Immortal

by Nicole Conway

  I threw myself in the way, arms out to catch him before he hit the ground. My back creaked in protest. For a tall, lanky guy, Jae wasn’t light.

  “Grab the gear.” I started to give out orders. “Empty the saddle bags, all of them. We have to take cover as soon as possible. We can’t move until nightfall.”

  Suddenly, Jae started to revive.

  He swung at me, catching me with a fist on my chin. He pushed away and clamored to his feet. It was like he didn’t know us. His eyes looked wildly between Kiran and me as he staggered back.

  “Jaevid, just calm down.” I raised my hands, hoping he’d snap out of it. “You’re hurt. You’ve lost a lot of blood. We need to take a look at—”

  He threw up.

  Kiran flashed me a worried glance. Together, we rushed to catch him again as Jae dropped to his knees and started screaming. He yelled like a maniac and hammered against the ground with his fists until his knuckles were banged up and bleeding, too.

  It took both of us to restrain him. With Kiran pinning his arms down with a bear hug from the front, I got him in a headlock with a hand over his mouth. Together, we forced him to be still.

  “Calm down, you idiot,” I repeated. “You keep that up and anyone who might be on patrol around here will be heading straight for us.”

  His chest heaved with deep, fast breaths. Tears were streaming down his face. I didn’t understand any of this. He’d seemed just fine when we left the castle.

  I looked to Kiran for an explanation. Maybe he’d seen something I hadn’t. “What’s going on?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  Great. So neither of us had a clue.

  “Well, we can’t stay out here in the open like this.” I tried to come up with a way to restrain him—something involving tying him up like a mental patient. Then, out of nowhere, Jaevid went limp again. He stopped struggling and his whole body went slack in our hold.

  I thought it might be a trick, but when Kiran loosened his hold, Jae didn’t lash out at us. He just laid there, limp as a dead fish, as we slowly let him go.

  “Something’s not right. You know better than any of us what’s going on with him and that forest god, right? So what would set him off like this?”

  Kiran’s brow furrowed and his mouth mashed together into an uncomfortable, crooked line. He was looking Jae over, thinking. At last, he met my gaze and answered, “Death.”

  It took a second or two for that to sink in. It took even longer for me to make sense of it. Meanwhile, Kiran and I worked together to get everything prepared for nightfall. I carried Jae into the burned-out, skeletal remains of a building in Barrowton’s former city square. It offered some cover from aerial scouts who would soon be launched to search for us.

  Kiran unloaded all our gear and supplies, stacking them in a corner and bringing me all the medical tools he could find while I ripped open Jae’s blood-soaked shirt and started treating his injury. It was a deep puncture through the middle of his shoulder. It was going to keep him from being much use in combat. Actually, it was a miracle he’d made it this far. He had a lot more grit than I’d ever given him credit for.

  “Is he dead?” Kiran appeared over my shoulder, leaning in to watch while I put the final stitches in place.

  “No. You think I’d bother to stitch up a corpse?”

  He made a ‘pfft’ sound and walked around to sit across from me, huddling underneath a coarse blanket he’d swiped from Jae’s saddle bag. We couldn’t light a fire, even though the evening air was chilly. After I got Jae’s shoulder bandaged up and wrapped in a few layers of gauze, I took the blanket from my bag and wrapped him up in it. Then I sat back to think.

  Outside, our dragons were hunkering down in whatever cover they could find—lying in wait for further orders. Orders that I wasn’t sure I could give. If Jae was out of commission, that meant completing this mission had just become my responsibility. Only, I had no idea where to go or what to do when I got there.

  “You know,” I started to talk because the silence was crushing me. “Hovrid actually came to me right before this. He asked me to be his new Lord General.”

  Kiran canted his head to the side. Duh. He didn’t know what a Lord General was.

  “Basically, the leader of all dragonriders. His number one in command,” I explained.

  Kiran made an O-shape with his mouth.

