He wasn’t happy.
Holding her hand instantly helped his mood though. Just that small touch was a gift he was thankful for.
He cleared his throat. “Are you ready to talk to me yet?” He tried hopefully, anxious to put this behind them before they both caught fire and died.
Taylor looked like she was about to say something, then quickly pulled her hand away, ending the pleasant sensation of her touch. “I… I think we should just focus on the trip.”
“So we can’t talk about it at all?” He asked, following behind her.
“Talk about what?” The Brother inquired, trying to pick his way down the rocky path. His foot slipped on the pebbles and he lost his balance.
Dom casually grabbed him by the back of his shirt, so that the boy didn’t plummet to his death. “Your sister is upset about…”
She gasped in horror. “Don’t talk to my brother about it!” She whirled around to face him in disbelief. “What’s wrong with you!?!”
Dom frowned. “I don’t know, that’s why I thought getting another human’s opinion on this might be a good idea.”
Ryle frowned in confusion for a moment, then realization dawned. “Oh, fuck no!” He shook his head. “No, no, no, no!” He made a slashing motion with his hands. “We are not going to discuss…” he paused, making a face, “you know… that.” He glared at his sister. “Speaking of which, I thought we had a lovely and incredibly awkward conversation about this very thing not too long ago?”
Ahead of them on the path, Uriah shrugged helplessly, as if answering for her in a wizened tone. “The heart wants what the heart wants.” He placed his hand over his chest.
“Shut up!” Dom, Taylor and Ryle all chorused at once.
The pirate put up his hands in surrender.
“What’s the holdup?” Ransom asked.
“Nothing, Dove.” Uriah continued down the mountain, gently helping his partner through the rocks. “Just the excessive tyranny that is love.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed as the man strolled away. “He is such an asshole.”
“Indeed.” Dom nodded in complete agreement. “I told you hiring pirates rarely comes to any good.”
She made a non-committal sound. “It wasn’t like we had a whole lot of options.”
“We could kill him.” Dom suggested. “I’m more than capable.”
“We need him to be our guide.” Taylor argued.
“I know the way from here, Tay-Lore.” He pointed towards the valley floor. “Down.”
“We’re still probably days away from the Crossroads though, and even then, we have no means of getting past any guards we might find.” She shook her head. “For the time being, we still need him.”
“He’s not so bad.” Ryle chimed in, stepping over a log. “He’s kinda funny sometimes.”
They both stared at him in disgusted silence.
“Aaaand that probably wasn’t what you guys wanted to hear right now, is it?” Ryle nodded. “I’m just going to go on ahead and let you guys work out your personal crap between yourselves, okay?”
“No!” Taylor all but cried. “Don’t leave me alone.”
Dom looked down at the forest floor, feeling lost and ashamed.
He had scared her.
Somehow… he had scared her and now she didn’t trust him.
Taylor met her brother’s eyes. “That conversation we had? About…”
Ryle nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, that’s in danger of happening if I’m alone with him.” She turned to look at Dom, her voice a whisper. “…happening a lot, in fact.”
Ryle rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I really wish I had a brother instead of you, Tay.” He held out his arm to help her along the path. “Or at the very least a sister who acted her age for once.”
Dom started after her. “Tay-Lore, I realize you’re frightened, but it would be very unwise to ignore The Pyra for much longer. The consequences of that could…”
Ryle moved to stand in front of him, cutting him off as Taylor continued on ahead.
He watched the small human in silence for a moment, then moved to step around him.
The boy again blocked his path. “Yeeeeah.” He shook his head. “This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever been forced to do.”
Dom would have to agree with him on that point. No one stood between an ogre and his mate.
Ever.
The boy crossed his arms over his chest. “But the way I figure it? I’m as safe as houses.” He pointed at Dom. “Because no matter how pissed off you get?” He pointed at Taylor, already in the distance. “I’m still her little brother.” He refocused on Dom. “Which means that you can step on me, obviously, but if you do?” He shook his head. “That’s going to be really tough to explain to her.” He pointed a finger at him again. “So you’d better give her space or whatever big guy. Because I can’t intimidate you into leaving her alone,” he met his eyes, “but I can sure as hell make you kill me if you try.”
He stood silently for another moment. “I mean her no harm.” He assured him. “I merely wish to inform her of the dangers inherent in this situation.”
“I think she gets it.”
Dom shook his head. “No, I don’t believe that she does.”
“The whole world is going to shit, big guy.” Ryle swatted him on the chest several times in a show of strange human comradery. “Just give her a little time to deal with it before you make your move. This will all make more sense once we reach the capital and we can sort some stuff out.”
“We will be dead long before we reach the capital.” Dom warned, imagining their burned and smoldering bodies, writhing on the ground cursing their foolish decision to ignore the call of The Pyra.
Why did they insist on risking that? What was wrong with the human mind?
“Oh, you worry too much.” The Brother assured him, starting down the path again after his sister. “I figure our odds of surviving this are pretty good at the moment.”
