Chapter 31 The Whine of a Cornered Dog
The Whine of a Cornered Dog
“Ah, the pretty human thinks she can fight me,” Ktren mocks. “Please, don’t stop because of me. Win your Trial. Victory against the mighty Orran is a much bigger prize than you’ll ever be. I wish to hear the undefeated warrior of the Jagged Blade beg for mercy.”
The aesin spy calls out a question in the elven tongue, loud enough for the audience to hear. Murmurs hiss overhead, muffled agreements. The rules of aesin conduct were never clear to Sascia, but this she can decipher: Ktren just asked permission to kill Orran. On her dais, the Queen dips her head.
“Finally,” Ktren breathes around a satisfied sneer, “I can be his ending.”
“You aren’t going to be shit.” Fury takes over; Sascia bends down, snatches Orran’s dagger from the ground, and steps in front of her friend. There will be no endings today, not on her watch.
Across from her, Ktren throws their head back and lets out one of their wild yowls. It should be intimidating, it should grind her courage to dust, but all Sascia can feel is wrath and justice—before the aesin can collect themself, she lunges.
The dress flings open around her thighs and her Doc Martens pound on the rock as she sprints down the passageway, gaining momentum, and swings her blade in a horizontal slash at the aesin’s chest. They slide away, liquid fast, wearing a satisfied smile.
Their own dagger flashes out, its polished blade a glint of onyx before it finds purchase in Sascia’s flesh.
Heat blooms at her side, where the blade has nicked her.
She doesn’t stop—she drags her dagger in a low blow, aiming for the aesin’s legs, but she’s still too slow.
Ktren jumps over it with ease, bounces off the wall, and dives for Sascia’s face.
The punch connects with her cheek, reverberating through her skull and down her body.
Nicks, punches; Ktren is toying with her.
They’re going to make it hurt and make it slow, a show of power for the aesin gathered in the throne room.
Sascia fought to sway the army to her side, to prove herself to them—she can’t let Ktren bring it all down.
And Orran—she has driven Ktren back down the tunnel where they came from, but at her back, her friend is still lying on his side.
How can she ever defeat an enemy who’s twice her size, three times her speed, and endlessly stronger?
Sascia raises her dagger and dives into a series of moves that Orran drilled into her muscles.
The spy deflects each blow with a mere twist of their wrist, facing her dagger with their own.
Soon, Sascia’s covered in sweat and blood from the dozen little cuts Ktren inflicts on her flesh.
But after every parry, every stab, she picks herself up and launches once more.
Like a beetle, her father had said. You keep throwing yourself against the glass, again and again, instead of flying out the open window an inch to your right.
What you are is a little gnat, Nugau had said. Vexing but ultimately too ephemeral to be of any consequence.
A beetle and a gnat, bugs the both of them, pests that annoy because they just won’t quit.
But to Sascia, bugs have always been the most interesting of creatures: glorious in their smallness, resilient in their fleetingness, ingenious in their folly.
They are underestimated and swatted at and stomped, but they don’t give up. Not beetles, not gnats. And not moths.
“Mooch,” Sascia whispers as she crouches on the ground after a particularly nasty cut to her midriff. Ktren has turned to face the spectators above, basking in their cheers. “Are you there?”
Mooch lands on the back of her palm, skitters to a cut bleeding on her arm, and stays there, fluttering its wings unhappily.
“I think it’s time,” Sascia heaves between gasping breaths, “to attack.”
The moth reacts in seconds: its scaled body ripples, as though magnetized by some invisible force.
Its flesh bursts in spikes that transmogrify its soft, hairy wings into smooth, hard onyx.
Sharper than a blade, stronger than a rock—in this form, Mooch is a weapon all on its own, yet it folds itself into her hair.
“While I have enjoyed this, pest,” Ktren says, turning back to her, “I am eager for a foot rub and a strong drink. Let’s end it, shall we?”
Sascia sits back on her haunches, peeking through the curtain of her sweaty hair. Ktren stands a couple of feet away, flicking their dagger into the air. Drops of blood spray the walls each time it lands in their hand—drops of Sascia’s blood.
