Chapter Thirty
Mia
I screamed as we fell from the sky like a stone, and I struggled to free myself from the grasp of whatever terrible thing had me. I could barely make it out, the form shifting and moving around me, a living shadow that held me wrapped in its midst, a prisoner of something I couldn’t see.
Behind us, the mighty roar of a dragon followed us.
I hoped it was Tor, but even if I could have seen through the never-ending ripple of pure blackness to confirm, I would probably never know.
The only time Tor had shown me his dragon, I’d been more overwhelmed than anything.
The color, which was about the only detail I could make out, appeared to be the same, but he’d been asleep when the monster got me.
How would he have been able to track me all that way?
The wind whistled as we fell, a reminder that the ground was coming up fast. Very fast. What was the monster's plan? I couldn’t imagine it had flown us all that way just to dash our brains out on the side of the mountain.
My thoughts were confirmed as we angled around slightly until an opening revealed itself.
At speeds far too fast to be comforting, we shot into the darkness, where we abruptly slowed.
I was slammed hard into the grips of the icy darkness fiend, the sheer terror it exuded sinking deeper into me from the extra contact. I whimpered, trembling.
We came to a stop. I had no idea where or what was around me. It wasn’t the darkness of a room at night. It was absolutely pitch black. I brought my hand up in front of my face, but if it had been someone else’s, I would never have known it was there. It was invisible.
“Hey!” I shouted as the thing abruptly tossed me to the side. I bounced off the rocky ground, rolling several times until I came to a jarring halt courtesy of a solid piece of rock.
I got to a crouch, reaching above me, in front of me, all around me, trying to figure out where I was. My feet cautiously tested forward to ensure there was no open chasm that I could fall into. The only thing I felt was the solid wall behind me that spread out to either side.
“What do you want with me?” I shouted into the darkness, though I didn’t expect an answer. The creature hadn’t said a single word the entire trip. I doubted it could speak.
I tried to ease my way forward, away from the wall, but cold, icy tendrils wrapped around me, the monster shoving me back. I tried to resist, but I couldn’t fight its strength.
Light exploded around me without warning. I shrieked in a mix of surprise and pain as my eyes were immediately overwhelmed. The cold disappeared as the monster was yanked away. Something hit the ground hard nearby, and the force of the impact was strong enough to spill me from my feet.
I cried out as I landed. A furious bellow echoed my shout, coming from farther away than I’d expected. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the image of a dragon, its jaws open wide, lunging toward a murky black shape.
Then darkness swept over us again, the light going out.
I huddled down, only able to listen, not participate.
Several moments later, more lightning flashed, that time way off to my left.
My head snapped around just in time to see the giant dragon bowled over by the enemy creature, extinguishing its light once more. A cry of pain went up.
“Tor!” I screamed, fearful that I’d just witnessed his death.
Another angry roar sounded in the dark, and something smashed into the wall again. Dust and debris rained down, forcing me to cover my head with my hands after getting plunked in the head by a few unpleasant knuckle-sized rocks.
Lightning flashed, and I saw another snapshot tableau of them fighting.
Then again. And again. They moved across the cavern.
First, Tor would have the upper hand. Then the monster.
Then they would be even. My eyes were dazzled, and tears fell, but I forced them to remain open.
I had to see what was happening. I had to know if Tor fell …
A cry of pain stabbed at my eardrums, and lightning showed the monster pinning Tor to the ground, something having ripped open his chest, leaving a gaping wound. The dragon struggled, but the light slowly faded, and they disappeared into the darkness.
“Tor! Get up, Tor! Don’t you dare let it win!” I bellowed.
It started so slowly that, at first, I didn’t even notice the increasing glow.
It moved like a snake, crawling across the floor in an arc.
As it grew brighter, I realized it wasn’t moving, but rather, it was making its way up Tor’s tail.
It pulsed, growing stronger until I could see Tor’s snout, his teeth bared at the creature.
A weird thrum noise sounded with each pulse, rattling off the cavern walls as it built in time with the power Tor was summoning.
