Chapter Four
Chapter
Four
“Do you think adventuring will ever get old?” Moss muses.
“It hasn’t yet!” Sindra grunts as she jerks her sword out of the dragon’s eye socket.
It always takes Sindra a few moments to come down from the rush after a battle.
She pants out of flared nostrils, and her pointed tail flicks behind her in a pattern of excited restlessness.
She flexes her hand around the grip of her sword, the leather worn and patchy after years of use.
Her fingers are sticky with the dragon’s blood, but it’s difficult to see against the ruby-red tone of her skin.
It had been a traveling bard who first brought news of the dragon to the forest druid enclave that Sindra and Moss call home.
The enclave is situated at the base of the mountains along the very edge of their kingdom, and it isn’t unusual for travelers passing through to spend a night or two in their safe company.
Seated near the cook fire, the bard had spun them a wild tale about a great horned beast prowling the skies.
His words were entirely too fanciful—and the teller entirely too drunk—to be taken seriously.
But when a small group of farmers from the nearest mountain village arrived with the same news a few days later, telling stories of how a young dragon was flying off with their flocks, the enclave listened carefully to their plea.
As the self-appointed protectors of the forest, the druids considered restoring nature’s balance—by killing a predator terrorizing the local ecosystem—to be their duty.
Sindra and Moss of course volunteered for the task of tracking down the dragon.
After all, Sindra was one of the only people in the enclave who knew her way around a blade, and Moss was a skilled healer who enjoyed every opportunity she got to see the world and pretend to be an adventurer.
When they accepted the quest, one of the older farmers had kneaded his straw hat in his hands as he warned, “Listen, somethin’s wrong with it. Somethin’s…off. Be careful, all right?”
But so far as Sindra can tell, there is nothing that marks this dragon as different from any other—besides the fact that it is now very much dead. “Come on, Moss,” she says, wiping off her sword. “Let’s check out the hoard.”
Every good, seasoned adventurer knows all dragons have a hoard, and though Sindra traded in her adventuring days as a knight years ago for a comfortable life protecting the enclave, her knowledge about dragons still rings true.
They find the small pile of loot tucked against an outcropping near the mountain’s peak.
As the dragon had been relatively young, the hoard isn’t especially impressive, but it has enough gold, gems, and shiny things to sustain a mountain village through the winter.
Sindra reaches for a bar of gold, but Moss swats her hand away with a tsk. “We’re giving this back to the villagers, whom this creature no doubt stole from,” she chides gently. “We don’t need riches, anyway. Nature provides.”
Sindra snorts out a laugh. “If I had a coin for every time you said that, I’d have a hoard ten times the size of this one,” she says dryly.
“Am I wrong?”
“You haven’t been yet.” After all, when Sindra had broken her oath and been stripped of her knighthood all those years ago, the enclave had accepted her into their community with open arms.
Moss flashes her a teasing grin, her two small orcish lower tusks on full display. “Give me a hand, then.”
The gold, of course, is the first to go—and then any weaponry, armor, or enchanted items that can be used or sold.
But Sindra knows by now that Moss is always enamored with the shiny bits that are left behind, as dragons are known to hoard anything shiny.
At a glance, Sindra spots sunlight sparkling off smooth pieces of cerulean sea glass, tiny silver lockets, and a large broken mirror.
As Moss comes to stand at her side, Sindra regards their expressions in the mirror, their faces multiplied many times over in the broken glass: Moss’s cheery, tusky grin, bright against the spring-green tone of her skin and framed by the curls of her shoulder-length auburn hair; and Sindra’s own scowl, her dark brows drawn low over her pupil-less yellow eyes, startlingly stark against her red skin.
Sindra lifts a hand to smooth down the fringe of ink-dark hair between her two horns, which spike upward from her temples.
Although Sindra herself has never had anything to do with devils, her parents’ meddling in a cult of devil worship before she was born had been enough to leave her with the horns, tail, and other unique qualities that mark her as a tiefling.
“Oh, stop pouting,” Moss says, reaching up to tuck a strand of Sindra’s hair back into its long braid. “I found something you might like.” She presses a dirty scabbard into Sindra’s hands.
At first glance, it looks like junk—but Sindra’s eyes catch on the gleam of a sword’s pommel hidden within.
