37. First Blight #2
“I saw…another of…her kind today,” Auryn managed. “You did as well. He sought to spill blood. She…does not.”
A faint smile ghosted across the Glider’s face, as if she’d just been offered a child’s drawing in the middle of a battlefield.
“You should listen to your Attendant,” she said, circling a fraction closer. Her wingtips, mottled and ragged, brushed the wall with a whispering rasp. “Trusting me? Because I am beautiful and do not carry a glaive?”
Her mismatched gaze fixed on Auryn’s throat, lingering. “Or…is it because I have given name to that which you fear? Veins none have seen in millennia.”
Auryn balked. “You…know what this is?”
The wariness in the Glider’s eyes swirled, one storm-bright, the other deep and earthen. “The Sky remembers. The winds have tasted creatures like you. And so, I know of it.”
“Who…are you?”
For a long moment, the Glider simply stared, searching Auryn’s face, a judge weighing a sentence. Her golden feathers shifted, whispering as they caressed the stagnant air. Her feathered tail dragged against the stone—a hunter's idle motion.
The scent of herbs and salves thickened. The Glider’s fingers brushed Auryn’s neck, tracing one of the blackened veins. Her skin burned—as if her hand had been pulled from boiling water—and Auryn had to fight not to flinch.
“I would give you my name…” The Glider tilted her head, “but with these veins choking the life from you, you will soon perish.” Her gaze lingered a moment longer, unreadable. “I do not speak my name to the dead.”
Lu’ma’s hands twitched—a silent, precise language of fury—as she stepped between them. Her shadow cut through the faint light, her stance wide, shoulders squared.
The Glider didn’t step back. Her mismatched eyes slid toward the Attendant with slow, deliberate appraisal, as if weighing how much trouble it would be to remove her.
Lu’ma signed a sharp sequence, every movement clipped and bristling. 'Step away. Now.'
From somewhere beyond the ruined passage, a clash erupted—shouts, steel on steel, the roar of something inhuman. All three of them turned toward it at once.
Auryn’s pulse jumped. The Bond flared to life in her chest—sharp, urgent.
Kail.
She latched onto the feeling like a drowning swimmer to driftwood.
Kail, I’m here!
The answering voice wasn’t in her head but in the echoing corridors.
“This way, Zarrek. I can hear her!”
Zarrek’s reply was a growl of disbelief. “Resh, you’ve gone mad with bloodlust. She’s back at the Lattice. You said yourself she can only portal one way.”
“That Voids-damned burst ruptured every mana channel from here to Selen,” Kailorien snapped, his voice like drawn steel. “Portals are misrouting.”
His words carried closer, and with them, the electric thrum of his fury through the Bond.
Kailorien emerged first, a dark monolith in the narrow passage, Zarrek a breath behind him. The tunnel protested their bulk—their heads nearly grazing the stone ceiling, and their shoulders broad enough to scrape the walls.
They were drenched in the night’s violence.
Ash streaked their armor. Blood slicked their hands, spattered across jawlines and weapons.
Kailorien's half mask bared its wolfish fangs, blood dripping from its maw and azure mana steaming from the gaps.
Morvane's rune channels glowed blue, as did his eyes.
Zarrek’s axe dripped red, shouldered as they made their way through the tunnel in the dark. His eyes glowed gold, the rune magic in him restless from battle. Kailorien held his sword with a white-knuckled grip, its edge catching the pale shimmer of the Polis light.
Auryn’s breath caught, her knees buckling with relief. “Kail—”
He moved. A sudden, violent burst forward, his eyes locking on the golden-feathered stranger. His entire posture changed. Shoulders squared. Jaw set. A predator sighting its rival.
Zarrek’s gauntleted fingers tightened around his axe, the colossal breadth of him a bulwark at Kailorien’s back.
It all happened at once.
Auryn lurched toward him, but her legs faltered. The golden Glider reached for her.
“Back away,” Kailorien growled, his voice low and lethal through his mask.
The Glider didn’t flinch. A deeper shadow detached itself from the wall and landed between them with a thud that rattled the stone. Black wings flared, talons digging into the grit. Colossal black wings snapped open, a gust of wind sending Auryn stumbling back. Lu'ma caught her. Steadied her.
Auryn’s heart stopped. She knew that shape. The one from the alley.
“Riven.” Kailorien’s eyes flashed.
The word hit the air, a blade drawn across bone. He closed the distance between himself and Auryn, one arm pulling her to his chest, his free hand pushing Lu’ma behind him with sharp authority. His heart beat steady—impossibly so—beneath Morvane, the Bond pulsing between them in jagged bursts.
