by Joe Jackson
“Twenty-one,” Kari answered. She remembered that day well: she was so proud to have graduated from the Academy, but then the headmasters had pulled her aside and told her the truth. They had only allowed her into the Academy as a mercy because they didn’t think she would survive the training. They told her of her illness, that her longevity was unusual, and that her success in spite of the illness made them very proud of her. But only then had Kari figured out why she was abused and treated as a throwaway child by her own parents, and it remained a painful subject. She swallowed her feelings, though, and continued, “My parents knew when I was a child, but they never told me. Even the headmasters didn’t tell me til I graduated; they were surprised I survived the training. I guess it was a shock to most that I lived as long as I did: most born with Dracon’s Bane don’t live to see puberty.”
“Something tells me you’re a little too strong-willed to give up so easily,” he said.
Kari nodded solemnly. “So anyway, yes, I decided to look inside the cave, against better judgment. There were a few dead demons: mostly corlypsi, but there was a brys as well. The smell was awful, as they’d been dead for at least several days, but part of the smell was from the infected wounds of what they’d been fighting.”
She went silent a few moments, and Erik took the bait. “And what was that?” he asked.
Kari looked at him from the corner of her eye, gauging his reaction. “A black dragon.”
“Alive?” he asked, his eyes wide with shock, and she nodded. “So what, did you kill it and find the armor amongst its hoard?”
“No,” Kari said. She hesitated to tell him what she had done, but figured it would let her know how much he really trusted her. “That’s what he expected, but he was too weak to defend himself. So…I healed him.”
Erik’s brow furrowed. “You healed a black dragon?” he asked. Black dragons were generally violent and antisocial, and were a popular target for adventurers because they were also among the “weakest” – a relative term – of dragonkind. Kari having healed one would normally go against everything the Demonhunter Order stood for: they were expected to defend the people not only from demons but from anything that threatened society in general. Kari watched Erik sort through the thoughts, though, and he seemed to realize the one loophole that allowed her to heal the beast in good conscience: her duty to aid those attacked and wounded by demons.
Kari shrugged. “It was either that or kill something that was defenseless,” she said. “I suppose I could’ve just left him to die, but I thought we were supposed to be better than that – you know, all that nobility they try to push on us at the Academy. They don’t realize that you can’t be taught to feel that way; you either do or you don’t. I do.”
Erik thought about it for a minute but then bobbed his head approvingly. “Frankly, I’m just surprised he didn’t burn you to a crisp when he regained his strength,” he said.
“It took him a while,” Kari returned. “Our healing power isn’t very strong, so all I could really do was keep the bleeding in check, wash the wounds, and try to keep them from getting infected again. It took over a week before he could even lift himself off the ground, and since I’d spent that time feeding him and keeping his wounds clean, he’d taken a liking to me. He felt he owed me – something about a ‘draconic debt of honor’ – and asked me what I would have of him. So I made him swear to not harm the elves or their neighboring kingdoms.”
“Are you serious?” Erik asked.
“Quite,” she answered. “He felt he had no choice but to honor my request. But he felt something else, too: surprise, I guess you could say, that I didn’t ask for gold or any of the trinkets he kept in his den. So he gave me this suit of armor.”
Erik shook his head, clearly surprised himself. “That’s amazing,” he said. “Though I wonder where he got it from.”
“It belonged to his daughter,” Kari said. “He told me he had a half-dragon daughter named Ashanti S’Laviolor who adventured for a couple of centuries. Ash – the dragon – said I reminded him of his daughter, so he gave me her armor as a gift for sparing his life. She was only slightly taller than me so the suit fits well, but the gauntlets are for someone with much longer fingers, and the helmet has so many holes for horns that it doesn’t offer much protection.”
“I was wondering why you didn’t wear them,” he commented. “You’ll need to see Serenjols – the demon, not my brother – back in Latalex if you want them refitted. He’s worked with paluric armor before. So, were all of your adventures in your…past life so amazing?”
Kari shrugged, at a loss. “You tell me. You’re the one that studied them,” she said, to which he chuckled. “Knowing I only had a little bit of time made me restless, and I guess pretty reckless, too. I tried to get as much done as I could with the time I had.”
Erik nodded silently and simply stared at her for a while, and Kari understood that he must be reconciling everything he’d seen and learned of her over the course of the voyage with what he knew of her from history books. They continued on their way. Later in the afternoon Kari found what she was looking for: a type of vine that curled sinuously around one of the ancient trees. She hacked through it easily with one of her scimitars, and soon it began to drip water to the forest floor. She filled her canteen slowly before repeating the process with Erik’s, and then she took a drink from the end of the severed plant. The water had a slightly bitter taste, but it was better than going thirsty. Kari explained a bit about the vine and why it was so rich with water, and Erik took note of what the vine and the tree it was wrapped about looked like in case they needed to find one again in the future.
They traveled for two more days before they finally came to a wide, fast-running river that appeared to head southeast toward the coast. Kari spent several minutes scouting both sides of the river, watching for movement or any signs of life other than from the canopy overhead. The sunshine was strong here, bathing the river in light, but it only served to deepen the shadows where the forest thickened on each side. Once Kari was satisfied that there was nothing else around, she asked Erik to keep watch while she took a quick bath. The scent of her sweat was grating on her after several days. He agreed and sat near a tree.