Her legs are failing. She can’t command them to carry her weight any longer. Her blade trembles in midair, as pathetic as she herself must look, kneeling and bleeding and gasping for air.
With the leisure of a cat waking from a long nap, Ktren stretches their arms over their head, waltzes over, and simply kicks the dagger out of Sascia’s hand.
It clatters to the wall with a small, pitiful clang.
The spy positions themself dramatically before her, legs spread, chest puffed, dagger aimed at her face. “Human,” they say, loud and performative for their audience. “Yield.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Sascia spits.
She and Mooch launch as one. She goes for the hand that holds the dagger; Mooch goes for their eyes.
The moth is a sight to behold. Onyx wings spread wide, their edges sharp as a blade, it lunges at Ktren’s face, slicing their eyes, their nose, their mouth.
The aesin lets out a shriek of panic that is cut short when Sascia buries her fist into their belly.
Momentum throws them both on the ground, hard enough to smart.
Sascia has their wrist in her grip, trying to pry the dagger from their fingers, while the aesin rolls them around, tumbling feet over heads.
Ktren is too strong, too heavy, too skilled—even with a moth slicing up their face and a human girl wrapped around their torso, the spy comes out on top.
They grab Mooch and fling it to the wall, then twist their wrist out of Sascia’s grip and pin her hand to the ground.
A sound tears from their throat, less wolf howl and more the harrowing shriek of a banshee. Their cheeks are shredded, strips of flesh peeling off their jaw, one of their lids torn open. They look down at her through those bleeding eyes—
And open their mouth wide.
Their teeth lengthen into sharp incisors, rows upon rows of them, coated with black saliva that drips into the soft column of her neck.
Sascia stretches back, away from that maw, those teeth, that hunger, but there is nowhere to go, no way to escape.
A sob crawls out of her chest, the whine of a cornered dog.
Ktren is lowering their mouth toward her neck. Sascia can feel their saliva dripping against her collarbone. They will rip into her, tear her to pieces.
A beetle. A gnat. A pest.
Her body reacts. She thrashes with all the strength she has left in her, arcing her torso, kicking her legs, straining against Ktren’s hold on her wrists. Out of pure luck, pure frenetic adrenaline, she manages to knee them in the ribs and twist her neck out of the way—
Ktren’s fangs bore into the soft flesh of her shoulder.
A cry pours out of her, so hard that it hurts all the way up her throat. The pain is everywhere, pulsing at her ears and darkening her vision. She is consumed by it, by the feel of Ktren’s teeth ripping into her flesh, the feel of their wet lips on her skin, the weight of them on her, the pain.
It is instinct alone that keeps her going, the vexing insistence of a pest. She snaps her hand out of Ktren’s grip, grabs a dagger from the belt across their chest—and plunges it deep into their ear.
The spy slumps onto her.
Their full weight is crushing her chest, but their jaw has grown slack around her shoulder. Sobbing uncontrollably, hands trembling, Sascia grips their chin and pulls their jaws apart.
She screams as her flesh tears anew, but then she’s moving, wiggling out from beneath their body, kneeling where Mooch is lying on the floor.
She takes the moth into her palm—the good one, because her other arm doesn’t seem to be working at all—and crawls all the way to Orran.
She studies them, their chest. There. Slow and tortured, but they’re breathing.
A few feet away, Ktren is lying face down on the floor, blue blood forming a puddle around their horns.
No walls of onyx surround them anymore. The Labyrinth has flattened back into the arena.
The third gong must have rung. The Trial is over.
Sascia lost. Aesin are trailing down from the sidelines of the cavern, edging toward her with the cautiousness of a tamer approaching a frenzied wild beast.
A figure comes into view. Her hair has unraveled out of its updo. Her face is scored with panic, sweat beading her furrowed brow.
Oh, good, Sascia thinks, mind fogged with blood loss. Nugau is here.
Now she can pass out in peace.