Doom and the Warrior

by Lexy Wolfe

“No, of course not.” He managed to smile wanly, touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. “You see so much in me, but I feel lacking and inept. I don’t know enough to take care of you. Not as much as you need me to. You were near death so long and so often when we first escaped. It was luck you are still alive, not because I knew how to keep you that way. I would have preferred to stay near that beach until you completely recovered, but you insisted we keep moving.” He bumped his fingers across her lips to stop her from speaking. “You were not wrong to insist. But I was afraid.”

  He looked at their still clasped hands. “You insisted we go into Dramaden so you could fight. You were right about that, too. We were somewhere safe where we need not worry constantly someone or something would find us so we could finally rest. You could heal. And I learned more about healing from Master Harther, but I am afraid it will not be enough.” He shrugged. “It is not that I do not approve of you fighting. I am afraid of what might happen to you if I don’t have the knowledge to help you when you need me most.”

  She let go of his hand and put her arms around his neck, embracing him fiercely. “I wish I could give you reason not to fear for my life, but will not promise what I cannot absolutely give you, my friend. But I will do whatever I must to keep you safe first.”

  Doom returned the embrace, his quiet laugh filled with affection. He got to his feet and held his hands out. “Let’s at least go over there where it is more sheltered to rest. We have several hours of sunlight left. We should be able to get a few more miles in before we need to set up camp.”

  Leaning on his support, Tiwaz looked up at him. “You are preoccupied by something else.” She waited with quiet patience in the lengthy silence while he led them to the thick cluster of bushes and trees, then for him to spread out a blanket, accepting his hand to avoid another jarring drop-in-place.

  “I…didn’t tell you everything about our escape. Not because I didn’t want to. It was just…very confusing. And now I can’t help but think about it.” She watched him silently, her expression devoid of any emotion. Recognizing the look as her arena mask, he could not meet her eyes, unsure what she was thinking or feeling. He took out the pouch given to him by Juran, looking at the worn emblem on it. “The wagoner who got us out of Shurakh Arln gave this to me. He said it was a gift from those who help slaves escape, with apologies for not coming for us sooner.”

  A slight frown touched Tiwaz’s features. She reached out a tentative hand to touch the supple leather. After a great deal of uncertainty, she rested her hand on it. “This is very, very old.” She closed her eyes. “It has magic.”

  He blinked. “You can tell it has magic?” She nodded, eyes still shut, opening them at his heavy sigh. “I suppose after being around Alimar and his experimenting for so long—”

  “No. I have always been able to sense magic. Magical energy is like the colors of the rainbow. A rainbow is all light, but when it is fractured, you can see the different parts of it. Magic is similar except to me, each is a mixture of colors and scents and sensations all at once.

  “Alimar used me to verify the truth of those who sought to sell him things, and made examples of any who tried to deceive him.” Doom put his arm around her shoulders when she shuddered at the memories. She shook her head once in a sharp motion. “He had taught me to tell the difference between the many types, and sometimes the origin. The same type of magic from the Southern Wildlands feels a little different than from the Western Empire. They all feel or smell different.” She looked at the pouch. “But I have never sensed anything like this before.”

  He considered the pouch. “I do not know if that makes me feel better or not,” he mused. He took his arm from around her to dump the pouch into his hand. The two coins with the small gemstones bearing the image of a dragon lay in his palm. He used his thumb to bump the diamond-eyed coin. “This was in the pouch, along with the map I have been using to navigate.”

  “And this one?” she asked, picking up the emerald-eyed coin to examine it with a frown of scrutiny.

  “I found it next to you after a…a dream I had.” He could sense her piercing gaze on him, but he could not bring himself to meet her eyes. “After Urbin left me in that hidden temple under Shurakh Arln, I cleaned and bound your wounds as best I could, then fell asleep next to you to keep you warm.”

  “I remember…feeling…safe,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. Green eyes turned to meet his. “I never knew what to call that sensation until we were in Dramaden. When you mentioned it, I had words at last for the feeling that has haunted me. I felt safe. Protected. I had only ever glimpsed that when we were together, when you would hold me. Especially when I was afraid.”

