Chapter 18
DION
Something was wrong, it shouldn’t have been like this. One of the most dangerous, hellish places in all of the Warlands, and we were walking straight in. Surely it was a trap? The gates were wide open. There were no merls in sight, nor guards, and blood was everywhere.
I watched Feyra, who looked around constantly, looking for any sign of her friend. Roman continued to scan the compound, but I didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
To the people of the Warlands, Mograaw’s Keep was a curse that shouldn’t have ever existed.
It was a place so vile, so evil, that it had been banished from nearly all village records.
It had taken Roman years to learn of its proper existence.
Why he’d learned about it? I had never known.
And he’d only mentioned it once by accident as we passed the tip of the ranges many leagues away.
To get to Mograaw’s Keep we’d taken a similar crack through the mountain range, coming out though to a rounded bowl.
It had been an impact site, Roman said. Where a large meteor had struck the world.
But it was a terrible place. In that meteor, or maybe because of that meteor, the land had turned vile.
Blackened. Died. Caused the death of all the living things in the wastelands.
Its fingers reached far and wide, and what it touched, withered.
It was fitting that Lady Skol ruled it and its beasts. Which was why it made no sense that none were here.
We were completely alone. I couldn’t hear a single heartbeat, even with my senses tuned up.
Four towers and spiked walls surrounded us, charred bodies and fire pits covered the large area.
There was no sense to the place. No organization.
I couldn’t tell what I was looking at half the time, and what it would do the other.
But Roman heeded everything to not be touched.
Even the shoes we walked in would have to be destroyed afterwards.
But there was one area that made sense. Only one that Roman and I knew—the sacrificial altar at the center of the headquarters. It was a pointed wooden structure, raised off the ground with two rising pillars continuing further upwards. Ropes hung, covered with bright red blood, from each.
Feyra ran instantly for it. I felt the fear rise in her, the scream that tore from her throat when she gained the top matched it.
I bounded up the stairs and found her in hysterics, she knelt in a pool of blood clutching a severed hand.
I held her and let her rock back and forth.
The grief poured from her. Grief she’d been storing up for so long, grief she’d been denying for too long.
It wasn’t just for her friend, it was for everything.
She pulled back, took the bracelet gently from the hand, and then with a cloth, wrapped the hand in it. There was a mixture of teeth and hair around us. The smell of copper stung my nostrils, along with the smell of the merls’ blood too. However Agatha had died, she’d caused damage to them as well.
Feyra rose quickly, her face paling as she ran down the stairs. Roman stepped aside for her to pass, but she stopped just by him and fell to her knees, retching up everything.
I went to join her but Roman stopped me, shaking his head.
We watched as she righted herself, adjusted her clothing, and walked straight out of the compound.
Never looking at anything around her, refusing to smell the horrid smells that insisted on being known, and always, clutching the hand of her friend to her chest.
No one spoke for the rest of the day afterwards.
We left the Keep, and soon the mountain range, just as confused as when we’d entered.
We continued into the wastelands properly now.
There would be no other towns or villages between us and Jebra, and the finality of our situation was driven home by the stretching plains going forward.
I reached out a few times to Feyra as we rode, but she was steeled away.
There, but not acknowledging me. I couldn’t blame her.
All I wanted to do was comfort her, but that in of itself could’ve been something to drive her away.
I didn’t know and didn’t want to risk it, so I left her to her silence.
We rode until dusk, stopped only for a brief drink for the horses and meal for us, then continued on.
Feyra didn’t want to stop. She wanted to keep going, to put as much distance between her and the keep of Mograaw.
Neither of us could blame her. Even the stench from our burning shoes after we left had been like the smell of rotting corpses.
The color of the place, the black of the blood and timber, was too dark for anything of our world.
We rode through the night, still no one spoke.
Roman glanced at me a few times, wished to speak with me via our wolf connection, but I refused him.
We had to give time for Feyra. She needed this time to accept how her life had changed.
I’d spent my whole life being readied for it, she’d barely had a month.
I gave her what no one else had ever given me. A chance to absorb that truth.
By morning, when Feyra was asleep in the saddle, we stopped.
We brought our small train of horses to a stop by a small cliff face; it rose steeply and a deep crack extended on and away from it.
Roman and I began pitching the tent. We let Feyra keep sleeping as we worked.
Once we’d finally erected it, we both saw that she was awake. She watched us with dreary eyes.
“There is a hidden oasis here,” Roman said. “We can restock water and rest until this evening. See out the heat and travel in the cool of night.”
Feyra nodded, descended from the horse, and took the water skins. “I’ll fill these.”
We watched her go.
“Whatever her friend was up to, her death was something I would wish no one,” Roman said.
