Iris's Guardian

by Lisa Daniels

  Anyway. Kalgrin knew where the guards existed, and he knew the security had tightened on the serf village now as they watched out for the missing traitor, leaving less at the main house. Less than the night she ran away, of course. But perhaps more than usual.

  Half an hour later, he knew he wouldn't be flying back to call it off. The attack would take place. And Kalgrin planned to kill the lord.

  He prowled across the plantation from the eastern side, careful to stick to shadows, to move sinuously and efficiently. Reaching the house made him sneer quietly at the guards’ incompetence. Likely they never expected any danger from any other directions, other than from the tiny human village. They lived in the middle of nowhere. And no one cared enough to visit plantation lords.

  Two guards stood at the main entrance. Lowborn wyrms, doing menial duty they hated, and really not paying attention. One strolled out of sight for a moment to take a piss in the grass, and Kalgrin lunged at him then, swinging his diamond sword through the neck of the wyrm’s human form. He died without a sound, eyes frozen in surprise.

  Not the first time Kalgrin had killed. And not the last. The muted thump of the body should make the other wyrm investigate. When his companion came to check, that one died too, spending his last moment gaping at a decapitated body.

  Anger filled Kalgrin upon sneaking into the house, built upon the suffering of others.

  To think of how these beasts would treat his mother if they got their grubby hands upon her. They called humans lower, but if that was the case, then he wouldn't have grown up with a smart and kind mother, one who knew a lot about the world.

  One who never seemed inferior to him, not even for one moment.

  He needed to be fast now – the other drakes were coming at midnight to herd all the humans away to their new homes. Maybe to dispatch the last of the guards still patrolling. Many humans would be too confused and scared to move, too uncomprehending to realize they no longer needed to live the way they did. They needed rather firm encouragement, and sometimes just some rough handling, like he'd done with Anya.

  Encountering the owner and his wyrm wife ended in another two quick deaths. The wyrm, who had been eating and talking with his wife, managed to stand up and exclaim, “What the devil are you doing here?” just before Kalgrin made the fast, lashing strike towards the soft fool’s plump body. His wife screamed hysterically, before attempting to transform. Kalgrin caught her just as her neck began to elongate and scale. That didn’t feel good, but he couldn’t risk survivors.

  You needed the stomach to go through with these things. Not a tender heart.

  Have to remember. History will look kindly upon me. I hope.

  He hunted around the house for any extras, and found some house servants trembling in their beds. He informed them that their masters were dead, and never again did they need to live in fear of being beaten. As usual on these types of missions, blank incomprehension lingered on the servants’ faces. So battered, so trodden down as they were, they simply didn’t believe him. Maybe even thought this was some cruel test to figure out where their loyalties lay.

  Well, they’d find out soon enough.

  He scoured the rest of the mansion, making sure no other wyrms lived. He clutched the diamond blade hard, heart beating in a fast rhythm. Then he went back outside to keep both an eye above and across the gardens. One more wyrm made his way back to the mansion. One more fallen.

  May as well make his way through the village, see if any other beasts lived.

  Not so many, he thought, taking out the four sentries, two on either side of the village, with embarrassing ease.

  No more wyrms. No... wait.

  A huge, wingless form emerged out of the darkness, growling. Kalgrin hissed and transformed as well, rearing onto his hind legs. The wyrm towered above him, thicker, bigger.

  “Intruder! Traitor!” the wyrm spat. “Guards! Wyrms! Get over here!”

  Kalgrin lunged towards him, using his wings for extra force. He crashed into the bellowing dragon, snapping, clawing, using surprise and speed to try and overwhelm the wyrm's defenses.

  He received a few scratches along his scales, but managed to secure a tight grip on the wyrm's longer neck, a wyrm's fundamental weakness when it came to fighting drakes with their wide jaws. Kalgrin bit down, crushing things. And the wyrm collapsed.

  Kalgrin spat out globules of red, checking for any other wyrms. There were none.