“That staff on the side of my pack has a folding bow in it,” Kari said while she shed her armor and clothes. She waded out into the water and it took a moment to get her legs underneath her. The current was stronger than she had anticipated, and she had to go a fair way out to submerge herself to the waist. Fortunately the bottom was fairly rocky where she stepped out, so she was able to brace her feet against a solid bottom.
“Did you get these for Grakin?” Erik called from behind her, and Kari blushed when she realized he was looking at her purple undergarments. She didn’t answer, but she assumed her silence did so well enough.
After washing quickly, Kari emerged from the river and sat down on a thick root near the water’s edge. Erik stared at her curiously, and Kari figured that even though nudity didn’t faze the rir, he was not only half-demon but her brother-in-law, so he was likely surprised that she walked around naked in front of him. Kari sat for a minute but then decided not to wait for her undergarments to dry. She figured they would take too long with the humidity anyway, so after slipping them on, she motioned for Erik to go ahead and bathe. He was hesitant, but Kari was insistent: while he didn’t smell bad, she hadn’t seen him bathe at all during their entire trip. At the very least, she figured he’d best wash his wounds and make sure that he smelled presentable for the czarikk, who she remembered had much keener noses than rir or even half-demons.
Erik began removing his armor while Kari sat back down on the root, where she waited for her undergarments to dry a bit on her before she’d put on her padded clothing. She watched him strip, but he paused before he removed his loincloth. He seemed to acknowledge that he had done the same to her, so he slipped off the garment. Kari continued to stare at him, curiously impressed, but he soon became arou
sed by her stare. He swore quietly and made his way into the cool river. “Sorry about that,” he blurted and waded out into the water.
Kari waved off the comment, though he had his back to her. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, especially during the Apocalypse,” she said near-truthfully. There’d been no such thing as privacy in the camps of Jir’tana’s brigade, and she’d shared the command tent with Jir’tana himself. Given his attraction to her, she’d seen him naked more than a few times, and Erik’s muscular masculine form wasn’t all that different than Kris’.
“Still, if word gets back to my brother that I was standing aroused in front of his mate…,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll never hear the end of it. Certainly not from Ty.”
“I doubt he’ll have much trouble inventing stories about what we did all alone in the jungle, anyway,” she said. “Not that it matters. Grakin knows me better than that.”
Their eyes met when Erik emerged from the river, and he nodded as he stood nude before her once more. His self-control was better this time, and he took a few steps away from her before his form was suddenly lined with black flames that evaporated the water from his flesh near-instantly. Kari was shocked; she knew guardian demons commanded hellfire, but she wasn’t sure if their children and other descendants did. Erik’s command of it was considerable, and Kari was shocked that none of her companions had ever mentioned being able to use it during the entire trip. She couldn’t help but wonder if her mate could do similar things.
Kari helped her partner don his armor, and then she moved over to begin putting on her own. Soon they were underway again, and they followed the river to the northwest while they looked for a suitable place to cross. While bathing, Kari became aware that there was a sharp drop-off in the depth, and the current in the center was much too swift to attempt swimming. It would have been easy enough to fly the distance, but Kari wanted to conserve her strength, and she explained that flight taxed her much more than it did her half-guardian companion. In the end the decision was a simple one: they were no less likely to find the czarikk by following the river than they were by crossing it. Daylight began to wane when they found a fairly safe crossing point where some rocks and boulders formed a makeshift bridge across the currents. It required hopping from rock to rock, but with the help of their wings they made the crossing quickly. When night descended, they found themselves a good distance from the water. While their trek had been uneventful where wild animals were concerned, Kari explained that the proximity of the river might change that, so they moved farther inland before setting up camp.
They made only a small fire to cook some meat and then doused it, and they settled in at the base of one of the larger trees. As usual, Erik allowed Kari to sleep first, letting her rest through the majority of the night before he would get a few hours of rest himself. Kari lay down on her cloak, watching her companion as he sat vigilantly scanning the forest around them. “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked.
Erik turned a surprised look on her. “What? Why would you ask me that?” he returned. “Of course I think you’re pretty, as does anyone else with a working pair of eyes. Or a single eye, for that matter. Why, did Ty say something to you?”
Kari shook her head. “No,” she said. “I was just wondering.”
“Both of my parents will be proud of Grakin’s catch,” Erik said, and it was clear from his expression that he was, too. “Though I’m sure I’ll catch hell for not finding one of my own.”
“Why are you still unmated?” she prodded.
Erik fixed her with an unreadable gaze, but he swung it out into the forest after a minute. “I imagine for the same reason you are...or were,” he said. “This job isn’t exactly conducive to finding a mate and starting a family.”
“Condu-what?”
“We’re demonhunters, and that always has to come first,” he said as he looked back to her. “I at least – theoretically – have the luxury of a much longer lifetime. I’m not sure how the rest of you make your peace with the demands of this career.”
