Chapter 32.5 The Lake
A sound rips out of me, horror and outrage, given dragon voice and dragon fire.
I flap hard, trying to catch up to them, getting ready to dive.
I waffle, for a heartbeat, between this moment and the moment in Dragon Valley when Cherry was falling, when Vakhrin was injured.
When I had them at my fingertips, and they slipped away.
As my friends spiral toward the ground, Vakhrin turning end-over-end with his wings gone completely limp, Cherry clinging to the rope harness with all her strength, I know a fear like I have never known before.
I tuck my wings—and then my head explodes in pain.
EEEEAAAAAKKKIIIIEAAAKKKKIEIEIIEIEIIAIIAIEIEIIAEAEKAKAIIIAAE—
Noise. Intense. Sharp. Loud at the decibel of holy-gods-make-it-stop-make-it-stop-make-it-
I think I scream, I think I die, I think my brain is on fire. Orange fire flashes all around me, around us, and I am dimly aware of Marton shouting, of his hands grappling at my neck, his legs clinging tight to my back.
In a fog of pain, I notice a blob of pink and gold as we fall past it. Cherry, I think. Vakhrin. They are not falling anymore. Now we are falling. That would be good, better, if I were to die instead of them, but I need Vakhrin to get Marton off my back. To save him, so that I can die.
The noise in my head does not stop.
IIIEAAAKKKKIEIEIIEIEIIAIIAEEEEEAEKAKA—
Fire sears the inside of my skull, and I know for the first time in my life what it is like to burn. I know what the men I killed must have suffered, as they died. I wish I had never been born. I want the ground to spring up to meet me. To end me.
There is something happening around me, dull. Movement, sensation, insignificant compared to the pain. Something small butts up against me, underneath me. The fuzzy golden-red shape seems to be trying to keep me in the sky, to break my fall. I wish it would go away.
To my relief, for a moment, it does. And then there are twin sets of sharp pressure digging into the scales on either side of my back. My fall slows by increments, and then I am being eased slowly toward the earth. Not fast enough for it to kill me.
I groan in protest, trying to get free. There is noise above me, a set of tinny voices shouting, and one beckoning, lulling call that almost eases the violent cacophony in my head.
EEAAAAAAAHHHHHH—
With my thoughts partially cleared, I am able to recognize the new sound. Only our mouths can make it, and only in our manticore forms. That is my friend. Manticore.
Vakhrin.
And on my back, that other voice. Marton.
And the last, the most important. My princess. Shireen. Cherry.
Cherry, Cherry, Cherry.
I have to stay alive, because I am her protector.
That is a truth I know to my core.
I pour all of my energy, all of my focus, into raising my pain-deadened wings. I spread them full wide, and the wrenching pain in my head is back, trying to drag me under, to kill me.
But my friends are holding onto me, and I am holding on to myself.
EEAAAAAKIEEEEAHHHHHH AHK AHHE AHHHH.
The pain disappears as suddenly as it came, the noise cutting off abruptly.
To my surprise, I am not an eviscerated husk. I have not been burned to ash. I am...perfectly fine.
I beat my wings, and Vakhrin releases me, knocked off course by my movement but catching himself in the air. We are ten feet above the ground, not twenty yards from the shores of the lake.
With a last flap of my wings, I collapse to the ground on all fours, claws sinking heavily into the moist dirt. I pant for breath, worn out mentally by the shocking pain I have endured.
What the holy skies above was that?
Vakhrin lands next to me, and then the humans are tumbling out of their seats.
They fuss between me and the manticore, talking in loud, quick voices.
Packs are ripped off backs and rummaged through.
There is a scrap of cloth held in front of my nose, waved energetically.
But my brain is catching up to my body now, assessing the situation.
Registering the threat. Something around us made that sound.
Targeted first Vakh and then myself. Someone—protectorkin?
—is near and has ill intentions toward us.
Could this be part of a basilisk's magic?
It is like nothing I have heard of before, but I have come to understand that most legends are half-truths at best.
I put Marton and Cherry at my back, not daring to shift into my human form, as I scan the land from left to right, searching from the edge of the lake to the woods in the distance for any sign of a foe.
