by T. J. Klune
Ruv swallowed thickly, and that made me feel a little bit better to know he could be intimidated just like anyone else. “Understood.”
“Don’t die,” Gary said to me. “But if you do, I get all of your stuff.”
“I want some stuff,” Tiggy said.
“How touching,” I muttered. “Okay, so how are we going to do this?”
Ruv picked up the wooden contraption and fixed it to his pack again. “One step at a time.”
WHEN ONE is crossing a sea of sand with gigantic monsters circling sight unseen underneath, one tends to get slightly nervous. Couple that with the fact that one’s best friends are waiting behind, offering such pearls of wisdom as “Don’t look down!” and “If they start to eat you, poke them in the eyes or something!” it tends to make the situation a little tense.
“Would you guys shut up?” I growled.
“Someone’s moody,” Gary muttered. “And you guys have only moved like five feet. This is taking forever.”
He was right. It was taking forever. Ruv was in the lead, with me behind him and Ryan bringing up the rear. Both of them were crowding me slightly, causing Kevin to make some crack about wanting to be stuck in that sexy sammitch. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have demanded the sand mermaids kick his ass.
But it was slow going, and the island looked as far away as it did when we first stepped out onto the pathway. It hit me with that first step that there had to be some measure of trust in Ruv, but not because I was willing to follow him out (I’d always been a bit stupid), but because I was allowing Ryan out on the sand. Granted, Ryan would never have let me go alone, but still; I trusted Ruv enough that he knew what he was doing.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
And it certainly didn’t help that I could feel my magic as I always could, wrapping around me and Ryan, almost like it was a sentient thing. It knew him, because I did, because of what he was to me. But it also pulled toward Ruv. Nowhere near as much, of course. Ryan and I had been through too much together for that to ever happen. But it was there, a possibility. But it was a door that I firmly held shut with all my might. Ruv said he understood. I might have trusted him to have our backs, but I didn’t trust him about the cornerstone business. I doubted I ever would.
So there we were, far from home in the middle of the Luri Desert, the sun burning down on us, shuffling through the sand, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Ruv was looking ahead, seeing some path that neither Ryan nor I could see. Ryan still had his sword drawn behind me, and I knew he was keeping an eye out for any sign of movement in the sand.
Me?
Well. That was another story.
Because between the pull of my magic toward Ryan and Ruv, there was something else. Something more. I felt it the moment we stepped out onto the sands. It whispered to me, low words that I couldn’t quite make out, like a breeze across my mind. It was warm and familiar and old. Gods, it felt old.
And it was pulling me forward.
I felt it in my head.
I felt it in my bones.
And I wanted nothing more than to find it.
We shuffled our way forward. For the most part, the path was straight. There were times when we veered slightly right or left, and how Ruv knew to do that, I didn’t know. Either he’d walked this path many times before or the so-called trial and error had been ingrained into him. Either way, I was thankful for it.
It wasn’t until we were halfway to the island that things went to shit.
Because it was pulling me more now.
And I could see where it was pulling me to.
Through the ruins, through the remains of what had once obviously been a castle of old, stood the dome, crumbling and cracked. There was a large stone archway at the bottom. I didn’t know what it’d been, what purpose it’d served, but it was where we needed to go. I was sure of it. We needed to—
I took a lurching step forward.
I bumped into Ruv.
He glanced back at me, a questioning look on his face. “What’s—” His eyes widened. “Uh, Sam?”
“Yeah?” I said, distracted. We needed to hurry. I knew that much. Something was happening on the island, and I needed to get there.
“Do your eyes normally glow red?”
That got my attention. “What?”
“Your eyes are glowing red.”
“Sam?” Ryan asked, sounding concerned. “Sam, look at me.”
I did, and his rough hands came up to cup my face. Everything was awash in colors, shifting brighter than it’d been before, seen through a haze. The magic was leaking out of me, and the only other time I had to compare it to was that day years before with the bird in the forest. That had been unintentional. This was too.
“Sam,” Ryan snapped, as if he’d been saying my name repeatedly.
“I can feel it,” I said, voice slightly slurred. “Ryan, I can feel it.”
“Did this happen before?” Ruv asked him. “With the other dragon?”
“No,” Ryan said, thumbs rubbing over my cheeks. “It wasn’t like this.”
“Then why is it happening now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Figure it out,” Ruv said. “If this keeps going, we might as well just jump in the sand.”
“You worry about getting us there,” Ryan snapped. “I’ll take care of Sam.” He looked back at me. “What is it?”
“It’s….” I frowned. “I think it’s in my head. The dragon. It’s waking. I think it knows we’re here.”
“Shit,” Ryan breathed.
“I gotta get to it,” I said, trying to pull away. “Let me go. Ryan, you gotta let me go.”
“Never. You hear me? Never. Sam, I am never letting you go. We do this together, you get me?”
I did, and it was enough to push through the haze of magic. It was slightly startling in its clarity, and for a brief moment, I could see sharper than I ever had before. I blinked. “Ryan?”
“Hey,” he said. “There you are.”
“We have to hurry.”