  Thank skies for that. All it took was one mistake on his part to end the whole thing.

  Come on, Leoch. Fly your stubborn ass over here.

  Surely it must be midnight by now...

  A few minutes later, dark shapes converged in the sky, descending to the ground below. Kalgrin went to greet Leoch by the right side of the mansion, who gave him an elaborate bow, eyes grim.

  “Was it hard for you, Kal?” Leoch watched with Kalgrin as the drakes wandered along the human village, spreading the news. At first, the humans were sluggish on the uptake. Most, like Anya, had never seen drakes, so having these winged beings waddling amongst their homes made them gape in amazement. More of the humans came out of their huts, staring at the winged drakes and witnessing the dead wyrms for themselves. Letting it sink in that they'd been rescued.

  Kalgrin doubted many would cheer. A lifetime of soul crushing did that to a person. He chewed his bottom lip, considering Leoch's question. Hard? Not really. Nerve-wracking? Yes.

  “Easier than the last one. The lord there insisted on the kill order for his serfs when the alarm was raised. If he couldn’t have them, neither could we.” Kalgrin only managed to save half the humans. He wondered sometimes if the dead ones were better off in the ground, rather than living in a wyrm regime.

  “Tragedy,” Leoch murmured, shaking his head. “Did you rehome the girl you saved yet?”

  “No. Not yet. It's not been that long.” Kalgrin didn’t want to admit he intended to keep her if possible. “She wanted to know if her family were alright. She overheard the wyrms threatening to kill her grandfather if they didn’t give up her location, so I’m not looking forward to giving her bad news. You know what these bastards are like. I wouldn't mind giving some good news for once.”

  “Yeah, I do know what they're like,” Leoch nodded, before patting Kalgrin on the back. “That's good of you, Kal. You go check on the girl’s family. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  Kalgrin thanked Leoch, slowly walking through the village, heart heavy. He checked through every rescued human, staring with filthy faces, their new situations slowly dawning upon their minds.

  He mentally prepared himself for the worst. He knew how to shut himself off, to be cold and cruel, and forget that other people existed, that others had lives. Even with the wyrms. No room for weakness here. Not whilst he needed to send a message to the political establishments of their country. Not as long as humans got treated as beasts, killed without mercy, hunted for sport and whipped for work. Not as long as they continued to ignore the growing murmurs of dissent, and tip the balance of power further.

  Not as long as Kalgrin's own people got treated as barely worth the effort.

  No. Things needed to change. Being passive did nothing. Using reason got ignored. Only action, blood, and fear worked for these creatures.

  Nothing else.

  Chapter Four

  Walking through the streets of Tarn felt off to Anya. She still couldn't get used to the fact that she could actually do so, and people didn't intend to throw her in a jail cell, or flog her for roaming past her boundaries. No plantations existed for miles. No serfs picked their way through wheat fields and lay crippled on their mats at night. People slept in houses. Thatch and wood and stone.

  She saw humans and drakes chatting to one another, laughing, smiling. She saw humans running bars and drakes selling wares to humans. She even saw a drake selling flights to humans to other towns and cities, or doing it just for the joy of flying around. Selling flights? What a novel concept.

  Ev
erything struck her as bizarre and surreal. How was it all even possible? How could she walk down these cobbled lanes, dressed like a woman, without a layer of mud over her face, hair allowed to tumble to just above her shoulders?

  Not only that, but people smiled, and waved, and didn’t look as though they were about to collapse or starve to death. It pretty much felt like being dumped on an alien planet.

  The freedom didn't sit right with Anya. Perhaps she was like one of those kittens she once rescued from drowning. Some lout decided to keep three kittens stuck in a tiny cage. He didn't want them roaming away, and they lay there in their own wastes, mewling, until eventually, they gave up and just crouched listlessly.

  Anya snuck into his hut one night and opened the cage, and the kittens still sat there in their cage, unmoving. They didn't seem to comprehend they'd been freed, or perhaps they'd forgotten what it felt like.