Vakhrin, on the other side of the humans, has moved to do the same.
We make a protective cage around them, teeth and claws ready at any sign of a threat.
But we are looking in the wrong direction.
All our attention is focused on the land around us, and it is Cherry who spots movement from another direction.
From the water.
She cries out, pointing, and I swivel my head to look.
I am not sure what I see.
There are four.
..forms, humanoid, inching their way out of the water.
Grayish, skinny and hunched. Their skin is rubbery and slicked with water, and their eyes the size of goose eggs peer out of their emaciated faces like the solid black marble eyes of a doll.
It is a sight as unsettling as it is baffling.
I have no idea what they are, but I know from the stories that basilisks are meant to resembled giant serpents.
These are undoubtedly not that. As they slink from the water in dripping, slow movements, their four limbs are unmistakable.
One of the creatures opens its mouth, and the gaping maw, lined with needle teeth, takes up half of the creature's face.
And then the sound rends the air again.
EIIIAAAAKK!
Less prolonged and intense, the sound still makes me quake, feels like an axe blade being slipped between my brain and everything my brain is supposed to do.
Reality, sense, perception, everything disappears for a moment, and then just as quickly, it returns.
I wince, shaking my head to clear it of the sound.
The four creatures study me with unblinking eyes, as if waiting for my reaction.
Violence, probably. That should be my reaction.
But I don't think I would get very far into a charge before I was laid low by that awful noise again.
Another of the creatures opens its mouth, and I brace.
But...nothing happens. I hear no sound. Feel no pain.
To my left, a rippling noise of pain comes from the manticore in our party.
His legs tremble, threatening to give up supporting his weight, and his head hangs low between his front paws.
I roar a warning at the creatures, and their attack immediately cuts off.
The two smaller of the creatures scramble backwards, cowering behind the others, clinging together like children.
That gives me pause.
Like children.
I think of the small dragons and wyverns of the Trove, practicing their bumbling flight maneuvers and tumbling over one another. Roaring and growling like the noises were a test, a game of aggression they were trying to figure out.
My chest clenches with something at once cold and soft, painfully sympathetic and horrified at the same time.
I ease my aggressive stance, tossing a glance at Vakhrin to warn him of my intentions. I shift. The ground rises up to meet me as I shrink, and Marton and Cherry next to me are now towering over me. I take the dress that Marton is still clutching and slip it over my head.
"What are you doing?" Marton whispers. "Are you alright? I thought you were going to die—" He is nearly breathless, his hair windswept and eyes wide with adrenaline from our fall.
"What are they?" I ask, my attention going to the four small forms that are watching us so intently from the shallows of the lake.
I can't tell their reactions from their blank faces.
Are they gleeful that I have made myself human and vulnerable?
Are they frightened, lost, hungry?
"Kraken, undoubtedly.
They came from the water. There are more species of the Kraken than anyone has been able to record.
Their legends are stranger, more frequent, but less sensical than the legend of Chimera or Dragomira, Lycan or Equira.
Some of the sightings sailors claim to have had could have just been whales or sharks, seals or octopi.
"
"I don't think those are seals.
"
"No," he agrees. "Tarah, what happened?
One second we were flying and then we were just..
.falling. What did they do?"
"You didn't hear anything?
" I regard him. "Didn't...feel it?"
He shakes his head.
"You heard something? Felt— What was it—?
"
"It was pain. Loud, incessant, unbearable pain.
It sounded like someone's soul was screaming into mine.
Like the worst, most invasive feeling I've ever felt.
"
His eyes grow impossibly wider.
His gaze sweeps away from me, latching onto the four beings lurking by the water's edge.
"There are legends. Stories of sailors throwing themselves overboard, being lost to deep water or jagged reefs, of people leaping from seaside cliffs because they were lured by a compulsion, by a sound.
"
"I wouldn't call it compulsion.
.."
"No. Not everyone does.
The survivors of these tales report that it was horrific, awful music.
A siren's call that lures people into the deep.
That's what the legends call these creatures.
" He sucks in a deep, disbelieving breath. "Sirens."