Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Aesira
Days of endless desert traded with jagged red rocks. A heavy mist clung to the craggy mountain peaks, offering limited visibility to the outpost below them.
Aesira cupped her hands and blew into them, warming the frost from her fingertips. In Novaria, the elevation was higher but the land was still temperate. No extreme drops or spikes in temperature. Nothing like the heat of Vargah or now the frigid air of the Whispering Mountains.
“If those crawlers don’t kill us, surely this cold will.” Nora wrapped her hands around a steaming cup of tea.
“Once we’re on the ground, we’ll warm up.” Aesira rubbed her hands together. They sailed straight through the day and now the moon was lighting the way for Aquila to dock at the next stop. Dire, Stone had called it. A tiny speck on the map, and the last known civilization in the west.
Aesira’s armor held in her body heat well enough that she waved off a cloak from Bee. Deciding it would only get in her way should a need for her weapons arise.
“Almost there,” Stone said from behind her. They spent their rotations together the last two nights, just as he’d said.
He was patient, teaching her how to fly while they made simple conversation.
The weather, Vargah, finding Desmond. She was finding his company more and more comfortable.
Actual friendship, as Stone liked to remind her.
Except when his hands met hers on the wheel of the ship, his callouses scraping against her skin, sending tiny thrills down her spine.
Or when he laughed at his own stories and Aesira caught herself leaning into the sound, savoring it.
She’d chastise herself in her room later for being so easily distracted.
Aesira left Nora to warm with her tea and joined Stone at the helm. “What’s the plan?” His goggles sat snug on the top of his head, his hair tousled from the wind.
“We dock. Ask around.” He spun the wheel slightly to the left, angling them toward Dire. “We hope King Desmond is holed up here and if not, we prepare.”
Hope.
Aesira had done her fair share of hoping in her younger days.
Hoping her father would change his mind about sending her off to train with the Order.
Hoping Kamari would not be sent away to a foreign kingdom.
Hoping her brother had found peace in the afterlife.
Hoping her mother would intervene and protect her children.
She’s outgrown the notion that hoping for things meant anything.
Over the edge of the ship, red rocky earth stretched beneath them. The crawlers had been mostly quiet all night, but every now and then her name drifted on the wind. Her secrets and shames.
The dock was in sight now. It was worse for wear, broken planks and missing hinges. Stone managed to land with grace, only knocking a few planks loose in the process.
He led them off the Aquila and into Dire, checking over his shoulder three times that the ship was tethered.
The wind tugged at Aesira’s hair, biting at her chapped lips and cheeks.
The moon and stars twinkled through the growing clouds, but other than their light, the rest of the small encampment was dark.
No music like in the Outpost. No astra lamps or sounds from the small cluster of buildings.
She imagined the rations of astra were minimal out here, but still, shouldn’t there be some evidence of life?
“It can’t be that late,” Nora whispered at her side. “Where is everyone?”
Stone finished wiping the condensation from his glasses and slid them back on. Together, the six of them scanned the meager outpost.
A set of crumbling buildings sat vacant to their right. The windows had been shattered, the door barely hanging from its hinges. On the other side was another set of buildings. They glowed blue in the moonlight but through the broken windows, Aesira could see nothing but darkness.
“Shouldn’t there be someone here?” Bee asked, coiling her arm around Birdie’s. Dread snaked in Aesira’s stomach. She knew it was a small outpost, one that didn’t garner many visitors. But it shouldn't be completely vacant. Holding her breath, she scanned the ghost-like town before her.
“We’ll go in teams of two,” Aesira said. “Nora and Patch take the northernmost building. Birdie and Bee, head to the eastern cluster.” She nodded at Stone. “You and I take these.” She pointed to the set of dilapidated buildings in front of them.
They divided the torches they brought from the ship between them before they split up. Nora’s sword glinted under the moonlight as she and Patch trudged through the desolate outpost.
The building in front of Stone and Aesira was drowning in darkness, the shattered windows giving a distorted view to the empty void inside.
“Hello?” she called out, her own voice echoing back to her.
Her sword felt heavy in her hands after a week without use, but her muscles were quick to remember their training as she raised it higher, tighter.