“Your odds are good.” Dom agreed, pitying the small boy who was obviously too frail to ever find a mate. Thus, whether or not he chose to follow in his sister’s footsteps and temp fate by ignoring The Pyra would be immaterial. He’d never have it anyway. “Sadly, I can assure you that the rest of us will be dead by the time we reach the kingdom.”
He came around a bend and saw Uriah sitting on a log, in the midst of babbling something to his partner.
“Some of us sooner than that.” Dom finished, imagining how good it would feel to shove the man off of a cliff somewhere.
“…and that’s how I learned that infants can’t swim.” The pirate finished his story, as if that statement somehow made sense in context.
His partner continued standing motionless beneath a tree, seemingly paying no attention to him.
“Again, I’ll ask: what are we doing?” Taylor snapped, sounding annoyed.
Uriah shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea.” He gestured to Ransom with his thumb. “She’s the brains.”
“He’s the pretty face.” His partner agreed.
Uriah shook his head. “I’m forbidden from making command decisions anymore.”
“…after that thing last time.” Ransom finished for him.
“Yeah, after that last thing.” He nodded in agreement.
“Even I knew that rock was there.” His partner sounded disgusted.
Uriah let out a longsuffering sigh. “For the last time, I thought it was just ice!”
“That’s even worse!” Ransom turned towards him. “If you thought it was ice, why did you steer towards it!?!”
“Because I wanted something cool to drink!” The pirate argued, as if that were perfectly rational. “Why else!?!”
Dom frowned, hoping that that was a joke. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why have we stopped? Every moment in your company is an annoyance which brings you one step closer to death. I would advise that you make haste.”
Uriah turned to lo
ok at his partner, his back to whatever it was which had caught the blind girl’s attention. “Rance?”
“Settlement ahead.” The girl murmured.
Uriah turned back towards them. “There’s a settlement ahead.” He repeated for their benefit.
Taylor frowned, trying to see through the trees in front of them. “How can she tell?”
“Adithian magic.” Uriah assured them seriously, his voice filled with wonder. “They’re trained from birth to be gifted in the mystic arts.” He held his fingers up to his temples. “They have strange mental powers.”
His partner turned to face him, looking confused and disgusted. “Huh?” She pointed ahead of them. “There are no trees, it smells like firewood and I hear chickens, Uriah. Thus, a settlement.” She shook her head in amazement. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“It’s just a better story my way, Dove.” He explained. “The better story should always win.”
Dom squinted ahead, and sure enough, there appeared to be a small town. “There’s definitely something there.” He agreed. “Looks like a village of some kind.”
“Does that mean we’re on the right path or the wrong one?” Taylor asked the pirate. “Should I be happy or sad about stumbling across this place? Are we near the Crossroads?”
“How should I know?” Uriah shrugged disinterestedly and pointed at his partner, as if directing all questions to her.
Taylor rolled her eyes. “Ransom?”
“We can be at the Crossroads tomorrow.” The girl told her partner, ignoring Taylor. “Maybe early the day after.”
“Tomorrow.” Uriah calmly reported back to Taylor. “Maybe the day…”
“Yes, I can hear her, thank you.” Taylor bit out in annoyance.
“So… are we going into town?” Ryle asked no one in particular. “Or are we going to swing around it?”
“Going around will use up time we don’t have.” Dom warned. “As it is, I don’t expect to make it to the castle before dying from total immolation, but if we add in another day’s march, I doubt we’ll even make the Crossroads before dying in an inferno.”
They all ignored his dire warning about The Pyra. Humans just had no fear of it for some reason. At all. Perhaps they’d simply learned to deal with the pain and the danger by ignoring it in their own relationships?
He had no idea what kind of Pyra the humans experienced in their own pairings, but he wasn’t used to someone being so blasé about it.
“A town means people, and people mean that someone could spot us and tell someone.” Taylor cautioned. “Which means trouble.”
“I can deal with anyone who bothers us.” Dom assured her, more than willing to take out his frustration on this stupid town.
“We go in.” Ransom decided. “No way around.”
Uriah nodded, as if that settled the matter. “I’ll go in first to make certain it’s safe, Dove.”
Dom scoffed. “Oh, I don’t think so!” He pointed at him. “You just want to go in there and collect the reward on us or something!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” The pirate looked appalled at that implication. “Do you know how many people I’ve helped?”
“None that I recall.” Ransom said under her breath.
Her partner rounded on her. “With respect, Dove, that’s probably because of your ongoing struggle with amnesia. Unless you’ve somehow recovered your memory without telling me and have merely been silent about it all this time because you believe it adds to your feminine mystique, I fail to see how your recollection of anything can be entirely trusted.”
“I’d remember that.” She affirmed. “Didn’t happen.”
“Don’t listen to her.” Uriah waved a dismissive hand. “Her brain is broken.” He straightened to his full height, which was tall for a human but still pitifully tiny. “I’ve helped gads of people.”
“Nope.” Ransom shook her head again.
