60. Long Live The King

60. Long Live The King

Skylenna

As the sun rises, aburst of burnt amber and apple cider light filters through the hole of the underground drain pipes that reek of a molding mummy, a basement of mildew, and the sodden aroma of my growing dread.

I haven’t been able to leave this narrow, gray passage due to a storm of soldiers, Blood Mammoths, and beasts of all sizes searching for me. They’ve shouted in foreign words, only exposing one I actually understand: Skylenna.

Chunky sewage and dirty water collect around my thighs and hips, and occasionally that horrid creek brings dead animals, like mice or kittens floating like rubber duckies in a child’s bathtub. Mushy and decaying.

And I’m sitting in my own piss and shit.

My stomach is empty, grumbling, chewing on itself as I starve and grow dehydrated to the point of dropping dead. My skin is pale and pruned. My mind is swirling with doubt, and the fear of failure won’t seem to leave me be! The nightmares grow more powerful each time I close my eyes. Ruth dying. Niles dying. Never seeing Dessin again. Being killed before I can reach the army. It’s all there.

But as I stretch up to my tiptoes to look out the hole blazing with the morning sunrise, the village is finally quiet. No more stomping hooves or shouting soldiers. It’s quiet and…hopefully, safe to flee. As if I even have a choice anymore. Another few hours in this hole, and I’m dead.

I lift my arms to grip the edges of that drain hole, but my God, I’m so terribly heavy with the disgusting water soaking through my leather. My boots feel like they weigh fifty pounds a piece.

“Arrrrgh!” My arms tremble as I pull myself up another few inches. It’s agony. I’m weak and hungry and exhausted. My boots splash back into the gray water as I let go, huffing and grunting from the energy I wasted.

“Fuck!” I hiss, my bottom lip jutting out in frustration. “I can do this. I have to do this!”

Jumping again, I use the muscles in my thighs to give me some added height in hopes I won’t have to use as much strength to pull myself up. But gravity hits me like an avalanche.

Again, jump, pull, shake, slip.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each attempt is more pathetic.

Again.

Again.

Again!

I fall backward, hitting my head, and chunky water spatters into my gasping mouth.

“Oh, god! Oh, god! I’m going to die down here! Oh, god. Please, no. Protect my friends. Protect Dessin. Please, I don’t care what happens to me. I could die in this hole knowing my family would find freedom.”

“Protect them yourself.”

A voice that still haunts my dreams, still sends distress escalating into my core, echoes along the stone walls of the drain tunnels.

My eyes search the darkness now filling with the early sun, landing on a man who used to seem so tall, so frightening to me.

His five o’clock shadow, dark shiny hair, and sea-green eyes. His leather jacket and dimpled chin.

Jack Ambrose stands above me, holding out his hand.

“No…” I mutter with a dry mouth and burning eyes. This tunnel of rainwater, debris, and rusty air shrinks around me.

In an instant, it all happens so fast. The memories of what he did to me. And then the truth that the void showed me. He loved Scarlett and me. Our mother loved us, too. He was a victim of these experiments, and he even ended his life to make sure they couldn’t use him as a pawn to hurt his little girl anymore.

“You deserved a good daddy, Skylenna.” His deep voice breaks along with his face, pinching together in a frown. “I’m so sorry they took that away from us. I love you. I’ve loved you your whole life!”

The sound of my father crying turns my body to mush. I cry with him, watching the big man drop to his knees, sloshing the nasty water around us. And I throw my arms around his neck, remembering the sweet moments we had before I turned six. The days under the Red Oaks. The scripture he’d read me on Sunday while I ate vanilla ice cream. He was once a good father.

“I love you, too!”

My father holds me close while he breaks apart softly, stroking my matted hair down my back, giving my cheeks soft kisses. We deserved to always have this relationship. We were robbed of it.

“You don’t have much time, my sweet daughter.” He separates our embrace to hold my face in his warm, calloused hands. “You need to get to DaiSzek. There’s a bond between you two that goes beyond logic. It’s in your blood, linking your souls, and giving you a language no one else other than Dessin can understand. Once you find him, the enemy is doomed to fail.”

Goose bumps prickle up the backs of my arms. The sound and shape of his name quickens my breath and ignites my soul. The urge to find him, to hold my big, furry boy is overpowering. It laces my blood with something stronger and more ferocious than adrenaline.

“You are a warrior archangel sent from God himself to strike down the evil in this world. Be that angel now. No mortal body can contain what lies under your flesh and in your soul.”

My pulse skitters in my throat like a jack rabbit’s heartbeat. I give my father one last look, one last hug. “I’ll always love you.”

“Always,” he replies with fresh tears swimming in his eyes.

My muscles buzz with new energy as I look to the hole streaming with daylight. This time, as I jump, I throw my arms back, swinging them upward, and use my feet to claw against the slimy wall. I kick so hard that I’m able to hoist myself onto my elbows, eyes watering as the light blinds me. Panting, I wiggle out, thrusting myself forward until my boots are free of that dingy hole.

