Chapter 75 #2
Struggling to pull breath amidst the searing exhales exploding against my face, I look up into the steely, narrowed eyes of the Great Silver Sabersythe—her face a little smaller than Rygun’s. Less boxy, with fewer tusks and horns.
Her scales—
Spectacular.
Like she’s dressed in thousands of crested plates of armor, all glinting in the flush light coming from the magma glug. Even the horns and tusks that curl and slash from her face and spine are the same argent tone; metallic looking, like she was smelted into shape by an otherworldly caftsfolk.
Her statuesque beauty doesn’t make her any less imposing. Not as her nostrils flare, drawing huffs of my scent, her rumbling sounds rivaling that of the active volcano we’re burrowed in.
But it’s hard to see her as a vicious, fearsome beast after placing bits of shattered shell over the open eyes of her perished young.
No.
All I see is the deep, rendered ache in her eyes, scarcely veiled by the understandable rage at finding an intruder sniffing around her hatchlings’ grave.
Kilíth was wrong. She’s not rabid.
She’s just a mourning dam breaking herself against the world. Trying to distract herself from the immeasurable loss of her young.
She tightens her grip, talons closing around my back and poking through my leathers as I’m lifted before her face. Those silver eyes narrow, reflecting me—so limp in her grip, waiting for her to eat me.
The air seems to swoop around us, alive and watching. Perhaps sadistically waiting for me to grow tense with anticipation. To scream.
Perhaps Clode doesn’t realize I’m already dead inside.
With a snarl, Ahra tosses me. A simple flick that sends me pelting through the air.
I smash against the wall, crumble to the ground. Groaning, I roll over just in time to watch her heave her large but somewhat emaciated body into the bowl, tattered wings dragging like a silver cloak frayed at the hem.
Releasing a rusty rumble, she bundles down, coiling around her trio of smashed eggs.
Within me, a wild rage gnashes.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
My words crack, ricocheting off the cavern’s vast confines. But Ahra just nestles her head beside her eggs and lowers her lids, like she didn’t hear me. Or doesn’t care.
Not acceptable.
I intruded on her place of mourning. There’s nothing more dishonorable.
My end is a penance I’ll gladly pay.
I snarl, wobble to my feet. Stumble forward and throw my arms wide, baring my chest. “END IT!”
She opens one eye, looking right at me for a single heartrending beat. Then whips her tail out and slashes my feet out from under me.
I land flat on my back so hard all the wind knocks from my lungs.
When I finally draw breath again, it’s seething between clenched teeth.
I rip off my cloak, almost strangling myself as I yank off my face covering without first untangling it from around my neck. And I charge.
Leap.
Land on her back in a tumbling roll of untethered rage.
Her energy shifts, and she rumbles low—the sound a volcano makes before it cracks the head off itself and spews.
She pushes up and shakes, trying to loosen me.
I clamber between twin ridges of parallel spikes running down either side of her spine—in a spot I know she can reach. Can whip around and chew me off, like a pesky itch.
She’ll do it. I just have to piss her off enough.
She churns, hurls her body about, but my grip is mortar. Another rumbling growl as she tosses her head, then looks back over the arch of her flared wing and crushes me with that silver gaze, going stone still. Akin to my beautiful Inkah the moment after she tore her presence from my chest.
Two breaths blast me, and Ahra’s eyes narrow with … something. Something I’ve caught glimpses of in my own reflection since I came across that merchant with the silver dragonscale.
Then we’re no longer in the nesting cavern, but charging down the burrow in bounding leaps, into the compressing dark. We launch into the smoggy sky, then plummet with such force my organs pinch in on themselves.
Ahra throws out her wings. Catches the air.
She tears through the swirling ash and smoke with catapulting heaves. Releases a roar that rivals the warring booms of the nearby peaks.
A jarring tilt forces me to tighten my grip as we spear vertically, slashing free of the smog I haven’t been able to see past since I came to this Creators-forsaken place. Straight toward the blistering sun, like she intends to pierce through its middle and pin it to the sky.
Forced to turn from the blinding brutality of its harsh rays, I tuck my head, finding footholds against her spikes so I can press flat against her scales. Desperate to avoid the same death Inkah suffered.
She gave too much for me to get chewed by the fucking sun that chewed her.
Ahra banks, spins. Taunting me with the searing rays. Forcing me to climb farther up, up, up—using her spikes as a ladder until I’m perched between her wing buds.
She steadies her ascent, wings pounding in rhythm with my thrashing heart as something … scratches at me.
Within.
A long, hooked talon that gouges across my heart and sends shock waves through my chest. The only warning I get before it feels as though a claw punches through my ribs, fists the pumping organ keeping me alive, and squeezes with such dominant might I crush—caving inward like the shell of an empty egg.
I’m still gasping from the shock when an argent essence floods me. So mighty and vast I’m paralyzed.
Wide-eyed, I stare at the silver aurora wiggling through the sky, feeling like I’m falling through a darkness that has no end. A silent hollow that’s so lonely and quiet I want to scream.
Then we are falling.
Pitching forward, tucking wings, and plummeting toward an active volcano, like diving at the world’s fiery eye, our fall becoming faster—
Faster.
I should be scared, but all I feel is her.
The fathomless outline of Ahra’s mind, her bottomless heart, and the vast chasm of her grief—so hungry it threatens to swallow me.
Probably would were it not for the song her soul whispers.
A strange, echoing melody that binds around me like those silver ribbons tangling with the moons above.
A song I tune in to, pinching eternal secrets like a thief.
I realize that unlike me—scratching for meaning and purpose in my grief like shoveling through a wound—this ancient being knows her fate. Knows she can’t fall into her loss, because there are things that must be done. Alone …
Unless someone chooses to ride with her.
Though I sense that one strong shake would loosen her from my chest—that she’d give me the death I crave, perhaps flinging me into the volcano where it’ll be over in a blink—there’s not one part of me willing to let her embark on this journey alone.
I know how alone feels.
Instead, I lean into the great honor and harden around her presence like a solidifying moon, accepting the symbiotic beat of our hearts as we plunge into the volcano’s crater, cut across the pool of bubbling lava, and heave skyward again—emerging together.
As one.