the wind cupped in her wings and started her descent to the ground.
She dropped slowly, tracing a wide spiral downward around the edge of her clearing. She had to be careful until she dipped down below the shade of the mountains, since the sunlight she was flying through made it impossible to see detail in the darkness below. She imagined it was similar to how Adrian and other humans had their night vision ruined by seeing bright lights. Unlike them though, her eyes adjusted quickly to the changing intensity of light. Just a few heartbeats after crossing the invisible border dividing day and night up here in the sky, and she could clearly see the ground again. There was the stream, her fire closer to the forest than the center of the clearing, and Adrian standing beside the little structure he'd built to shelter the hatchlings as he looked up to track her descent.
It still amazed her: the way he was able to take different, simple things and manipulate and combine them in ways that would never occur to her to solve problems she would have thought impossible for him. He'd been doing a lot of this unique tool-user activity in the four days since the eggs hatched. While he'd spent most of the first day as torpid as the hatchlings, exhausted as he was from his ordeal at the claws of the Sylvan, once he woke up he got right to work making things.
She could never figure out what his goal was until he was finished, but it was more fun to watch and guess than to have Adrian stop and explain. The only thing she'd ever used branches for was catching and keeping fire. But he used a few of those same branches and some of his rope-vines to build a simple kind of small human-home-shelter for the hatchlings. More distressingly, he used a few other sticks to fashion several spears, which she had recognized without needing Adrian to name them. She'd watched with mixed feelings as he practiced with these and a few other weapons he'd collected in that cursed human town.
He was holding one of them now, the stone-thrower he called a 'slingshot,' and she also noticed that he kept glancing away from her for quick scans of the clearing. Why..? Wait! She focused her gaze on Adrian, and he next time he looked up, she spotted specks of red marring his pinched face! She sniffed the air in alarm as she realized the deer she carried wasn't the only source of the blood-scent choking her nose!
"What happened?!" She demanded even as her sharp eyes raked the clearing for any sign of remaining danger. None were apparent, but from all the churned snow and blood-streaks, there had certainly been a hard fight while she was gone!
"Coyotes," Adrian answered, his words weary and tinged with disgust. "Three of them showed up maybe an hour ago. Tried to chase them off, but they wouldn't run until I'd killed one." He paused as Anea straightened out for her landing. She came in slow, using powerful back-winging strokes to almost hover before she released the deer carcass and dropped down onto her paws.
"You let the other two run away?" She asked, swinging her head to scan the treeline. Even as she searched, she jogged straight to the shelter where Gem and Nonah should be resting. She suppressed an urge to use her Scrying to check on them immediately. She was getting too used to monitoring what her errant spell was doing to Adrian with that technique. She needed to remember it was impolite at best, offensively invasive at worst. She definitely shouldn't be doing it when the few heartbeats it would take to check without magic would make no difference.
"Of course. I wasn't going to leave the hatchlings alone to follow them. I have no idea if they kept running or if they're still hiding out somewhere nearby though." Anea took a deep, long sniff, trying to ignore the sharp scent of blood hanging thick in the air. After a few heartbeats, she did pick out the faint scent of coyote, just starting to go stale. She also got to the entrance of the hatchlings' shelter and found them both sleeping peacefully, curled around each other amongst their nesting of pine branches and dry brown leaves. She heaved a sigh of relief and let her spines lie flat as she furled her wings.
"I don't smell anything nearby," she stated. She could sense Adrian's own relief running off him like cool water even as she turned to retrieve her buck.
"Okay, that's good," he muttered. "Really glad you can tell that, because I haven't been able to relax- Oh! You did catch something!" He interrupted himself. "It's so late, I thought... Well, maybe you won't have to go hunting tomorrow then." Anea turned to stare at Adrian a moment before replying to this unexpected comment. He knew this buck wouldn't feed the four of them long enough for her to take a day off of hunting. Maybe it could last the hatchlings and him for a while, but she would need the rest to be strong enough for the next hunt. Just as she was about to give up and ask what he meant, she noticed that the hatchlings were oddly quiet.