  He looked surprised. “You remember the temple?”

  She waved her hand in irritation, wanting him to get on with his story and not focus on her. “I remember feeling something I never felt before and I had no words for. Tell me about the dream.”

  The gromek nodded and took a deep breath. “A lot of what was in the dream also happened while the wagoner was getting us to the docks.” He hesitated a moment; she waited patiently. “There was a woman. She wasn’t human, but I have never seen anything like her. Her eyes were very green. Not quite like yours. Hers seemed to have a glow, but it might have been the light. She asked me why I didn’t pray to any gods for help. She looked at me strange when I told her there were no gods and she said there were.

  “Then I told her gods would not care about people like us. She seemed to hint that they do care, but they are limited. Something about faith and belief and gardens of weeds…To be honest, she started talking a lot of gibberish and nothing made much sense, but…” He closed his eyes. “She knew my name. I must have been asleep. I would have dismissed it as delusion except for that coin. It was right beside you and I know—”

  Tiwaz blinked, interrupting him. “Your name…? You told me you didn’t have a name. Like me.” She started to lean away from him. “You lied to me?”

  He winced. “No! I would never lie to you. I gave up my name because Alimar took yours away with your memory.”

  She put her hand over his heart, anguished. “But why? You have a name! I knew you were someone special. Special people have names. Tiwaz isn’t a name, it is a thing. I may as well be called Mud, there is no difference.”

  “My Tiwaz, you do not need a name to be special. You were special to all of us in Shurakh Arln.” He covered her hand, squeezing when she looked away. “You gave us strength when Alimar tried to take it from us. No matter what he did to you, you stood strong. You suffered for all of us. When you could not stand, we stood for you. That is why we are here now.”

  “I want to believe you,” she said in a hushed voice, leaning into him as he put his arm around her again. “I want to believe your words so much because you want me to believe. But I can’t. There is a hole inside me. An emptiness.” She closed her eyes turning her face against his chest. “The only way I can describe it is having no name. It hurts so much. More than the glyphs Alimar put on me. More than whatever in me that hurts during the full and new moons or anything he ever did to me. It has grown ever since I broke the gold shackles. But it does not hurt so much with you. Doom…” She paused. “Don’t be nameless anymore. Tell me. Please.” She whispered, “I want to know your real name. I want to know who you were before Alimar.”

  “My name is Thrahx Vaug. I barely remember my father, but my mother was the ruler of my people.” He tightened his arm around her, his anguish harsh in his voice. “I don’t remember what she looks like anymore.”

  She closed her hand around the coin and turned so she could put both her arms around his massive chest, holding him tightly. “Do you believe the woman in your dreams? That there are gods and they care?” He hesitated, then nodded. “Then go ahead and pray to them. Perhaps they will hear you because you have a name.”

  He glanced down at her. “Will you pray also?” He winced in surprise when her arms squeezed tight and he
could all but see her scowl despite how she hit her face against him. “Ti?”

  “No, I will not pray to them. Not a single one. I will only talk to a god when I can look them in the eye and demand why they let you hurt like this for so long.” She added before he could ask, “I already know they don’t care about me. You are the only one that matters and they have to answer to me for their neglect of you, and convince me why I should give them any respect.” He started to open his mouth to argue, then shut it again, just holding her nearly as tight as she held him.

  TIWAZ WOKE AS the sky began to brighten with the rising sun. She stretched in a methodical ritual that ended with her standing. Doom looked up from the parchment he was writing on with the burnt tip of a branch with a small smile. “Did you sleep well?”

  “You need to sleep, too,” was her sharp response, eyes flashing with annoyance. “We are supposed to take turns keeping watch. You should have woken me so you could sleep, too.”

  “I’m not worried.” He tapped the parchment lightly. “We are a half a day away from our goal. I can make it that far and sleep after we set up camp again.” She gave him a sidelong glare then snorted in mild disgust as she began packing her gear.

