3. Weapons Engineering
The trees of the forest, coated in fresh snow and glowing silver in the light of the two moons, reminded me more of ghosts than of woods. This was all probably for the better, as forests made me nervous, and after the summer I’d had, ghosts didn’t seem all that frightening of a concept anymore.
With the new threat of volcanic eruption, Sorcha had finally allowed my Skalmagick training to commence, despite my lingering injuries.
The night was clear, interrupted only by Gams’s storm on the horizon, so I hiked into the forest with my two Grimguards where the tree cover would hide the glow of our magick better than the windy mountainside of our hideout.
Orla had insisted on tagging along, and I leaned against her for most of the trek to the clearing where the two Grimguards would start my training. Not that long ago, Orla and I had been fighting those very same Grimguards. One of them had put an arrow through Orla’s chest. The other was Ciarán.
Needless to say, I wasn’t keen to trust either of them, and the force of Sabrina’s attacks was proving that to be a good instinct.
She seemed to take a special joy in blasting me off my feet, and despite the hours of training we’d already put in by midnight, I was still unable to create anything out of Skal that wasn’t a flail.
And flails, it turned out, made terrible shields.
“You hit her too hard again!” Orla fussed somewhere overhead.
I tried to will movement into my limbs to put Orla’s fretting at ease, but the cool touch of the ice permeating my leather chest armor was too inviting and something in my flank had definitely cracked with that last hit.
Besides, Sabrina wouldn’t hit me again if I stayed down. Probably. I wasn’t actually sure. As a Grimguard, she’d sworn fealty to my family, but the version of her I’d known in Keel Watch Harbor had been proud, a tad haughty, and definitely liable to strike me while I was splayed out on the ground.
“If hitting her hard is what it takes to get her to learn how to form a shield, then I’m going to keep hitting her hard.” Sabrina’s dark leather armor stood out against the moonlit snow, and her pale face blurred in my vision.
“She’s injured,” Orla reminded her.
“All the more reason for her to learn how to form a shield.” Magick sparked in Sabrina’s hands, and I tried to blink my eyes back into focus. It was hard, though, looking through the cracked lenses of Orla’s borrowed goggles.
“Ciarán?” Orla prodded for back-up, and a heavy sigh replied.
“Lady Quill is right, Sabrina.” Ciarán sounded bored. “It won’t do us any good if the little Saergrim is too battered to walk south on her own.”
“Little Saergrim?” I seethed at Ciarán, finally forcing myself to my knees.
Ciarán leaned against a snow-laden tree at the edge of our clearing with his black cowl pulled up over his mouth and nose.
“Would you prefer Saergrim Minor?” Ciarán’s quip sounded directly inside my head.
I balled my hands into fists in the snow. I’d prefer if he turned around and faced the tree.
“Is that an order?”
“You said you couldn’t hear my thoughts!” I snarled out loud.
Ciarán shrugged. “I heard that one.”
He was annoying me more than usual, which was honestly impressive as he usually annoyed me quite a bit. Maybe it was the fact that he got access to my head while I wasn’t allowed to know something as simple as his full name.
“What is she talking about?” The fire Sabrina played with in her hands matched the glow of her eyes. She had a cowl like Ciarán’s, and freckles played across her nose just above its hem.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s a nocturmancy thing,” Ciarán assured her, and I swiveled to glare at him.
“How intimate.” Sabrina’s orange light burst in my periphery.
Magick and Skal buzzed in my hands, begging to be let loose. I tried to imagine the strapped handle of a shield forming in my grip, and blue light expanded around my expectant fists before solidifying into yet another flail.
I swung it at Sabrina’s attack, and her Magick collided with mine. Heat seared across my face and chest, and the ice welcomed me back into its frigid embrace while the stars and two moons spun overhead.
“Sabrina.” Ciarán’s warning needled me in a way I didn’t expect.
“Tree,” I growled at him in my head. “It is an order this time.”
He snickered as he turned to face the bark.
“What’re you—” Sabrina started.
“It’s a nocturmancy thing.” I parroted Ciarán’s words back at her and struggled to my feet. I tore Orla’s goggles from my face to welcome the cool mountain air against my eyelids.
“We’re not finished,” Sabrina said.
“I can’t concentrate with them on.” It was a flimsy excuse. I had never worn goggles as a Nightmare, and even then hadn’t been any good at creating anything other than flails.
“Your retinas will burn without them,” Orla reminded me. Frost clung to her short hair, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.
“And then what? I’ll end up looking like them?” I glared at Sabrina, who blinked her black and orange eyes back at me.