"Oh!" She gasped, Adrian's quiet satisfaction blending with the contented silence from Nonah and Gem to give her the answer. "You killed one of the coyotes. The little ones already had their dinner, didn't they?" Adrian nodded, but his satisfaction became tainted with distaste.
"Waste not, want not," he recited, grimacing. "There wasn't a whole lot I'd want to eat on that skinny thing, but you always start by feeding them the organs..." He paused to take a steadying breath. "So that's what I did."
He's trying to hide his discomfort again, Anea noticed with a flash of irritation. She knew Adrian had little experience with killing and butchering his own meat, despite his twenty-four summers. Once again, he had made things harder for himself when he could have just waited for her to help. On the other wing... This way the hatchlings are already fed and settled. And how would I feel if a drake was squeamish about blood and viscera?
"Well, thank you." Anea settled on appreciation. If Adrian chose personal hardship to make the hatchlings happier, that actually was a good thing. It was different than when he did it just for some pointless show of pride. "I'll still go hunting tomorrow though. It's better if we have a kill already waiting here while I'm out looking for the next one. That will make things less painful if and when I can't find anything." Adrian nodded.
"That reminds me: once I get my own shelter finished, I want to start looking for some good places to set some traps. The survival guide I grabbed has a whole chapter on snares, and I'm hoping if any of them work, I can help keep the hatchlings fed." Anea cast a dubious glance at the pile of sticks Adrian had gestured to when he referred to 'his shelter,' but she reminded herself that what he'd built for Gem and Nonah had looked just as unimpressive before he finished. Still, Adrian would need to build something much larger for himself, so she was interested to see how he managed it.
"Oh, speaking of feeding," Anea said, "Did you eat anything from that coyote? Because you should if you used your breath to help deal with them." Adrian shook his head.
"No, and no I didn't," he declared, lifting his stone thrower. "They were small enough that I could keep them back with this. And my practice paid off because I actually was aiming for that one's head." Anea was impressed.
From what she'd seen during Adrian's practice with the device, it was somewhat like a small bow. But Adrian had only used it to throw tiny pebbles, nothing like the sharpened arrows from the old stories. It hadn't seemed very dangerous to her, and she hadn't understood why Adrian had spent twice as much time practicing with it than with his spears, small axe, or knife. She did now.
"Well, thank you again," she said, nuzzling his shoulder briefly. "It almost certainly won't be the last time something is drawn here to attack the hatchlings." Adrian shuddered at this prediction.
"Yeah, I guessed that. I'd hoped you were just being paranoid about how much other animals would want to kill them. But after seeing how determined those things were, I don't doubt you anymore. I've been getting really worried about how I could deal with a bear or God forbid a pack of wolves. I don't think this slingshot would work on animals that big, and I also don't like my chances with just a spear."
Anea bobbed her head slowly, imitating one of Adrian's nods. "You'd have to use your firebreath, but I agree. I don't like the thought of you having to fight things like that either. We need a better place to nest. Another cave would be ideal, but I never found another like mine in any of my time exploring this territory. It would also need a water source..." She trailed off, pondering all the interesting places in her territory, but none sprang to mind as any better than this clearing. "I'll think on it some more. If I have another successful hunt tomorrow, then maybe I could do some exploring the day after."
With that, she and Adrian fell quiet for a time. Anea buried her buck in the snow to keep it cold and unspoiled then sat to think, and Adrian continued work on his shelter. Anea tried to focus on new potential nesting sites, but her mind kept drifting back to Adrian and the secret she was keeping from him. She wanted to spare him from pointless, helpless worry and anxiety. He was so young by her reckoning. But at the same time, he acted nothing like a dragon his age would. He was no child, and he was wise and capable in his ways. He'd earned her trust and respect, as well as her affection. Hadn't he earned the truth from her too, even a painful one? Stars, I just want to tell him I can fix it too! Why can't I figure out how to do that?!