  “I refused. I mean, not that it wasn’t tempting. But something about him … I don’t know, I guess it was my intuition that he was after more than just a new Lord General. He wanted me—someone Jae trusted—to turn on him. And then when I actually saw what he was underneath that mask? Gods and Fates, I can’t believe I ever doubted Jae for a second.”

  “If it had been easy to believe, then Hovrid wouldn’t have gotten away with it for so long,” Kiran replied quietly.

  He was a weird guy. Short, you know, because of the whole elf thing. He never said much, or at least never more than was absolutely necessary. And his long, silver hair, multi-hued eyes, pointed ears, and colorful silk clothes were odd, too.

  But I was starting to see why Jaevid liked him.

  “Why’d you come with him?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me then quickly looked away. “There was … someone I was hoping to see.”

  “A girl?” I guessed.

  He didn’t answer. But I knew I was right. His mouth scrunched uncomfortably and his brow creased with worry.

  “Someone from the prison camp? Or the ghetto in Halfax?” After all, it had to be another gray elf, right?

  He shook his head slowly. He had that faraway look on his face. “No,” he answered softly.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s fine wherever she is.” I tried to offer him a little hope, since that was in short supply at the moment. “And when all this is over, you can go find her and tell her you helped save the world.”

  Kiran swallowed hard. “I hope so.”

  “We can’t stay here much longer.” Kiran shifted his weight from one foot to the other, peering up at the starry night sky through the charred rafters of our hiding place.

  Technically speaking, we should have been long gone by now. We should have sent our dragons off as a diversion while we slipped through the border into Luntharda undetected. But Jae was in bad shape. I didn’t know exactly how bad off he was; I’m not any sort of doctor. Although, I could guess that the pale color to his skin, the dark circles under his eyes, and the frantic, shallow way he was breathing weren’t good signs.

  “I don’t see how we can move him like this,” I muttered back.

  Kiran puffed a frustrated sigh through his nostrils. “I’m going to get a better look. If there aren’t any scouts or patrols in sight, we will have to take the risk. The princess is waiting for us.”

  He didn’t hang around for my opinion on the matter. He scurried away across the debris-strewn city like a silver-haired squirrel, leaving me to sit by Jaevid’s unconscious body.

  Only, he wasn’t unconscious anymore.

  “H-how late is it?” His voice sounded dry and hoarse. Thanks to the faint, sterling light from the sky, I could see his eyes were open. Even so, he still looked dead. His expression was vacant and his gaze was fixed straight ahead as he lay on his back, not moving.

  “Not very. An hour past dark. We’re behind, but not by much.”

  He blinked slowly. “I’m going on alone.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  Jae didn’t argue. He didn’t look at me or make any sound at all. It wasn’t normal, even for him.

  I turned away because I wasn’t sure how to start or what to say. I had to ask him. Someone needed to, and that someone had to be me because I was his best friend.

  “It was Beckah, wasn’t it?”

  When he didn’t answer, I dared to glance down at him again over my shoulder. He hadn’t moved. He was still just lying there, staring up at the sky.

  The light glinted off s
omething wet sliding down his cheek.

  “I failed her,” he whispered.

  “No you didn’t.”

  He looked back at me, then. His jaw tensed and I saw something crazed cross his face, a primal anger he didn’t have the ability or strength to express. It was the look of a broken man. “I promised her, Felix. I promised her I would protect her! And I couldn’t do anything to stop—”

  “She knew the risks,” I shouted as loudly as I dared. “We all did. And we understood what was most important. The only thing that matters right now is getting you and that stone into the jungle so we can put an end to all this. If that means a few of us have to die to get it done, so be it. That’s the gamble we all took. And if Beckah were here, she’d be telling you the same thing. This is war, Jaevid. People die—and sometimes it’s the people we love.”

  We stared at each other in silence. I could tell I’d made him even angrier. His face got a little bit of color back—just enough to let me know he still had enough blood in his veins to keep him going.