“Hello?” She took a step into the building when something crunched under her boot.
Broken glass.
“Here.” Stone lit the torch. Flickers of firelight cut through the room, illuminating shards of glass that littered the floor in every direction. Tables were overturned, a few chairs still sat in place, deep scratches carved through the backs and bottoms. Curtains hung in tatters on the ground.
“What happened here?” She sheathed her sword, broken glass crunching under her boots. “Rebels?”
“I don’t know,” Stone said, angling the torch to light the way in front of them.
The drifters of the desert had been quiet as of late.
They had no real home, no ties to either of the kingdoms, coming and going as they pleased, usually bringing a torrent of crime with them.
Theft, mostly, of resources like astra and water.
Sometimes more violent, like the time they invaded Novaria.
They'd held a woman hostage and demanded medicine from their healers.
The room before them was destroyed, pillaged. There were little resources here to begin with, but she couldn’t imagine that would stop the rebels from taking their fill anyway.
Stone pointed the flame toward the back of the room, where another dark doorway sat. A thread of instinct pulled taut in Aesira’s chest. She moved through the room until she stood in the doorframe.
The light from the torch flickered from side to side as Stone joined her. The dread that was in her stomach crept its way up through her chest before clenching around her throat. “Stone.” She swallowed past a scream. “Stone.”
“What is it?”
Something dark slid from the wall, falling to the floor.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Aesira took a step closer but recoiled when the odor hit her.
Tangy and pungent.
Blood.
It dripped from the ceiling, pooling on the edges of the broken glass. Aesira covered her mouth with her sleeve.
Movement in the corner caught her eye, too far back for the flame to reach. She pulled her sword again and took a step forward. Stone’s free hand clenched around her arm. “What are you doing?”
She shrugged him off. Another shift in movement, another crunching sound from the glass beneath her feet. She took a tentative step, the heat from the torch touched her cheeks as Stone followed closely behind.
“Is someone there?” Her grip tightened around the pommel of her sword, the shadowy movement from the back corner froze.
“Aesira,” Stone warned but she raised a hand to silence him.
She could appreciate his caution, she understood it.
But this was more her element than tending a ship or overlooking a wall.
She knew what she was doing and when she looked at him over her shoulder, the quick dip of his chin told her he knew as well.
There was another sound. Not the bite of glass under their boots. Not the crackling of the flame from the torch. She craned her ear and held her breath, honing in on the instincts she’d sharpened since she was twelve.
Singing.
From the farthest room, a woman’s voice faintly drifted through the open doorway. “Do you hear that?” Aesira kept her voice low but with how close Stone was pressed to her body, she knew he heard her. His fingers gripped her arm like a vice.
The singing continued, high pitches and coos. Bird-like. Soft. Sweet.
“Who’s there? Do you need help?” Anticipation churned in Aesira’s stomach as she thought of the blood coating the ceiling and floor, the destruction of the building itself. The singing grew louder, a chirping melody that rang in her ears. She took a step forward. “We’re coming in.”
Another step and a high pitched note rang through the building. “What if we all fell down, down, down.”
Despite the cold, sweat pooled in Aesira’s palms and on her brow, clinging to the thick dark hairs around her nape.
“What if we all fell down,” the voice sang again and then all at once, nothing.
A wave of silence settled into each nook and crevice of the vacant building, like calm skies before a sand storm.
The odor of the room was strong enough to spring tears from her eyes, burning her nostrils.
Aesira thought of herself as a brave woman. A noble knight and fearless on the battlefront. But when Stone raised the torch and lit up the room, a fear so deep cut through her, her sword trembled in her hand.
A woman’s face was illuminated in the flame. She threw her head back, hissing at the light. A pale face with large, yellow eyes, a chin stained crimson with blood dripping from her needle-like teeth. Dark, stringy hair clung to her scalp, falling well below–
Aesira reared back, bumping into Stone’s chest. He dropped the torch and pulled her so tightly into him she could feel the erratic beating of his heart.
From the neck down, the woman morphed into feathers and rippling muscle, all held up by powerful legs and sharp talons. Aesira’s pulse hammered in her chest. Her sword slipping, slipping from her grip until it clattered against the glass on the floor.