  She walked over as she slipped her backpack on and looked over his shoulder at the map. “That is what you use to guide us? How can you understand any of that? It doesn’t look like anything,” she demanded, waving her hands at it. “It is all lines and squiggles! There’s nothing that makes any sense on there.” She put her hands on her hips. “How can you keep track of anything with that?”

  “The ‘lines and squiggles’ are symbols and names. I could teach you to—”

  “No.” She held up both hands in a warding gesture. “I am a gladiator. You finish doing whatever you’re doing, I’ll go stand watch.” She said over her shoulder as she headed to the large rock, “Over here.”

  “You complain about not having any skills outside the arena, then you don’t want to learn,” he muttered under his breath.

  He winced a bit when she responded tartly. “You can read, I trust you, and the only thing trying to learn something so foreign would do right now is confuse me and give me a headache. Neither would serve me well if we come across something I need to be ready to fight.” He met her glare before she crossed her arms and looked away in a huff.

  “Your hearing seems to have gotten a lot sharper,” the gromek noted as he finished marking the map and tucked it away again. He hefted his backpack and secured it on his back before taking his quarterstaff to use as a walking stick. “Or are you just now starting to pay attention to things around you instead of focusing on what’s right in front of you?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered after some time, expression unreadable. “That I do not know bothers me very much.”

  Doom remained silent as he considered his friend. “Once we find a place to settle, I want to start teaching you as I had been taught by Urbin.” He felt her eyes on him but did not turn to look. “He had never heard of my kind before Alimar gave me to him to be trained. He said he has trained others who were of other races in his art, so the first month was nothing but determining what gromeks could do.”

  “I am well aware of what I can do,” Tiwaz stated tonelessly. “I am very good at what I can do.”

  “Yes, you are exceptional at what you can do.” She glanced sideways at him as he qualified, “Inside of the arenas. But, as far as we know, you are either not human, or you are a human with very definite abilities not seen in most. Alimar used you for what he wanted, but only what he could control. He wouldn’t have needed to put glyphs on you to constrain you if there wasn’t a need. I am certain of that.”

  Her pace slowed as she considered his words. “You think…there are things I can do?” She held her hands up, looking at them with uncertainty. “Things that I do not even know I can do?”

  He nodded. “I am sure of it, Ti. It is really the only thing that makes any sense about how you healed on the beach and in Dramaden. We know you have magic, at least on an instinctive level.”

  “You are accusing me of being a mageborn?” the woman demanded, fists clenched. “Like Alimar?”

  “Of course not like Alimar.” Yellow eyes flashed in irritation. “You are nothing like him. But I watched your wounds close, Ti. I saw them close without the aid of any outside magic.” He caught her hand, pushing her sleeve back to expose her wrist. Bandages peeked out from beneath the bracer. “Every time it happened, your wrists bled.”

  Her expression reflected distress. “No. I don’t have magic. I can’t—”

  “Why not?” he asked her. “What else would Alimar want to suppress than something that could endanger him? Think about it. Your wrists bled when you threw off his compulsion spell, too.” He clasped her hand in both of his reassuringly. “I would have blamed the gold shackles, except they bled since you broke them.”

  Tiwaz trembled with emotion. “I didn’t…I couldn’t remember…” She looked up at him with a stricken expression. “Doom, forgive me, if I had known there was magic in me,” she began, spitting the hated word as though she bore the soul of evil unknowingly.

  “Tiwaz, relax,” he urged, putting as much reassurance in his voice as possible. “Whatever the reason these things happened, native ability or divine intervention, I am eternally grateful for it. You stood up to Alimar’s compulsion. You healed enough to keep you alive. That is all that is important. Nothing else matters to me.”

  “You think…you think something else may have done it?” she asked in a small voice, begging him. “I can’t have magic.”

  “It is possible,” he assured. “But I am as determined to make sure you stay alive and free just as much as you are determined to make sure the same for me.”

