“Are we almost there?”
Hiran straightened up again. “Indeed. I would guess that at our current pace we will get there by the end of the afternoon—”
He was cut off by a loud roar from somewhere behind them. Both turned around sharply, staring around wildly for the source of the noise. She couldn’t see anything, but Calla felt she knew what was coming.
She looked at Hiran. “Let me guess,” she said, “our favorite lizard-men are right around the corner?”
“Far too close for comfort.” Hiran was wide awake now, his eyes wide with fear. “A patrol this close to the Lady’s defenses…” His voice trailed off.
A tiny, dark dot appeared on the horizon as they watched, then was quickly joined by others. A little closer to where the two of them stood, something large rose out of the ground. It was enough to start the adrenaline pumping through Calla’s body. “I may not be an expert on this, but I don’t think we have all afternoon anymore.”
“If that is not the truth, then I do not know what is. Run!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her after him as he ran towards the patch of bright light they had been staring at a moment before. Calla didn’t need his encouragement, running as hard as she could to keep up with him.
The time they spent running seemed to last forever. They focused on reaching that spot on the horizon, never looking back. They didn’t need to do so to know the pursuit was right behind them—each creature roared something to another, loud enough to be heard far away. But as she ran Calla realized the calls were getting even louder—the Brilken were gaining on them, to the point that she could just hear the sound of their oversized feet slamming into the earth over her labored breathing. They couldn’t reach that horizon soon enough.
The Brilken were practically on top of them when they reached the end of the Dead Lands, which just stopped in a line of green, living grass. Calla and Hiran didn’t pause to take in details or to celebrate—they leaped over the remaining few feet of dust and landed in the living field and still didn’t stop running. The Brilken didn’t even acknowledge the change in the landscape, just charged right after them.
The muscles in Calla’s legs were screaming from exhaustion and she began to tire. She just finished thinking she wouldn’t last much longer when she caught her foot on a protruding rock and fell to the ground. Hiran had sprinted farther ahead before he realized she wasn’t with him. He spun around on one foot and started running back to her, but he wasn’t going to make it in time. As Calla started to get up three of the Brilken were only a few feet away, reaching out towards her with their clawed hands. She shrieked in terror and threw her arms over her head to protect herself.
The first of the Brilken were so close they were snapping their jaws at the air over her head. Calla braced for the end when the air around her began to move fast, and a noise of something rushing past her at a high speed filled her ears. An instant later she heard a loud crunch, followed immediately afterwards by a quick series of faint impacts before it grew quiet again. She lay huddled against the ground, curled up so tightly out of fear she didn’t notice the silence right away. Something hit her and she jumped in her place, her eyes snapping open as she looked up.
Just mere inches away from her own head was a Brilken’s snout, the jaws partially opened, dark blood dripping from them onto her arm. Terrified Calla started crawling backwards, never taking her eyes off of it. It didn’t move, its orange eyes glazing over as it stared at where she had been. Drops of its blood hit the grass and started to smoke.
Fear gave way to confusion as Calla stared at it. Why did it stop? she thought. No sooner was the thought completed that she saw why.
Spires of rock had been forced through its torso and neck—from the ground.
Calla rose unsteadily to her feet and looked around. The entire group of monsters had been impaled in a similar fashion—some of them multiple times—their bodies hanging limp, some of their limbs still twitching. Blood flowed out of the wounds and onto the ground by their feet, shriveling up the grass on contact.
The whole sight was taking a painfully long time to sink in for Calla. “What…happened?” she asked in a whisper.
Hiran came up behind her, still breathing heavily from their race. “I think…your magic happened,” he said. “If my guess is right, your survival instinct seems to have awakened some of your innate talents. I think even Mai would have been impressed by such a display.”
There was a loud snapping noise—one of the Brilken was still alive, its arms and one leg speared by rocks. Hiran didn’t hesitate, marching over to it while ignoring its deadly threats. As Calla watched, he swung his fist into the side of its head with such force he knocked it clean off; it bounced along the ground for some distance. “That was far too close,” he said as he turned back to her.
Calla sank back down to the ground, her whole body shaking. “Too close—far, far too close.”
The sun dropped down to the horizon, but Hiran didn’t want to rest yet. He felt they were still too close to the border and decided they should move at least a little further on before officially stopping for the night. He looked tired, but managed to make his attempted enthusiasm to continue at least sound convincing. Calla was still quite shaken from the close call with the Brilken and was in no hurry to move on; she would have preferred to rest first, and then continue. Hiran didn’t force her to walk. Instead he carried her in his arms, allowing her the chance to calm down while still enabling them to put distance behind them. Only a faint streak of daylight remained on the horizon when he finally decided to stop. Calla had managed to calm down some by then, and eagerly hopped out of his arms to save him from the risk of falling over with the effort of setting her feet back on the ground.
