11. Familial Psychology #2
The projectile ripped through the rotsbane’s open mouth and straight through the back of its skull, threading a length of chain through its head and coming to a rest embedded in the chest of the second rotsbane.
Their twin screams split the cavern, high-pitched and wailing. The first rotsbane convulsed, held up by the chain strung through its skull, and then sloughed away as sludgy smoke.
The charging form of the remaining rotsbane barreled towards me through the smog, but the chain, still attached to the spear, pulled taut, yanking the beast to the side.
“Move, Wren!” Ciarán’s shout brought me to my senses, and I scrambled away. The rotsbane continued to try to reach for me, but Ciarán had wrapped the chain around a series of lava pillars, creating a pulley system to help hold the monster back.
He passed the chain off to Orla and loosed a second chain and spear as they formed in his hand. The spear pierced the rotsbane’s neck, and the rotsbane screamed and writhed as Ciarán wove the chain through a second set of lava pillars.
The rotsbane twisted where it was trapped in the snare, but it had the sense to clamp its jaw shut so I couldn’t strike it in the mouth and end it. Instead, I ran to relieve Ciarán of his length of chain.
His hands quaked with fatigue as I took the metal, and sweat glistened on his forehead. The rotsbane jerked on its end of the snare, but I dug my feet into the rock and forced more Nightmare strength into my arms and legs.
“You were supposed to leave!” I grunted as the rotsbane yanked again.
Ciarán bent over, heaving to regain his breath, but somehow managed to smirk between gasps for air.
“I got the others out, like I said I would. I came back as soon as the Lyrian agreed to leave with us.”
“And Orla?”
“She followed me.”
“Wren!” Orla shouted a warning, and Ciarán and I both twisted towards a fresh Nightmare pulling itself from the dirt.
Ferrin’s grin glinted green in the light of his glowing hands. He could easily make more rotsbane than Ciarán could make spears. Ferrin would kill as many people from my world as he needed to create his monsters without a shred of remorse or restraint.
“Ciarán,” I said.
“Tell me what you need.”
A dark resolve settled in my stomach. “Kill Ferrin.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
Orange fire solidified into a dagger in his hand, and it flew ahead of him as he charged to dispatch of the new Nightmare before Ferrin could transform her into another rotsbane.
Her head knocked back with the force of Ciarán’s weapon hitting her square in the forehead, and she dissolved into dust. She’d be waking up in her bed at home, shaken by a bad dream she couldn’t remember, not knowing how close she’d come to being stripped away into a hungry nothing.
A new dagger formed in Ciarán’s hand, and Ferrin procured a weapon of his own to fend off the attack.
“Wait!” Orla cried out.
The rotsbane between us lurched towards me, knocking Orla off balance. She regained her grip on her chain and braced her boot against a lava pillar for better leverage.
A grunt echoed across the cavern. Ciarán had Ferrin pinned against the rocky ground. A thrill of excitement and dread electrified my extremities.
I’d ordered Ciarán to kill Ferrin, and that was just what he was going to do. Ferrin struggled beneath Ciarán, but even at this altitude, Ciarán was the better warrior.
“Don’t!” Orla begged. “He’s my family!”
“He’s trying to kill us, Orla!” I shouted back at her.
“That doesn’t mean we have to be killers too. Ciarán! Please!”
Ciarán lifted his eyes to mine.
I gave him a nod, and Orla screamed.
“These are the monsters you’ve aligned yourself with!” Ferrin howled at his niece. “These are the beasts you betrayed me for!”
“Wren!” Orla sobbed. “Make him stop! Please! I don’t want anyone to die!”
An orange blade glowed in Ciarán’s fist, and he raised it to Ferrin’s neck.
Every time Ciarán had fought me, he’d been all gravitas and flourishes.
Now he looked more like a man taking livestock to slaughter, eager to keep the job at hand quick and clean, with simple, calculated movements and cold eyes above his cowl.
Gams had said once that Ciarán wasn’t made for the brutality of the Grimguards, but he wasn’t shying away from it either.
I braced for the blood I was sure was about to spill from Ferrin’s neck.
“No!” Orla’s shrill cry cut through the room. Metal whipped and whistled as she released her hold on the rotsbane’s chain to unleash a column of purple fire towards the men.
The attack seared across Ciarán’s back, forcing him away from Ferrin. The metal in my hands ripped from my grip as the rotsbane lurched after the lavender magick with a scream. Both chains whipped after the rotsbane, smashing into stone and forcing me to the ground to avoid the spray of rock.
The rotsbane crossed the cavern in three strides of its massive legs and extended its claws to swipe at the lavender sparks. The magick sucked into its mouth as Ferrin and Ciarán both tried to scramble out of its reach.
Ciarán was too slow. The rotsbane raked its long claws down his flank, shattering the bottles of Skal on his belt.
“No!” I clawed at our bond for more Skal, but Ciarán was running on the last embers of his magick supply. My desperation led me to a new source.
I could feel the pebbles of the lakeshore digging into my back and the ghost of my rib injuries nagging at my sides as part of me reconnected with my real body. Fresh magick, my magick, coursed through me, and blue light swelled in my hands.
The rotsbane spun towards me, screaming in hunger, and I let azure flames engulf me.
Something primordial locked into place, heating me from the inside out.
That undeniable magnetism that connected me to the mountains of Skalterra strengthened.
The pressure of the magma building beneath Skalterra’s crust was a pressure that built on the inside of my head and chest, but I felt every rock, every cavern, and every vein of quartz running through the Second Sentinel as if it were my body that they comprised.
My magick came from the same magick that had made this mountain. The city may have been Ferrin’s, but the rock it was carved from was mine.
Tremors shook the cavern, and Orla screamed my name from the top of the stairs. The rotsbane reached for me with extended claws, but slabs of stone showered from the ceiling to pin it against the stone floor.
“You’ve done enough, Orla! Get out!” I shouted over the rumbling of my earthquake.
Orla’s face turned white, and she mouthed a desperate apology before whisking out of sight.
Rock continued to shatter overhead, and Ferrin’s retreating silhouette glowed green as he fled back down the tunnel towards the city.
The cavern was collapsing, and while I wasn’t sure if I possessed any control over the earthquake, I imagined the stairwell closing behind Orla and keeping Ferrin from giving chase.
The top of the stairwell caved in, whether from luck or from some unknown ability on my end.
The earthquake subsided, but rock continued to fall and crack. The rotsbane fought against the slabs of rock on top of it, desperate to unearth itself and devour me, but I skirted around its outstretched claws to run towards Ciarán.
He lay on his side, horribly still and bleeding, but if he were dead, I wouldn’t be here as a Nightmare anymore. I rolled him onto his back, and he groaned in pain.
I’d expended nearly all my magick in the earthquake, but there was a bit of Skal left in one of Ciarán’s bottles. I unhooked it from his belt, trying not to look at the bloody mess the rotsbane had made of his side.
The Skal was warm in my throat and stomach, and it stoked the quiet hunger that buzzed in my veins.
“Careful,” Ciarán murmured. “Too much magick will kill you.”
“I know.”
Magick burned in my back muscles, dissolving the clothing and armor that covered my skin there as I lifted Ciarán in my Skal-strengthened arms.
He groaned something again, but I couldn’t make out what he said through the crashing of rocks as the rotsbane freed itself. I sprinted for the lip of the shaking cliff.
The rotsbane screeched after us, but I held Ciarán’s bleeding body close and leapt from the cavern into open, mountain air as twenty feet of feathered wings erupted from my exposed back.
There was a brief moment of weightlessness, and my wings unfurled.
Then the rotsbane’s claws tore into my calf.