Chapter 28
A Dying Star
The Keeper's fingers dug into my ankle.
"Not... without me," the Keeper rasped. Blood bubbled between the joints of his armor. His helmet was cracked, revealing a single blue eye and skin pale as death. "Take me... through."
I looked down at him, this broken thing that had fought a dragon and lost. His armor was dented and twisted, black scales embedded in the metal. His legs were shattered.
Behind us, Klaus was rising.
"Take me," the Keeper insisted, fingers tightening. "Or I'll hold you here until Klaus kills us both."
Mabel's voice was urgent in my head. "He's not bluffing. And we need to go NOW."
I grabbed the Keeper under his arms.
His armor was slick with blood. He weighed more than he should have.
I looked back at Kaz. He stood alone facing Kluase, his body broken but still burning with golden flames.
Klaus was almost fully healed now, towering over Kaz like a mountain of scales and hatred.
"You will all burn," Klaus promised, his voice stronger now.
Kaz was silent as the light around him intensified. His skin cracked, golden flames seeping through the fractures. He was compressing his power, concentrating it.
He was making himself into a bomb.
"KAZ!" I screamed his name. The Keeper yanked me hard, trying to drag me toward the tear.
Klaus lunged forward, his jaws wide enough to swallow a man whole. Kaz swung his remaining axe upward in one final strike; it lodged into the dragon's lower jaw, locking them together.
Man and dragon, face to face.
Kaz smiled, and golden flames exploded.
Fire tore through Klaus's skull from the inside. It erupted from his eyes, his mouth, and every gap between scales. Half of the dragon's face was sheared away in an instant. His scales melted.
Klaus screamed in pain, but he did not die.
The dragon reeled back with half his skull exposed, his jaw hanging by threads.
He was wounded beyond reason, but still breathing.
The shockwave hit us like a truck.
Lifting both of us into the air.
We tumbled through the tear together; the last thing I saw was Klaus collapsing to the ground, painting.
At the center of the blast was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash.
Then reality folded, and we were gone.
◆◆◆
I hit frozen earth hard enough to break bones. The impact drove the air from my lungs.
Cold… It's so fucking cold!
I forced my eyes open. And was met with a grey sky that stretched low overhead, heavy with the promise of snow.
The air smelled of pine and stone and the musky scent of animals.
My vision steadied.
I was lying on frost-covered ground. Around me, the land rolled away in all directions, a vast tundra dotted with purple shrubs dusted with ice.
I could see rocks jutting from the ground. In the distance, there were scattered pine groves, and beyond them, massive mountains capped with snow.
Where the fuck are we…
Maybe fifty yards away, there were ruins of what might have been a watchtower. Its walls crumbled to waist height.
The Keeper lay against those ruins; he wasn’t moving. His armor was cracked open all over, and blood was leaking out, sending steam into the frigid air.
His sword lay half-buried in frost a few feet from his hand.
My left arm hung limp—dislocated, maybe broken—my chest was screaming with every breath… and I could taste blood in my mouth.
"That was spectacularly stupid," Mabel said, her voice weaker than usual. The explosion had hurt her too. "Next time, maybe don't drag the half-dead man through dimensional tears?"
"Next time," I wheezed, "maybe I'll leave you behind."
I could feel the worms, but they were slow and disorganized. Like they were half asleep. And my body was riddled with injuries.
I started dragging myself toward the ruins. Every movement sent fresh spikes of pain through my chest, but I kept going.
Movement caught my eye. Out on the tundra. Wolves. Eight or nine of them, circling us. They could smell the blood.
The Keeper moved slightly.
He coughed, blood freezing on his chin almost immediately. His hand scraped toward his sword. But he was too weak to reach it.
I reached the Keeper just as the first wolf howled.
The sound carried across the frozen tundra, a hunting call that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
Up close, I could see just how bad of a state he was in… he wouldn’t make it.
The Keeper's eyes opened, they were bloodshot. He saw me watching him.
The wolves had stopped circling… They were just watching now... waiting. Their dinner wasn't going anywhere.
I looked down at my own broken body.
We are both dying.
The Keeper's hand found the hilt of his sword; his hands were trembling... he knew what I was thinking.
I could help him. Could try to fight beside him. Two wounded warriors against the wolves… we would both die.