By the time the sky turned black and the strongest light was from the fire crackling merrily away in the stillness of the evening, Adrian had stood up a triangular frame for his shelter and begun lining it with sturdy sticks. But Anea felt no closer to solving the problem of her errant spell. All her pondering and useless speculating had accomplished was making her feel even more guilty that she still hadn't told Adrian. He let out a heavy, shuddering sigh, and she focused on him to see he was standing by the fire now, holding his hands near it then pulling them back to rub together.
"That's it for tonight," he declared, looking up to meet her gaze. "I'm too cold, and I can't really see what I'm doing."
Anea bobbed her head, then raised her right wing in invitation. The ground was too cold for him to lay on for long, so Adrian had been sleeping against her side since Gem and Nonah hatched. She'd miss this once he finished his shelter, but she'd felt how poorly he slept when he couldn't lay out flat. Just another reason spring couldn't come fast enough. Adrian settled against her right shoulder, and she gently lowered her wing to shield him from the bitter cold of the winter night.
"Thanks," he muttered as her warmth stilled his shivering. He leaned his head back, resting it against her wing for several heartbeats. "Wow..." he just barely breathed. She felt a quiet awe rising up in him, and she glanced back, curious what might be inspiring such a reaction. He was staring up at the night sky, and when she followed his gaze she soon joined him in his appreciation.
Tens of thousands of her ancestors' twinkling pinpricks dotted the inky black. How long had it been since she last stared up into the Great Nothing, just taking in its beauty? Maybe she hadn't since she'd fled from her nest, overwhelmed by the crushing prospect that she should abandon her own eggs. She remembered the desperation and hopelessness as keenly as the moment when she'd sent a wordless prayer for help to her ancestors. Her heart tightened as she reflected on how that prayer had been answered in ways she never could have imagined. Thank you...
"They really are amazing, aren't they?" She asked, holding Adrian just a little tighter to her side.
"They are," he agreed. "I can't remember the last time I saw a night sky like this. I usually preferred looking down from the cockpit. But I don't know... Sometimes it's nice to just look up and remember how small all of us are in the grand scheme of things." Anea snorted with amusement.
"Small," she chuckled. "You can speak for yourself if you like. But dragons never feel small once we leave the nest. Why should we? Can you honestly name anything you've ever seen that compares to a dragon? Because we haven't found it." She grimaced. "And humans like you drove us into hiding. Your people conquered the world. What do you have to feel humble about?"
Adrian sighed with frustration. "Ok. I guess what's happening out there matters about as much to everything on this rock as we do to it." Anea lifted her head off the ground to focus both eyes on Adrian, confused and a bit hurt by his comment.
"The ancestors still care about us. Of course what's happening in the Great Nothing matters to us. And what 'rock' do you mean?" Adrian's brow furrowed as she felt confusion gripping him as well.
"Um, Earth? And by the 'Great Nothing,' are you talking about space?" Anea huffed. It felt like they were referring to the same thing, but Adrian's word implied something very different than the stories she'd always known.
"If space is the airless void at the top of the sky, then yes. We call it the Great Nothing because there is nothing there for wings to grasp, lungs to breath, or fire to burn. It's only a place for those who've passed on from their flesh, so I suppose you're right that it matters little to us. But the stories say the ancestors still watch us from above, and they can offer guidance to those who ask for it."
Adrian gaped at her, radiating shock and disbelief. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Why was he getting so worked up over a story? Even one she personally believed more now than she ever had before in her life. They had real problems to deal with, not the least of which was the magic living in and subtly warping Adrian's body.
"Anea," he said with hesitation, "humans have been to space. It's not just some other realm for spirits. It's a real place that we've been to, that we've started exploring. Humans have even walked on the moon." Anea was racked by a pang of guilt, hearing Adrian's patient sincerity. He wanted to tell her his story, with no idea why she had zero interest in such a frivolous debate right then. Tell him!
"Not tonight, Adrian," she interrupted, desperate to get the truth out before her nerve broke. He's earned the truth! Just tell him! "There's something else I need to talk to you about."
End of Broken Wings
Book One of Skyward Bound