Abandoned (The Scars Remain #1)

Chapter One

To the Grave

In the distance, through the haze of the desert, a shape

began to appear.

At first, Isaac thought it was a sandwyrm surfacing through

the dunes. He started to panic again. His mind grasped for his books, all the

bestiaries lying heavily in his pack, trying to remember every detail he had

ever learned about the eyeless dragons. They were colossal, easily the size of

a city road. They were territorial. They were vicious when disturbed. Their

glass-like scales were impervious to arrows and blades. Most importantly, if

Isaac could see the wyrm now, it had already long ago sensed his presence, and

it was only breaching the earth to close in for the kill.

He stopped, feeling the heat of the sand through the thin

soles of his boots. Out in the distance, the shape only grew larger. For the

life of him, Isaac could not spot the vestigial wings, the glittering hide of

scales, or any other key identifying anatomy. The lessons from his textbooks

slipped from his mind like mist.

He blinked, standing tall at the peak of a dune. Down below,

in a valley of sand, the shape crawled through a shimmering haze of heat.

It was not a mirage. Something massive was there.

He licked his lips.

When he tried to focus his eyes, the sand and sky began to

swirl around him, like a rug pulled beneath his feet. He lost his balance,

stumbling briefly, cursing himself for making even more vibrations for the

creature to sense.

He was dizzy.

He was utterly, desperately thirsty.

He was growing certain that he was going to die.

He knew he shouldn’t have been out during the day. While

pressing the scrolls and phylacteries into his pack, his uncle had instructed

him to travel by night, emphasizing that Isaac should never, under any

circumstances, choose to brave the sun’s light, as this was the time when the wyrms would vent their sediments into the alluvial waters

beneath the earth, which brought them dangerously near to the surface.

Of course, the heat was also a concern.

He licked his lips again.

For a time, Isaac had followed his uncle’s advice, making

camp inside dry gulches during the day and travelling around the deeper pockets

of sand during the night. Unfortunately, by his fourth day in the desert, he

had exhausted his waterskins, and he had been forced to scavenge in the morning

light for what little vegetation existed in this desolate area of the world,

ripping the plants from the scraggly dirt and sucking the moisture from their

roots. His rations of salt meat and hardtack had only worsened his thirst. Now,

on the dawn of the sixth day, he was stumbling through a valley of dunes,

searching for an oasis his map told him was only a half-day’s journey away. He

knew that, if he didn’t reach it soon, he would certainly die.

His mission was in grave danger.

He was thirsty.

Gods above, he was thirsty.

Right now, all he could see was a large shape heading in his

direction. Isaac was no longer certain it was not a mirage. It seemed to float

on the edge of the sand like a blade of grass on still water, curling within

the hazes of heat.

Isaac attempted to steel himself.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and reached down into the

quiver at his hip, pulling out a rolled sheet of vellum, which began to glow

upon contact with his skin. He unfurled the page and held the faintly limned

sigil in the direction of the approaching shape. With his other hand, he

performed the necessary mnemonics, the motions that would bring about the

magical transmutation of energy. A familiar draining sensation sucked through

his inner being, channeling into the scroll. Isaac had to force himself not to

stumble again.

For all their might and ferocity, the sandwyrms were not

mindless creatures. A single warning was capable of scaring them away. The

spell would be exhausting to perform, in a time where he needed to conserve all

the strength he had left—at the same time, anything less than a catalyzed blast

would not intimidate the beast. He had to seem like a threat.

Isaac aimed. His breath steadied.

In the distance, the shape seemed to become—

A fireball erupted from the scroll, arcing across the dunes

like a second sun blazing through the sky. Isaac wobbled on his feet, the

sudden transfer of energy nearly buckling his legs. He watched with dizzied

eyes as the fireball completed its downward trajectory, exploding into a nearby

dune, searing the sand into glass, the edges of the flames raining across the

body of the wyrm. Isaac expected the beast to quickly

flee into the clay and rock below the dunes. He had encountered more than a

dozen wyrms in his trek across the desert, and all of them had decided to

retreat rather than risk a determined battle.

Instead, as he watched, the shape began to change.

Suddenly, Isaac could make out more details. He saw the

angled spire of a prow. He saw a top deck festooned with lines of netting and

rope. He saw cannon portholes stitched in rows across a wooden broadside.