She gasps in surprise as she unsheathes the longsword—she’s never seen a more gorgeous blade.
Rubies and topaz shine along the gold of its hilt, and sunlight sparkles in blinding flashes along the sword’s sharp edge.
Experimentally, Sindra swipes it upward, and it seems to sing as it cuts through the air.
*Sweet gods, thank you! A thousand thank-yous for freeing me! You would not believe how stuffy—*
It’s only thanks to her years of training that Sindra is able to bite back a shriek of surprise. Her grip tightens on the sword as she spins in a tight circle, eyeing the clearing for the source of the voice. “Who goes there?” she demands.
Moss stands immediately, one hand on the staff strapped to her back. “What? What is it?”
Sindra’s eyes dart around the empty clearing. “Did you hear that voice?”
Moss shakes her head slowly.
Sindra frowns and holds the sword out steadily before her. “I could have sworn—”
*I am so very sorry, I never quite figured out how to make introductions easier!* A ringing laugh. *My my, you know a thing or two about wielding a blade, don’t you?*
Sindra’s eyes grow wide and then narrow on the sword. “You?”
Moss regards her with amused concern. She clearly can’t hear a thing.
*Me! My creator dubbed me Brightmorn.*
Sindra pauses, then thinks, Why can only I hear you? Oh gods, can you hear this? Can you see all of my thoughts?
*Yes, I can hear you, but no, my darling, I cannot comprehend anything going on within your mind that you are not purposefully sharing with me.*
Why can’t Moss hear you?
*She is not touching the blade.*
Sindra speaks aloud. “Moss, here, hold this—”
*TURN AROUND.*
The warning sounds like a gong inside Sindra’s head, echoing painfully against her skull. Sindra pivots immediately, raising the sword and standing in front of Moss on instinct.
If she had waited even a heartbeat longer, the dragon’s teeth would have severed her arm as it lunged forward.
Impossible. We killed it.
*Not this time. I sense the curse on this one.*
The curse?
As Moss shouts behind her, Sindra readies herself for battle for the second time.
Unsteadily, the dragon rises to its feet and roars loud enough to send the leaves in the branches above shivering.
Its empty eye socket still weeps blood from where Sindra was certain she pierced through to its brain.
Burning red light shines from the pit of the dragon’s remaining eye as it bares its teeth in a snarl.
It shambles forward, and though it has difficulty keeping its feet given its mortal wounds, the crimson glow of unholy magic propels it.
“How?” Moss cries. “It was dead.”
*Decapitate it.* Brightmorn’s tone is fierce in Sindra’s mind. *It is the only way.*
Sindra nods and quickly tosses her long braid over her shoulder. “Once more, Aramoss,” she pants. “Follow my lead.”
Luckily, Sindra and Moss have fought together often, whether sparring at the enclave or volunteering for every excursion they can.
They move in flawless synchronization, with Sindra distracting the dragon and making herself the primary target of its aggression while Moss chips away at it with claws that sprout from her fingertips or thorned vines that burst from the earth to trap it in place.
This time, Moss focuses all her energy on guiding the roots of the surrounding trees to twine around the dragon’s limbs, pinning it down to give Sindra the perfect opportunity.
With her old blade, it would have taken her several swings to carve the dragon’s head from its body, but with Brightmorn, it’s like a knife through butter. Immediately the great beast crumples to the ground, and Sindra falls to her knees to catch her breath.
Moss hunches over, her palms braced on her thighs. Her green skin somehow looks greener as she takes deep breaths to avoid being sick. “What the fuck was that?” the druid says, gasping. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I have no idea. But you should…Here.” Sindra grabs Moss’s wrist and lays her hand on the sword’s pommel.
*Hello!*
Moss shrieks. Sindra smiles grimly and waits as Moss darts a bewildered look toward her before delicately touching her fingertips once more to the sword.
*Terribly sorry, I keep doing that. I am Brightmorn. And where I hail from…the dead do not always stay dead.*
Moss asks the obvious question. “And where is that?”
*The kingdom of Moros.*
Sindra and Moss share a look. They know little of Moros, which isn’t unusual—no one knows anything about Moros. It may be their neighboring kingdom, but its closed borders means it rarely welcomes visitors, and when it does, they rarely return.
“Are dragons common there?” Sindra asks, continuing to speak aloud for Moss’s benefit.