by Maia Starr
Chloe went tumbling back, and the black creature that had sprung forth from Chloe’s pack looked up at me and, while expressionless, I felt a sudden unease.
As though it thought it was protecting her, the creature darted toward me, swirling up my leg and biting into the flesh of my stomach, burrowing its way into my body.
I gripped the end of it like a tail and tried pulling it out, grunting with effort as its slippery ooze disappeared from my hands and into my body.
Fenris’ attack suddenly ceased as he doubled-back in disgust, watching with horror as the creature continued into me. I could feel the darkness ripple up into my body, swimming through my blood and slowing down my movements. I gasped for breath and could only taste the salty water it brought in with it.
I fell to the ground and clutched my side, trying in vain to pierce my fingers into the hole that had been created and pull the sludge out from me, screaming in agony.
On my back, the rain pounded onto me, and my body was too weak to stay shifted: suddenly my bones were pulling against me until I was in human form. I looked up at Fenris, and he vaulted skyward, far away from us.
My heart sank as the shock of my wounds wore off, and their pain became fully realized. I groaned in agony, gripping my sides and staring back up at Fenris. He must have been certain that whatever just entered my body would be the death of me because he was circling the sky: watching me and casting deep, piercing cries of victory through the night.
Chloe ran to my side, patting it desperately with her hands, drumming my wounded flesh to try and call the being out from me.
“W-what is this?” I stumbled.
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” she yelled out, still tapping my body with her hands. I watched the panic fill her eyes, and suddenly I realized I wouldn’t be okay after all. “I’m so sorry,” Chloe repeated as she burst into a miserable, panicked sob.
I grabbed her hand, silently begging for her to stop hitting my wound. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s!” was all she managed to say before inhaling a screeching breath and squeezing my hand.
A choke of black liquid filled my esophagus, and I cleared my phlegmy throat several times before it went back down.
“It’s an infection,” Chloe finally managed to say.
I looked up at her, and there was a silent exchange of fear between us that left me sick.
“Do you know how to get rid of it?” I asked, suddenly dire.
“It’s what killed Amlodesh!” she yelled through the rain.
I blinked, feeling the blackness taking over almost entirely, flowing through my body like cool air. Everything seemed to move painfully slow.
“Oh,” was all I said.
It was inevitable, then.
“Fenris said Alecia made a salve to cure it!” she yelled over the rain. “I…” she paused for such a long time I wasn’t sure she would finish her sentence. Then she said, “I’m going to go and get it from her!”
“It’s far,” I warned her. “I can’t fly you there.”
“I’ll get it,” she said with renewed vigor, standing up now.
“It’s far,” I warned.
She gave a strong nod and then leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. “It’s my only chance.”
I swallowed, and we both flinched as a crack of lightning sounded off in the distance.
She went to leave, but I pulled her back, studying her beautiful face: her brown eyes and damp maroon hair. If this was the last thing I would ever see, I wanted to enjoy it.
Chloe pulled away from me and stressed, “I’ll be back.”
She took off running, and I felt my body tense. “Chloe!” I yelled back. She turned around, shielding her eyes from the rain. I licked my lips and tried to sit up, weakly pointing to the set of white caves closest to the lake that she loved so much. “I’m going to the caves.”
She stared at me for a moment, and I used all my strength not to cry out or wail in pain—to be strong enough to make her leave.
“Okay!” she finally yelled back.
And then she was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Chloe
My body was shaking: I could still hear Fenris’ screeches, his victory cry, in the distance
I made my way to the footbridge and back to Renden and took one of the nearest teleporters to the Adoranthe district. To Alecia.
Without a knock, I burst through the doors and Alecia spun around in shock, pressing her back into the counter behind her as she brought a hand to her chest.
“You scared me!” she lectured. As though suddenly realizing who I was she bit her lip and gave me a worried frown. “You can’t be here, Chloe. What are you thinking?”
The rain outside finally let up some, and I heaved my breaths in and out,
“Fenris attacked Scashra, and he was…” I huffed, struggling for breath, my body going numb from my efforts. My wrist began to roll as I searched to find the words. “Scashra was infected by that… that thing!”
She ran over to me, putting two hands on either side of my face and met my eyes with concern. “What thing?”
“That… blackness,” I huffed.
Her eyes went wide and flicked back and forth from mine as though we had just shared a stolen secret. “Is Fenris okay?” she asked desperately.
“He’s fine!” I shouted, irritated. “He flew off! But, Fenris told me that you created a salve. Please, you have to come with me or give me the antidote, please!”
“Chloe,” she said hesitantly, and suddenly my whole body went cold.
Would she really not give me the salve?
“Did Fenris send you here?” she asked.
“What difference does it make?”
She bit her lip, obviously torn. “Fenris… wants Scashra dead.”
“Alecia,” I warned, backing away from her. “If they have their feud, it’s between them, not between you and me. Please.”
“But it isn’t,” she said. “Fenris wants to be Dendren, and he would be a good one.”
“Alecia, help me,” I begged. “I love him.”
