Dead Moons Rising: First in the Honest Scrolls series

by Jack Whitney

  “Your company is an embarrassment to this kingdom,” Aydra said haughtily. “They’d all night to find the creature and there he was, in the exact spot we threw him from.” Her jaw tightened at Rhaif’s displeased face. “My Second and I are leaving, and we are taking Dorian with us. We will return in a few days, finally rid of the filth in our streets.”

  Rhaif’s jaw set. “And the Dreamer towns? Will you be traveling to those to dispose of those bodies?”

  “I will accompany the Venari King to the Villages,” came Dorian’s voice as he joined them once more.

  Rhaif’s stern stare flickered between the pair and then back to Draven. “Very well,” he finally agreed.

  The first day and night were a blur. Not many words were spoken between the four as they traveled and then rested overnight on a hill. Aydra’s butt was numb from the horse, and she could feel the exhaustion of each one of the beasts pouring through her core, making her more tired than she should have been.

  Aydra fell asleep in the grass curled next to her own horse before they ate supper.

  She dreamt of running, of fire chasing her, and only when it caught up with her did she jolt awake. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, but the soft coo of her raven and dewy fog around her calmed her heartbeat back to normal.

  Draven was already awake, putting out the fire and checking the straps on his horse to make sure things were tightened. Aydra didn’t speak to him, but did the same, too sleepy still to get into any sort of argument with him so early in the morning. She woke Lex and Dorian, and within the hour, they were riding across the Hills once more.

  The path they were on was beat of grass and full of mud. It had been a few years since Aydra had ridden so far south. After her predecessor, Zoria, died from sickness, she’d not ventured far from the castle except to the cliffside an hour out.

  How she missed the fresh smells and wind through her hair.

  It took them the rest of the day to reach Bedrani, having only stopped a few times during the day for water and food, and to give the horses a small break. Bedrani was a cluster of three great stones on a high hill, sat stark in the middle of the Haerland flats south of the Blackhand Mountains. It was the mark of the fork in the road from the south. If you took the path due north, you would find yourself the path of the Knotted Caves to the Blackhand Mountains. A treacherous journey, some would say, as the caves were not easy to navigate, and could easily consume you if you did not know the way.

  The path northwest, the path they’d taken from Magnice, was the path most used as it was the path every Ambassador and Bedrani Council member took from their southern Dreamer towns to reach the kingdom of Magnice.

  Aydra hadn’t seen the Bedrani boulders since she was a child, so when it rose in her sightline on the horizon, she had to pause. Her raven circled overhead, and she took a moment to take in the sight around her.

  Dorian and his horse came up beside her, pausing for a minute as well. “We should do this more often,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed without taking her eyes off the horizon. “We should.”

  They stopped and rested on the hill with the boulders. Because of the darkness, Draven insisted they start a fire and get some rest first, determined to not send the creature back to Duarb’s roots until the morning.

  Once more, the tire of the horses filled Aydra’s core, and she hardly made it awake past dinner. Darkness consumed her body as she leaned back against the cold stone, and the next thing she knew, she was running again, the fire tickling at her feet on the floor of the castle. Every turn was wrong. It was an endless maze of fire and chills.

  She bolted upright once more, and the fog on the ground filled her vision.

  There was a violet hue across the landscape as the sun threatened to rise. Aydra cracked her neck and stood from the ground. The wet grass curled beneath her toes, and she inhaled the scent of the dirt she so rarely got to enjoy.

  Dorian and Lex appeared to still be asleep around her.

  What time is it? she asked the raven as it landed on the top of one of the boulders.

  Hour to sunrise, it told her.

  She curled her cloak around her arms and stepped around the boulder to the other side. A sudden chill ran over her body, and nauseating spell pulsed through her core. She blinked and looked around. It had felt as though she’d stepped through some invisible gateway, as though she’d stepped into a world not of her own.

  “Interesting,” came Draven’s sudden voice.

