Chapter 25
WHAT REFUSES TO DIE
Arioch
Asound woke me.
Not a footstep or a voice, but a wet, uneven slapping against earth, like raw meat being dragged across stone. My hand found Silentium’s hilt before my eyes opened.
Moonlight slanted through the canopy of alien trees above our camp, casting warped shadows across the limestone ledge.
Tyrin sat upright against his boulder, axe across his lap, chin dipped to his chest. He had fallen asleep on watch.
I would not fault him for it. The gargoyle had flown the same distance as I had, and his reserves were not what they once had been.
The sound came again. Closer.
I rose on silent feet, eyes adjusting to the moonlit night. Something lurched between the trees at the base of the ledge. Two somethings. They moved with off-kilter gaits, each step punctuated by a thud and a drag, as though half their bodies refused to cooperate with the other half.
“Tyrin.”
His eyes snapped open, and he was on his feet with his axe raised. Following my gaze, he went rigid.
Two shaggy-haired figures emerged from the tree line. Even in the moonlight, the sight of them defied reason.
Each creature bore only half a face. One eye, one nostril, half a mouth stretched in a perpetual grimace.
Their bodies were bisected as though cleaved by a god’s blade, the wounds cauterized and covered in skin.
They hopped and lurched on one leg with terrible efficiency, covering ground far faster than their anatomy should have allowed.
A gurgling shriek forced through damaged vocal cords scratched at my eardrums.
“Nesnas,” Tyrin identified, shifting his weight to his front foot. “Arabian desert creatures. I thought they were a myth.”
“Evidently not. Weaknesses?”
“If I recall correctly... none.”
None? The creature was half-dead already. How difficult could it be to finish it off?
The first nesna crested the ledge in a single hop that would have been impressive had it not been so profoundly disturbing. Its lone eye fixed on the remains of our fire and then swiveled to me. Hunger contorted its half-mouth.
The breeze shifted, carrying the stench of carrion directly into our faces, and even Tyrin—with his inferior gargoyle nose—blanched in distaste. It was all I could do not to retch.
I brought Silentium to bear. The nesna lunged with startling speed, its single clawed hand raking toward my chest. I sidestepped and swung my sword in a clean arc, severing the arm at the shoulder.
The limb hit the ground with a wet smack, palm up, yet it was far from vanquished. Finger bones squeezed and released, rocking the hand back and forth.
“Helheim take you,” Tyrin swore.
The severed limb flipped itself over.
We both took a step back.
Fingers clawing at the earth, it dragged itself across the stone, returning to the body that bent low, balancing precariously on its single leg, allowing the arm to climb up and reattach itself to the stump.
Sinew stretched and connected. Flesh knitted together with a sucking sound that would haunt my nightmares for decades.
Fingers flexed, the shoulder rolled, and the nesna lunged for us once again.
Behind me, Tyrin’s axe connected with the second creature, splitting its torso from shoulder to hip. Both halves hit the ground and immediately began pulling themselves back together.
“You were not exaggerating about the lack of weaknesses,” I said, parrying a strike that left frost on the creature’s claws.
“I take no pleasure in being right.”
I drove Silentium through the first creature’s chest, pinning it to the earth. It writhed and clawed at the blade, its single eye rolling with mindless fury. The second lunged at Tyrin, who planted his axe squarely in its skull. It crumpled, twitched, and began reassembling.
Freezing them proved equally futile. Ice encased the first nesna completely, and for three glorious seconds, silence reigned. Then cracks spider-webbed across the surface, and a clawed hand burst free.
“Perhaps fire is the answer?” Tyrin suggested, wrenching his axe from the skull of the second creature for the third time.
Our cooking fire was nothing but ash, and I doubted the creatures would allow us the time required to rebuild it.
“Or distance.” I sheathed Silentium and seized the nearest nesna by its single ankle, freezing just enough of its leg to create a handhold. It shrieked and clawed at the air, twisting to snap at me with its half-jaw.
I shifted.
The nesna dangling from my foreclaw went rigid as my form expanded, scales erupting across my skin, wings unfurling to catch the warm coastal breeze.
Airborne in moments, I swept low and snatched the second creature from where Tyrin had it pinned beneath his boot, ignoring its furious attempts to bite through my scales.
Banking over the water, I flew until the island was nothing but a dark smudge on the horizon. Then I released the retched creatures.
They shrieked as they plummeted, striking the water with twin splashes that the darkness swallowed whole. I circled once, watching the surface. A single arm breached the waves, clawing at nothing, before a wave dragged it under.
