by Isaac Hooke
“We both are,” Abigail said, shivering.
“Well, we can’t light a fire,” Malem said. “That will attract the monsters. Here.”
He finished his meat and reached into his pack to retrieve the spare outfits he’d brought along. There were some extra dresses for Abigail, along with his own spare clothes. He laid the dresses over the two of them like blankets, and piled his clothes on top.
“That’s a little better,” Weyanna said.
“Are you two well enough to sleep?” he asked.
“He means are you going to last the night,” Ziatrice answered for them, rather coldly.
Weyanna swallowed nervously.
“I think so,” Abigail said. She glanced at her cousin. “You?”
Weyanna nodded.
“I’m going to sleep next to you both,” he said, sitting down on the ground in front of them. He hadn’t packed a sleeping bag, firstly because he was used to sleeping on the hard ground, and secondly because the journey to Tartan’s vale wasn’t supposed to take more than half a day.
Gwen, Xaxia, and Ziatrice alike seemed disappointed in his choice of sleeping location—he had the impression they didn’t approve of his proximity to the half dragons—but none of them commented. They found spots for themselves, produced their sleeping bags, and settled in.
Rathamias sat down next to the two ghrips to keep watch, at least for a while.
Malem ordered his eagle to roost for the night, and the bird perched on a nearby branch before falling asleep.
Weyanna exhaled heavily. She glanced at Abigail, and said, softly enough for her ears and Malem’s alone: “We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?”
“No,” Abigail said. “We’ll make it to the healers.”
“What if the healers can’t heal this?” the white dragon said. “What if… what if this is it?”
Abigail shook her head. “I refuse to believe that. We can’t have come all this way, lived all these years, only to die here in this forest. Such an ignoble end. Alone. Surrounded by monsters.”
“But maybe suiting,” Weyanna said. “Perhaps I deserve as much, for how I’ve treated the humans.”
“You seek redemption?” Abigail said. “Is that why you volunteered?”
Volunteered? Malem hadn’t known that.
“Maybe,” Weyanna said.
“And here I thought you did it because you wanted a chance to get with the Breaker,” Abigail said.
Weyanna laughed softly. “Actually, I kind of did.”
“Shh, he’s listening you know,” Abigail said, laughing softly.
Weyanna shrugged. “Let him listen. When I first saw the two of you together, it was obvious to me he was your man. Though you share him, apparently.” Abigail opened her mouth to interject something in response, but Weyanna talked over her. “I thought: I want what she has. I want him to be my man. And I won’t share him. The whole time we were flying here, before we were shot down, I was trying to figure out a way to take him from you and the others. I figured I’d probably have to eat them, and maybe you, too.”
“You’re joking?” Abigail said.
Weyanna laughed. “Yeah. I didn’t plan on eating any of you. Okay, maybe the night elf, but that’s it.”
Abigail shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
Weyanna suddenly became serious, and sighed. “When the king asked which of us wanted to go with you, of course I was going to shoot up my hand. I’ve always wanted to be you. And now, to have the chance to travel with you? I had to volunteer. Even if I couldn’t get your man, the experience alone, traveling at your side, would be worth it.”
“You wanted to be me?” Abigail said, sounding astonished. “Whatever for?”
“You don’t understand what it was like growing up in the keep,” Weyanna said. “Not for a distant member of the royal family. You had a privileged upbringing. Mine was… ordinary. Worse, I had the curse of being born in the same month and year as you.”
“But why is that a curse?” Abigail said.
Weyanna chuckled sadly. “Because I felt like I was in your shadow my whole life. You were the princess, and I the distant cousin. You got all the attention I wanted so badly. You got all the most expensive jewelry and clothes, whereas I had to settle for imitations and hand-me-downs. All the young boys fawned over you, but me, they never paid me any attention. To them, I was always ugly, at least compared to you. Princess Abigail. That’s all the other boys could talk about. And not just the boys, but the girls, too. The girls… they were the worst. Always wondering what exquisite clothing you’d wear in class. Wondering which of the cutest boys you had a crush on. It was all about you. It’s why I stopped socializing with my age group entirely, and sought solace in my own company.”
Malem suddenly understood why she sought out men to toy with: for the validation and attention she never received as a child. That didn’t justify eating them after, of course, but it did explain things, a little bit.
“As soon as I was of age,” Weyanna continued. “I went seeking in the mountains around Ademan, looking to make my fortune. I hoped to find some long lost treasure hoard.” She glanced at Malem, acknowledging for the first time that he was listening. “You see, two hundred years ago, the war against The Elk King forced the Metals to abandon their dens for the safety of the keep that would become our great city, Khaledonius.
“Because there wasn’t time to haul all of their treasures to the keep, nor any assurances that the mountain, and thus their belongings, wouldn’t fall into the hands of The Elk King, many Metals elected to bury the openings to their caves. They intended to return for their treasures when the war ended of course, but some died in the fighting, taking the location of their hoards with them to the grave.
“I found nothing when I searched those mountains. I spent almost a year out there, living on mountain goats, but discovered not a single cave. So I gave up, and flew to the boundaries of our territory, where holding my dragon form proved impossible, and then spent many years among men.
