Chapter 26
KARA
Ascrape comes.
Low. Long. Deliberate.
The sound coils up, vibrating through the stone beneath my feet. I flinch, but the vibration doesn’t stop—it grows louder. Closer.
He moves before I can, not away, closer.
His shoulder brushes mine, steadying, his wings flexing once before settling closed.
His tail rises and curls around my waist. Moonlight slides along his scars, picking them out like white lightning across crimson scales.
He doesn’t speak, but the tilt of his body says enough. Stay. Hold.
I can’t breathe right. My chest is too tight. I stare at the dark line of the canyon, waiting for the monster I know is coming. My knife is slippery in my grip—sweat, blood, exhaustion, I don’t know which—but I don’t loosen my hold. I won’t.
The scrape rises again, louder, punctuated by the grind of stone breaking free.
“Where?” I say, voice a rasp, hardly sound at all, scanning the edge.
He doesn’t answer. His tail tightens on my waist—the only sign of tension—but his stance never wavers. He is waiting as though this moment belongs to him and not the thing climbing to get us.
The contact with him steadies me more than the stone beneath my boots. His claws flex against the haft of the lochaber, the faint scrape of metal on scale sharp in the hush.
Then it crests the edge.
Not all at once—it’s a shape. A swell of black against the night, massive claws hauling a body too big, too heavy, over the lip and into the moonlight.
My breath sticks in my throat. The canyon is birthing a nightmare. A horned head lifts, horns curved cruelly backward, catching silver glow as the rest of it heaves upward. Scaled hide gleams dark bronze, wet-looking in the thin light, muscles shifting like rolling dunes.
Then its eyes open.
Twin slits, burning yellow, sweep across us. The pupils narrow, locking onto me so sharp it feels like a spear through my chest.
My stomach twists hard enough to make me sick. I can’t move. Can’t blink. It sees me.
Beside me, he shifts—not stepping back, not even flinching. He plants himself firmer, a wall of muscle and wings between me and those eyes. For one heartbeat, I lean into the curve of him, stealing the steadiness he doesn’t falter in giving.
My knife feels pitiful, a child’s weapon against something carved for killing. But I don’t put it down. My fingers cramp, stubborn and tight, and I force air into my lungs.
The monster pulls higher, its bulk scraping free of the canyon, claws shredding stone. The sound rattles my bones. Its mouth parts once, a wet hiss slithering across the rim.
My chest seizes. The smell of it—rancid rot and hunger—burns into my throat.
He moves again, wings half-furling as he lowers his stance, lochaber tilting, blade catching a thin strip of moonlight. His tail arcs high, balanced and deliberate.
The scrape of his scales against my skin when he adjusts is nothing, barely there, but it jolts through me harder than the monster’s hiss.
The thing hauls another length of its body free. Its shoulders heave over the rim. Stones shower down in bursts. Its claws gouge forward, stretching toward us.
I choke, gasping, and backpedal a step. His hand snaps out, catching my wrist. His claws don’t cut, but the grip is iron. He drags me to his side, closer than breath.
“Together,” he growls.
The sound rumbles through my chest, as steady as the earth itself. I nod once, hard, my pulse stuttering so fierce it feels like my skin can’t contain it.
The monster’s eyes flare brighter, molten in the dark. Its head lifts higher, horns glinting, shadow swallowing shadow.
It knows exactly where we are.
It roars—deep and rolling, shaking the canyon, the dunes, the marrow of my bones. The roar splits the night.
It’s so deep and violent I feel it in my bones before the sound even reaches my ears. I clap my hands over them, but it does nothing—sand pours over the rim in sheets, the ground shudders beneath my boots.
He doesn’t flinch.
The scarred warrior spreads his stance, wings flaring wide, tail lashing hard enough to send grit skittering. His lochaber gleams in the moonlight, angled forward like a living extension of him.
Then it comes.
The monster drags its bulk onto the ledge with a sound like stone cracking. Its head rises higher. The stench is foul, a mix of rot and acid that makes my stomach lurch.
It lowers its head and inhales, that massive chest swelling. I stagger back one step. Just one.
My fingers tighten on the knife until my knuckles ache. Everything in me screams to run, to hide, to let the warrior meet it alone—but I don’t. I lift my blade, arm shaking, throat tight with defiance. If he stands, then so do I. I will do what I can to help.
For a heartbeat, the only sound is my ragged breath and the monster’s hungry snarl.
Then he moves.
The Zmaj explodes forward, a blur of scars and muscle and steel.
His lochaber arcs with precision, slicing across the creature’s snout.
A spray of dark ichor bursts free. The monster jerks back, rearing with a guttural screech that rattles my ribs.
Its tail lashes, smashing into the canyon wall hard enough to cause cracks to spider out.
He lands light, blade raised again, shoulders coiled and ready. His strike was clean, purposeful—but not enough to stop it.
The beast answers with fury.
It lunges, one massive forelimb swiping across the ledge.
I throw myself aside, sand and rock exploding into the air around me.
Claws carve trenches through stone, gouging the ground where I stood a second ago.
My boot slips, the rim crumbling beneath me, and for one sick heartbeat the void yawns below.
A hand slams around my arm.
He yanks me forward, my back striking his chest, his wings flaring wide to shield us from the spray of debris.
The ground bucks as the monster’s tail smashes down, sending a wave of grit over us.
His claws tighten—not crushing, but steadying.
I feel his hearts pounding against my spine, steady and powerful despite everything.
The beast rears back. I lift my knife, though it feels pitiful against something this size. He doesn’t let me go. His stance shifts, turning us both with him, lochaber angled to deflect.
It spits.
A wide arc of green venom sprays across the ledge, hissing and burning wherever it touches. The path behind us is cut off instantly, stone melting into black pits, the air thick with acid smoke.
My throat seizes. We’re trapped.
The ledge narrows behind us into nothing but the drop. The desert beyond is blocked by the thing. The beast coils for the kill.
I grip his arm without thinking, fingers digging into scarred scales.
He doesn’t shake me off. Instead, he leans forward, lochaber rising steady in his other hand.
His voice rumbles low—not a command, not even words meant for me—just the sound of him, like stone grinding, promising that this isn’t where we fall.
My pulse pounds so hard I feel it in my teeth.
I lift my knife again, shoulder pressed to his, every nerve stretched to breaking.
“If we don’t kill it,” I whisper, more to myself than him, “we won’t survive to see tomorrow.”
The monster lowers its head, claws digging deep into the rock. Its tail lashes once, twice—the warning of a predator about to strike.
And we wait, side by side on the rim of the world, for the thing in the dark to come for us.