Can they swim with one arm and one leg?
Truly, I did not wish to find out. The ocean and its predators could keep them.
I angled back toward the island but did not immediately descend.
The air was different up here, warm and thick with salt and the fragrance of unfamiliar flora.
Stars crowded the sky in numbers I had never witnessed from behind my sire’s ward.
They appeared so close I could reach out and touch them, and I suddenly wondered if I could fly high enough to do just that.
The moon painted a silver highway across the water.
The waves, wind, and distant hoot of an owl wove together a melody that could never be replicated.
After a lifetime of observing my ancestors’ accounts of the world, I had believed I knew what to expect, but no stored memory could have prepared me for this.
I never want to go back.
The thought ambushed me, and I shoved it aside with the discipline of a dragon lord who knew his duty. My people depended on me. This freedom was temporary.
But the experience was mine, and I would store it in my hoard to revisit any time I needed an escape.
I descended in slow spirals, studying the island from above.
Even in moonlight, its strangeness was arresting.
The umbrella-shaped trees stood like sentinels, their canopies so uniform they appeared sculpted rather than grown.
White sand beaches gave way to limestone plateaus scored with turquoise pools that glowed faintly, suggesting magic far older than anything I had encountered.
Toward the center of the island, ancient trees rose from a valley shrouded in mist. Even from this height, power radiated from that place, pressing against my awareness like a forming thought.
I banked away from it, unsettled by the depth of natural forces I sensed.
Whatever slept in that valley was old. Possibly older than my bloodline.
When I landed on the ledge, Tyrin was cleaning his axe with a rag. A fresh cut across his forearm was stitching itself closed.
“A third one came while you were gone,” he said, answering my unasked question. “I threw it off the cliff. It is still down there, trying to hop back up.”
I peered over the edge. Sure enough, the creature lurched against the base of the ledge, leaping and falling. Its single eye blazed with mindless persistence.
“I will handle it.”
After dispatching the third nesna to the same watery fate as its companions, I returned and settled beside the dying fire. Dawn was still hours away, and the gargoyle needed rest.
“Sleep. I will take the watch.”
“Are you certain, m’lord? You have not rested enough.”
“I am a dragon. You are not.”
He studied me, concern furrowing his brow, but the exhaustion carved into the hollows of his face won the argument. He settled against his boulder, axe within reach, and closed his eyes.
Silence reclaimed the ledge, broken only by the soothing rhythm of waves slapping against the shoreline.
I let my thoughts unspool.
I wondered how Jameson fared. Would he do as I commanded and remain safe in the inn?
Would he still be there when I returned?
Or would he vanish with the silver I had given him?
How had the orphan boy ended up a prisoner?
Who had taken him, and why were they forcing him to feed his magic into a machine?
Having no answers about the youth and his plight, my thoughts drifted to the little thief.
Ziara.
Her people had sent her to steal from a dragon, yet she would do anything for them. She had given up her location because I threatened the children and families she loved. The shame of that tactic lodged beneath my scales like a splinter I could not reach.
I had told Tyrin I was proud of my methods.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The distinction between leverage and cruelty was thinner than I had imagined from behind my books and walls. The expression she wore had not been the look of defeat, but of desperation as she chose which part of herself to sacrifice.
I understood that look, for I had worn it the night she shattered my ward and forced me to choose duty over the instinct to pursue my treasure.
She is still the enemy.
The declaration rang hollow against the quiet of the night.
She stole from my hoard.
True. And her people intended to restart a war that would cost untold lives.
But she spared mine.
My hand drifted to my chest, where her daggers had pierced me. The wounds had healed without a trace, yet I could still feel the ghost of them. Not the pain. The hesitation. She had repositioned her blades at the last instant, missing my heart on purpose.
What enemy showed such mercy?
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of the sea mixed with the sweet, bizarre blossoms that grew on this island at the edge of the world. I breathed it in and committed it to memory, already picturing the pink tourmaline I would store it in when I returned home.
I was still lost in my thoughts when dawn crept over the horizon, painting the water in shades of rose and gold. The artifact stirred, drawing closer.
The ship was coming, and with it, the reckoning I had chased halfway around the world.
I stood, rolling my shoulders and summoning the cold that lived beneath my skin. Whatever awaited me, I would face it as my mother would have, with clarity and purpose.
And, gods willing, without mercy.
But when I imagined Ziara’s green eyes staring up at me, defiant, afraid, and impossibly brave, I found I could not guarantee the last.