Chapter 7 #2
Drystan’s corporate mind tried to compartmentalize the pain, focusing entirely on the geometry of the forest. He counted their paces.
He tracked the subtle shifts in the elevation of the bedrock beneath the ash.
He was navigating by memory, trusting a video game map to keep them alive in a physical hell.
"Stop," Nymeria hissed suddenly.
She grabbed the back of Drystan’s duster and yanked him downward. He collapsed behind the thick, rusted roots of a massive ironwood tree, biting his tongue to suppress a groan as his broken rib flared.
Nymeria crouched beside him, her dusky skin blending perfectly into the deep shadows of the roots. She pressed a finger to her lips, her amber eyes wide.
The air around them suddenly smelled of drying clay and old copper.
Drystan recognized the scent instantly. It was the smell of the academy's foundation. It was the smell of a nightmare.
Through the twisted roots, thirty yards ahead, a massive shape stalked through the white ash.
It was an Ironwood Chimera. The beast possessed the sleek, predatory musculature of a giant panther, but its skin was completely plated in overlapping scales of rusted iron bark.
It was the size of a modern delivery truck.
Its massive paws, equipped with jagged steel claws, displaced huge clouds of ash with every silent step.
It had no eyes. The sockets were hollow, burning with a faint, eerie green aether.
"It's a perimeter guard," Nymeria breathed, her voice barely a vibration in the air. "It's hunting."
Drystan’s heart hammered against his sternum. A chimera out in the open was a death sentence. His Glitched Weave-Gauntlet was dead. Nymeria was exhausted. If they fought it, they would be torn to shreds in seconds.
His meta-knowledge flared.
Ironwood Chimeras are blind. They lack optical receptors. They track prey using thermal sensors in their nasal cavity and by detecting ambient mana signatures.
"It can't see us," Drystan whispered, leaning his face so close to Nymeria's ear he could feel the cold silk of her hair. "It tracks heat. It tracks magic. If we stay perfectly still, it might pass."
"Our body heat is radiating like a beacon in this cold," Nymeria replied grimly. "It will find us."
She didn't panic. She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were trembling, blue with cold.
"I can weave a thermal mask," she whispered. "I can draw the heat out of the air around us and sink it into the bedrock. But it will drop the temperature around us to sub-zero. It will hurt."
"Do it," Drystan commanded without hesitation.
Nymeria closed her glowing amber eyes. She didn't use grand, sweeping gestures. She pressed her palms flat against the calcified ash.
The chaotic twilight magic activated. It wasn't explosive; it was a slow, parasitic drain. Drystan felt the ambient temperature plummet instantly. The air in their small root-enclosure turned agonizingly cold. Frost rapidly formed on the shoulders of his leather duster. He could see ice crystals forming on Nymeria’s bare midriff and the exposed upper swells of her heavy bust.
She was literally freezing them alive to hide them.
Drystan suppressed a violent shiver. He clamped his jaw shut, his teeth grinding together. He watched the Ironwood Chimera through the roots.
The massive beast stopped. Its heavy, rusted head snapped in their direction. The hollow, green-burning eye sockets seemed to bore directly into Drystan’s soul. The chimera opened its jaws, revealing rows of jagged steel teeth, and inhaled deeply.
Drystan stopped breathing. He was so cold he couldn't feel his legs. Nymeria’s eyes were squeezed shut in absolute concentration, a thin trickle of dark blood leaking from her left nostril as she forced her exhausted body to maintain the magic.
The chimera took a step toward them.
The grinding of its iron scales was deafening. It was fifteen yards away. Ten yards. It paused, sniffing the air directly above the roots where they were hiding. The overwhelming stench of old copper and rotting clay filled Drystan’s lungs.
He didn't reach for a weapon. He trusted his ally. He trusted the lore.
The chimera huffed, a massive cloud of green, toxic vapor exhaling from its nostrils. Finding no thermal signature in the freezing pocket of air, the beast lost interest. It turned its massive, armored head and continued its patrol, stalking silently away into the blinding white dust of the forest.
Drystan waited until the beast was completely swallowed by the storm.
Nymeria collapsed forward into the ash, her twilight magic instantly shattering.
Drystan caught her with his functional right arm. She was ice-cold to the touch, her breathing shallow and ragged. The thermal mask had drained the absolute last reserves of her energy.
"You did it," Drystan whispered, hauling her limp weight against his chest. "You hid us."
He didn't let her rest. He forced her up, dragging her through the skeletal trees. The adrenaline of the stealth encounter provided a final, desperately needed burst of energy.
Ten minutes later, the petrified forest ended abruptly against a sheer cliff face of jagged black basalt. Drystan scanned the rock wall frantically. His memory was perfect. Hidden behind a heavy curtain of petrified, rusted vines was a narrow fissure in the stone.
He shoved the vines aside and dragged Nymeria into the darkness.
The howling wind of the Wastes was instantly cut off.
The air inside the smuggler’s hollow was stagnant and damp, but crucially, it was significantly warmer than the exterior desert.
It was a natural, enclosed cavern system, barely large enough for a camp, but it was defensible. It was completely hidden from the sky.
Drystan laid Nymeria down gently against the smooth stone wall. She was unconscious, her body finally shutting down to recover from the magical exhaustion and the biting cold.
He backed away, sliding down the opposite wall until he was sitting on the cavern floor.
He looked around the dark, quiet sanctuary. They had survived the academy. They had survived the executioners. They had survived the chimera.
Drystan leaned his head back against the stone and closed his eyes. The board was set. Evander Cross was sitting in his golden tower, wielding an army of zealots and the automated laws of the universe.
But Evander was predictable. He was bound by the Script.
Drystan Harrow opened his icy gray eyes in the darkness. He wasn't an accountant anymore. He was the Valedictorian of Fate Academy’s darkest corners. He possessed the meta-knowledge of a god and the loyalty of a shadow. He didn't just have a sanctuary; he had a base of operations.
And from this dark hollow, the Doomed Mid-Boss was going to tear the golden hero's world apart piece by piece.