  Aydra nearly jumped at the noise of him, and she looked down to find him sitting against the rock just to her right, opposite of where she’d herself curled up for the night.

  “What is with you and sneaking up on people?” she managed.

  He looked as though he would laugh. “You live in darkness long enough, you learn to become one with it,” he replied cryptically.

  Her jaw tightened, and she pulled her cloak tighter as she gave him a once over, noticing his whittling something with his knife in his hand, a new long pipe it looked like. “What is interesting?” she asked, referring to what he’d said.

  “The shiver you felt upon entering my realm,” he answered without looking up. “Not everyone feels it.”

  “Perhaps it is a warning from your giver for me to stay out.”

  “Possibly.” He blew on the end of the pipe, blowing away any stray shavings that were left.

  Her eyes narrowed at the construction in his hands. “Other pipe not working very well?”

  “Not really your concern,” he said as he turned it over to inspect it. “Tell me, Sun Queen, are you ready to dispose of your beast or should I let you sing to the hills this morning?” he asked, finally making eye contact with her.

  She felt her arms tighten across her chest. “Just show me how to get rid of it, Venari.”

  She woke Dorian and Lex soon after their exchange. Draven pulled the body of the Infi off the horse and unfurled it from the blanket, letting its rotting corpse roll onto the grass at the bottom of the Bedrani hill. Aydra pulled the heart from her bag and tossed it to Draven’s open palms.

  The moment he took the knife from it, it began to beat once more.

  “The Chronicles do not speak of this part of the curse,” Aydra muttered.

  “The Chronicles are lies,” Draven replied.

  He shoved the heart back into the open wound of the creature’s chest, and stood back over it. Its chest rose off the ground, and its bones began to crack. Aydra took a step back and put a hand across Dorian’s chest. Draven went back to the horses, and a moment later he shoved Aydra’s bow and an arrow into her chest.

  “Try not to miss this time,” Draven warned.

  Aydra glared at him as he and the others took steps back from the creature.

  Bones continued to crack, and the creature started to lift off the ground, as though it were putting itself back together. Slowly, she felt its empty core return, and it hovered between creature and being for a moment, before it found itself doubled over on its hands and knees on the ground.

  Not a creature, but a man looked up at her from its mangled hands.

  One yellow eye. One blue eye. Nose crooked, but slowly straightening as the flesh twisted on its face, morphing from burned and disfigured to smooth and handsome. Its wide eyes pleaded with her from the ground.

  “My Queen,” she heard it say. “My Queen, please. I mean you no harm.”

  Aydra stared down her nose at it, weary of the begging it was doing before her. The memory of it running at her across the beach reminded her of what it truly was.

  A monster manipulator.

  It reached up towards the bow in her hands. “Please, I—”

  The double-take it did behind her then caught her off guard. It must have seen Draven, for suddenly its face flashed of the obscene creature once more, and it hissed in Draven’s direction.

  The creature bolted to its feet and took off running in the opposite direction.

  Aydra pulled the arro
w through her bow, aiming for the neck, and—

  The arrow landed with a thud in its throat. Its feet dragged midair on the grass, and then it fell flat on its face to the dirt.

  “Look at that,” Draven muttered behind her. “The Queen does know how to use a weapon not made of her body.”

  She glared back at him. “Shut up,” she smarted. “What now?”

  “Just wait,” he told her.

  “For what? For it to get back up and run away again?”

  Draven wrapped his arms over his chest and his jaw tightened beneath his beard. She glared back at him, and he raised a brow and gave an upwards nod back at the body once more.

  The ground began to tremble.

  The earth snapped.

  She could see a gaping crack in the earth moving fast towards them. Fissures opened up around the Infi’s body. A violent tremor shook her to the point that she nearly lost her balance. Lex grabbed her arm as she too almost fell.

  The wind wrapped around them. Aydra looked bewildered back at Draven and started to speak, but he was collectively watching the Infi, completely unphased by what was happening around them.