  Anya didn't even know what freedom felt like. It took some coaxing for those weak kittens to stagger out. Two of them ran into the wilderness. One stayed within the village, and visited Anya for years afterwards, until one day it disappeared. She still thought of that kitten with some fondness.

  I am like it. My cage is open, but I still don't understand that I'm free. I still don't comprehend that my life will never be the same again.

  She wished desperately in this moment that she could share the newfound freedom with her family, whose fate still remained unknown. As did Kalgrin's. He said he'd be back by early morning, but she woke up to an empty house.

  Gods, if she lost Kalgrin as well...

  No, don't go there. You know nothing yet. It might be taking him a while to fly back.

  She quelled the anxiety in her heart as best as she was able. Just because she could, Anya wandered into a shop selling beverages, and three women and two men greeted her.

  “Hey! Come over here, new girl. Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

  Anya smiled at the speaker, Seon. She looked around twenty or so years in age, in the perfect picture of health, smiling with fabulous white teeth. It made Anya more self-conscious of her own yellow teeth, and she licked her tongue nervously over them. She intended to find some kind of whitener to help her smile become glossier. Kalgrin had rather obviously shoved Anya in Seon's direction, so the barmaid was in a position to watch over her. The babysitting embarrassed Anya a little, but secretly, she appreciated it as well. She needed the guidance. Still hadn't gotten used to life in the town. Didn't know if she would. Kalgrin intended her to adapt to it, of course. He wanted her to learn to settle down and not keep looking over her shoulder for death to descend.

  Maybe she even could settle down in time. Maybe she'd learn to fit in, and not act like a twitchy slave. Not whilst she kept worrying about her family, though. Kendra left a hole in Anya's heart. Along with her four siblings, and her near toothless grandpa.

  Her grandpa was covered with scars. Her mother had a fair share as well, hidden under her tattered shirt. Once, Kendra suffered punishment from the wyrms because she didn't respond fast enough to one of their orders. It gained her two cracked ribs which never quite healed right.

  Anya chewed her bottom lip, thinking of Kalgrin. Wondering if he would find her family, if he had succeeded, or if he lay dead. She didn't think such a powerful creature would die, but... the wyrms. They towered taller, thicker. Held a reputation for viciousness. Nurtured cruelty in their hearts like campfires.

  What caused a creature to be so twisted? Why did they endorse senseless violence with reckless passion? How in the world did they think such treatment worked long term? It built up in the soul. Memory after memory passed down. All until it accumulated in a melting pot of rebellious despair. People who already felt dead, deciding that they may as well just fight.

  How many human rebellions had been put down over the centuries? And how many more would rise? Surely something like this didn't work in the long run. Resentment had a way of festering. And even though Anya might have been crushed down over time, she held a lot of it inside, simmering. Because all the problems in the world boiled down to the oppression of the wyrms.

  They needed to die. But she had no power. No form to transform into, no forbidden magic to wield at her fingertips. Perhaps she might make a better life for herself in a place like Tarn. But could she settle for a job, a home, without thinking of the plantations, of where other humans toiled miserably until they expired?

  She wrenched herself out of these thoughts, knowing they formed a scowl upon her forehead.

  “Cloud covering your sun, I see,” Seon declared, now flicking her jet-black hair dramatically over her shoulder. “You know, Kalgrin's put me in charge of making sure you don't trip over your own shoelaces.” She glanced at Anya's new shoes, which reflected some of the sunlight streaming through the windows into the inn. “But you always walk around like a wyrm ate your mother.”

  Anya started at the comparison, before reassuring herself that Seon meant it in jest. “That's actually part of my issue. A wyrm might have done that.”

  The dark-haired woman scowled, tapping her fingers upon the table. “Oh? Is that why you sit here like this? You're worried?”