Uriah made a face and refocused on her. “What about that woman three weeks ago who I helped after she was robbed?”
“You’re the one who robbed her.”
“What about the assistance I provided to the authorities in that carriage robbery along the swamp road?” He pointed at her, as if that made his entire point. “I solved that case when no one else could.”
“Confessing doesn’t count as ‘help’.” She snorted. “Plus, you just ended up robbing them too.”
He turned to face them. “You’ll have to forgive my partner. She suffers from chronic disappointment and a poor memory.”
“Which are both the result of my partner’s bungling.”
He smiled. “Ah, teamwork.”
“You’ll have to forgive my partner.” Ransom rasped. “He’s an idiot.”
“Can we please just decide if we’re going into town or not?” Ryle asked the group at large. “Not that this isn’t a fascinating look at your private lives, but I kind of want to get moving before I’m murdered by the Baselanders.”
Taylor started forward from the tree line, walking towards the structures like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Dom swore under his breath, hurrying to catch up with her and preparing to shield her, should the villagers unleash a volley of arrows or something.
To his surprise though, the entire place seemed abandoned. They walked past several completely empty buildings, but saw no sign of people. The buildings themselves looked very worse for wear though, rundown and falling apart. Several appeared to have been crushed to ruins or burnt-out, and farm animals grazed lazily through the streets.
The War of Gold and Silver had found its way to even this isolated spot.
There was something else though… a feeling Dom got which told him not to let his guard down. The place looked abandoned, but he got the sense that someone was… watching.
Taylor absently nudged at a bone on the ground, apparently unaware that it was a human femur. “What happened here?”
Dom looked around warily. “I don’t know.” His gaze settled on smoke rising from a small area near one of the barns, evidence of a recent campfire.
Someone had been here, very, very recently.
“I don’t like this place.” He decided. “I think we should keep moving.”
Behind them, Uriah continued gently guiding his partner through the rubble, moving slowly like they were out for a pleasure stroll. “No, no.” The pirate shook his head, his voice one of complete patience. “A dozen people in the White Sea, Rance.” He assured her. “There were at least a dozen people in that boat.”
“There were two people and a dog.” His partner corrected.
“I should get credit for the dog, then!” He cried, steering his blind companion around a shattered barrel. “You’re always trying to rob me of the dog!”
Ransom heaved a sigh of pure longsuffering irritation, as if she was sick of her partner talking about that. “For the last time, I’m not counting the dog.”
“It counts!”
“Nope.”
He turned to face them again as he led his partner to where they were standing. “I’ve helped three people and a dog. Minimum.” He informed them seriously, like they were still waiting for his official count. “We’ve decided.”
“Just the dog.” Ransom corrected. “You threw the people overboard.”
“We were close to shore!” He protested. “That counts as helping!”
“Helping the sharks, maybe.”
“I help animals too.” He bragged, as if Ransom’s words had aided him to make an important point. “Dogs, sharks… I love them all.”
“Nope.”
“I should have hired a quartermaster who was mute, not blind.” He rolled his eyes. “It would make my life so much easier.”
“Only because you’d be dead a dozen times over without me.” She tilted her head to the side, focusing on the smoke Dom had just seen. “Even… even the dog… tried to kill you.” She finished, her voice sounding distracted.
&nb
sp; “And after I rescued his master and everything.” Uriah sighed again. “There’s no gratitude in this world, I suppose.” He turned to look at her again. “What I will…”
“We’re not alone.” Ransom interrupted.
“Huh.” Uriah straightened, suddenly serious. “Our best course of action?”
“We’re getting out of here.” Dom started forward. “Now.”
Uriah didn’t look away from his partner’s face, but raised his voice so that Dom could hear. “I didn’t ask you!” He leaned closer to Ransom, his voice softening. “We in trouble?”
“Tell me what you see.” She whispered to him. “Be my eyes.”
Uriah immediately turned to face the town again, suddenly totally serious. “How can I describe this scene for you?” He paused for a moment. “Well, imagine a rat. Now imagine that some cruel soul has starved that caged animal for months until it was half dead, then drowned it in sewage and placed it outside for a week so that its corpse became bleached and bloated in the sun. We are now staring at the ass end of that poor bedraggled creature.” He did a quick count. “Six buildings in sight from here, a barn… some cows. I see no people, but there’s a campfire and someone has been feeding the animals, since I see several in pens.” He turned back to her. “The funereal atmosphere of this charming destination does not inspire one with the greatest confidence in the kinds of people who may call it home, Dove.”
“No.” She agreed softly, looking unsure. “It does not.”
Uriah looked down at the bones which littered the ground, his face solemn. “Woe to the vanquished.”
“I want to leave.” Dom told them again, stalking towards Taylor and gently hustling her through the town as quickly as possible. “This place is… wrong.”
“I… I don’t like this place, either.” His mate agreed, her voice trembling for a moment. “It feels like something bad is about to happen or like it just happened, and either way, I don’t want to stick around.”
Travels With a Fairytale Monster Page 18