Kari thought about it, and a deep silence grew between them that was still only slightly uncomfortable, and only because it demonstrated that no matter how much alike they were, they were still vastly different simply on account of race. While Kari didn’t mind half-demons, they certainly took some adjusting to get used to on account of their differing outlooks, lifestyles, and lifetimes. They thought on a different level, on the one hand seeming unhurried due to their slower aging, yet on the other always seeming like they had to run to keep pace with their less long-lived friends.
“It’s about commitment,” she said quietly. “I guess in the end, if we can’t commit to the life we chose as demonhunters, then we won’t likely be able to commit to the bonds of a mate that are supposed to last much, much longer.”
Erik didn’t disagree, but his expression said he wasn’t entirely satisfied with her answer. “Can I ask you something, honestly? And I don’t ask this to make you upset, but doesn’t it bother you to know that Grakin will outlive you, that he’ll likely have other mates and children long after you’re gone?”
Kari shook her head. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Maybe I see things differently because I’ve already died once, but the only thing I really worry about is what’s right in front of me. There’s no sense worrying about a future I may not live to see.”
Erik was surprised, but he seemed to like that response much more. “That’s practical,” he said. “You’d best get some sleep. If we don’t find the czarikk by tomorrow, I’d like to start traveling into the night as well.”
Kari agreed, turned on her side, and closed her eyes. She tried to push what Erik had said out of her mind. Grakin had still not shared his burden with his siblings, and she knew from experience it was just going to hurt more the longer he waited. It was bad enough to know a loved one was going to die, but far worse to find out from someone else, or long after the fact. In her case, the opposite had been true: how painfully it had stung to find out in retrospect that the reason for her abuse was something her parents – even her sisters – knew and never told her.
Silently Kari whispered into the night air, wishing her mate a sound sleep and a night’s freedom from his pain.
Chapter X – Strange Bedfellows
Kari and Erik traveled for three more days but still found no trace of the czarikk or any sign that they inhabited the forest. They began to wonder if the old man’s words were true, or whether he’d been some sort of spy: a confidence man in the employ of Gaswell set to misdirect possible troublemakers out where they might become lost and die. If the czarikk controlled the rainforest and there had been such dire consequences to the humans of Riverport trying to raze the woodlands to build farms, then it was hard to understand how they were so difficult to find.
The obvious conclusion was that the czarikk didn’t want to be found, and having lived in the rainforest for uncounted generations, they were experts at being untraceable when the situation demanded it. Kari began to wonder if the movement overhead in the canopy that she had been largely ignoring since they’d entered the forest could in fact be the very people they were searching for. Her limited knowledge of the czarikk didn’t include whether or not they liked to climb trees or travel among the boughs like the elves were so fond of doing.
It seemed unlikely as she thought about it, though she supposed it depended on what type of czarikk they were. The mulrassa were more humanoid and unlikely to be walking around in the trees, but the sulrassa were more reptilian, so for them it was entirely possible. Initially she had assumed that the forms whose shadows she saw moving overhead were animals – monkeys or such – but she began to suspect something more sinister. If her nagging concern that the old man in Riverport had been a spy was well-founded, it was possible they were being tracked from above by an elf, possibly, or even something worse like a brys.
They kept their wits about them and pressed onward, and Erik made sure to check his compass regu
larly. In prior days they’d found that following even the simplest curve of a hill or skirting around a thick cluster of trees and growth turned them around easily. By the compass’ readings they knew they were still heading north, though neither knew how deep into the massive forest they were. They didn’t come across any other rivers, just some narrow, slow-moving streams that at the very least supplied them with plenty of water to drink when combined with the common rainfalls. Kari couldn’t smell the ocean, so she was likewise unsure how far inland they were. She wished more than once that there had been a cartographer in Riverport who could’ve shown them a map – or better yet, sold them one.
Night settled in but they continued their travels, and they marched until Kari’s legs began to cramp. They set up their camp at the base of the largest tree they could find, but they didn’t bother to build a fire since the fresh meats they’d brought were long since gone. Kari nibbled on trail rations but Erik skipped his meal. His wounds were nearly fully healed, and he said he’d ration out his own food supplies more strictly in case Kari’s ran out.
Kari slept soundly through most of the night, and she rose and belted on her swords when Erik woke her so he could get in a few hours of rest before dawn. She sat upon a rock near the base of the tree and scanned the dark around them, and she listened for anything out of the ordinary among the sounds of the night. Her surprise was complete when she turned her attention straight out before their camp once more to behold a brys standing not twenty feet away from her.
Kari was on her feet in a moment’s time and slid her blades from their scabbards with a distinctive ring, and she barked for Erik to wake up. Though the demon held his bow in hand, he made no move to threaten either of them; he merely stood across from Kari regarding her and Erik curiously. He backed up a couple of steps when Kari approached warily, but then he took up a confident posture and continued looking the two over with his glowing, dragon-eyed stare. Sensing that he was not immediately hostile, Kari lowered her guard somewhat and halted her advance. She heard Erik pick up his weapons and approach her from behind.
