I glanced up at the scaly man. He was watching me with his smoky eyes, lips curled back into a sneer. Pieces of animal flesh were stuck in between his teeth.
I let out a small growl as I turned my head and bit his one finger, scales thick and gray. He laughed and grabbed onto my shoulder tighter. He had his other hand clamped around my jaw, holding me from behind. His scaly hands felt like sandpaper against my face.
"Little Human girl," he said, "You're going to help me."
"No I won't," I struggled against his hold.
"A spirited one," he chuckled, his voice grating on my ears. "Good life force in you. I'm glad I caught you."
My eyes roved around the village. Smoke was pouring out of a number of homes. Homes that had lasted the decade since the last Hardone raid. I had been three at the time, but I still remember the screaming. But there weren't fires then.
"Let me go," I screamed, looking around to see if any other of my villagers survived. I kept expecting to see my father running towards me, shirt sweaty, with streaks of dirt, after working out in his field all day. But no one came.
A girl screamed.
I choked on a gasp, my heart sinking when I saw who had just been captured by another Hardone.
"What's wrong?" the lizard-like man asked me in a mocking tone, "Why did you stop fighting me? Something catch your attention?"
The other Hardone, a large female, judging by her long feathery hair, cloaked in armor that reminded me of a silver dress, threw the girl to the ground in front of the King.
"Need any more, King Rexon?"
My best friend Sahria glanced up at me, the Hardone woman's foot on Sahria's small back.
"No, that will be all. An Incubator and a Dancer is all I wanted."
"So which one will be the Incubator?"
The King laughed. "This one." He pushed me towards the female Hardone. "Take them," he signaled to some Hardone guards. "We're going back to the palace."
Two guards, with long spears in hand, their metal robes dragging near their ankles, grabbed us by the backs of our old dresses. The tips of my toes dragged along the stony ground as the guards took us away.
With a kick to the knee, the guard holding me yelped and let go of me a bit.
I dug my heels into the dirt ground, pebbles stabbing up into my foot. "You let me go right now," I kicked again.
The guard laughed, and dragged me along to a cart. Two komodo dragons were hitched up to the front of the barred cart. The animals hissed, turning their heads this way and that, long tongues flicking in and out of their wide mouths.
"No!" I yelled, as the guard lifted me off the ground.
"Little girl," he sighed, with a shake of his head as he shoved me into the cart, "I don't like having to be too rough. Even if you're a Human."
Sahria tumbled in behind me. With a click, the cart door was locked. The guard gave me a long hard look before letting out a second sigh and walking off.
I turned to look at Sahria. She was staring at me with wide eyes. I felt jittery, my legs weak beneath me as I curled up in a corner of the cart. We held on to each other, staring wildly at the Hardones around us. Their large tails dragged on the ground behind them as they moved around, kicking up dirt. Some peered into the cart, scaly lips curled into sneers.
"What are you looking at?" I hissed at one.
He hissed back but moved away from the cart.
"I'm scared," Sahria said, her hands shaking. She glanced past the bars of the cart. Bodies lay strewn all over the ground. "They're worse than those komodos! Than even the Genies!"
"I always heard they were the cruelest of the seven races," I said, my hands shaking as I moved to brush my hair out of my eyes. My sweaty hair lay matted on my forehead, my face. Flakes of dried blood crumbled when I pulled my hair off my skin.
I choked back my sob as I watched one Hardone take a flaming torch to a small cabin. "No!" I screamed, "No, no." I lay my head down, sobbing, as my home lit up, flickers of red and orange blazing the gray sky.
"My father built that with his bare hands!" I screamed, kicking against the cart walls, trying to break through. "His bare hands! Doesn't that matter to you?"
I looked away just as the roof caved in, eaten by ravenous flames.
"I can't watch," I said, glancing up towards the sky. Gray smoke filled it.
Green trees lay at a distance, bent over a large river. The smoke created a hazy curtain amid them and the dying village, like the border between life and death.
"They're gone," Sahria sobbed. "All of them. Our family," she choked.
I looked around again, not sure if I wanted to keep staring, or look away.
The air was heavy, and smelled like the taste inside my mouth whenever I bit the inside of my cheeks too hard. I gagged when I spotted the miller's wife. I averted my eyes, but then glanced back, unable to tear my eyes away from her.
Her body lay at an angle, arms and legs strewn at her sides. White hair spilled out from under her red-stained cap. She used to bake me bread topped with cinnamon.
Another large flame rose up around a lookout tower. Just a few hours before, a guard in that tower sounded the town alarm.
"Sahria," my chin quivered. I looked over at her. She was staring ahead, as if she didn't hear me. I lay my hand on her shoulder. It was tense, as if trying to harden itself against an imaginary weight.
"They're all gone," she said in flat tone. I pulled her in towards my chest and she fell into a sob, her body shaking violently.
