Chapter 31

Chapter Thirty-One

Erix

T he encampment was no more by the time Keera and I mounted our horses. All the tents had been strapped onto the backs of the remaining horses and only marks in the sand from where they had stood remained. Those too would be dusted away by nightfall.

“Wait until we reach the horizon line, and then ride for Clan Katal as fast as you can,” I instructed the assembled clan.

Keera tapped her brow in deference to Lord Dhara as she nodded her understanding. To my surprise, the lord echoed the gesture back at us. Lords rarely made such gestures to others. I bowed my head respectfully.

Without another word, we set out in the direction the rider had indicated the night before. Once we were out of earshot, Keera spoke.

“Do we have a plan for attacking the lava wyrm?” she asked.

“I may be skilled in combat, but even I’m not stupid enough to go into a fight with a creature of legend unprepared.”

“Thanks for cluing me in,” Keera quipped.

A smile tugged at my lips, but I tamped it down.

“We’ll use our sabers,” I started .

“How will we get close? I’m not sure about you, but I can’t walk through molten rock.”

“You know how we’ve practiced throwing rocks?” I asked.

“Yes. Are you going to throw rocks at it? I thought you just said we will use sabers.” Keera looked quizzical.

“You’re about the size of a boulder.”

Keera stared at me as if she expected this to be some sort of joke and she was waiting for the punchline. When all I did was shrug, her eyes widened.

“You’re going to throw… me?”

“That was my plan.”

“And how is that supposed to help us?”

“If you can get on its back, you can find a weak point without having to approach it on foot. Besides, you stole my kill in the hunt at the Trials just fine by jumping down from above with a knife. We’re just going to be using your strategy again.”

Her expression was incredulous. “And what will you be doing after using me as a projectile?”

“I’ll be the distraction.”

She opened her mouth to argue, clearly not keen on the idea of being launched straight at a beast of legend, but it was too late to turn back. Rumbling shook the ground beneath our mounts’ hooves, as if threatening to split open. Even Alza, as used to bursts of magic as she had become, pranced, showing the whites of her eyes as they rolled back in their head.

I motioned for us to dismount. This fight would be safer on foot. Neither of us would have attention to spare for spooked horses.

We continued creeping forward on foot. I drew my saber from across my back and a metallic shink to my left told me Keera had done the same. As we crested the ridge of a dune, a smoldering graveyard came into view.

Blackened patches of rock led into oozing magma, still glowing a reddish orange. Charred bones littered the ground, the skeletons of horses and humans intermingled. I swallowed and looked away quickly when my eyes caught on a skull small enough to belong to a toddler.

“Sands,” Keera cursed under her breath. When I followed her line of sight to where she was looking, I was inclined to agree.

Curled up on a steaming pile of magma was a lizard three times the size of Alza. A long snout rested on scaley hands, each finger tipped with a claw as long as my dirk. As the creature snored, it became apparent where the rumbling in the earth was coming from. Smoke rose from its nostrils as it exhaled, curling into the pale-blue sky and making the normally piercing light of the sun hazy. Its eyes were closed.

“Do you think we could sneak up on it?” Keera murmured, voice little more than a breath.

“I’m all for trying.”

Carefully, we crept down the far side of the dune, doing our best not to make a noise. As we got closer, it became more difficult to avoid small bones that would crunch under foot. The scent of charred flesh grew thick as we approached, gagging me.

We halted at the edge of the patch of gradually hardening lava the wyrm used as its bed. I dared not touch it with my boot even to test its temperature, the billowing smoke telling me that it would likely burst into flames. I blinked against the stinging of my eyes.

Keera waved, grabbing my attention. She mimed throwing, and my heart sank. She had apparently changed her mind relatively quickly about my plan being a good one. Standing as close as we were now though, I couldn’t see any weakness that she might be able to exploit even if I did get her onto its back. If what Lord Dhara said was true, the only soft spot would be its underbelly, and laying like this, its vulnerability was completely hidden.

