Chapter 21 Thaleo
THALEO
Iremained with my sleeping love for quite some time.
The Vrika remained as well.
“You must have heard me,” I said to it. “I will not go with you.”
My fate did not lay in its nest.
She lay right here beside me in this bed.
Her form so small and trusting in sleep.
Even now, her flat little feet were creeping towards me, attempting to dig under my thigh, seeking warmth.
This tiny action, this unconscious desire of hers, was sacred to me.
Brought me more peace than I’d ever known before.
I had never been taught what happiness was.
But if I had to define it now, if I had to give it another name, it would be hers.
“What else could this be,” I asked the Vrika, gesturing at Nazreen’s toes against my leg, the nearly mundane, holy perfection of it all, “if not a mate bond?”
The Vrika did not answer.
I wondered how long it would remain there. The last two times it came for me, it disappeared soon afterwards, as if aware I would not follow it. But now, it merely waited and watched me, as if expecting something.
And maybe that sense of expectation was altering my perception of the scene. Because suddenly, a cool dread licked up the back of my neck. Irrationally, it made me want to gather the bundle that was Nazreen up into my arms.
Instead, I stood and gathered my weapons. Bow. Arrows. A single, long blade.
It was time to be getting back to my duties.
For now, I remained Gahn. And there was work to be done.
The fastest way to get back outside would be through the natural opening in this cave, and I’d spent too long here already.
Even so, I took a moment to stop and look at Nazreen in the bed, the dark rivers of her hair, the moonlit gleam of her cheekbone.
For some reason, it felt suddenly paramount that I commit her to memory. Just like this.
When that was done, I made my way out onto the landing of stone that jutted out from the healers’ cave and leaped over the natural stone barrier.
Not far below was a ledge that I landed upon.
There were paths down from here, but Yeralk was likely close by, waiting for my summons.
It would save time to simply mount him from here. I called for him.
The Vrika landed on the stone below. We both waited.
But it was not Yeralk who appeared but a few heartbeats later.
It was the borog.
We had not seen it since the attack that injured Nazreen. Fear gripped me. Not for myself, but for Nazreen who slept so soundly just above and within. But the borog did not aim itself towards me or Nazreen’s sleeping place.
It went for the Vrika.
And then a new fear found me. Could something like a borog kill the Vrika?
I did not know. The Vrika was an immortal creature.
But I’d never seen something try to kill it before.
The Vrika was moving at once, slipping through the air like misting breath on a cold night. The borog followed, beating its heavy wings, jaws snapping.
“Yeralk!” I bellowed, but the faithful creature was here now, diving at me like an arrow. I caught his neck without him even needing to stop and land, hauling myself up onto his back. Together, we plunged after the two massive winged beings.
Perhaps this was not wise. Shooting after the borog like this alone. But only one man was needed to get below it and kill it. And there was no time – even now it was nipping hungrily at the Vrika’s shimmering tail.
I would not let anything happen to the Vrika. It would mean the end of our ways, our people. The end of the Deep Sky entirely.
One benefit to the malevolent borog’s ability to fly was that a man could get beneath it and try to pierce its vulnerable places without being trapped and subjected to the lethal spray of its toxic blood.
It was one of the reasons my men and I were riding so hard these days, patrolling constantly for the borog.
If only one of us could fly below it, and have an arrow shoot true, we could be victorious.
With this in mind, I urged Yeralk on, faster and lower.
Mountains bled through the air around us, smeared by speed.
The Vrika was leading the borog higher, which worked well for my purposes.
In rapid succession, I shot three arrows at the borog’s underside, but none hit the right place.
That narrow band where its throat met the broad, armoured span of its chest.
“Blast!”
The Vrika slipped around a towering outcropping of stone.
The borog followed with less grace, crashing against the stone and sending great boulders down to the ground, scrabbling with its claws and launching back into the air.
I realized then that the Vrika was leading us back to its peak.
Perhaps that was where it felt safest. Yeralk and I followed closely.
Eventually, I gave up entirely on trying to direct Yeralk, trusting him to know what to do as I loosed arrow after arrow, every chance I got.
Not a single one was successful. And by the time we’d reached the base of the Vrika’s peak, the borog had advanced enough to snatch the sacred Vrika’s tail between its mighty jaws, dragging it down to the ground.
“No!” I aimed a shot at the writhing knot of the two battling bodies, but it merely clattered off the borog’s back. I reached for another. My fist closed upon empty air.
Out of arrows. Out of time.
I leaped from Yeralk without a second thought.
It was me or the Vrika.
There was no need to contemplate what was to be done.
The borog’s body was like living stone beneath me.
A writhing, bristling mass of monstrous energy beneath the unyielding durability of its surface.
I hurled my bow away, fighting to hold on while grasping my blade with my other hand.
I did not try to use my blade back here.
It would be futile. It would probably snap my only hope of ending this.
The borog made feral sounds of rage as it fought to keep its hold on the Vrika. The Vrika was entirely silent besides the sounds of its body against the stone. I’d thought the two were battling, but now I realized the peaceful Vrika was fighting only to free itself.
It had no real weapons if its own.
But it had me.
Part of the Vrika’s tail was wedged beneath the right, front shoulder of the borog.
