Nite Fire: Flash Point

by C. L. Schneider

  As she passed behind me, I couldn’t tell which weapon she hit me with, but it did the job.

  When I came to, we were high above the ground. Dangling from her arms, ankles and wrists bound; the sun glare was strong. The wind threw tangled, blood-streaked strands across my eyes, hampering my already fuzzy half-conscious glimpses of the terrain. Even so, I had no trouble seeing the extent of the black, parched land. It went on further than I thought.

  The ruptured ground held withered trees similar to what I’d been chained to. Some were jagged and broken with their limbs scattered. Others still held their leaves, but they were an odd bluish-black, as if taken by some kind of blight.

  Watching the ailing landscape rush by, my mind wandered. I thought of what Oren said about Naalish and her fixation on the health of Drimera. Maybe she was right to be worried.

  Moving in and out of awareness, I woke as we reached the outer pillars that served as boundary markings for the largest lyrriken community on the continent. Lain out concentrically, instead of the grid method humans were fond of, the City of Spires unfolded beneath us in circles that stretched far beyond view. The towering obelisks forming the exterior ring were forged from the strongest metal on Drimera. Slender, sleek, and solid, their bluish-green tint reflected the sun painfully well. The lyrriken guards stationed at their pinnacles glanced up as we passed. More were posted on the ground. Their hybrid figures were small yet unmistakable at our height, standing between the foundations of nearly every spire.

  There were significantly more guards on the first ring than I remembered.

  Moving inward over the circles, the obelisks grew larger and wider. Their materials and hues varied depending on their function. Within their hollowed-out interiors, thousands of lyrriken lived, worked, and studied. The narrowing structures stretched into the sky, wrapped in tendrils of fluffy white clouds. Shelves interrupted the spires at various points. Flat and round, many were connected by bridges made of a thick, rope-like fiber. Others served as platforms for the elders to land on or perch for the night.

  As I stared down, watching the pieces of my former life go by, I knew a bounty of aromas lay far below. Yet, up high, the air was strikingly fresh and clean. Drawing such purity into my lungs was almost painful, but I breathed it in deeply; clearing my head; gathering my strength.

  The last ring was approaching swiftly. Guild owned and occupied, the tops and bottoms of the buildings were windowless and sleek. The middle floors, used for combat training, were open, boasting only sturdy columns and no walls. Sparring was either done in human form or with wings restrained. A winner was declared only when one participant was pushed off the edge. It was harsh, but the disgrace lasted far longer than the loser’s temporary death.

  The Citadel sat inside the Guild ring at the heart of the city. Legend said the bones of the first dragons to ever walk the land were built into the towering walls of the sheer rectangular black fortress. Clouds ringed the cathedral-like pedestal at the top. The lower rooms were a place most lyrriken would never see, and none wanted to.

  Lucky me, I was on visit number two.

  It was an occasion I thought might have earned me a parade. I expected to be marched past the elder tribe leaders, the top officers of the Guild—the Queen. It would have been unpleasant, but it would have given me a chance to walk off the last of the venom holding onto my system. But as Brynne swooped toward the ground, I realized I’d applied far too much importance to my homecoming. Naalish had said her peace, and either the elders didn’t care I’d been apprehended, or they didn’t know, because there was no fanfare. No one had come to gawk or celebrate, and Brynne made no show of our landing. At thirty feet above the ground, she simply let go and dropped me.

  Falling, the sudden rush of air stole my breath.

  The crunch of bone took my sight as I landed.

  As the vision grew around me, the scenery unfolded. The details filled in, sparking long-ago memories. The Drimeran sky just shy of sunset, the distant woodlands, and the grassy clearing beneath my boots, the sharp edge of the hillside behind me; I remembered the moment. I remembered if there had only been one, things would have gone differently.

  That’s all that was spotted slinking through the exit. All that was seen stealing away from the elder’s lair, leaving behind its distinctive bitter scent and the cracked shells of the female’s compromised eggs.

  Elder females reproduced once every five to ten years. To lose an entire nest was devastating to the tribe. Their request for retribution had been instantly granted by the Guild, and I’d been happy to volunteer. I hadn’t tangled with a skelacreen for some time, and this one was deserving of execution.

  But not only had my hunt discovered that more than one had snuck through the exit from their world, these skelacreen were larger and stronger than any I had seen before. Which was why I was riddled with slashes and bruises, and blood was leaking from at least a half dozen rips in my scales. I was tired, hurt. I’d lost my batons. I’d set fire to half the trees in view in my attempt to kill them all. The sweat their skin excreted was inconveniently resistant to flame.

  Now, the sun was near gone. The moons were rising on the horizon. And I was down to my last opponent. I’d chased him to the clearing, to the edge of the hill. Behind and below me was the old riverbed, a strip of land long-dried after the water was diverted to enhance the drainage system beneath the city.

  The drop-off was no more than twenty feet, but the large rocks lining the bed would more than make up for the lack of distance. And skelacreen had no wings. If I could throw him off, the landing would disable, if not kill him.

  Abruptly, the creature’s twin canine-like heads lashed out. Its necks were nimble, their reach annoyingly long. At five feet tall, three feet wide, on four legs with a ridged exterior spine hard as solid stone, the skelacreen‘s body was strong and took a lot of punishment. But their tails were the real problem. Spiny bristles ran the length of the thick gristly appendage. A cone-shaped spur topped the end, heavy and sharp and perfect for piercing lyrriken scales.