With a mighty snarl, Tor got to his feet, flinging the monster back into the darkness—and spitting it with a lightning bolt, the physical, cackling, jagged line of lightning erupting from his mouth to pierce the creature and nail it to the wall.
“Yes!” I shouted, clapping my hands as the creature sagged, its body drooping in what I assumed would be death. The lightning bolt faded, and the monster dropped to the floor.
He’d done it. Tor had done it! He’d won. We were safe.
I gasped as the light from Tor also faded, leaving me with an image of him falling to the ground.
“Tor!” I screamed, stumbling forward, my hands in front of me, my feet shuffling across the uneven surface.
I tripped and fell, scraping the skin from my palms, but I didn’t let that stop me. I got to my feet and kept walking. My only thought was to get to Tor.
He can’t be dead, I told myself. There’s no way he’s dead. He has to be alive. Pretty please. Don’t be dead!
My shuffling was the only thing that stopped me from dying. I planted my left foot, and my right moved forward—but only encountered air.
I teetered for a moment, nearly going over the edge, but I managed to pull myself back, away from the lip, falling hard onto my rump. In the darkness, I hadn’t noticed the chasm, and without any light, there was no way I could find out if there were a crossing.
“Tor!” I called. “Please! Get up! You have to be okay!”
There was no immediate response.
Pulling my knees to my chest, I fought back tears.
What would I do? I had no idea how to get out of the cavern.
There was no light anywhere. Nothing to show me the way out.
And even if I did get out, how was I supposed to get home?
Everything had happened so fast, and I’d barely been able to see much anyway.
I was trapped in a place I didn’t know.
Off to my left, a dull light appeared, faint enough that I thought I imagined it at first. A hallucination in the dark. But it continued to get brighter until I saw the outline of a shadow moving. A person. Walking.
Could it be?
He approached the chasm, which I could see now, and deftly leaped the six-foot distance, landing with a slight bend of his knees.
“Mia,” Tor said, emerging from the darkness as his light banished the shadows. He bent down and scooped me up without asking, holding me tight to his bare chest. “I’ve got you now. You’re okay.”
“Tor,” I whispered, burying my face in his neck. “You’re okay. Oh, my god, you’re okay!”
“So are you,” he said.
My hand slid down his back. I recoiled as I felt the bumpy, jagged outline of a gaping wound. “Oh, my god. Tor!” I wiggled out of his grip, turning him around so I could get a look at it.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Tired. Sore for a bit, but it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Like hell, it’s not! Tor, this is the size of my fist and two inches deep. You’re bleeding like crazy. You’ll die if we don’t get this taken care of right away.”
“Hush,” he said, pressing a finger to my lips. “Listen to me, Mia. I’m not like you, remember? I’ll heal from things that would kill a human. I’ve suffered worse than what the Vorgan did to me.”
“Vorgan.” I repeated the word. I’d heard it before. But where?
“Yes, that was a Vorgan,” he replied tautly. “The same creature my sister used to kill so many people when I was younger. And now it’s killed again.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Tempest and the other dragons who came through yesterday,” he said tightly. “It got them in their sleep.”
“Oh, god,” I whispered, hand over my mouth. “Ty?”
“Badly wounded, but he’ll survive. He made it to my room to wake me and tell me what happened. That was when I discovered it had you.”
“How did you find me?” I asked.
Tor bent over and scooped me up into his arms. I let him that time, careful not to press my hands into the hole in his back. It boggled my mind that that was not a major wound to him.
“The Vorgans give off a residue. It feels like walking through a cold fog. It led me to the Rift, which I saw my sister had activated to bring you through. After that, there’s only one place it could have been going. The mountain under Storm Keep, where they live, deep, deep down.”
We were walking now.
“So, you mean that we’re …?”
“Yes,” Tor said, wings sprouting from his back as he lifted us into the sky and up through the tunnel. “We’re not on Earth anymore. We’re in the dragon realm, the land of the storm clan. My clan.”
We burst out from the mountain and around the peak, giving me my first look at the castle Tor had grown up in.
“Welcome to my home,” he said.