  “Yes. Kalgrin went to the plantation last night. He's not back yet. My family... I don't know if they're alive. The last I heard of them, wyrm guards were threatening them to reveal my location. I barely managed to escape out of there.”

  “Skies,” Seon said. She glanced over to the side, as if seeing something there. Anya peeked as well, but spotted nothing. The woman appeared nervous. “I don't have much of a family connection myself. But I understand that leaving people you love behind, not knowing if they're dead... no. No wonder.”

  The other women nearby Seon had silenced. Anya tried to recall their names. Harriet. A Krissy. Jalyun? Jaljun? A name that began with a D? The recollection muddled in Anya's mind. Always had trouble with that blasted memory. She didn't want to keep asking for their names, when they all knew hers by heart.

  “I still don't know how to handle the idea I'm free. I don't even know if I am free, and this isn't all just some dream I'll soon wake up from.”

  The raven-dark woman grimaced at this. “Messed with your head, living like that, right?”

  Anya closed her eyes, not bothering to respond. Seeing the life unfold before her again. Smelling the wheat fields, the rain upon the soil, along with the stench of human waste and despair in the village. She saw the ramshackle huts that barely withstood a sneeze, let alone a storm if it raged above the region, with the growl of thunder and tendrils of lightning. That image suited her former life, somehow. A field under a purple dark sky, the pressure low and heavy in her lungs. People toiling even as the storms lashed over them, bolts flickering in the shape of wyrms. Despair whipping over them. Evil sinking their bodies to the ground, until they died and became part of the soil and the grass and wheat grew over their bones.

  “I heard that the rural areas, like the mines, the plantations, the lumberyards and coastal regions had it the worst. They say that without the calming influence of civilization, it allows cruelty to run unchecked.”

  “I don't think it's anything to do with the region,” Anya whispered then. “I think it's something to do with the fact that the wyrms just hate us. But I don't understand why. What did we do? Hate doesn't come out of nowhere. I know I hate them because of what they did to us. So what did we do to them?”

  Seon paused at this question, her eyebrows pinched together, her lips tight. Something about the woman let Anya think that she understood things about the world. Probably hosted quite the mind under that pretty exterior. Probably held onto her secrets as fiercely as anyone she'd known.

  Who didn't? The world was full of secrets, after all. What interested her mildly was the fact that the two men were drakes, and partners to Seon’s friends.

  “I don't know. They say it might have been something to do with the past. But no one seems to know exactly what that something in the past is. Maybe we
offended their king or something.” Seon placed a friendly hand on Anya’s wrist. “You’ll need to stop these gloomy thoughts, Anya. You’re free. You’re not a prisoner anymore. If you keep dwelling on your work on the plantations, you're still a prisoner in your mind. Be careful of that.”

  True. She was a prisoner in her mind. But not in the way Seon thought.

  “Come,” Seon said. “I'll show you around the bar, get you used to how things work. You can start with cleaning the dishes and tidying the bedcovers before you progress to becoming a barmaid and needing to interact with people. I expect you'll need to build up some self-confidence before that.”

  Anya sighed, but she agreed. She didn't think she'd be able to deal with hundreds of people demanding things of her at once. She didn't think she had the force of will to handle others.

  I'm so weak. Why am I so weak? How do I stop being weak? She stared at her calloused, rough hands. Slave hands. Hands that had been bruised, cut, torn and left exposed to the sun. Her arms were a darker shade then the rest of her body. And the shadows under Anya's eyes dug into her skin, refusing to let go their grip of exhaustion.

  Going into a chore, like cleaning and washing dishes, was easy and mechanical. Anya knew how to work, to switch off her mind and just focus on nothing else. Work could take away the gloom for a while. Just the pure, physical task of swinging her muscles, concentrating on the thing ahead of her.

  Briefly, her mind skimmed to Kalgrin. His gray eyes had that quality of stealing attention. Well, the quality was nothing to do with the color of his eyes, but from the soul that hid behind them. Something earnest and true burned there. This was someone who cared.