As she curled up on the soft cushions of grass, Calla couldn’t sleep right away, which was rather surprising after what happened to her just a few hours before. She rolled over onto her side to face Hiran, disappointed when she saw him still awake. He was sitting upright fairly close to her, his back to her, and gazed out across the starlit field.
At the rate he was going, he would end up killing himself from severe sleep deprivation long before seeing her safely to her destination.
She sat up, supporting herself on one arm. “Shouldn’t you at least consider getting some sleep?” she asked.
He turned his head slightly in her direction. “Others may come,” he replied, “more of Dranl’s creatures, or maybe something worse than them. Someone has to be able to defend us if that happens.”
Calla crawled over on all fours until to sit next to him. “You can’t keep pushing yourself like this. Sooner or later you will break.”
Even in the dim light of the stars the shadows that had grown under his eyes stood out. He shook his head like a child, but he was so tired the action almost made him fall over. “I will not rest until I see you safely to Elenan—if Mai were here she would do the same thing.”
“I question that.” Calla slapped him lightly on the back of his head. “I think she would be more disappointed—hell, probably irate—by you pushing yourself so far that your sanity starts to become questionable. Now please do yourself a favor and get some sleep.”
“The Brilken may come without—”
“That’s it.” Calla had had enough. She reached over and put one hand on the opposite side of his head and pulled, trying to make him fall over. He started to fall but caught himself with one arm. Calla knew she would have to get a little rough with him, for his own good—she cut the side of her hand into his elbow, knocking his supporting arm out from under him. His support gone, Hiran just fell, his head landing in her lap. Calla jumped slightly in surprise, but when he didn’t try getting back up she relaxed a bit; at least now he would get some amount of sleep, so this didn’t seem too awkward. He muttered something inaudible to her, his words slurring and voice fading as fatigue finally took over.
Calla smiled down at him, running her fingers along the felted cords of his hair. After
seeing him look so fierce and strong for so long, seeing him lie there looking so peaceful had a strange kind of pull on her. She felt herself being drawn by how handsome he suddenly appeared.
She stopped abruptly when she realized she was leaning down, getting closer to his face. She pulled herself back upright, scolding herself. Damn it girl, what are you thinking? You don’t even know the man. She forced herself to look away from him.
For most of the night she sat and kept watch, fighting off the exhaustion that hovered at the edge of her awareness. The stars glided slowly in the black vault overhead, casting down their dim light to the ground below. Calla watched for hours, staring towards the darker-black void they had left behind as Hiran continued to sleep in her lap.
XIX
Lina
Lina stopped at that hard line between living and dead grass, staring into the dark world beyond; the dead of night made the Dead Lands even darker. She shuddered at the idea of what creatures roamed there at night, flicking her three tails in agitation. The wall of death seemed to have expanded a few yards since she was last here a few days ago. She growled at the silent shadows. Her corner of wilderness grew smaller every time she looked away. Very soon she wouldn’t have any place left to call home. She cursed at whatever let those shadows expand.
She would never know what constantly worked to kill her world—that was something beyond even her understanding.
Lina was about to turn away when something in the air caught her attention. She stopped, sniffing at it intently. It smelled like blood, freshly-spilled blood. That was strange, for though she was to the border of the Dead Lands that was not where it was coming from; it overpowered the stink of decay, coming from somewhere east of her on this side of the line.
The stink was of dark blood, no kill from any natural creature living here. Her curiosity pricked, she bounded towards the source with a swish of her tails.
She ran on for much of the night following her nose. The scent of blood grew stronger as she went, until it was suddenly all around her. She skidded to a stop, though not before bumping into something hard and scaly. Lina jumped at the impact and snarled, straining to see what it was in the dark; she couldn’t see anything, the starlight too faint and no moonlight to be had. She focused her animal senses, projecting them out from her until she could feel what lay around her.
She could sense the forms of many reptilian creatures lying about on the ground about her, several of them in pieces. The creatures themselves were massive, bigger than anything she had ever met. The air here was saturated with the stink of their blood, so foul it gave her a headache. Several of them had been impaled on massive spikes of rock, some in many places. One was missing its head. They all had to have come from the Dead Lands.
Her ears pricked up and she cocked her head to one side. Odd, she said to herself. I don’t remember that formation being here before. I don’t remember it being anywhere before.
This was a new development. And how could these ugly monsters deliberately run themselves through on such a formation?
Lina flicked her center tail, striking the hard end of it against the ground. Still using her other senses she noticed strange marks in the ground, a trail of them leading away from this unusual scene. She walked slowly in that direction, following them. After a few yards she found these were footprints, two sets of them, both from two-legged creatures. She growled quietly, immediately suspicious. She had found no other trails on this side of the line, so the two these tracks belonged to must have come from the Dead Lands as well. There was a strong likelihood this meant trouble.
She followed their trail until her paws hurt. She stopped, panting heavily; she was exhausted. Where she stood now was as good a place to rest as any other spot in the area. She let herself flop to the ground on one side, resting her head on a large clump of grass; it would be dawn soon. She closed her eyes, surprised by just how tired she was. She would rest here, but only for a little while…
“You fell asleep?! After you said you would keep watch?!?!”