“Fenris wants Scashra dead,” she repeated.
“And so you won’t heal him? You’d have their great rivalry end like this? The same with it did with Amlodesh?”
“I love you,” she said evenly. “But I love Fenris, too. You don’t know what Scashra was like! How he treated us? Fenris was wiped away from his position all because of Scashra! He hated the humans; do you know that?”
“I don’t care!” I shouted, feeling like too much time had already passed. “Let Fenris take the position; we don’t care!”
“Scashra does, I guarantee it,” she snapped. “He wants the throne bad enough to kill.”
My eyes went wide: fury filling the pit of my stomach. “You think this was Scashra’s doing?”
She shrugged, already decided. “Who else?”
My face went white. “You would rather rule this planet than save the person I love?” I said coldly.
“Please, Chloe,” she said, turning away from me. “What would you do if it was the other way around? What if Scashra wanted Fenris dead?”
“I would tell him that nothing was worth killing your own family for,” I fumed and took a step closer to her, spitting out my words: “Or betraying your friends for.” I paused. “I bet Fenris was the one who killed Amlodesh. I doubted it before but…” I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
She nearly gasped. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
I shrugged. “Then I guess Fenris has that effect on people.”
“Chloe,” she warned.
“Alecia, I came back for you! I risked everything to find you, and this is how you’re going to end things?”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she wouldn’t relent. I knew that much about her still. “I love you so much,” she said steadily: carefully.
“No,” I waved her off, and she burst into tears, holding her hands over her face in embarrassment.<
br />
In all my life I had only seen Alecia cry four, maybe five times. Usually when I saw her cry it would send me into a flurry of sympathetic tears, but not this time.
“If he finds out I helped—”
I interrupted her: screamed, “Then come back to the Earth!”
“I won’t leave him!” she yelled back, slamming her hand down on the countertop. “Cadir needs him!”
We stared at each other in a tense, numb standoff. I could feel my adrenaline starting up again. I made a quick look around the room, knowing even if I wanted to, I would never be able to find it.
I set my jaw. “Fuck you, then.”
I turned away from her and made my way out the door as quickly as I could.
The way back to Scashra was long and cold: the warm rain had stopped completely, and the wind that blew against me lit my whole body up with cold shivers: the air feeling like ice against my body.
It took so long to get back that my heart began to pound: furious with myself for even wasting a minute away from Scashra to deal with that twisted bitch.
My adrenaline never gave up, keeping me sprinting across the massive bridge, furious that there were no teleportation pods from the plenks to the mainland.
Finally, my energy was spent. I dry-heaved, forcing myself to stop along the immensely high bridge.
I could hear a Parduss’ cry off in the distance, and I looked up to spot a beautiful white dragon smoothly gliding overhead.
The way her face went concave at the sides, I knew it was Pash.
Against my better judgment, I began screaming her name at the top of my lungs.
"Pash!" I yelled, my voice cracking. The white shifter cocked her head to the side, swerving before me. She hovered over the bridge and looked down at me, darting toward me with eagle-like precision, stopping just before hitting my body.
"I heard!" she said with haste. "The researchers said there was a fight between the brothers. Where is he?"
"In the caves by the lake," I shouted.
She seemed to nod, looking suddenly worried. "Is he alright?"
"No!" I cried desperately. "Fenris attacked him an-and he's been infected by... by whatever took his sister. Please, get help!"
She blanched. "It wasn't Fenris?"
"It was both!" I rushed her. My stomach flipped as I looked up at her massive frame and I felt a pang of unease in my gut. It was against my better judgment to trust her: to let her help. But if anything, I knew she cared for Scashra in her way—she wanted him to be Dendren.
"Go find help, please!" I begged.
“Who?" she demanded with as much agony as I was feeling.
"Doctor Lampart!" I yelled back.
She nodded at me, knowing exactly where to find him in the research center. It was the only chance we had of helping him now.
Pash immediately turned around and began to move skyward, but she stopped. Turning back toward me, she flew in so close that the wind from it nearly knocked me over.
“Get on,” she said.
I gripped onto her for dear life, allowing a woman who I once thought of as my enemy to take me back to the lake without a second thought.
What if that was it? What if running away was the last thing Scashra ever remembered about me?
I disembarked from Pash’s back and rushed down the winding hovel and into the cave, glowing with maroon glow-stones.
Scashra was leaning up against a jagged wall; the stones seeming to curve and crouch in toward him. He set a hand on his stomach and smiled up at me, tired and somehow final.
“You couldn’t find it?” he said with a cough, his eyes turning darker than usual. His veins were pulsing through his skin, turning black.
I could feel my throat tense and tighten as I ran up next to him, kneeling in front of him and setting my hand on his leg.
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Fenris,” he coughed, “has a hold on people. He’s… persuasive. He has her in his grip.”
I grit my teeth. I was so stupid to ever have trusted her.
“Chloe,” Scashra reached for me, and I didn’t hesitate to nestle into his arms. If these were our last moments, I wanted to be as close to him as possible. “I want you to know that nothing in my life has ever meant anything until I met you.”