“I found out I wasn’t as ugly as I thought. I used my beauty and cunning to part many men from their wealth, and I returned to our realm a rich woman. It was while traveling among the humans that I developed my current attitudes toward them. Especially the male members of the species. Let’s just say, I feel no regret whatsoever when I eat them.
“So, as I was saying, I returned to Khaledonius a rich woman. But I still wasn’t happy. All the coins, jewelry, and beautiful clothes I had acquired paled in comparison to everything you had, Princess. The loving family. The seemingly limitless treasure hoard.” She shook her head. “I knew I could never be you. I was… I felt I had wasted my entire life. Here was I, wreathed in wealth, perhaps ill-gotten, but wealth nonetheless. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. The boys and girls that fawned over you as children had grown into men and women, and they still fawned over you. I hated you for the longest time.
“When your father sent you away to serve as advisor to King Goldenthall, I thought my turn to shine had finally come. But the court still talked about you. Despite all my wealth, despite the fact you weren’t even here, I was still in your shadow!
“So I decided the only solution was to do away with you. I made my way to Tartan, and found employment as an intern under the castle cook. Once more using my womanly wiles, I discovered where you and your protector, Sir Matthew, slept. I drugged Sir Matthew, slipping a certain concoction into the drink he ordered nightly from the kitchens, and he was sound asleep when I broke into your quarters. I snuck past him to your room, dagger in hand, but I paused at your door when I heard something unexpected. Crying. The great princess Abigail was weeping in the dark of her quarters.
“That’s when I stopped hating you. I realized you were a victim of circumstance just like me. That your perfect life was merely a facade, that inside you were hurting, maybe even more so than I was. So I left Tartan and Malhadden behind and did my best to forget about you. For a time, I even found
some happiness. If only fleeting.”
“So that’s who broke into my quarters that night and drugged Sir Matthew,” Abigail said. “I always wondered…”
“Yes,” Weyanna said. “I figured, since we’re both dying, now’s as good a time as any for a confession, right? Neither of us might be here tomorrow.”
Abigail laid a reassuring hand on Weyanna’s knee. “We’ll be here. I know we will.”
“I hope so,” Weyanna said. “I’ve never been so frightened as I am now. I always thought we dragons were immortal. But we’re not, are we? We can die in battle. Or we can die from poisons, like this Eldritch magic.”
“You know how I know you won’t die?” Abigail asked.
Weyanna tilted her head uncertainly. “How?”
The princess smiled. “Because, you haven’t had a chance at redemption.”
Weyanna sighed, her eyes sparkling with moisture in the dim light. “If only the world worked that way. Life, and death, wait for no one. There’s no escape. If tonight is my time, it won’t matter if I haven’t been redeemed. But let’s say that was true. That death would wait for me to find this fabled redemption. What’s stopping death from taking you, then?”
Abigail didn’t have anything to say to that.
Quietude settled on the camp, and as the darkness came, Malem found troubled sleep.
10
Malem stood on a chewed up cobblestone street, surrounded by houses that had collapsed. Fires raged around him, casting everything in a surreal orange hue, and the night sky was starless, consumed by black smoke.
There was a commotion of some sort outside the city walls beyond those buildings. Flames fanned into the air, and huge shards of ice rained down from the sky, striking something he couldn’t see from this angle. But whatever they were impacting, it was certainly sending up quite the plume of smoke.
Malem approached.
He reached the wall, and stepped through a ragged crater that had been blasted into the stone.
A mage in a rippling blue and white robe stood before him, wielding a staff of pure ice. In the night beyond towered the dark, terrifying form of a Balor, its black silhouette outlined by blue flames. The demon carried a giant, fiery sword.
The mage swung his ice staff to the left, and the rain of shards changed angles, coming at the Balor from the side. The small fragments struck the creature but bounced away, their tips blunted and melted; they gathered into profuse piles on the ground surrounding the Balor.
The mage lowered his staff, and the ice rain ceased.
“Is that the best you can offer?” the Balor said.
The beast swung its fiery sword.
The instant before it struck the mage, a half-dome of ice enveloped him; the dome shattered when the sword impacted, but the deadly blade was repelled.
“Go back to the Black Realm!” the mage shouted.
He lifted his staff once more. The shards of ice piled around the Balor began to swirl, rising from the earth to form a maelstrom. The mage thrust the staff forward, sending the swirling mass grinding against the target.
But upon impact with the demon, all of the ice particles shattered like glass. Most of the pieces melted before hitting the ground.
The Balor laughed. It was a hideous, terrible screech of a laugh, deep-throated and booming. “You fool! I can never return. This is my realm now. I shall recast this land into a world of my making. Humanity, a blight upon the earth, will be no more.”
Ghostly hands of darkness, much like those that had chased Malem his entire life, emerged from the core of the Balor, and billowed toward the mage at a terrifying speed. A concave shield of ice formed in front of him, and the blackness struck it—the ice turned black and melted away. But the Darkness had been stopped. The dark drops of liquid seeped away into the ground.