Lina’s eyes snapped open and she sprang to her feet. The rising sun was shining down brightly on the world, harsh on her opening eyes. She raised her ears, listening intently: someone was shouting at someone else. Wary, she crouched low to the ground and crawled forward on her stomach through the clumps of tall grass, her fur bristling. She stopped when she spotted movement in a space of shorter grass up ahead of her; peering through the tall blades she saw a strange man with white hair pacing back and forth and shouting angry words, apparently directed at the equally strange-looking girl still sitting on the ground in front of him.
“I cannot believe you!” he shouted. “We could have been killed during the night—”
“Honestly, Hiran,” the girl said calmly. “Is this how you usually wake someone up? As you can see we’re still alive, so you shouldn’t have anything to complain about.”
“Solely on luck! It could have been a much different outcome!”
“But the point is nothing happened. You have to admit that if there was going to be another wave of those things coming, we would have met them already; chances are that Dranl wasn’t expecting us to escape from the last group.”
Lina felt the tension in her body ease as she continued to watch the two go back and forth with their argument. There was no doubt these two had come out from the Dead Lands, but their scent was wrong—it wasn’t as foul; they smelled almost…earthy. Slowly she rose up from her hiding place without thinking about whether or not they could see her, her curiosity gaining more of a hold. Who are these two?
The two were suddenly silent. Lina paused, then looked up. The girl was still staring at her companion, but he was staring somewhere else.
He was staring straight at her.
Her hackles rose as she tried to stare him down; she didn’t like the look in his eye. She let a growl rumble in her throat in warning. He didn’t back off, just folded his hands into fists and brought them up to the level of his shoulders. Her fur bristled as she stepped out from her hiding place. They kept trying to stare each other down for several minutes.
Lina let all three of her tails rise in threat. Bring it, tough guy.
The girl got to her feet quickly and backed away from them several paces. “Um, Hiran?” she said nervously. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You worry too much, Calla,” the man replied, not taking his eyes off Lina. “I can handle this.”
Lina stalked towards him, swishing her tails through the air. Come on, then. You will be the one that eats the dirt next—if you are lucky.
“Hiran, she’s not too impressed…whatever she is.”
“I can tell you what she is in a minute. It should not take much longer than that.”
You won’t last that long. You’ll have my teeth in your arm in half that time! With a snarl Lina sprang towards him with teeth bared. She was aiming low, planning on getting him by his leg and possibly cutting some artery with her teeth, then moving in for the final kill. She snapped at his foot when she thought she was close enough; she missed his ankle by several inches. He, on the other hand, didn’t miss: one hand clamped down on the back of her neck right behind her head, the other latched on to one shoulder, and he threw the rest of his weight down onto her back. She went down, pinned underneath him. His weight was putting a lot of pressure on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe.
Get…off, she gasped, twisting around in a vain effort to bite.
“Hiran you’re hurting her!” the girl cried.
Air…Cannot…breathe… Lina tried to swing her center tail at him; it rose only slightly through the air before thudding against the ground again.
“Get off of her, she can’t breathe!”
“She will only go after us again if I do.”
“Damn it Hiran, get off!”
Her vision hazy, Lina could only just see the girl slam into the man on top of her. That force was enough—the pressure on her chest lifted as he
rolled off to the side. She lay there panting heavily before she slowly sat back up, breathing hard as the air flowed back into her lungs without restriction.
Lina looked off to her right. The girl was sitting next to her; she seemed to just realize how close she sat to her, a hint of fear on her face. Hesitantly she reached out one hand and placed it on Lina’s shoulder, running her fingers through her fox-red fur. Lina didn’t like being touched by two-legged creatures; her instincts usually said the people would kill her for no reason apart from sport. But this time her instincts were different; now, she found this gesture comforting, and she suddenly wanted more. She leaned towards the girl as she continued to scratch her shoulder.
Could you maybe go down and a little to the right?
The girl—Calla, it must have been—slid her hand down to the exact spot. Lina let out a happy groan as that itch was finally relieved. Ah, that’s the spot. Thank you.
The man just sat up and stared at the two of them for the whole time, a look of puzzlement on his face. He shook his head in apparent disbelief. “I cannot believe it,” he said.
“Believe what?”
“You have actually befriended a Tri-tail.”
Calla looked up at him. “A what?”
He didn’t stutter. Lina rolled over onto her back, nuzzling the girl’s hand for more attention.
“A Tri-tail. They are wolves from the ancient world, ancestors to the more common modern wolves that roam the earth today. I have only heard about them in the old stories, but they are said to be quite unpredictable—in most tales they are incredibly aggressive. This seems to be a side no one ever mentioned, if it has ever happened before.”
“She seems quite sweet to me,” Calla replied.
Why, thank you.
“You’re welcome.”
The Last Druid Page 11
