Sinking #2
Outside, it was daylight, for which Math was partly grateful, but mostly resented. Grateful because he always liked sunlight, but resentful because of both the stabbing pain in his head and what the sunlight allowed him to clearly see.
Death, first of all.
Neither people nor animals had done well in the crash. Math suspected he could count himself as one of the lucky ones, since he could walk and see and breathe. From the smell, the faint moans, the bloody evidence spread out in random abandon, that wasn’t true for many others.
He stared in blank, numb horror as a crying soldier staggered over to a shuddering, mortally injured horse and cut its throat. The man immediately collapsed, after, his head in his hands.
Then Math heard roaring, shouts, and a familiar voice.
“Math, we must fly.” Kaiataris pulled on his sleeve. He saw she carried something in her other hand: it was one of the dress swords he’d found days earlier. He had no idea where she’d been hiding it.
“That’s Huraiik,” Math explained. He turned back to her, although he wasn’t sure exactly what he would have said, what he needed her to understand. How could that possibly be Huraiik? Then he stopped.
Looming behind Kaiataris was a …
Plant. Creature. Thing.
It looked for all the world like a topiary lion come to life, a topiary lion made of a thornbush. It saw them, and lifted a paw. The foreleg elongated as the vines lashed out. Thorns raked the arm he hastily threw up to defend himself, and Math cried out.
“Catch!” Kai yelled.
He didn’t. The sword struck his shoulder and bounced away—mercifully still sheathed. He scooped it up, barely registering its garish hilt before he yanked it free and swung the wide, curved blade at the lion.
He sheared through several vines—not because the sword had edge or weight, but because his momentum did.
Like snapping a dry root with a boot heel.
The lion closed the distance, lashing again.
This time, when Math struck, vines coiled around the blade and pulled.
The weapon fought him briefly, then slipped free from his hands and vanished into the creature’s body, swallowed whole.
“Gravespit!” It hadn’t been a good sword. He’d held it for less than two seconds, and already he missed it with an absurd and wholehearted passion.
“Catch!” Kai yelled again.
This time, he caught it. Another costume blade, of course. He had just enough time to glance over and see that she was standing beside an entire opened crate of the damned things.
Blood from his scalp wound kept trickling toward his eye.
He wiped at it with his left hand, but that one was already slick with blood from the claw wound down his arm.
His vision remained speckled with bright spots.
The dizziness had not relented, even though the ground beneath him was now perfectly flat.
He felt rather than saw the next attack: a full pounce, launched from ten feet away. Math let the vertigo take him. He dropped and rolled, the impact of his shoulder against the ground knocking loose another breath. It probably saved his life. It did nothing for the ache in his skull.
He pushed upward. Tried to rise. His knees obeyed; his balance did not. He stayed crouched, sword tip braced against the dirt.
The lion turned, coiling for another strike—but the blow never came.
A wave of heat surged past his left side, close enough to lift the edge of his collar. The grimmock ignited all at once, fire threading through its body in lines like glowing veins. The vines blackened and cracked as flame consumed them.
It didn’t scream. Or perhaps it did, and he simply couldn’t hear it.
Huraiik had said plants were chatty.
“Thanks,” Math croaked, voice rasping.
Kai’s hand was still raised. Her arm trembled slightly, whether from effort or shock, he couldn’t tell. “You are most welcome,” she said. “But I fear I have little more magic to offer. This was all I could restore during our time on the train…”
A second passed with nothing trying to murder him and Math decided he was done reacting.
He stood. Or tried to. He swayed, stumbled, and fell back to his knees.
“Gravespit,” he muttered. “Hang on. I just need … I just need a minute.”
“You mustn’t fall asleep!” Her voice cracked. Her fear surged through the bond, sharp and cold and insistent.
He needed to heal. Properly. But he didn’t know how, and she didn’t have enough power. The irony stung: if he did the very thing she feared—if he gave in and let sleep take him—his plants would come.
Whether they’d come quickly enough to save his life was a different matter.
He remembered what she’d said. That he could control them. That he always could. He knew that was true, didn’t he? He’d done it before—at the lumber camp, drugged and barely conscious.
It was a beautiful day. A sky of cloudless blue. A sun that soaked the skin with golden warmth. And the only thing keeping him from healing was his own logical mind.
If he couldn’t cross that threshold—if he faltered now—he would die. Or worse.
And if he became what Huraiik had become, then his first act would be to kill Kaiataris.