Chapter 31 Omirre
OMIRRE
Lark was falling again. Looking up, she saw a pair of black wings flapping over her.
It was the scene from her most recent memory, only this time there was no open sky behind the dragon.
This time she was looking up at the domed cavern in a dwarven mine.
And the dragon was no dragon, but the shadow terror that was trying to kill her.
Ezra’s voice faded as she dropped below the lip of the landing into a seemingly endless crag.
As the shadow terror hovered in the moment before its descent, a whip-snap echoed through the chamber above.
Dark liquid spattered out from the shadow terror’s chest, a sharp sword-like tail driven through the nightmare.
An instant later, the sharp spike retracked, followed by a fearsome roar.
The bellow boomed as the terror hit the landing, now far above Lark.
In the dwindling light, a winged, serpentine creature dove into the crag, streaking toward Lark with lightning speed.
Lark’s fall halted with a whiplash. Warmth wrapped around her, coiling her ribs tight.
Lark’s trajectory changed; she was now being carried up by the winged serpent.
She strained to see what it was, a dragon?
No. This creature had scales like a dragon, its body, wings, and head shape all bearing a striking resemblance to a dragon, but this animal lacked arms and legs.
Amphiptere, the name sounded in Lark’s mind in a mental voice unlike her own. The feminine voice was seasoned, raspy, and tense, like it was holding back a verbal assault.
The serpent carried her through the cavern at a dizzying rate.
This creature flew much faster than Ingamar could’ve as they passed over the chasm toward the mouth of the waterfall.
Lark closed her eyes, bracing for impact with the cliff wall.
At the last second, the amphiptere hugged her close with her powerful tail.
They darted into the narrow opening where the water came rushing out.
The creature skimmed along the water’s surface, dunking Lark into the cold river.
After suddenly being submerged, they slid up onto a dry ledge. The tail uncoiled, letting Lark go.
She hacked up water, crawling on her knees like a drowned rat in the creature’s lair.
The amphiptere coiled herself like a snake, her swordtail raised just under her arched head twenty feet away.
Her tan wings were folded in tight against her brown and black diamond-patterned back.
She shot a red forked tongue out between sand-colored scaly lips.
Her beady black eyes locked in on Lark, watching her every move.
The lair was cut out of a ledge alongside the underground river.
The roof arching overhead was smooth and dotted with lumistone rocks that glowed a soft white to illuminate the cavern.
A dark hole with smoothed stone showed where the creature entered a cave system at the back of the opening.
With the river launching off into the abyss and the amphiptere blocking the cave exit, Lark had nowhere to go.
“Are you saving me to let me go or saving me for your own meal?” Lark asked, raising her voice to be heard over the rushing water.
“That depends on how you answer my questions, Ella,” the creature replied, speaking aloud without moving her mouth.
“That’s not my name.”
“Lie to me again and I will send my tail through your chest just as I did to that shadow terror. I can let the water wash you into the depths of the underworld far below.”
“Ella is not my name, anymore,” Lark corrected. She felt for the dagger sheathed at her back. Finding it, she pulled it free in a reverse grip, ready to use if the amphiptere attacked.
The creature lowered her head, extending her barrel-sized face closer to Lark. She tasted the air with her tongue, saying, “You speak truth.”
“Who are you and why did you save me? Or are you playing with me before you try to make your kill,” Lark snarled.
“You don’t remember who I am?”
“I can’t remember much from before a few weeks ago.” Lark said honestly.
“I am Omirre, but the name you knew me by back then was Clawless,” she hissed.
Lark shook her head, “Doesn’t jog any distinct memory for me.
The serpent hissed, striking the cave floor with the flat of her tail, causing Lark to flinch, dangerously close to the edge. Omirre slithered over to Lark, sliding her swordtail up to Lark’s chest, holding the tip away from her by a few inches. “You really don’t remember me?” she growled.
“I don’t know what I did to you in my past life, but whatever it was, I’m sorry. I can’t afford to stay here and sort out a disagreement or whatever we fought about before. I need to get to Red Lodge and fast,” Lark responded.