It was brutal. The merls were inhuman in their violence and eating habits. Both Roman and I had known immediately what it was we saw but couldn’t break it to Feyra. A feeding shackle was horrible to hear about, let alone see. She would have died slowly, painfully.
“But the larger problem of its emptiness is quite worrying.” Roman rolled his shoulders. His face was uneasy. “I’ve never heard of it being abandoned. Either things are going very right in the world, or very wrong. And I would tend to think the latter.”
I took feed out for the horses and hooked the bags around their necks. I poured the final water skin for the horses in a small travel trough. “Have you been able to talk with my father?” I asked.
Roman shook his head. “No, his dreams are quiet. That may be the distance, but then, other packs have been unreachable too.”
“It really is the beginning then,” I said. My fur bristled at the thought of it. The end of Lady Skol. Well, the chance for the end. There was still a very real chance that we, I, could fail. “How long do you think it will take us to reach Jebra?”
Roman shrugged. He began to make a small fire, also taking his teapot from his belongings. “It is hard to say. How quick we ride, how long she can hold off her wolf? Two weeks I’d say. But who knows what other surprises are in store? There are too many unknowns.”
I nodded, squatting down next to the fire he was building. He lay large pieces first, then stacked on some smaller pieces, finally, starter brush and kindling. All of it crisscrossed in a climbing vent for the air to race around. I grimaced at what he was building.
“I’m going to go see Feyra,” I said. “I’ve not felt her in my mind for a while, and plus, this.” I held up the last water skin.
Roman didn’t reply, he watched his flames, the crackle of the fire growing and snapping.
He was in deep thought. For the first time in my life, I wondered what other things he knew but didn’t tell me of.
I had followed him unquestioningly all these years.
As my guide, and more of a father figure than my father, I had hung on his every word.
He had always seemed wise and all knowing.
But a new emotion had appeared on his mind today as we rode, even now as we spoke, unease.
Everything I had lived for, had already been taught to him long before me.
He had been on the path of his prophecy from birth too.
Always to be a teacher. Always a leader.
Yet there were things he’d never told me of even in his prophecy.
It was why he’d built that particular fire. The fire that represented everyone’s prophecies. One person, one prophecy, was merely a tool in the building of others. And every person held many similar factors within their own life and fates. Everything intertwined and coalesced.
I descended in unease, down the small stairs that had formed from the breaking rock and found myself in a hidden oasis. It was beautiful. Looking at the water shining like that of the Pools of Prophecy, a sense of magic enveloped me and I didn’t feel uneasy anymore. I felt–
I felt like I’d seen this place.
In my dream. The dream I’d had about Feyra. We had made love. I’d been so sure that it was the Pools of Prophecy, yet… there was something here.
I found Feyra kneeling at the edge of the water, all the bags were full and she was staring. I sat beside her, not saying anything. She continued staring and I waited. I wondered about her scarred heart, about her prophecy. I wondered what it was. I felt like I needed to know.
“I find it hard to trust you,” she said.
I kept silent and tried to see what she was watching in the waters.
“I want to, and yet, I feel that if I do, it will be a disservice to–to Agatha.” She pulled herself away from the water now. “But I need to trust you, that’s the problem.”
“You don’t need to trust us. You only need us as guides,” I said, but Feyra laughed like I didn’t understand.
“That’s the problem,” she said, quietly. “I see how you look at me.”
I blushed. Now I was looking at the water.
“You said so yourself, that we were destined to be lovers. But I–” she stopped.
“You what?” I asked, turning back to her quickly. Her face was blue and radiant, but troubled. My heart hammered in anxiety.
“Never mind,” she said. She thought about her words carefully. “I was going to say that I am a poor girl of Lassig. But I suppose that doesn’t matter here.”
I laughed, despite myself. “I am a guide of the Warlands. A poor Lassigian girl to me is a queen.”
“So you see me as a Queen?” she asked, a coy smile on her face.
My blush deepened. “Well–I mean, I just mean you could be a queen with your beauty.”
She raised an eyebrow and smiled. It was the smile from my dreams with parted lips.
I’d stuck my foot in it now. She probably thought I was the cheesiest idiot there was. The way she smiled at me only made me feel more awkward about it. I’d always pictured this talk going differently—being more confident for one. Less humiliating on my behalf too.
Her face became sad though, and she looked down at her lap and I knew I’d missed my chance. I’d already rejected her once, now I was just rubbing dirt in the wound. She probably thought I was just trying to make her feel better because of Agatha.
“Feyra, listen–”
“Dion there is something you should know–”
We both started at once, and then stopped together. We laughed, the silence passing between us now speaking volumes. Maybe I hadn’t lost the chance to initiate a Mating Call? I reached out tentatively with my wolf sense, feeling her presence pulsing beside me. I felt her open up–
Then Roman started screaming.