Chapter 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

Keera

I slept better than I might have that night, worn out and sated by Erix’s and my explorations. Still, falling asleep to the familiar silhouettes of date palms and rock formations that had been my only company for so long made me jumpy. I woke up many times in the night, squeezing Erix’s hand where it interlaced with my own to make sure he was real, afraid I would wake up to find everything to be a dehydration-induced hallucination. I didn’t think I could survive being alone again—not now that I had been with Erix, bonded in a way that did more to soothe the ache of loneliness than being surrounded by a city full of people.

When we rode away in the morning, I was glad to put the oasis to Daiti’s tail. As we set out, I turned to take one last look at the sight that had been my entire world for too long. The borders of my existence only continued to grow, but the girl that had been trapped here, abandoned by her own parents, lived inside me. She still itched to scream and rage at the injustice of it all, even as she was afraid of the power that had twisted inside her, lashing out before going silent for too long.

Erix paused beside me. “You never have to go back.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to undo what had happened to me .

“Step back,” he instructed. I looked at him curiously, but did as he asked, urging Daiti away from where he sat on Alza.

Erix reached out toward the oasis and closed his eyes. A tug at my gut made me jolt, Daiti shifting beneath me as the power of the desert coalesced around Erix. A roaring filled my ears, coming from everywhere as well as inside my own head.

The ground trembled and shifted beneath my feet, and a cloud of dust, like a small sandstorm, swept through the oasis before us, blocking it from view. Then, as suddenly as it came, the roaring stopped and the magic trickled away from Erix, like sand running between my fingers.

Swirls and eddies of dust began to settle, revealing nothing but smooth sand. The palms and the pool of water had been washed away, and even the rocks I’d pitched my lean-to against had been erased by Erix’s power, as if they had never been there at all. Erix had reshaped the desert for me.

I nodded, not knowing how to show my thanks, but sure Erix could feel my gratitude nonetheless. In reality, I knew destroying the place that had been my prison for so long changed nothing, but a knot inside me loosened knowing it was gone just the same.

I kneed Daiti around and left it all behind me, Erix riding at my side.

Picking up the lava wyrm’s trail again was easy, the black patches of hardened lava marring the ground like scars. The massive beast had a head start on us, and seemed to move quickly as we followed its path for the greater part of a week, even though we rode hard every day.

Every morning, Erix and I started the day practicing our forms side by side, the connection between us growing even stronger as our magic flowed together. Each night, the bond between us was blown wide as we lay in each other’s arms. Even as we went to face down the most dangerous creature to have been seen in centuries, the mood between us was as light as it had ever been those first few nights.

I couldn’t get enough of Erix, exploring every inch of him with my fingers and mouth every chance I got. Erix, while still looking dumbstruck every time I reached out to touch him, seemed to melt into the attention the more I gave it to him. It emboldened me, as if I could rub his salt and sandalwood scent into my skin.

On the second night, I took Erix into my mouth, craving even his taste. Erix shuddered and wrapped my hair around his fist, and I reveled in how it bound him to me as much as I to him. It didn’t last very long before he pushed me off him, pulling my hips into the air and driving into me punishingly from behind.

As the nights passed though, the signs indicated that we were gaining ground on our quarry, and the mood became more subdued. The patches of lava we saw now simmered, and the smell of smoke coming off the trail we followed took on the unmistakable stench of decay and rotting flesh.

After a week, we sat around our campfire, using the fire to harden the tips of the javelins we had worked on as we rode. Tonight, I had managed to start the fire without a flint, a spark of my magic jumping forth easily to light the tinder. Now that I could feel the way he channeled the immense power within him through our bond, I learned how to do it myself more easily. I could only hope that the increased use of my power would be enough for us to defeat the lava wyrm. I tried not to think of how many innocent clanspeople would be swallowed by its fire if we failed.

“I think we’ll find the lava wyrm tomorrow or the day after.” Erix drew a whetstone over his saber in smooth motions as he spoke. The metallic grating had become almost soothing to me as this was a nightly routine of his.

I nodded. The nearby lava trail contained areas that still glowed reddish orange and bubbled lazily.

“Do you think we’ll be able to kill it?” I asked.

It was a question that had weighed on both our minds for days. I could tell Erix wondered at it even as he hadn’t voiced it, in the way he contemplated the carnage in our path, his mouth set in a hard line.

