29. Ambush Tactics
I kicked my father’s dust from my boots and then straightened up, relishing the look of shock and loathing on Ferrin’s face.
The opal forest surrounding Willow’s Grave was miles wide. Ferrin could search through day and night for the next week straight, and I’d bet my grandma’s cat he wouldn’t find the cave hiding beneath the grove of trees where we’d left my real body.
Ciarán never would’ve agreed to using my real self as the distraction, though he was hesitant to leave me sleeping and unprotected in the woods as well. The cave was nestled underground, however, perfectly hidden and cozier than some of the places we’d stayed.
If I focused on my body, I could feel the dirt floor against my sleeping body’s back, smell the earthy scent of exposed dirt, and feel the Saergrim magick I’d used to turn my retinas blue running through my veins.
A third explosion cast the silhouettes of trees against the tent canvas, and Ferrin morphed in the flickering light.
“Can’t say I blame you. It’s a useful trick, after all,” he growled, and I realized too late what Tiernan had been so quick to notice when I’d impersonated Ferrin in the mountain.
Ferrin wasn’t wearing his goggles.
His arms sharpened into mantis-like spears as he commanded his own form to become a weapon. He was a Nightmare too.
I charged, but he ripped through the tent canvas, escaping into the camp on Skal-strengthened legs that now looked more like the haunches of a beast.
Through the stone trees, running bodies, and burning tents, flashes of gold met orange where Ciarán fended off Caitria’s attacks. Una’s silhouette took up a defensive crouch as Ferrin crashed towards them.
Magick heated my hand, and an orange flail formed as I drew back my arm. I whipped it forward, releasing the handle, and watched as the flail zipped through the clearing and tangled around Ferrin’s engorged ankles.
He howled and fell in a mess of magick and monstrous limb. Una abandoned Ciarán’s fight against Caitria to pounce at Ferrin, but he batted her off with an oversized arm. She smashed into the stone trees, yelping as she fell.
“Ferrin!” I screamed, mostly out of anger but also to keep his attention on me.
He shook off the tangle of flail around his ankles, the bare skin of his leg still smoldering where the magick had burned him. Another explosion split the forest, and orange flames reared through the trees to our right, but I kept my gaze on Ferrin, bone blades at the ready.
Ferrin took the bait.
His mouth, now more like a snout than a human jaw, contorted in a tooth-baring grin, and he charged.
A small squadron of soldiers running from the most recent explosion ran between us, but Ferrin speared through two of them with his mantis-arm and cast them to the side out of his way.
The brutality of it gave me pause, and I let my guard down as I waited for either of them to stir in the dirt, but neither did.
And then Ferrin was above me.
I summoned a surge of magick from Ciarán’s end of the tether to harden my skin and fortify my muscles as Ferrin came crashing down.
I grabbed him by what was left of his wrists, holding the points of his spears inches from where he’d tried to pierce my chest. The fresh Skal bolstering my form made me dizzy with hunger, but I pulled on more from Ciarán to find enough strength to rival Ferrin’s.
“Watch it, Blue!” Ciarán shouted in my head. “Are you trying to kill us both?”
“I’ve got it under control,” I said back, though the thirst for Skal was hard to ignore. The fact Ciarán needed magick to keep Caitria at bay was the only thing keeping me from drawing more.
But if it was affecting me this way…
Ferrin’s eyes had taken on a slight glow. He’d tried to turn me into a rotsbane in the canyon. What sweet justice it would be to goad him into doing the same to himself.
“You really want things to go back to normal?” Ferrin hissed, still struggling to break through my grip. “Look at you, Wren! You’re absolutely magnificent like this! You’d really give this up just to keep things the way they were?”
“Yes!” I grunted through the strain of holding him off.
He reared back, slipping from my hold, and spun an oversized leg into my side. It caught me in my midsection and threw me into the side of a tent. The canvas collapsed beneath me, and the air drove out of my lungs as I hit the ground.
“No friends, a father who never loved you, and a rejection letter from your dream college! That’s what awaits you in Keldori! But here? They think you’re a god! Hell, Wren, you actually might be one with what I’ve seen you do!”
“I’m not a god,” I wheezed, forcing air back into my lungs. “And neither are you.”
He leapt, bringing the pointed end of the mantis arm down. I rolled out of the way, slicing my bone blades through one of his arms and into his stomach.
Ferrin roared in pain, but the severed limb regrew, and his stomach knit itself back together.
“I may not be a god,” he admitted, “but when the people of Keldori see what I can do and what I bring to their world, they will worship me as one.”
He batted at me with his newly grown mantis-spear, and I let it catch me, managing to nick his shoulder as I flew across the clearing a second time.
I slammed into a tree and felt several bones shatter, but I pulled more magick from Ciarán, ignoring his continued warnings in my head. I just had to outlast Ferrin. I had to keep him pulling more magick than I did.
And then I would have to fight the rotsbane he’d turn into, but I’d figure that out when I got there.
“You don’t win this,” Ferrin snarled. His nostrils flared, and his eyes burned brighter as he continued to draw more Skal into himself from wherever his real body was resting.
“You can’t. Your grandmother has been in the ice too long to realize it, and your allies are too dogmatic to admit it.