  Tree roots shot up from beneath the fissures. Her eyes widened back at the scene as the roots finger-like ends paused above the Infi as though it were waiting to pounce. The wind whipped past them once more, and then—

  The roots dove inside the creature’s body.

  “I think I’m going to hurl,” she heard Dorian say.

  She could see the roots wrapping inside the creature’s mouth, ears, and wounds. The wind began to slow, and she noticed something white inside the roots’ grasps as they reemerged into the open air.

  Bones.

  The ground began to tremble again, and the fissures slowly closed. The last root to retract back into the earth carried the Infi’s heart in its grasp. And then—

  The hills were silent once more.

  Aydra couldn’t move.

  She’d just watch a man’s insides be pulled back into the ground by its own giver.

  “You wanted to know how to kill an Infi,” came Draven’s voice. “I assume you are satisfied?”

  “That was disgusting,” Aydra said as he walked around her towards the creature.

  “I never claimed it to be pretty,” he said, crouching down beside it. He pushed on the rubber-like skin of it left behind. “The rain will take care of the shell.” He stood once more and brushed his hands on his pants as he turned back towards them.

  “Who’s hungry?”

  Draven left them to hunt for rabbit a few minutes later. Aydra sat with Dorian against the boulders, and neither could stop staring at the empty skin lying at the bottom of the hill.

  “We should tell the Scribe of this when we get back,” Aydra said, sipping on her water.

  “I volunteered to help him rid the others,” Dorian said in an almost trance-like voice. “Tell me again why I volunteered for that.”

  Aydra almost laughed. “Because you’re the bravest of us,” she replied.

  Dorian shook his head and then leaned back against the boulder. Aydra curled her knees into her chest, and movement caught her eye across the field. She squinted, and she could see Draven lying in the grass on his stomach. She couldn’t see the weapon he had in his hand, but she felt the thud of the rabbit’s life leave its body a moment later.

  A grunt behind them made Aydra smirk. Lex was trying to get a fire started, but the wind kept putting it out. She heard her curse Duarb’s winds, and then throw something forcefully into the open field.

  Aydra exchanged a look with Dorian, and he laughed as he shook his head and stood. “Looks like your Second could use some help,” he said as he offered a hand to Aydra.

  “I believe this is your chance to show off,” she said, taking his hand.

  Dorian had grown in the last year, he was a couple inches taller than her now, but still as gangly as ever, as though his muscles seemed to be struggling to keep up with the stretching of his bones. Some of his muscles seemed to finally be filling out with all the training he had begun doing with Lex. His deep set, widely rounded stark blue eyes tore through her beneath his bold brows. His fluffy black ear-length hair fell over his eye, angling with the sharpness of his cheekbones and triangular set of his jaw. She was glad he was finally growing into his stature. At one point when he was younger, she remembered his eyes being all she would see when she looked upon his young face, and while that still reigned somewhat true, at least he was growing into the sarcastic smirk he wore on his face all the time.

  Aydra reached out and fluffed his hair playfully as she usually did. “I can’t decide if you always look as though you’re up to no good or if you’re sad with those eyes,” she said fondly.

  He huffed amusedly under his breath and held his arm out to her. “Ah. Secrets, sister,” he mused.

  The noise of Lex throwing something else frustratedly into the air diverted their attention. Dorian raised a brow and grinned at Aydra.

  “Calm down, Second Sun,” Dorian said as he quickly made his way down the hill. “I’ll help.”

  Lex’s hands sat haughtily on her hips. “You can’t. This damned wind of the Venari is debilitating. I can’t—”

  Dorian put his hand beneath the pieces of wood she’d piled up, and a flame grew in his blackening palm. Aydra saw the flash of fire in his pupils, and she crossed her arms over her chest, smiling proudly at her brother.

  “Oh.” Lex’s gaze met Aydra’s. “I forgot he could do that.”

  Dorian grinned as he stood. “You can thank me when I get back from the villages,” he said with a wink.