“I know. But you need to breathe. Sam, your magic is everywhere. Even I can feel it, and you know what that means.”
It meant that any magical creature would be able to feel it too.
Say a unicorn. Or a half-giant.
A dragon.
Or a sand mermaid.
I was probably broadcasting like a godsdamned beacon.
I tried to pull it back as much as I could.
With Ryan there, it should have worked. He was my cornerstone. Even if I doubted everything else in the world, I would be certain about that. Ryan Foxheart was my cornerstone.
And I knew that every cornerstone worked differently for every wizard. I knew it was a private thing, a magical thing between two people, a bond unlike any other. He made me stronger. Better. We were building my magic into something that had never been seen before, if Randall and Morgan were to be believed.
So it should have worked.
It had in the past.
Any time I’d felt slightly out of control. Anytime we’d fought villains or faced danger, there was always a sense of control. He was my control.
So it should have worked.
And for a moment, it did.
I felt the magic dull.
The red in my eyes must have faded, because he smiled at me. “There you are,” he said. “I knew we could—”
Then:
Wizard, a voice said, low and growly. Feel you. Hear you. Smell you.
Everything came surging back. My spine snapped ramrod straight, mouth falling open as I shuddered against it.
“Shit,” Ryan said. “It’s not—”
“Ryan,” I gritted out. “Watch… your motherfucking… language.”
“Oh my gods,” he said. “You dick. How could you even think of that right—”
“Uh-oh,” Ruv said.
“What uh-oh?” Ryan said. “Why uh-oh?”
“We have company.”
<
br /> “Uh-oh,” Ryan said weakly.
I had enough of my faculties left about me to know that wasn’t good. I looked where Ruv was pointing and almost wished I hadn’t.
Because off to the right, crawling slowly along the surface of the sea of sand, was a sand mermaid.
“Sweet molasses,” I managed to say.
When one thinks of mermaids, one thinks of fairy tales, of beautiful creatures with long flowing hair, ethereal skin, a fantasy built around seduction. The mermaids that had captured me in the ocean were just that, humanoid beings that sang their prey to them. Some could even be good, though, and had alliances with the King just like other magical creatures of Verania did.
This was not those creatures.
This mermaid had only the vaguest of human attributes upon its countenance. There was a nose, yes, flattened with slits running down the middle. And eyes too, deep black pools that glittered in the sunlight. But the gaping maw that was its mouth was most certainly not human. It was almost perfectly circular in shape, with rows upon rows of sharpened teeth wrapping around the interior. Its skin was green that faded into black, looking fetid and tight, like it’d died decades before and then been baked by the sun. Its arms were long and thick, the claws on the hands it used to pull itself toward us bigger than I thought they were, curved into wicked hooks that looked as if they were made for eviscerating. It was obviously female, breasts hanging down into the sand. The lower half of its body was fishlike, with iridescent scales that caught the sunlight and cast reflections onto the surface of the sand. The tail at the bottom had fins that curved off outwardly.
But what stuck out at me the most aside from the sheer horror of it, the size of this thing crawling toward me, were the seashells that looked as if they were embedded into its skin, shells that were green and gold and red and white and jutted out from its face and neck and shoulders.
“Sam!” Gary called.
“Yes, Gary.”
“Now would probably be a good time to run.”
“Thank you, Gary.”
“Also, Sam?”
“Yes, Gary.”
“There’s another one crawling up on the other side.”
“Godsdammit,” I said as we whirled around, because sure enough, another horror was crawling up and out of the sand, moving toward us as if it had all the time in the world. “I am going to have such fucking nightmares after this.”
“Maybe we should—” I heard Kevin start.
“No,” I shouted at them. “You stay back there, you hear me? Don’t. Not until—”
Wizard, the voice sang, from the heart of the ruins or in my mind, I didn’t know. Come to me.
“Fuck,” I said, bending over and clutching my head. I felt Ryan put a hand on my back, anchoring me with his presence. “It’s calling me. We have to—”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Ruv said, sounding far calmer than he should have been. “I’m going to draw them away. And you’re going to get to the island as quickly as possible. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. The path curves left, then right, then left one more time. Ryan, do you see that large stone? Looks like a tree.”
“Yeah. I see it.”
“That’s where the path ends. Get him there.”
“What are you going to do?” Ryan asked, sounding dubious. “You can’t go out onto the sand. They’ll pull you under.”
I looked up as Ruv said, “Not if they can’t catch me.” There was a glint in his eyes that I didn’t like, but before I could say anything about it, he pulled the wooden contraption off his back and threw it out onto the sand to the right, off the path. It landed but didn’t sink. And as soon as it hit the sand, it popped open, the wooden slats snapping on the metal hinges, until it was a long, thin board, curved up along the edges. A wooden pole shot up in the middle, the cloth tied to either end. The wind blowing over the surface of the sand sea caught the cloth, and it billowed out, like a sail. The board began to slide along the sand.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Are you going to ride that?”