“We have no choice.” He shrugged casually, despite the grimness of his words.

I hugged my knees to my chest and watched his hands work, his movements clean and efficient. He no longer wore his gloves, which stayed stowed in packs along with his mask .

“I think we should use the same tactic as last time,” Erix continued. “Even if this one is larger, its weakness should be the same. No matter how thick its scales are, its eyes should still be vulnerable.”

I swallowed, remembering how the baby wyrm had nearly bucked me off, the heat rolling off its hide nearly unbearable as I climbed across its back to dig my saber into its skull. Still, if Erix was volunteering to draw the attention of a fully grown wyrm to give me a chance to strike the killing blow, then I would face down the challenge. Clan Otush had suffered enough of the baby wyrm’s wrath, and I shuddered to think what would happen if a fully grown adult would do if it set its sights on a clan encampment. Still, I wondered if there were another way to defeat it.

“Couldn’t you just destroy it with your magic like you did the oasis?” I asked.

Erix stared into the fire, opening and closing his mouth a few times as if considering his answer.

“I can’t usually do things like that,” he admitted. “Occasionally though, the whispers in my head tell me to try things that would normally be impossible. I almost feel that the desert wants things… that she lets me do things I shouldn’t be able to when it fits her purposes.”

I stared, wanting to argue that his explanation didn’t make sense, but that wasn’t completely true. While some people, like the queen, spoke of the desert like it was a force of nature, powerful but uncaring, it had never seemed that way to me. The desert was a friend and an adversary, and sometimes I could taste her moods and her intentions on the air. I had thought I had given her sentience in my isolation, to make myself feel less alone, but Erix felt it too. The old ways of the clans acknowledged it too, in their belief that the Champion was chosen by the desert, and not just by their skill in a duel.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” I admitted. While I had set out to fell the wyrm without him, I had to admit it likely would have been a fool’s errand on my own, ending in a smoldering grave. It was a mission I had taken despite that risk, for if I could not find acceptance among the desert’s people, then I could at least die for them. This still might be my end, but with the immense power Erix held in the tips of his fingers— magic that he showed me how to use more and more every day—we had a chance.

“I’ll be with you, for better or for worse,” Erix murmured.

“It might be for worse.”

“I knew that when you spit in my face the first time we met, but here I am anyway.” Erix’s smile was small, but it bolstered my courage all the same.

The mood was solemn as we set out the next morning. Even the horses seemed to sense the tension in the air, Daiti forgoing his usual show of displeasure when I loaded our supplies. As we mounted, Erix and I both checked that all our weapons were within easy reach. Both of us carried our sabers across our back and dirks at our hips, along with a supply of javelins lashed to the horses’ backs.

By midday, all the trails of lava we passed were red-hot and liquid, some still trailing in treacherous streams. The horses picked their way across the dangerous terrain, slowing our progress.

The magma became more and more prevalent, making it difficult to make headway, until we came across a patch of molten rock the size of the pool at the oasis. The surface boiled ominously, the stillness of the desert broken by the thick plat of bubbles popping on the surface of the viscous liquid.

Erix squinted, raising a hand to his brow to peer to the other side of the fiery pond. I mirrored him, only to find that beyond the expanse of lava lay only unmarked sand.

“The trail just… ends.”

I frowned, looking around. Off to either side spread pristine golden earth, not even disturbed by variation in the sand to tell us where our quarry had gone.

“It can’t be injured or dead,” I mused. “We would notice a body that big.”

Erix’s brow twisted in thought. “I know the legends say their wings are too frail to support them but… it didn’t fly off, did it?”

I opened my mouth to say that anything seemed possible at this point, but a bone-rattling rumbling cut me off. Even though I screamed for Erix to watch out, it was too late. A roar split the air and the magma before us rippled and writhed before exploding out. A giant blackened form burst forth from the center of the pit, the lava wyrm’s blunt, triangular head cresting the surface before rising up and up into the sky on an impossibly large body.

Daiti screamed in terror. So fixated was I on the beast before me, erupting forth from a lake of its own lava, that I didn’t have time to grab on to my mount’s neck as he reared. I slid from his back, hitting the sand, and rolling. By the time I got to my feet, he was already running away, the black shadow of Alza hot on his heels. Any hope of using our javelins against the wyrm was lost with them as they retreated. Either Erix had dismounted more gracefully or had just recovered faster as he was already crouched, weapons drawn.