  “Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be upset. I’m not saying you shouldn’t grieve. But don’t go off blaming yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. I made that mistake already when I thought I’d lost you. I know where that path ends. Trust me, that isn’t where you want to be.”

  Slowly, Jae turned his face away to stare back up at the sky. He blinked owlishly and never said a word, even after Kiran came back. Kiran was out of breath and frazzled, his eyes darted everywhere like a nervous cat.

  “I saw them. A scouting party of four dragonriders coming from the east,” he whispered. “They’re headed straight for us.”

  “They must be coming from Northwatch.”

  Kiran bobbed his head eagerly, and then gestured to Jae. “Our time is up. We must move now. Can he walk?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. But walking might not get us there in time.” I glanced at all our piled up gear. Saddlebags stocked with food, medical supplies, and survival gear. All were things I’d been trained to believe I needed in order to survive in Luntharda, and we weren’t going to be able to take any of it with us. “You’re sure that princess of yours is going to be there?”

  “Yes,” he answered sharply.

  That was good enough for me. “Gather only the weaponry. The rest we’ll have to leave behind.”

  Kiran bounded off again, rummaging through all the bags and laying out our spread of deadly tools. Meanwhile, I hauled Jae to his feet. He was catatonic, staring around aimlessly with a dead look in his eyes. It was starting to freak me out.

  I smacked him across the face. “Snap out of it, hero. You’ve got to get the dragons to draw off the scouts so we can get out of here without being burned to a crisp. You hear me?”

  He blinked a few times and finally nodded.

  It only took a moment or two before I heard the deep percussion of wing beats. I saw the starlight glint off our dragons’ scales as they sailed upward, spitting plumes of flame that would be visible for miles. A few minutes after they wheeled away and disappeared, four more dragons zipped past, flying low and fast in hot pursuit.

  The clock was officially ticking.

  After I packed what weaponry I could into every nook and cranny of my armor, I gave Kiran the go-ahead to take the lead. He was gonna have to get us out of the city and all the way to the border of Luntharda, because I was on watch to make sure Jaevid didn’t pass out again or die before we got there.

  I approached him carefully, holding out his elf-human hybrid scimitar with the stag head engraved on the pommel. “I need to know you’re still in there, Jae. I need to know you can finish this.”

  His eyes were clearer when he met my gaze. “Yes, I can.”

  “Good.” I pushed the hilt of the blade into his hands. “Now do whatever magical thing it is you do and let that princess know we are coming for her.”

  Kiran ran point, his bow at the ready as he scaled mounds of debris and kept his eyes on the horizon. He found a manageable path for us out of the city, and I had to give him credit—he didn’t even stop to consider all the decayed corpses of his kinsmen lying everywhere from the battle. Granted, there were a lot of human remains, too. But if seeing the carnage filled him with any kind of resentment for us or made him second-guess his decision to join our cause, it never showed. He was steady as a rock, focused, running ahead of us without making a sound.

  Once we left the city ruins, I got nervous. We were out in the open, plainly visible to anyone who might fly over. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. We were completely on our own, trekking to the border of Luntharda as fast as we could, which wasn’t nearly fast enough.

  Jae was weak. He leaned heavily against me, stumbling now and again so that I was forced to catch him to keep him upright. That’s when I realized … he wasn’t going to make it, at least, not at this rate. We were still miles from the border. I couldn’t even see the jungle yet.

  Suddenly, Jae stopped. He pushed away from me and whirled around, his eyes going wide as saucers as he looked to the sky. In the distance, I heard the low rumble, like thunder from an approaching storm front.

  “It’s the dragonriders from Northwatch,” Jae said. “They’re coming this way.”

  “How long?”

  “Five minutes at the most.” He blinked slowly.

  “Can you hold them off? Get their mounts to turn around?”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s the same as before. Hovrid has done something to them. They won’t listen to me.”

  Then his body shuddered, and when he gazed up at the sky again, I saw his irises light up like two green moons. He was using his powers—brewing up another miracle to try and save us.