  Lex’s brows raised amusedly. “Bold,” she mused, exchanging a look with Aydra. “But you’re not really my type.”

  “Didn’t know you had a type, Second,” came Draven’s voice as he joined them. “It was my impression you merely took your Queen’s leftovers.”

  Lex snorted and quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, and Dorian chortled aloud. Aydra felt her nostrils flare as she attempted to keep her amusement inwards at the snarky crook of a smirk on Draven’s face.

  “Funny, Venari,” she finally said, lips pursed. “Lex, I’ll finish packing the horses if you want to get a move on with breakfast. We’ve a long journey back to Magnice.”

  The deliberate once over Draven gave her then made her hug her arms around her chest. She returned it with a raised brow, and then turned on her heel to pack their things.

  Damn Venari.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TWO DAYS PASSED before Aydra and Lex returned to the ever bright kingdom they called home. Aydra paused her horse upon seeing its glory a few miles out, and she allowed herself a moment to take in the sight of its white facade built into the cliffside. Soldiers walked along the top of the great walls surrounding the bottom of the hill, the gates to the kingdom. The iron wrought gate was open, as it always was. Farmers and traders flooded in and out of it, the busy day coming to an end. Colorful tarps sat stark against the white rock over some of the winding streets to block the bright sun.

  The road was busy as they continued on at a leisurely pace. Every Dreamer to pass gave a nod and moved off the path, allowing Aydra and Lex to pass. Aydra knew a few, and she paused to speak with them. They told her of how their goods were moving, if they were having any troubles with securing items, and of how their families were doing.

  Bard and his men were waiting for them at the castle gates.

  “My Queen,” he acknowledged upon her dismounting her horse.

  She handed the reigns to him and gave him a full once over, noticing his wearing his best gamebeson and having brushed his long hair. “Bard,” she managed as she started ridding herself of her riding gloves. “You’re looking delectable today. What’s the occasion?” she asked.

  “Your brother asked that we attend the banquet he is holding in your honor tonight,” he replied.

  “And where is my brother? Could he not be bothered to welcome his favorite sister back to the
safety of our home?”

  “He waits for you in the Throne Room, ma’am,” Bard replied.

  Aydra frowned. “The Throne Room? Why there?”

  “I do not question my King,” Bard said. “I only heed his orders.”

  Aydra heard Lex snort at the sentence, and she looked around her horse to see her Second laughing. “Perhaps you should take pointers from Bard here, my Second,” Aydra smarted.

  Lex grinned at her. “What would be the fun in that?”

  Aydra almost laughed, and she shook her head before turning back to Bard. “My horse is tired. Have her fed and watered and a thorough washing. I will go to my brother after I’ve bathed myself of this riding stench.” She turned and gave Lex a nod. “Get some rest before banquet. Perhaps we’ll have an eventful night.”

  “I look forward to it,” Lex said, giving her a wink before Aydra turned on her heel.

  Aydra pushed her way into the castle then, stripping herself of her riding clothes with little care as usual to those passing her. She’d hardly reached the steps leading up to the level her room was on when she heard Willow calling behind her.

  She paused and waited on the brunette to join her. “My Lady, your brother—”

  “Yes, I’m aware he is waiting on me,” Aydra said as she began walking once more. “I doubt he would want to see me with four days stench attached to my body. Whatever he wants can wait until after I’ve bathed.”

  “He had me lay a dress out for banquet tonight,” Willow informed her as she caught the clothes Aydra was tearing off herself.

  “You’d think he would have learned by now not to bother with such,” Aydra replied. “What is the color?”

  “Blue.”

  Aydra rolled her eyes. “He’s an idiot,” she muttered under her breath. They reached her room then, and Willow followed her in to start the bath.

  She unpacked her bag on her bed while she waited for the water. Her clothes, she tossed into a bin to be washed, and she threw away the scraps of food left inside. But something dumped out that she didn’t recognize at first glance. She did a double-take and frowned at the trinket and baggie that didn’t belong to her.