And as I stand, rubbing my eyes against their natural adjustment, I see that my father is no longer here. He did what he needed to do.

As the adrenaline subsides, I feel the sting in my left bicep. The slash of torn skin where the arrow hit me has been opened back up from my many attempts to free myself from the drain.

And blood is dripping down the tips of my fingers.

It’s mixed with the sewage water, splattering on the sandstone street. Like a knee to the gut, I recall the other monsters that are looking for me.

Blood Mammoths.

Those awful products of generational incest, big like ogres, long hair, and no ears. They’re inhumanly strong, impossible to escape if they catch the scent of blood…

I bolt toward the end of Madmaz village, focusing on the East Vexello Mountains. The army that lies just beyond their glorious peaks. I’ve been through too much to be captured now.

Sprinting past an execution stage with a guillotine and rope for hangings, the void adds pressure to the back of my mind, begging me to stop, to see, to witness all that has happened here. Something horrible. Something that will likely kill me, too.

But I let DaiSzek’s face fill my mind with sloppy kisses and belly scratches. This is my one step, my one goal to achieve, and the enemy is doomed to fail.

Leaving the borders of this village, alarms sound off behind me. Loud bells clanking together. And the ground rumbles with stomping feet. It isn’t just the sound of soldiers running about. It’s the heavy, ogre footsteps that shake the earth. The clumsy, erratic race of Blood Mammoths. Blood thirsty. Crazed.

And I am their target.

Sweat drizzles down my temples. Fire weakens my legs with each stride. I’m probably not even running as fast as I think I am. My stomach has been empty for days, and I’m running on nothing but determination.

I make the mistake of twisting my neck to see a cluster of ugly, barbaric Blood Mammoths galloping wildly through the confines of the village, gaining on me with ease. Their raven hair flies around their face cages like stringy flags, and their bodies are even more terrifying in the daylight. The waxy chests are covered in boils, blisters, and sores. And their faces…crooked. Distorted. Slobber and drool spills down their chins.

Fuck.

I wish Dessin was by my side. He would know what to do.

The East Vexello Mountains grow in size as I race closer to them, hiking up sandy hills, tripping into dunes and ditches. Tears swell over my eyes as I realize my body is unable to keep going. Unable to take any more exertion. I taste coppery blood coming from bursting vessels in my lungs. I feel like a bag of bones, a chunk of meat ready to collapse, to drop dead. When the Blood Mammoths catch me, and they will, I won’t be able to fight back. I’m not even certain I’ll be able to access the void to hurt them the way I did last time I was chased.

There’s a bond between you two that goes beyond logic. It’s in your blood, linking your souls, and giving you a language no one else other than Dessin can understand.

A divot of sand and rock catches my boot mid stride, and I go flying, slamming to the ground on my hands and knees. I cough and hack, accidentally inhaling the sand.

There’s a bond between you two that goes beyond logic.

Every time I’ve ever screamed in terror, DaiSzek has been there to defend me. But I have no energy to scream. I have no air left in my lungs to give.

…giving you a language no one else other than Dessin can understand.

Soaked from head to toe in sweat and blood and drain water, I close my eyes in that dune of sand. I ignore the stampede of Blood Mammoths growing so close I can practically smell their oily skin and meaty breath. I give myself over to the angelic nature that my father spoke of. To the divine magic that clearly links me to my supreme protector.

I open my arms to the sky.

I feel the tingling sensation of my love for my guardian, stronger than a mountain, faster than a storm, and filled to the brim with the fire of a dragon. Fear slips from my grasp as the breeze picks up, blasting against my sodden skin. It’s telepathic as it soars through the void, through a bond that can’t be explained with words.

And with a single pulse of my mind, I need no words, no thoughts, not a single scream.

Because I can feel him racing through heaven and hell.

I can sense the wave of terror he brings, the will of the Almighty God himself.

And as I open my eyes to the daylight and backdrop of the obsidian mountains, all I see is the venomous glow of crimson eyes and midnight fur hurtling toward me like a lion on the hunt. DaiSzek leaps over as the Blood Mammoths dive into the dune of sand, following the scent of my blood, only to be led into the jaws of the greatest beast there ever was and ever will be.

DaiSzek devours them in a savage wrath of fangs and claws and puddles of blood.

The sand is soaked in red, littered with heads and fingers and arms, all separated from their bodies. My boy stands there above the carnage, looking back at me with those cinnamon eyes, and I can’t help but choke on a sob of relief. Because I know he feels it, too. Being apart from him for this long was like missing an arm or leg. Missing my heart from my chest cavity.

And as I bawl in a fit of gratitude and love for my boy, he jumps over the massacre, leaping into my arms like a puppy that’s come home to his mama.