“I swore to the gods above and below that when next I met Ella, that I would slay her for the wrong she did to me and mine,” Omirre said.
The vision of the elven fire burning the treehouse played out in Lark’s head. Was this creature there, too? Did Lark and her dragon attack them?
“You’re trying to remember.”
“Were you there in Gambria as a friend of the wood elves?” Lark asked, not sure how it connected.
“If I were a friend of the elves, would I have let them destroy themselves with those dwarves right outside my cave?”
Lark frowned. “Who was I to you?”
Omirre retreated again to her coiled state twenty feet away. “If you don’t remember what you did to me, what kind of person you were, then you are no longer that person. Until the time you do remember who you were, I cannot take my revenge.”
Lark couldn’t shake the feeling that she was combining the memory of the fire with this creature, but she was not sure how they were related. “Will you tell me who I am?” Lark asked.
“You know who you really are. People like you, like Ella, don’t change. If you don’t remember, you will repeat the mistakes of your past, becoming Ella again. When you do, I will be ready. When you do, I will come for you and your dragon, and kill you both,” the creature said.
“My dragon… You knew my dragon?”
“I know your dragon. He lives.”
Lark felt faint. “No, he was killed when I lost my memory.”
The amphiptere shook her head. “Your dragon was injured but not slain that day. He yet lives. I was hoping to kill you, lure him here, and kill him myself. But it seems that by ignoring him, you’re killing him yourself.”
“No! I’m not ignoring him. I don’t remember who he is.”
I didn’t know he was alive, right? Lark thought.
She knew that a bond was necessary for her to have performed the magic she’d used, but she thought that bond was with Ingamar.
It had to be from Ingamar. He was there, within range of accessing the bond.
Lark had flown on him, touched his senses.
But her connection with Ingamar wasn’t right.
She’d known that all along. She thought the disconnect was because they were both suffering their losses.
If he was alive, Lark was betraying her dragon by trying to bond with Ingamar.
The realization of this, of what she was doing this whole time to her bonded dragon... Nausea welled up in her stomach, she thought she would be sick.
“You know that I am right. You can feel it in your bones that you have been crushing your dragon’s bond by entertaining another. You never even went looking for him. You left him and started anew, the whole time crushing his life force by ignoring his existence.”
“No, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know,” Lark stammered.
“You say you need to go help your precious friends, but they aren’t the ones who truly need you. They don’t know who you really are,” Omirre said.
Overwhelmed by grief, Lark said, “That’s not true!
How is this happening? It can’t be. This isn’t…
” She closed her eyes tight and searched herself, reaching back into the fog of her memory, hoping to find something that would tell her who she was.
Omirre’s words echoed in her soul, vibrating around her like… like a thread of magic, she realized.
“You should be going to save your bonded ones, not helping your so-called friends,” Omirre said.
She’s manipulating my emotions, Lark realized. This creature was like a dragon and had magical powers, one of them must be able to manipulate the emotions of its prey.
“You’re evil. As evil as they come, Ella.
Remember how you first got your powers. Where you got that necklace and what you did.
There are more ways than one to channel magic through the veil on Sataran.
Remember, Ella. Remember what you’ve done,” Omirre said, her obvious resentment washing over Lark.
She’s trying to get me to admit to her that I wronged her so she can feel justified in her revenge. “But I don’t remember,” Lark said honestly.
“You killed the only thing I’ve ever loved. How can you not remember,” Omirre hissed.
Lark searched herself, drawing back into the recesses of her memories. She couldn’t see who she had been, only who she was now, who she had been since she found herself in that village.
Lark shook her head. “No,” she said, straightening up.
She raised her chin to the winged serpent.
“I am Lark. I am not evil. I am trying to help people I care for. I don’t remember having a bonded dragon.
If he is still alive, then I will go and find him.
If he is truly mine, he will understand me.
He’ll know that what I’ve been through wasn’t my choice and forgive my absence. ”
Omirre hissed, swatting the ground again with her tail.