The wyrm before us stood up on two hind legs, spread its membranous wings, and shook itself, sending gobs of fiery rock spraying everywhere. I raised my arms against the spray, and a few droplets landed on my sleeves, burning through to scorch my skin beneath.

An invisible hand shoved me to the side, a brush of Erix’s power helping me leap out of the way just in time for the wyrm to crash down onto all fours. Its head now between Erix and me, it swung back and forth, maw opening wide to show teeth nearly as long as the saber that I unsheathed.

One glowing pupilless orange eye fixed on me, and it swung toward me with a snarl. Its breath gusted over to me in a choking cloak of sulfur and smoke. I took the opportunity to try to sashay to the side, hoping to skirt around it and rejoin with Erix where we could execute our plan.

The wyrm had other ideas, vomiting up a gout of lava as it spun, creating a half circle of fire around it that effectively separated me from Erix. I heard him shout on the far side of the beast, catching its attention. A clang of metal on hardened scales signaled that he had attacked while I distracted it, and the wyrm whipped around, faster than I would have thought possible for a creature ten times the size of Daiti.

I threw myself backward, just in time to avoid the club of its tail, the end of which was decorated with wicked blackened spikes that the young wyrm had lacked. As the appendage whistled by, hot wind whipped my face, as if I had leaned too close to a fire while cooking. Where the young wyrm’s flesh had been uncomfortably hot to touch, I knew the scales of the adult would burn and blister my skin on contact. Still, I had a job to do.

The creature scuttled forward and away from me, apparently advancing on Erix. I unconsciously tugged the tether between him, finding his power knotted tight and strong on the other end as he fought. The feeling reinforced my resolve. If he wasn’t there to throw me atop the wyrm’s back, I would have to launch myself.

My feet churned in the sand as I pushed myself forward into a run, pumping my arms and pushing myself as fast as possible to gain momentum. I reached for the power of the desert flowing around me, through the well in my gut, in Erix, even in the wyrm before me, where the magic tasted rotten and blackened. As I gathered my strength in my thighs to leap into the air, I threw myself into a current of power. I flew through the air, breath catching in my throat as a few threads of Erix’s power tugged me even higher. Then gravity grabbed me once more, and I plummeted toward the wyrm’s broad scaley back, poised to land right between its shrunken wings.

I landed in a crouch, a scream tearing from my throat as the heat of its scales melted through the soles of my boots in a split second. Unconsciously trying to avoid the heat, I lost my balance, pitching sideways toward the ground below.

I flung out the arm holding my saber, hoping to stab into the wyrm’s flesh and stop my fall, but it skidded across flesh as hard as any armor. The blade screeched against scales, throwing sparks into the air as I dropped.

I landed flat on my back, forcing all the air from my lungs and turning my vision white. A shout from Erix warned me just in time for me to roll blindly away, a foot tipped with deadly talons crashing down where my torso had been just a moment before. However, I wasn’t quite fast enough, and the wyrm’s weight came down on my shin instead.

My scream drowned out the crunch of my bone as it gave way under the beast’s massive weight.

“Keera!”

Erix’s shout cut through the haze of pain, the fibers of his magic pulling taught and shuddering with tension as he raged against the wyrm. I blinked against the watering of my eyes, finding myself still halfway under the creature, the flesh on its belly a sickly white color.

It’s underbelly—the only place besides its eyes where it was unprotected by scales.

Clangs and cracks, along with the rage pouring down the bond from Erix, told me he had the creature thoroughly distracted. Rolling onto my front, I used my elbows to drag myself forward, further beneath the wyrm to where I hoped housed its vital organs. My one leg dragged behind me uselessly, twisted at an odd angle, but I grit my teeth against the white-hot sensation.

The body above me heaved as the wyrm prepared to spit lava at Erix. Before it could, I shoved my sword up hard. Boiling blood dripped down my arm as I drove my blade in all the way to the hilt. I screamed but didn’t let go, twisting savagely as the wyrm roared in agony. The form shuddered and convulsed.

When I was sure I had hit my mark, I let go of my sword, trying to crawl out from beneath the dying beast. I was too late. Partially twisted onto my side, I threw up one arm to shield myself from the massive form collapsing atop me.

Erix’s screaming filled my head as searing heat engulfed me.