Another step closer, and Keera was standing between me and the creature, looking impatiently over her shoulder, as if now that we were here, she didn’t know why I would hesitate to launch her like an arrow from a bow. I took a deep breath in through my nose, considering my options, and regretted it immediately. Between the smoke and the burnt carcasses around us, I choked. I swallowed to suppress my cough, but it was too late.

The moment I made a noise, the wyrm’s eyelids snapped open, a second translucent membrane underneath blinking away its sleep. Burning orange eyes without a pupil fixed on us immediately and the creature let out a roar so loud I was sure our horses were fleeing.

Faster than I would have thought possible for a creature that large, a clawed hand shot out, swiping at Keera. I leaped, tackling her to the ground. We rolled in the sand, the creature’s claw just catching on my hood and ripping it free from my head. As it fluttered to the ground, we both sprang to our feet.

The wyrm pushed to stand, the squat, angled legs looking too short for the bulk of its barrel like body. Thin, vestigial wings lifted and fluttered from the middle of its back, causing the smoke around it to whirl and eddy in dizzying patterns.

Keera made to dart forward, but the wyrm opened its mouth, releasing a waterfall of molten lava. She leaped back, the red-hot ooze sizzling inches from the toes of her boots. With a flick of my saber and a lick of magic, I sent the nearby skull of a horse flying at the creature. It smacked it just between the eyes with a solid crack, confirming that its scales were hard as bone. Still, its triangular head swung in my direction and away from Keera.

It snarled, showing far fewer teeth than I would have expected on a beast so fearsome. I didn’t have time to contemplate as another bout of lava shot from its mouth, this time in a long stream, jetting at my face. I leaped over it, tugging at the strings of the desert around me to heighten my jump. I flipped in midair to land on my feet once more.

Now the creature charged. Swinging its claws at me again, I used my saber to knock it aside. The blow reverberated through the blade and up to my shoulder. For the first time ever, I worried that Kelvar’s saber would not hold up to the strength of my opponent.

I took advantage of the creature getting close to me to dart forward, trying to shove the blade down its throat, but it skittered backward at an incomprehensible speed. Clearly threatened, it made a furious hiss before vomiting up a gout of lava, forming a veritable moat around itself.

“Erix!”

Sometime during the fight, Keera had worked her way around behind me. I chanced a glance over my shoulder to find her charging at me full tilt. I only had a moment to realize her intentions before I crouched down.

Her boots landed between my shoulder blades. I heaved upwards with my body, also reaching out to pluck the strings of the desert’s magic that clung to her. They were shockingly easy to grasp, and I tugged on them, flinging her through the air with the combined force of her jump and my magic.

She hung suspended in the air for a moment, and I could only watch in awe. Then the gravity defying moment slipped away, and she landed on the creature’s back with a thud. She tried to roll upon landing, but the wyrm bucked at the attack, knocking her off to the side. She just managed to grab the base of its wing to avoid plummeting off, saber dangling uselessly in her other hand. Her toes brushed dangerously close to the lava covered ground as she kicked out, trying to climb back on.

The creature bucked again, spinning around, and trying to push itself up on to two legs before crashing down again. I knew I had to distract it if Keera was going to climb atop it. Using scorching lava around me, I pulled on the heat of the desert to shoot a small spurt of flames at the wyrm.

As expected, it was immune to the fire, but its attention snapped to me. Still it continued to spin away from me. I jumped forward, just to be knocked back as its muscular tail swiped a rock the size of a red wolf from the ground in my direction.

Having found a new way to attack, it continued swiping its tail back and forth, knocking rocks in my face. As it managed to send another boulder flying at me, I released a feral yell, unleashing some of my power as I swung my saber down. The rock split down the middle, skidding to a stop on either side of me in a spray of pebbles and ash.