  I knew I should’ve stopped him. He wasn’t up to this. He could barely walk, how could anyone expect him to—

  The ground started to rumble beneath us. Jae snarled, baring teeth with incisors pointed like a wolf’s fangs. He made a primal, roaring sound and stretched out his hands. Jae made a ripping gesture in the air, as though pulling apart invisible dough with his fingers.

  Before us, the ground shuddered open like a cracked piece of pottery. Kiran and I stumbled back to get out of the way, and not a moment too soon. Out of the fissure crawled a creature out of someone’s worst nightmare, with eyes glowing like two pits of bottomless, green fire. It looked like an enormous dragon made of roots and earth, held together by raw magic, easily twice the size of any king drake. Horns of twisted roots, scales of shale, claws of crystals, and a hide spotted in moss and plant life. It shook itself free of the ground, as though it had been imprisoned there for an eternity, and let out an earth-shaking screech.

  I couldn’t keep my mouth closed or take my eyes off it. The dragon spread its huge wings. Each beat was like a mighty clap of thunder. I had to shield my face, as the force of it taking off blew debris everywhere. Once the monster was airborne, we watched in total silence as it soared towards our approaching attackers—ready to intercept them.

  “What the heck is that thing?” I heard myself ask.

  “Another distraction,” Jae replied hoarsely. “But it won’t last long. We need to hurry. I’ve asked Mavrik and Nova to hold them off as long as possible.”

  I saw him start to wobble. He staggered, and I rushed forward to catch him under the arm before he could collapse.

  “I called out to the jungle. Araxie and Jace … t-they’re … w-we have to …” Jae tried to speak, but his voice was lost as he took in deep, ragged breaths. His head lolled against me, and I could see that his skin was more ashen than before. Casting that magic, drawing from that power, was costing him too much.

  “We can’t let him do that again.” I growled at Kiran. “He’s killing himself a little more every time he does.”

  Kiran nodded in agreement. “Let’s move.”

  We took off as fast as we could across the rolling prairie. Kiran stayed right beside me, watching our backs with
his bow at the ready and his eyes on the sky. Behind us, I could hear the sounds of aerial combat. Dragons snarled and bellowed. The night lit up with plumes of dragon flame erupting into the darkness.

  Jae was right. His earth-dragon didn’t last long. It made for an amazing spectacle, but it didn’t hold up well against fire. Once it caught a few good blasts of burning dragon venom, it only had minutes left before it came crashing back to the earth to smolder and crackle in a giant heap.

  Then they were on us. With a skull-rattling boom, a dragonrider touched down right before us. His sword was drawn. His mount’s scales glittered in the starlight like black diamonds. I saw the dragon’s plated chest heave and its head recoil as it took in a mighty, venom-spraying breath.

  She came out of nowhere—my girl. Nova blitzed down out of the sky and smacked right into them at full speed, legs outstretched and jaws open wide. The impact threw the rider from his saddle and he hit the ground with a nasty-sounding crunch. The two dragons rolled across the ground like two brawling cats, snarling and hissing. My girl was bigger, stronger, but her opponent hadn’t come to the fight alone.

  Three more dragonriders dove in at her at once, overwhelming her and burying her under a heap of scales, claws, and teeth.

  I yelled for her. I heard her screeching, screaming in panic.

  A sudden explosion of flame sent her attackers retreating back. Mavrik landed beside her, his teeth bared and his black spines bristling as he took up a protective stance between them—daring one of the other dragons to make a move. It gave Nova a chance to recover. She shook herself off and joined him in squaring off with their enemies.

  I never saw what happened next. We descended the hill on the other side of the fight and kept going. I couldn’t stop, or look back to see if she was all right, I just had to trust that she would be.

  It was a race against time, and we were definitely losing. I saw the shadows of the other dragonriders against the gentle light of the stars as they made low, zooming passes over us.

  They were coming, growing closer by the second. They were just looking for the perfect place to rally and corner us.