“No, you’ll go blind.” Sabrina deadpanned.
“Our eyes don’t look like this because we don’t wear goggles, Blue,” Ciarán said, still facing his tree. “They look like this so we don’t have to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Permission to turn back around?”
“Fine.”
Snow crunched under his boots as he pivoted away from the tree. Even with his cowl on, the set of his brow told me he was smirking under the dark fabric. And his eyes—
My heart twisted.
His dark sclera had faded to white and the glowing orange of his irises were now a warm, honey brown.
They were Liam’s eyes.
“Goggles are inconvenient, and they break.” He strode forward to meet me in the clearing and took Orla’s cracked goggles from my hands.
I stood rigid, holding his gaze, unable to look away from the eyes I’d known to be Liam’s.
“So we use our Magick to construct tiny barriers inside our eyes. It protects our retinas and allows us to see better in the dark.”
Ciarán threw the goggles into the snow at Orla’s feet, then blinked, and the dark sclera and glowing irises returned.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Skalmagick burns your retinas so you counter that by putting Skalmagick directly in your eyes?”
“Not all Skal constructs glow, Blue,” he chuckled. “You should know that better than anyone here. As a Nightmare, how often did you emit light?”
“Your eyes are literally glowing, so obviously this construct does glow.”
“That’s only part—”
Neon light erupted from the other end of the clearing, and Orla’s warning shout mingled with the sound of Ciarán’s magick crackling and snapping in his hands as he intercepted Sabrina’s fresh attack.
Sabrina’s burst of orange shattered against Ciarán’s glowing shield, and I let the fresh flail I’d procured evaporate in my hands.
“She’s not going to learn if you block it for her,” Sabrina snapped.
Ciarán’s shield dissipated into auburn steam, and he wrapped a sudden, protective arm around my shoulders.
“Get off—” I tried to wiggle out from his embrace, but he held a finger to his lips, his glowing eyes trained on the dark trees behind Sabrina.
For a moment, I thought he must be imagining some nonexistent danger, but the longer I stared, the stronger the soft haze of indigo light percolated through tree trunks and underbrush.
“Move!” Sabrina hissed, pushing Orla into the low bushes that lined the clearing.
Ciarán pulled me after them, and the adrenaline helped dull the pain in my sides.
“Shouldn’t we run?” Orla whispered.
“There’s no time.” Ciarán fought through snow-covered underbrush, and then dropped below the vegetation to lie on his stomach in the snow. He helped me down after him, and the leaves rustled as Orla and Sabrina followed suit so we could watch our abandoned clearing together.
“Ciarán, the snow,” Sabrina hissed.
“I’ve got it.”
The prints we left in the snow behind us glowed a faint orange for a half moment, and then filled with fresh powder to hide our footsteps. And I remembered what Ciarán had said just minutes before.
Not all Skal constructs glow.
The ice beneath us at least felt good against my ribs as we waited in silence, and I set my forehead down on my hands in front of me.
“Maybe they went a different direction?” Orla whispered after a tense minute of holding our breath. Ciarán shushed her, and she shifted uncomfortably against my side.
The sound of snow crunching beneath feet accompanied that of snapping tree branches, growing louder as the newcomers approached.
We watched in silence as a squadron of leather boots trudged into the clearing where we’d just been sparring.
Wagons dragged behind them, laden with supplies and tarps.
Whoever these people were, and wherever they were from, they were planning on a long stay wherever they were going.
“Breachriver?” Sabrina whispered from Orla’s other side. “Judging from the coating on their boots?”
Ciarán murmured back in agreement.
“How about a rest, Captain?” a man called from the middle of the troupe. “This field is—”
“We’ll rest when we get to the Bay of Teeth!” someone yelled back. They were met with groans and sighs. “If the Rift clears before we arrive, the trip over the mountains will have been for nothing. I refuse to let the Baron reach Keldori before us.”
A man on the group’s outskirts stumbled and fell, landing on his hands and knees in the snow mere feet away from our hiding spot. Nervous Skal jumped in my fingers, and Ciarán shifted to place his hand over mine.
“Careful, Blue,” he warned in my head. “Just wait.”
The man took an extra moment to kneel in the snow.
Ice had frozen his wiry beard, and his cheeks were ruddy and chapped.
His comrades stepped around him, unfaltering in their steady trek, and when he finally leaned forward to push himself back to his feet, his eyes lifted.
He froze when he saw us lying beneath the underbrush.
Ciarán’s fingers wrapped around mine, but he otherwise remained still, as did Orla and Sabrina.