But you don’t win. I do. And if you want to survive long enough to see me ascend, then you’ll tell me right now—what were you looking for in Lysanor’s library? ”
I bolted forward, catching Ferrin by surprise, and conjured a flail that I brought smashing into his shoulder. I rolled out of the way of his attempted counterattack, and spun to face him.
Sinew regrew where I’d destroyed muscle and flesh, and a look of understanding passed over Ferrin’s face.
“The little god,” he spat. “What a joke. You could be happy here, if you tried. You could be happy in the new world I’m going to create out of the ruins of both our realms. Instead you resist. Instead you try to trick me. I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.”
“It was worth a try,” I quipped. “You’d look prettier as a rotsbane anyway.”
“I’m not weak like you. My Nightmare form has been tempered in the magick of Keldori. I’ve spent the last decade resisting its pull.” The glow in his eyes dulled as his resolve solidified. “Besides. I have places to send the magick before it destroys me.”
A strangled cry erupted in the trees behind me, and I turned in time to see the silhouette of one of the army Nightmares swell and break into the monstrous form of a rotsbane.
The cry turned into a shrieking howl, and its head turned towards us. Glinting eyes of emerald peered at us through the dark, and it reached forward with all four hands to brace itself against the trees.
A force from behind slammed me into the ground, leaving me breathless once again. I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off Ferrin, and now he stood over me.
“I’ve loved catching up,” he said. “Let’s do it again soon, if the rotsbane doesn’t devour your consciousness.”
The coward grinned as he dissolved in a cloud of glowing dust.
“WREN!” Ciarán’s scream echoed in my head as well as through the burning campsite, and I looked to see the rotsbane turning the trees beneath its claws to rubble as it pushed off them.
“Ferrin, you coward!” I yelled at the night as the rotsbane’s jaw unhinged.
I braced with my bone blades at the ready. It leapt through the air, all four claws extended and hungry, but a green blur tore through the dark and slammed into its side.
Una pinned the rotsbane under her talons and tore at its neck with her canines. It screamed, and its back legs raked at the ground, but then its struggle subsided into violent twitches, and its form dissolved into ash.
New hands grabbed me beneath my arms, and I recoiled.
“It’s me,” Ciarán said, and I let him help me to my feet. Strands of dark hair clung to his forehead with sweat, and half his face was hidden by his cowl, but I could tell he was grinning.
“Where’s Caitria?” I twisted around the clearing. Shouts to retreat echoed through the opal forest, and the remaining soldiers fled deeper into the trees.
“She left when Ferrin did. Are you okay?”
“Ferrin can’t hurt this body. I’m more worried about you.”
Ciarán brushed the dirt from my shoulders. “I’m flattered, Blue, but you don’t need to worry about me. That rotsbane, if it had got you—”
“Una took care of it,” I said. Una bumped her snout up against my shoulder, and I scratched her beneath the chin in proper greeting after being apart all week. “Is that it then? We won?”
“Three tents of Skal and two tents of rations. All up in flames.” The firelight caught the wild hairs that had fallen from Ciarán’s bun, and he grinned in triumph. “You did amazing.”
“I was just the bait!” I laughed.
“And you were great at it. You’re so good at being captured.” There was something magnetic in the way he was grinning at me. I was sure it was just adrenaline. I could feel it too, coursing through my Nightmare-made veins. “We can probably catch up with the others. Wren, you can still go home.”
Home.
I felt like I could take on twelve rotsbane and twenty Ferrins. We could stop any army and any monster he threw at us, and make it to Keel Watch Harbor.
Maybe I was a god after all.
But then—
The crackling of the fire muted, hard to hear over the sudden pounding in my ears. My skin turned clammy, and my breath caught. When I forced air into my lungs, it felt like half my chest was filled with sand and cotton.
I slipped my hand over the lower ribs on my left side.
Something was wrong.
This body was fine, but something was wrong.
My left side…
It didn’t hurt, but cold dread rose where I knew there was supposed to be pain. I pulled at my leather armor, searching for the ghost of an injury I couldn’t feel but still knew was there.
The armor turned to dust as it separated from my body. I pulled my tunic up and braced myself against a tree.
The skin of my side was uninjured and pale in the firelight, but still, something was very wrong.
“Wren?” The triumphant smile dropped from Ciarán’s face.
I let the hem of my tunic fall back into place as I slid to the ground. Ciarán caught me and tried to help me upright. His orange and black eyes took up my field of vision, and I felt like I was falling into them as the world closed in.
“Ciarán,” I murmured.
“What’s wrong?”
I pulled my tunic back up to show him my uninjured flank. He shook his head at me, confused.
“I’ve been stabbed,” I said.
His face turned stark, and his grip on my arms tightened to the point of being painful. “You look fine.”
I shook my head.
“My real body.” I tried to focus on his eyes, wondering if they were the last thing I’d ever see.
“When?” He was yelling. Panicked. “Just now?”
“Ciarán, I think I’m dying.”
His breath hitched.
“Then I’m sorry, Blue.” His voice wavered. “But you’ve got to fight like hell. I’m coming, okay? I’m on my way, but whoever it is, give them hell, do you understand?”
I didn’t understand, but I nodded anyway. His neck bobbed as he swallowed hard.
“Then I release you from my service.”
The night closed in, and I existed for a half-moment between my bodies, painless, weightless, and thinking that if this was death, maybe it wasn’t so bad.
But then agony erupted in my flank, and I awoke to the flashing of a red dagger overhead.