This kept the monster partially elevated off the ground.
Just enough space for a man to crawl beneath it.
My heart throbbing in me like a wound, I slid down the hard curve of the side of the borog’s head and burrowed my way beneath its chest.
Perhaps absurdly, I was reminded of mere moments ago. Nazreen’s little toes, wiggling their way beneath my thigh.
Thoughts of her only renewed my purpose as the borog’s mass bucked and convulsed above me, threatening every other moment to crush me.
With barely enough space to do it, I wrenched myself onto my back, shoving with my legs and my tail until I saw it.
There was no mistaking the creased area of flesh above me now, swollen and pulsing with the lifeforce of its terrible blood.
I had planned for this moment. As well as one could, anyway.
I had imagined that perhaps I might be able to angle myself in such a way that the spill of the burning blood might not be lethal.
That perhaps I could somehow direct it more at my legs, or maybe a single arm if I only managed to find the right place.
But I knew now such a thing would be impossible.
I would barely be able to get my arm and blade up to stab at the right place as it was.
Every breath I breathed threatened to be my last – the borog’s mass could crush me before I ever got the chance to harm it.
It would be a death entirely without purpose.
A death that did nothing to protect the Vrika, my people. Or Nazreen.
I might not get another chance. It had to be now.
I grunted and strained to get my blade into position, its tip aimed at the pulse point.
I remembered Nazreen as I’d first seen her in the dark.
I remembered her the first time that she’d laughed.
I remembered her face down in the dust of the valley, bleeding from her head.
And then I thought of her as I’d just left her. Asleep in bed. Safe.
Because I would keep her safe.
Calm with purpose, I tensed every muscle in my body and shoved my blade inside.
The borog reacted at once, releasing the Vrika’s tail immediately and roaring. I wrenched my blade, splitting more skin.
And the blood poured down upon me.
There was no way to escape it. No way to protect myself from it. It was as if I’d just stepped beneath a waterfall.
In that moment, I did not feel pain. But I heard the sizzle of my own flesh. The Vrika’s tail slipped out from the borog’s shoulder. The loss of that support sent the borog crashing down on the right side.
Even in my current state, barely breathing, blinded by black smoke, some instinct for survival lived on. With the last of my strength, I dragged myself out from beneath its dying body. Then, beside it, I collapsed.
I accepted death like Nazreen’s arms around me. It pulled me up, up, up. Into the sky.
If I could see anything from my eyes now, would I see my own corpse upon the ground?
But the sensation of rising ended abruptly. Something solid now, behind my back. And the poison bloom of agony moving in. Everywhere.
My body was nothing but the scorching demolition of pain. I could not breathe. Could not open my eyes or swallow. This was how my uncle had died.
Perhaps now, after all the ways I’d failed him, I had finally done him honour. Though the weakest parts of me cursed the fact that I had not been crushed and killed immediately after stabbing the borog.
But even a few more moments of this torture was a little more time in the world that had Nazreen in it. I thought of her, saved now from the borog as my people were. And I endured.
And as if the very thought of her had a cleansing quality upon me, like the silvered fall of gentle rain, bit by bit, the pain began to recede. Likely, this merely meant I was dying. But I kept her fixed in my mind anyway. So that she would be the last thing with me.
But so profound was this change in me – not towards death, but towards life – that I became able to open my eyes. I was still blinded – this time by bright white light instead of black smoke.
No. It was not blindness. It was the Vrika.
Its great body arched above me. Blood gushed from its tail, raining down on my face, my chest. Blood from the place the borog had bitten it.
I did not allow myself to dare to hope. I only lay there, silent and unmoving, still not quite able to breathe as the Vrika healed me with that most potent source of its fresh blood.
I did not deserve this. Many men died without the Vrika’s intervention.
Gahn Seerak being one of them.
Why me?
I did not answer you. I did not follow you.
Breath filled my lungs, and it only hurt in the way an old bruise might, my flesh tender and tight but ultimately alive. Tilting my chin, I let my gaze cascade down my body. I glowed as the Vrika did, completely coated in its blood.
This was more than Vrika’s blood in a jar could accomplish. No healer would have been able to save me. Only the Vrika, the Vrika that I had not heeded, was capable of it.
But it did not answer the question of why.
With the worst parts of my ravaged body now healed, the Vrika moved away, giving me a startlingly clear view of the sky. We were so high up. Impossibly so, it seemed, no other peak as tall as this one.
The Vrika’s peak.
I was in its nest.
And when something smooth and cool bumped my side, I suddenly knew why the Vrika had saved me.
“No,” I rasped, turning my head to see the Vrika’s egg beside me. The egg that, once broken, would bind me to my mate forever. The Vrika watched me with endless eyes from behind its egg. Without me even touching it, the egg cracked.
“No,” I said again, with as much force as I could muster. “No, Vrika.”
If this was why it had saved me, it should have just let me die.
The top of the egg fell away. As if the mate vision was a living thing that needed to be born whether I was ready or not.
Inside the egg was a face.
I tried to wrench my newly-healed eyes away. Tried not to see.
But hers had never been a face that I could look away from.
Green sight stars were the last thing I saw before my healed – but terribly weakened body – collapsed into total oblivion.