Finally, he saw twin masts sporting a single large sail, which glowed with the

large, circular sigil of wind propulsion magic.

The shape had not been a sandwyrm.

It was a sandship.

A skimmer.

People.

He had just attacked people.

“Shit,” Isaac said.

A sharp semicircle of sand kicked up into the air as the

ship pulled a hard turn across the face of a dune, trying to dodge the rains of

fire. Seeing clearly now, Isaac was able to discern multiple sailors rushing

along the deck. Their forms were large and varied, covered in wayward patches

of leather armor, mixed with tails and animal heads and the brief impression of

swords.

All at once, the magical sigil on

the ship’s sail began to glow brighter. Members of the crew were pouring fire

directly onto the fabric, which was absorbed like water and transformed

directly into momentum. The ship was accelerating. It was still turning in

Isaac’s direction. As the vessel completed its hard shift to port, a black

standard unfurled itself along the foremast, showing a canine skull perched

over crossbones.

They were pirates.

He had attacked a pirate ship.

For a moment, Isaac could only stare in awe. He had read

about the pirates of this desert, how their ships travelled across sand and

gravel as easily as water, using the magical technology to plunder any caravans

that dared to cross the wastes. They were zoanthropes near exclusively, foxes

and hyenas and lions, forming a cadre of predator species that were highly

adapted to life in the desert. He had only seen a few of the human-like beasts

in his life, though he had read many tales, and the important facts were

salient enough. Most of them stood a head or two taller than humans. Most could

kill him with a single swipe of their claws. Right now, all of them were

yelling and snarling in his direction, raking the air with the edge of their

sabers.

“Fuck,” Isaac said.

Their first cannon salvo knocked him out of his shock.

Plumes of smoke burst from the broadside of the ship, and the ground before him

erupted in a rushing line. Isaac dove away, feeling the wind of an iron ball

screaming past the spot where his torso had been a second earlier. He scrambled

to his feet, spitting out sand. The ship had completed its turn, gaining speed

as it sailed down a valley of dunes, and it was now bearing down square in his

direction, the black pirate standard fluttering in the desert breeze as the

crew poured more fire on the sail.

Isaac ran for his life.

He sprinted to the edge of his dune and jumped off the side,

sliding down the slope in a naked, desperate tumble. His worn and dirty clothes

were destroyed even further by the rushing sand, flaying the skin on his hands

and legs. Once he reached the bottom, he rolled head over heels, barely

managing to regain his balance before he was running again.

There was nowhere to go. The only thing around him was sand,

sloping off in gentle waves as far as he could see. His feet sank into it with

every step, and he quickly lost any sense of bearing from his map. There was

only panic and fear.

He heard the cannon shots just in time. He dove again, and

twin explosions of sand launched themselves into the air, mere yards away.

Crawling along the sand on his hands and knees, Isaac looked back to see the

skimmer crest over the dune like a normal ship would cross a wave, its bow

pitching and yawing over the peak of the sand until the whole vessel was

sailing clear down the other side, a few wisps of smoke still trailing from the

forward cannons. By now, most of the crew were manning their battle positions,

pointing their sabers at him with a furious, animal snarl.

Isaac knew he couldn’t run. The ship was much faster.

He had to fight.

He dumped his quiver of scrolls onto the sand and grabbed

the first one he saw. By pure chance, it happened to be the elemental catalyst

for fire, the same one he had used only a minute ago. Stumbling back to his

feet, one arm performing the casting mnemonics, Isaac began to aim the scroll

at the ship as it finished descending the dune, bearing down on him faster than

any wyrm had managed before.

There was another salvo, another belch from the forward

cannons. Iron balls screamed above his head. The vessel yawed and pitched. As

the ship grew closer, the pirates on the prow began to aim

their crossbows, each of them cursing in a feral language.

Isaac gritted his teeth, concentrating on the flow of

energy.

All at once, the scroll crossed its catalytic threshold,

leaping to life in Isaac’s hand. A comet-sized fireball blew out from his hand

and smashed directly into the stern of the ship, wrapping half of the top deck

in flame and drenching the rest of the vessel with rains of fire. Shouts of

rage turned into screams of fear. The zoanthropes flailed. Above the deck,

foxes scrambled up the rigging, trying to escape the tendrils of fire, while