  He looked towards the towering mountains in the distance. “That is why I decided to go to Dragons Gate instead of to the Northern Territories. I realize they are part of the Southern Wildlands, and you insisted we not go there, but they are closer. Shurakh Arln is part of the Western Empire. If he ever looks while we stay in this territory, there will be no hiding from him.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again, frowning. “I suppose it will be safe enough if you think it will be.” She turned her gaze towards the distant peaks. “Dragons live there and they hate anything not draconic. Alimar avoided them because the power of the oldest of them was greater than his.”

  “Then it’s perfect.” Doom resumed walking towards the turbulent border between the Western Empire and the Southern Wildlands fractures, baleful winds howling. “I trust dragons to be more honorable than Alimar,” he pointed out. “And more reasonable.”

  “They are still dragons and we are not. They might consider it honorable to step on us then feed us to their offspring.”

  Doom smirked. “My, don’t we have a positive outlook.”

  The curtain of turbulence marking the physical border between the Western Empire and the Southern Territories roared, ending their conversation briefly as the winds whipped around them. He teased her about vanity when she insisted on stopping to redo her wind loosened braids after pushing through the chaotic wall of wind and dirt. All levity vanished when they heard a noise out of place with the ceaseless rush of border winds.

  “You heard that?” She nodded, body tensed. He scanned the thick brush, his quarterstaff at the ready. A long-necked reptile with hateful eyes emerged from the trees, fanning forearm-wings as it roared in challenge. He glanced at Tiwaz in alarm when she drew her short sword and dropped her backpack, eyes locked on the creature. “Ti! Get back from that dragon! It could—”

  “It isn’t a dragon,” she responded mechanically, all her focus on the massive animal as it crashed out of the greenery into the more open area. Balanced on back legs, it fanned its wings, lashing a thick tail that counterbalanced its front half. Between Doom and Tiwaz, it looked between them in angered confusion. “It’s a wyvern. I have fought these before. They have no magic. They canno
t even fly.”

  The comment startled Doom from his attention on the animal. “You what?!”

  She did not answer, spinning her blade in her hand. The sunlight reflecting from the blade captured the wyvern’s full attention. It snapped at her, but she jumped back just enough that it missed her, but remained close enough to allow it to believe it could catch her. It snapped again, then yelped when she brought the hilt of the blade down on a soft spot on its nose. It growled with menace. Doom swung his quarterstaff against its leg to divide its attention between Tiwaz and himself. He grunted as though he had struck rock. That it did not even seem to notice him made the gromek’s heart sink in dismay. “Tiwaz, just run!”

  The woman ignored her companion, focused on the giant reptile. “Come, poor excuse for a lizard! You disgraced castoff of dragon dung!” It lunged at her again, and again, she jumped out of its way at the last minute. “Try and catch me!” She rolled out of the way as it grabbed a mouthful of dirt.

  Doom looked over the beast and noticed one of its protective spinal plates was missing. With all of his strength, he brought the quarterstaff down on that tender spot. Despite being made of hardwood, the weapon splintered where it connected to the beast. Its legs collapsed, forcing it to try to get back to its feet and stumbling because of the shock to its nerves. Its head swung around to roar hatefully at the unarmed gromek.

  Tiwaz took advantage of the distraction, leaping onto its neck and bringing the short sword down with both hands, driving the blade into the base of its skull. She sensed a dull snap reverberate through her hands. She swore, unable to get away before its thrashing flung her several yards. She landed on her back and did not move.

  “Ti!” Doom felt his blood congeal in absolute horror at the stillness of his friend. He stood there, uncertain what he could do weaponless against this monster that just would not fall. He looked over his shoulder as a shadow fell across him and he hit the ground, covering his head. A brown-hued, ruby-eyed true dragon emerged and breathed fire, drawing the monster’s attention away from the pair. Another dragon, emerald-eyed and the color of grey stone, landed with a thump, biting the wyvern’s throat, holding it as it thrashed until it fell still.