I made my choice. I crawled on top of him, pinning his sword arm with my knee.
His other arm was trapped by his own broken body. I looked down into his eyes… They were begging me to make it quick.
I couldn't give him that… the worms needed to eat... I needed to take everything.
"You better make it count," he whispered.
I opened my mouth, my tongue splitting and spilling out towards him.
◆◆◆
The first worms burrowed into the Keeper's face.
It slipped through the cracks in his helmet, and into his eyes. They burrowed into his ears, and into his mouth, silencing his screams. His body bucked under mine, fingers clawing at my chest. His nails tore through my skin, but the pain didn’t slow me.
I didn't stop… There was no stopping me.
The hunger owned me now; it wasn’t like the blind rage from before, more cold determination. I needed this man's power, or I would die.
My worms spread through the Keeper's body. The Keeper's screams became wet gurgles, as the worms fed on him.
They ate him from the inside out. Memories flooded into me.
A name surfaced in my mind… his name.
Cedric.
His first kill was a young forest drake in the Greywood. The horn from that drake became the pommel of his sword.
The Covenant of Horns. It was a great mead hall in Valdris. It was a city built into the side of a mountain, with long wooden houses and Five Horn Lords seated on dragon-bone thrones.
I learned of Rajkovia through Cedric's eyes. Of Horn's Rest… it was a fortified waystation. Neutral ground for Dragoons... Safety.
I learned about the roads. About the dangers. Cedric had been a Drake Hunter for twenty-three years.
I learned of the women Cedric had loved. Both were dead now.
I learned all of it while eating the man alive.
Cedric's body collapsed inward… as the worms stripped muscle from bone, they consumed his organs as they were still trying to function.
The wolves fled.
I kept feeding.
Cedric’s eyes rolled back as the worms took those too.
I lay in the ruins by his empty armor and wet bones that were now crusting with frost… Cedric was gone.
Everything he was belonged to me now. But I wanted more.
The dragon-horn sword lay in the frost. Still cold. Still radiating power. Frost drake essence crystallized into a weapon. I picked it up, allowing the worms to pour from my hand… they wrapped around the hilt, the guard, the blade.
They fed on the weapon itself. The horn dissolved, its runes flaring brightly before dying.
The worms consumed the sword, breaking it down.
A template formed in my mind.
The memory of the weapon encoded into the worms themselves.
The worms pulled back into my body as power flooded through me.
It was too much.
My body couldn't hold it. My blood vessels were bursting; I felt blood leaking from my eyes, ears, and nose. My organs were failing.
My vision whited out as the power blinded me.
My body tore itself apart.
My bones cracked and reformed denser. Muscles shredded and regrew stronger. Skin split, healed, and split again, healing completely differently.
I saw myself from outside, a cocoon of writhing pale flesh in the ruins.
Snow was starting to fall around me.
Something was changing in my soul.
My Sacred Sea was expanding… it was as if a cage had been broken open.
I saw the white walls of my inner world begin to web and fracture; the power energy crashed into it.
Cedric's essence hit that wall like a battering ram. The sword's power added to the blow.
The wall shattered. The barrier was now covered in azure frost.
◆◆◆
Snow fell soft and steady, dusting the ruins in white.
I looked at what was left of Cedric.
His bones were now completely frosted over, in his empty, broken armor.
I raised my hand… and the worms began to pour from my palm.
Their pale segmented bodies twisted around each other, compressing and hardening, as they formed a shape—hilt, guard, blade—living tissue compressed into weapon form. Each segment visible along the edge, each one capable of independent movement.
The worm-sword solidified in my grip.
It radiated cold, a ghost of the frost drake that forged the original.
Cedric's muscle memory told me how to hold it… How to swing it… How to cut.
I gave it an experimental swipe. The blade moved like an extension of my arm.
I dismissed the blade.
The worms pulled back into my arm, as the sword dissolved.
I looked down at the bones again.
I didn't feel guilty; I did what I had to do.
I stripped Cedric's scale armor and strapped it over my ruined clothes. The scales were cold against my skin, but that only comforted me now.
A dead man doesn’t know the value of his own coffin.
Rajkovia. A cold, beautiful, deadly world. A world that I now lived in.