I pressed my eyes shut. “Shh.”
“You saved me,” he said, tilting my chin up and pressed a kiss to my lips.
“That’s not looking very accurate right now,” I laughed through my tears.
“Ah, well, you win some you lose some,” he let out a defeated laugh and ran his fingertips down my cheek. “You did,” he suddenly repeated, “You saved me.”
“Just hold on, okay?” I urged him.
“Fenris will be back,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, Chloe.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I gave him a confused half-shrug. “For what?”
He closed his eyes. “I wanted to give you everything.”
“Someone’s coming,” I said, “Just… hold on, okay? I love you.”
His eyes opened, and he looked at me with such pleasure that I nearly smiled. He did smile and said, “Finally, she says it. All I had to do was get to the brink of death for you to see things my way.”
I kissed him. “Just hold on,” I repeated. “We have other doctors and scientists here; they can work on something, but you have to hold on, okay?”
Scashra nodded, but his eyes closed again. He looked weak, and the longer we waited, the more hopeless I felt. It became clear that if Pash could find anyone, it was going to be too late.
Time kept passing; I could hear the hum of wildlife outside, water flowing and animals creaking and chirping, but nobody came.
And if they did come, what could they do?
Alecia has a salve, I could tell them, but how would they ever replicate it? I cursed myself for not asking Fenris more about it—for failing Scashra so completely.
Scashra moved, twisting his body uncomfortably, and I watched as the effort caused black tar to spill out of his mouth.
My heart pounded, and I reached up to touch his lips, thinking somehow if I covered his mouth I could pretend the worst hadn’t happened yet.
And then I heard footsteps.
I set my jaw, tempted to call out, ‘We’re in here!’ but too worried that it may have been Fenris, come to finish the job.
But it wasn’t Fenris. It was Alecia.
“Alecia,” I said, nearly sobbing.
She ran to us, skidding down in front of Scashra in haste and pulling his hand off of his wound. She looked up at me, and we had a momentary, unspoken exchange. It said: this is bad.
“This was the point of entry?” she said, wincing as she looked over the rest of the damage that Fenris had done to him.
“Yes,” I nodded frantically. “Yes, that’s it.”
Alecia looked up to his eyes, watched them fading away from us, and then looked over at me. “Okay,” she said, all business. “It’s deal time.”
“Deal time?” I repeated, too shocked to be disgusted.
“If Fenris finds out I did this…” she paused. “I don’t know what he’ll do.”
I set my hand on hers. “Then leave.”
She shook her head. “If I do this, Chloe, you have to leave,” she said. “Both of you. Go to Earth and don’t come back. Let Fenris believe Scashra died.”
I blinked and looked at Scashra. There was no time for consideration. If there was no Scashra, then there was nothing left in Cadir for me—nothing left anywhere. If I didn’t have him, I didn’t know what I would do.
“Please,” I said to Scashra, desperate.
His eyes were slipping, but he was conscious enough to be stubborn. “My father…” he said, and I immediately began to cry.
Alecia’s hands were trembling, knowing there were only minutes left to apply the salve. She bit her lip and put her hands on Scashra, beseeching him. “You know your brother,” she warned. �
��He won’t stop. Please, promise me you’ll leave. Please. It’s the only way we can all have peace.”
Scashra looked at me and heaved a great sigh.
“I love you,” he said to me and squeezed my hand. I squeezed it back, hard, and then he looked to Alecia and nodded. “I promise.”
Without another word, Alecia pulled the salve from her jacket and began pasting the green and white substance all over his wound before slathering some on my hands to apply to him. We rubbed his body with the concoction and waited with bated breath to see what would become of the Parduss who had changed everything for me.
I looked at Scashra, and my heart jumped as I saw he was already coming back to his usual color.
My eyes brimmed with tears as I looked down at his wound and watched as the blackness oozed out: forming back into the snake-like creature and offering me a strange regard, perhaps asking why I would double-cross it when its intentions were only to save me.
As the blackness left us, the wound at Scashra’s side began to slowly piece itself back together.
I knew her actions gave her pause, to betray her love for the greater good, but still Alecia looked at me with a satisfied smile and said, “Remember what you promised.”
I nodded. “I remember,” I said through trembling lips, “We’re going to Earth. We’re going home.”
Epilogue
Chloe
And we did.
We found our way out of the cave, guided in secret by Alecia. Fenris was satisfied believing that his brother died. And if that was the only way to keep both she and Scashra safe from his rage, then that was just fine by me.
Scashra was given two days to recover from his wounds, and I was happy to know that, at the very least, anyone else suffering from the blackness would now survive all because of my… former friend.
Alecia… she had made her choice. She made her own life now, and I would have to make mine without her, trusting her belief that Cadir was safe in Fenris’ hands.
We never found out who the real killer was, though in my heart, I held my opinion on who it was. Pash. Though, I could no longer hate her. Without her, I never would have made it back to my love.