“Skycleaver,” the Riven said, voice even. Undisturbed.
Kailorien’s runes flared to life on Morvane’s surface, light bleeding across the corridor until every shadow was burned back. The golden glow etched his face into a mask of barely-leashed fury.
“Take your ward and leave,” the Riven decreed, talons curling against the stone. “And I will do the same with mine.”
Auryn’s gaze darted down.
Her breath caught.
Dangling from the male Glider’s belt was a scrap of worn leather, the familiar strap swinging against his hip.
“My satchel!” The words burst from her, raw and loud. “Give it back to me!”
The Riven’s eyes slid to her. “You abandoned it for me to find,” he said, each word deliberate. “Therefore, it is mine now.”
Her pulse spiked with more than anger. Inside was the tarnished Reskala insignia she’d pulled from a dead soldier’s chest, her carved talismans, the little glass charm Kailorien had given her years ago…pieces of herself she’d kept close when everything else was stripped away.
Kailorien stepped forward, the light of his runes flaring.
“Return what is hers,” he said, every syllable weighted.
The Riven’s talons flexed as he slid his glaive from his back in one fluid motion, its blade whispering against the stone wall.
“Then take it from me, Skycleaver,” he said, the weight of Challenge hanging in the air like a guillotine.
Behind him, the golden Glider gave a long, world-weary sigh, the sound almost drowned out in the threatening hum of Kailorien’s magic.
“Sky grant me patience,” she muttered, her feathers rustling. “Two imbeciles butting antlers in the middle of a war.”
She stepped out from the shadow of the Riven’s colossal wing, brushing dust from her hands as though the threat of bloodshed was nothing more than an inconvenience.
“You,” she said, pointing at Kailorien. “Skycleaver. Legend says you are intelligent. And yet here you stand arguing over trinkets and leathers while your Sokar is gasping for breath.”
Kailorien didn’t so much as glance down at Auryn, but the muscles along his jaw locked, and the grip on his sword shifted. The Riven’s stance didn’t falter, though a faint smirk ghosted across his lips.
Auryn coughed, her fingers tightening in the fabric of Kailorien’s sleeve. The mysterious cold from earlier seeped deeper into her bones with each passing moment.
The female Glider smacked the Riven’s forearm.
Smacked.
Auryn blinked, certain she’d imagined it.
“Ro,” the golden Glider said, voice sharp yet heavy with all the weight of a weary sister scolding a younger brother. “Put down your glaive. Do you honestly plan to challenge the Skycleaver here—with your wings useless in a tunnel?”
The Riven—Ro—did not lower his weapon, but his jaw flexed. His eyes slid toward her, violet and simmering with annoyance.
“Your counsel is unwanted,” he said.
“I will give it nonetheless,” she replied, feathers ruffling as she stepped past his wing, “especially when you are acting like a hotblooded fledgling.”
Ro’s talons scraped against the stone floor in annoyance.
Auryn’s gaze flicked down at the sound—then stilled.
The golden Glider’s feet bore no talons at all.
Toes, bare and calloused, braced against the ground.
Human toes. The same was true of her hands—no curved black talons.
Her whole frame, now that Auryn noticed, was more humanoid than Ro’s towering form.
Somewhere behind her, Auryn Zarrek spoke to Lu’ma. Asking if she was hurt. But she couldn’t see her friend’s reply in the shadows.
The golden Glider turned to her. “Leave. All of you.”
“Please,” Auryn called, voice fraying. “Please give it back. You can take the charms, but I need that satchel.”
“Charms?” The female Glider’s head tipped, feathers shifting like the flick of a cat’s tail. Her gaze dropped to the bag. Then rose to the Riven. “You wind-borne—” she cut herself short, golden feathers bristling.
In the same motion, she stepped forward, yanked the leather strap from his waist, and sneered at the growl he gave in return.
The satchel hit Kailorien’s hands with a heavy slap of leather and metal.
Auryn yanked it open. Her fingers fumbled through scorched leather and tangled straps, past crushed parchment and broken charms. Then she felt it—smooth, unblemished glass, warm from her touch.
She pulled it free, the faint shimmer within catching the light. The bauble was still intact.
Her shoulders sagged. She shuddered with relief, clutching it to her chest.
Starlight…all that for a trinket?
It may be a trinket, but it is a piece of my heart.
She lifted her gaze to the golden Glider and managed a shaky smile. “T-Thank y-you,” she rasped, teeth chattering so hard the words barely formed.
Kail…I need you to Breathweave for me…please…