“You would replace us with oraks, and other beasts from the underworld?” Those words were meant to distract, Malem thought, because the mage was drawing a strange symbol on the ground with his staff as he spoke.
But apparently the demon was sick of talk, because it slammed its fiery sword down once again.
The mage was forced to interrupt the pattern he was creating on the ground, and raised his staff to create another dome of ice. It shattered once again when the sword struck.
This time the Balor brought the sword down again immediately on the rebound, but the mage created another ice dome. The demon struck again, and again, but always the mage countered.
Finally the Balor ceased the attack. “You will grow weary.”
“So will you,” the mage said between gritted teeth.
“Play with my minions for a while.”
Several eddies of black mist emerged from the Balor and twisted together to form a dark portal beside it. Wind gusted from the opening, howling madly.
But apparently the mage was waiting for this moment, because he shifted, bending his legs to put more weight on his front foot so that he wasn’t bowled over by the intensity of it and then rapidly finished drawing the pattern into the earth. He slammed the staff into its center.
All of a sudden the wind emanating from the portal shifted directions, becoming a powerful suction. Once again the mage shifted positions, this time emphasizing the back foot.
The Balor, closer to the portal, couldn’t resist the pull. Its body began to distort, with one side compressing and stretching toward the opening to the Black Realm.
Suddenly the demon began to laugh.
The Darkness thrust out from the Balor once more. The mage thought it was meant for him, so he raised that concave shield of ice once more.
But the Darkness weaved past him and headed into the broken city behind him instead. Meanwhile, the Balor continued to be sucked into the portal. Its body was about half its former size, and continuing to distort.
“What are you doing?” the mage said. He glanced over his shoulder in fright, perhaps worried the Darkness would turn back and strike him from behind. But instead, it formed a long, dark thread connecting the demon to some hidden target inside the city walls.
“You have banished me to my realm,” the Balor said. “But I have won. You thought your mental defenses were perfect, but I found a backdoor. I’ve been sifting through your mind all this time, you see, and I’ve found your infant son. Yes, I see the sudden terror filling your face. You are right to feel this way, because I’m touching your only child as we speak. Marking him with the last of my power.”
“No!” The mage swung his staff down at that cord of ghostly Darkness, but its constituent parts simply swerved around it. He created a sphere next, and again the Darkness circumnavigated it. Finally, the mage threw himself bodily into that cord, attempting to cut it with his own physical presence. “Take me!”
“Oh I shall,” the Balor said. “But your son is still doomed.”
The Darkness flowed around his body as it did with the previous interruptions, and became a single uninterrupted cord behind him. But where the evil touched the mage, the blue and white robe blackened; black veins emanated outward from the blackness, crawling up the surface of those robes. And judging from the agony twisting the man’s face, those veins were also penetrating his body.
“One day when my strength has returned,” the Balor continued. “I will reach out from the Black Realm and retrieve my prize, bringing your son down to the dark depths. Until that day, he will live a painful, meager existence, scraping by without a father.”
The mage stepped out of the Darkness and clutched at the black smear on his chest before dropping to one knee. The ice staff fell from his hands.
The pull from the portal began to weaken. The Balor suddenly cackled once more, so loud that the surrounding walls shook. Its body began to physically reform as it stepped back into this realm.
“And so I win in the end anyway,” the Balor said. “Maybe I’ll take your son now, instead of waiting.”
That caused something to flip inside of the mage. When he looked up, his eyes were fi
lled with raw anger and hatred. He clenched his fists, and swept both hands forward, causing a roaring snowstorm to materialize before him. That snowstorm enveloped the still weak Balor, and shoved the demon toward the portal once more.
“No one… threatens… my son,” the mage said.
The Balor shrunk rapidly as it touched the portal, and in moments its body was no more. The black portal closed, and mage lowered his arms and the snowstorm ended. The flakes dropped to the ground, forming a small white pile where the portal had been.
The mage collapsed. The dark veins were still spreading across his robes, and had reached his neck. They spidered across his bare skin and toward his face.
A man emerged from the shadows of the city wall and rushed forward. Malem recognized him as his uncle.
His uncle ran to the collapsed mage and held him in his arms.
“Nailcrom!” his uncle said. Tears streamed down his face.
“Peter,” the mage said weakly. The black veins had reached his lips. “My brother. Protect my son. Protect him from… the coming Darkness.”
“I will,” his uncle said. “I swear it.”
“Thank you.” Nailcrom smiled in relief, through the black veins that covered his lips.
The dark taint reached his eyes, and Nailcrom, the legendary ice mage who defeated Banvil, breathed no more.
Malem blinked, staring into the dark canopy of the forest above him. He was steeped in sweat, thanks to the nightmare.
Darkness. Always the Darkness awaits me.
Abigail’s voice came in his head. Are you all right?
He was relieved to sense her. Her energy bundle didn’t seem any worse than when he had gone to sleep. That was good.
He smiled in the dark. It’s nice to hear your mental voice. How’s Weyanna?
She’s still breathing. No worse than earlier. So there’s that.
Ziatrice and Gwen were both pressing into his thoughts, trying to conference in. He allowed them.
Did you have a nightmare or something? Gwen asked.