"Maybe it's true," I said.
"What's true?"
"The stories about the Realm of the Dead."
"Mistlyn," Sahria began. "You know it doesn't exist." She let out another sob, clear snot and spittle flying out of her nose and mouth.
"But what if. Wouldn't you go to the Realm if you could?"
"Well I can't," Sahria pouted. "I could if it were real. And you know it's not real, right?"
Her eyes searched mine, eyebrows raised.
"I know," I said in a hoarse whisper, laying my face on her upturned cheek as her head lay on my leg. "And I'm so scared."
She glanced up at me. "That we're next?"
I nodded, feeling an ache rising back in my jaw, my neck. My eyes stung as warmth spread down my cheeks. A warmth that both cooled and tickled my flaming face.
The cart started moving just as our village was going up in denser smoke and fire.
"I don't see any of them," Sahria said. "I don't see my parents."
"I don't see mine." All the bodies in the ash and flames looked the same to me.
I no longer had a home to go to after school and working out in the fields. The ache in my jaw grew.
I felt a heat stir in me, the fire rising up my neck, settling in my face. My temples throbbed, and I lunged at the bars of the moving cart, shaking them with a violence.
Two Hardone guards looked at me, shaking their heads. One stabbed the air in front of the rolling cart with his long spear.
"They'll kill us," Sahria whispered in a hoarse voice. "Move away from there." She pulled me back from the bars just as the guard stuck his spear in between them at me. He just missed my eye.
"We have to escape," I said, falling to my knees, knowing that we would never get away. "We can't let them take us away. We have to try."
Sahria moved closer to me, her long, white fingers grasping bars. "But how?"
Glancing over at a Hardone guard walking behind our cart, I shook my head. "I have no idea."
We rode on for the rest of the day. The sun set, the red of the horizon making it look as if the sun had been stabbed.
"Come here," Sahria pulled me over to her and we huddled, in a corner of the cart. The road was getting bumpier, and with each jolt of the cart rolling over stones, I felt a stab in my back and neck.
"They could at least give us blankets," I said in a loud voice. A minute later, the cart stopped. A grinning Skeleton opened up its doors, the hinges squeaking.
"Here," he said, handing us a thick square of cloth. I moved to grab the blanket from him, yanking on it and turning my back to him as I wrapped it around Sahria and me.
"Can I come in?" the Skeleton said in a soft voice.
Sharia and I glanced at each other.
"Why?" I said, trying to curl myself up in a corner. The only skeleton I'd ever seen was one that had washed up out of its grave in a very bad storm a few years ago.
He shrugged, his body clicking and cracking. "Thought you might like some company."
"We don't need anyone's company," I said. My voice sounded cold, flat, even as my lower lip trembled.
The Skeleton shrugged again. "Suit yourselves. I'm Farsooth, by the way." He shut the cart door once more on us. The cart started rolling again a minute later.
"Think we made a mistake?" I turned to Sahria. Her chin trembling, she shook her head.
"I don't know," she said with chattering teeth. I moved in closer to her and we hugged each other, trying to share warmth with each other. "He might have been our only friend."
"Maybe we should be nicer," I said hesitantly.
Sahria half-laughed. "We're going to die, so I wonder if we should even bother."
"Don't you wonder, though? They captured us. They could've killed us already. But they didn't."
"My father," Sahria's voice fell. She choked on a sob that she tried to swallow. "My father," she began again, her chin still quivering as tears flowed down her face, "Used to say that the Hardones took Humans to use them as dancers in their courts."
"I heard the King say something about a dancer. And an incubator."
"Then I guess they're going to make us dance."
I chewed on the inside of my cheeks. "And then what?"
Sahria let out a sob. Spit flew out of her mouth. "Then I don't know! But," she said, starting to shake, "I'm really scared, and we have to escape. And if we have to make friends with a talking skeleton, then that's what we have to do."
I nodded. "I'll thank him if I see him again. I did grab the blanket from him roughly."
"Just do what we have to do," Sahria said. "That's the only way we're getting away."
We stayed huddling in silence for a few more minutes. I listened to the sounds of crickets, of the trees rustling. Everything went on as it always did, even if nothing was the same for me anymore.
"Promise me," I said, my throat feeling raw.
"Promise you what?" Sahria didn't even look at me. Her face was turned away, eyes looking down.
"Promise me that if we're separated," I choked, "We'll go find each other and escape them."
"I promise." Her voice was flat.
"And promise me that no matter what, we'll make sure we both get away alive. Together."
She looked at me now. "I don't think we could ever do anything different to each other." She moved in closer to me and laid her head on my shoulder. Her breathing changed a few minutes later, growing slower, shallower, and she twitched, pulling on the blanket. I let her have it.
I stayed up the night, listening to the creaking of the cart, and the crunch of stones as we rolled over them.