The Wolf of Bari Lavuta winked at me, a cheeky grin on his face. “Told you I knew what I was doing.” And then he took a few steps back, bounced on his heels once, twice. He took four running steps forward and jumped, then landed on top of the board. It caught his weight and sank the slightest amount into the sand before it bounced back up and skittered along the surface. The sail flapped, and the momentum of his jump caused the board to pick up speed, away from us and toward the sand mermaid. Ruv bent his knees and jutted his hips, turning the board to the left.
“That’s not something you see every day,” I said.
“I bet I could do that if I wanted to,” Ryan said, though he too sounded impressed.
“Over here!” Ruv yelled. “Come and get me!”
The sand mermaid let out an unholy roar, something that caused my bones to ache. Its tail snapped back and forth, and for a moment, I thought it was going to reach out and pull him right off the board, but he moved at the last second, directing himself toward the large sand dune that surrounded one side of the valley we were in. It began to chase after him, sand shooting up around it as it dove under the surface.
“Crap,” Ryan said. “Where’d the other one go?”
He was right. It was gone too. The sand rippled, but there was no sight of it.
“It went back under,” Kevin called out. “When the other one did. Maybe you guys should consider moving your asses?”
“Don’t be salty,” Gary said. “But he’s right. Move your fucking asses.”
I took a step toward the island and stumbled as there was another blast of something from the island, my head spinning with so many colors that it felt like I was choking on them. I pitched forward and thought, Oh fuck oh fuckohfuckohfuck, but a strong hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back right before I fell off the path. Ryan pulled my back to his chest, wrapping an arm around me.
“That was close,” he breathed in my ear. “Don’t suppose you’d consider letting me carry you?”
I turned my head to glare at him. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not some damsel in distress that you need—”
“Right,” he said. “Because right now you’d choose to be difficult. And notice how I am not bringing up the whole damsel thing, even though you technically just swooned right in front of me.”
“That’s such crap, and you know it—”
“Are you guys really doing this right now?” Gary bellowed. “Oh my gods, you idiots, run!”
“Move, Sam!” Tiggy yelled. “Don’t get eaten! I would cry!”
“You heard him,” I said. “I would feel guilty for the rest of my life if I died. We should probably avoid that if possible.”
“Fine,” Ryan said. He let me go but trailed his hand down until he caught mine, holding tight. “I lead. You follow. Got it?”
I opened my mouth to argue but closed it just as quick. I’d give him shit for it later. We didn’t have time for me to be an asshole right now. Especially since it was probably better that he take the lead, given that I was still feeling the pull of whatever waited for us on the island. “You’re so cute when you get all huffy,” I said instead.
And there was the eye roll I was looking for, even as he blushed. “Shut up. I do not.”
“Totally do.”
“I really fucking hate you guys right now,” Gary said. “Just so you know.”
“Let’s go,” Ryan said, looking toward the ruins.
Left, Ruv had said. Then right. Then left.
We had this.
Ryan pulled me forward, sword still gripped in his other hand at the ready. Each step he took was deliberate, kicking up the sand, making sure we kept to the path hidden underneath. I followed him closely, trying to keep an eye out around him.
Ruv had started to drift up the incline of the sand dune that wrapped around the ruins. The sand mermaid following him leapt out of the sea, hooked claws reaching, but Ruv swerved at the last moment, and th
e creature flew into the sand dune, disappearing with the last flick of its tail. Remarkably, I could hear Ruv’s laughter, like he was having the time of his life.
I didn’t see the other one, though. And it made me nervous. I tried not to think about what would happen if there were more than two. That probably wouldn’t bode well.
Ryan paused briefly, hand tightening around mine as his feet found the first ledge. We began to move left and—
Wizard. Wizard. I feel you. Are you worthy? Are you ready?
I gritted my teeth against it, forcing myself to remain upright as Ryan led the way. It was urging me on, calling me to it, and I didn’t want to fight it. I wanted to sing back to it that I was coming, that I heard it too—
“Watch out!” Gary screamed behind us.
The path under our feet shook.
We turned slowly.
Behind us, only a short distance away, sat the other sand mermaid, on the path, tail flicking back and forth.
“Oh, we are so boned,” I said weakly.
“Run,” Ryan whispered in my ear.
And we did.
I had trusted Ruv to lead us on the path, trusting that he knew where to go.
Ryan didn’t know where to go.
And I trusted him more than anything.
We ran.
The mermaid snarled behind us, and I didn’t have to look back to know it was coming after us. I hoped that the others were being smart and staying where they were supposed to. They weren’t going to—
A shadow passed overhead.
I looked up.
Because of course they weren’t fucking smart.
“Incoming, motherfuckers!” Gary screamed. “Tiggy, fuck that shit up!”
“GWAAAAHHH!” Tiggy bellowed as Kevin flew right above us, Gary clutched in one set of talons, Tiggy in another. I watched as Kevin released Tiggy, the half-giant shouting that ridiculous cry he thought meant the sound of war. He hurtled toward us as Kevin and Gary continued on, heading toward the ruins.
“Oh, fuck me sideways,” I squeaked as a nine-foot half-giant fell toward us.
Ryan jerked my hand, pulling me forward as we ran under Tiggy.