As the dust settled, I blinked my vision clear just in time to see Keera climb astride the wyrm’s back. If I thought seeing her ride a horse was incredible, watching her atop a creature of legend was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Still, I had no time to consider such things as the wyrm resumed its efforts to unseat her. With a roar, I launched the broken half of the boulder at its side. It whipped around to face me, clearly no longer satisfied with swiping at me blindly. As it spat more lava, I darted to the side to escape its deathly breath. I ran out of space quickly, finding myself up against another smoldering patch of black rock.

Its lips pulled back from its strangely toothless gums as if to grin in triumph, clearly winding up to shoot another stream of fiery rock to where I was standing, trapped. I crouched down, ready to launch myself into the air to jump over the attack.

A fearsome cry spit the air, and Keera leaped over the crest of its head, saber held aloft. She landed on the creature’s brow, digging her blade into its glimmering orange eye all the way up to the hilt.

Blood spurted out of the wound, soaking her entire arm, and splattering across her chest and face. The wyrm let out a grunting hiss, crumpling to ground in a scaley heap. It twitched violently in its death throws, but Keera drove her saber in deep, twisting it for good measure.

With one final shudder, the creature went limp. Magic still roared in the base of my neck from the fight, wanting to be let loose—to launch more stones and pull at the edges of the desert until I was the one breathing fire. Still, my gaze remained fixed on Keera, hoping she was uninjured.

She pushed to her feet as she yanked her bloody weapon free of the carcass beneath her. As she stood, she looked at me, and her face split into a dazzling smile, brighter than the sunshine starting to cut through the lingering smoke around us. As she shook her hair back from her face, splattered in blood and grinning in victory, my heart stuttered, but my magic calmed.

I smiled back, irritated that she couldn’t see my face as I had put my mask on this morning. Without a thought, I reached up and ripped it off.

“I might need a hand down,” she shouted from her perch. There wasn’t a safe place to climb down where the ground wasn’t half molten.

“I don’t know. I think you look lovely up there.” It was out of my mouth in an instant, and I found myself biting my cheek violently. Even if I could control my magic, the adrenaline of the fight seemed to have left my tongue on a loose leash.

Keera thankfully didn’t react to my comment, instead spinning in place and surveying her surroundings. “I can certainly see a good amount from up here.” She pointed behind the beast. “It looks like it has some sort of nest over there.”

I headed in the direction she indicated, picking my way around still smoldering patches of lava and bones. Keera mirrored me, walking down the spine of the felled wyrm toward its hind quarters before picking her way down its tail. She paused at the end, crouching.

I nodded to her, and she leaped. With a jolt of my power, I helped her fly over the moat of lava to where I stood. I caught her around the waist without thinking, my free arm wrapping around her and pulling her close to break her fall even though it wasn’t strictly necessary.

She didn’t pull away immediately resting the hand not holding her saber on my shoulder and smiling up at me.

“Let’s go check out the nest,” she said. “It’s not every day that you get to see the lair of creature straight out of legend.”

I followed her toward the dense pile of bones she indicated even as I frowned. “I think legends exaggerate. It wasn’t nearly as big as I thought it would be.”

“Are you complaining that it didn’t block out the sun as it reared up and spread its wings, as the fireside tales like to say?”

“No, although its wings were disappointing.”

Keera shrugged. “Even in the stories they couldn’t actually fly.”

By now we had approached the circle of bones that marked the creature’s home. Keera vaulted over the waist-height barrier, and I followed suit. I paused, my frown deepening as I took in the sight that greeted me inside.

A large amount of what looked like blackened pottery littered the ground, leading in a trail to a large orb of the same material. It was shattered as if broken from the inside out.

“Is that…”

“An egg.”

We stared in twin disbelief, a weight settling low in my belly. It all made sense now, from the creature’s size to its toothless gums.

“If it was a baby though…” I started.

Keera finished my thought for me, her grim tone echoing my own thoughts. “That means there must be a mother somewhere.”