  His tail swept the ground. I jumped clear, and the spur cut the grass in my wake. Pain shot through my nicked legs as I landed. His tail swung again, and I pushed out a stream of fire, blistering the creature’s side, keeping him back.

  But for my plan to work, I had to get close. I had to take another hit.

  I jumped him. Our bodies collided with momentum. He took advantage, as I knew he would, and his tail pierced my side. I leaned in, shoving, pushing his back legs off the edge. As he teetered, the spur slid out. I moved back, but his open mouths snapped at me. Fangs caught in the leather of my belt, and as he fell, so did I.

  Four legs flailing, claws digging; the skelacreen’s tail wrapped around me. His weight kept my wings from extending. I tried to push him off as the hillside rushed past. I heated my hands, trying to burn his hide, but I only managed to slip free a moment before landing. His mass eased, and my back struck the rocks with an agonizing force.

  Pain darkened the deepening evening sky. I could sense the skelacreen lying beside me, but I couldn’t convince my body to do anything about it. Blood ran from an unhealthy amount of puncture wounds. At least one leg was broken, possibly my back. Discomfort intersected in so many places, I couldn’t separate them.

  But I had to.

  Pushing through, I went for the knife at my belt. The weapon’s tip freed the sheath, and the skelacreen scrambled on top of me. Its deadly tail curled over its right shoulder. It plunged down and I rolled, side to side; avoiding the first strike and the second. On the third, I swiped with the knife. The tail descended again, penetrating my scales and piercing my stomach as my blade cut through the width of the appendage, severing it with a burst of dark blood.

  Releasing a shrill cry, the skelacreen scrambled off me. I couldn’t pursue. Too much was broken and a good length of the creature’s tail was still in me. If I pulled it out, the spines lining the thick outer skin would tear my insides to pieces. Leavin
g it in, I would bleed more slowly.

  Either way, I would die soon.

  It wasn’t the first time. My death meant nothing. I was Guild. Only the mission mattered—and it was currently crawling away.

  Shaking, I reached out. I summoned the fire into my right hand and shoved out what I could at the highest heat I could muster. Flame burst across the empty riverbed and struck the wounded skelacreen. My target (the little tuft of fur on top of their heads) was tiny, but my blast was wide. It clung to the fur of one head, caught and burned. From there it would eat through hide, and skull, eventually consuming both heads.

  We were even now. It would die too.

  Satisfied, my arm dropped like a stone. Blood bubbled from my mouth. I coughed, jarring the tail, prompting more blood to flow and making me gag.

  Turning away from the smoking body of the skelacreen, my fuzzy gaze wandered. It settled on the sky above, and the immense shadow descending swiftly on my position. The dark form glided closer. Clawed feet made contact with a rumble of ground. Dust stirred, bringing more coughs to my aching body. As they passed, I took in the elder’s great oval eyes. His gold-wrapped auburn scales, brilliant and dazzling in the last rays of the sun. His form was muscular and sleek, lacking such common features as horns, spikes, or ridges to interrupt the flow of his strong lines.

  This one didn’t need such extraneous attributes to advertise his formidability and strength. The distinctive hexagonal pattern of his plates and the single pure golden scale in the middle of his broad forehead advertised his identity, and therefore, his power.

  Anxiety overshadowed my awe. This wasn’t any elder, or even a lesser tribal king. The dragon moving in to loom over me was the one all others feared. He was the King whose will fueled the Guild and the dragon whom Naalish had chosen as her mate; the most revered and mighty of all the firedrakes.

  “King Aidric.” My blood sprayed out to speckle his leg. “Forgive me.”

  With an eye on the tail embedded in my chest, his head lowered. Nostrils moving, the King’s hot breath blew with the strength of a summer wind in my face. His nose nudged the tail. Pain shoved a scream from my throat and he recoiled, as if the intensity of my reaction surprised him. Aidric backed up. More dust stirred as he put several feet between us and sat. A heavy resonance built in the air, and I knew he was about to shift.

  Size decreasing, limbs shortening, his spine straightened as his body structure altered. I expected the result to be human. An elder male’s ability to modify themselves into the human form was well-known. Yet, while his body had taken on a human-like shape, his features had remained scaled and reptilian, with a plated face that was strong and confident. His legs were long and sculpted. Dark wings flapped once and folded into his back as he stood before me as a lyrriken; something I hadn’t even known an elder was capable of.

  No—that’s not true, I thought quickly. Naalish could do it. I’d seen her.

  An image burst into my mind: Naalish swiftly shifting from elder to lyrriken to human. Ronan tied beside me, beaten and bloody. And Brynne...

  Brynne lifted me up. She carried me to the Citadel. She…

  The fucking bitch dropped me.

  Reality leaked back into my vision and I knew: that was real, not this.

  This was many years ago, not more than a month before I left Drimera.

  This was the last time I died.

  But why would my empathic ability choose this moment to show me? There had been nothing particularly traumatic about the experience. Yes, it hurt. My stomach felt like it was being ripped in two. But I’d died before, and far more painfully.

  Other than a recent mention to Evans, I hadn’t thought about my last death in a long time. It had been just another mission, another infestation of uninvited off-world creatures in need of killing. I’d seen no elder in the woods during my pursuit, in the sky, or landing on the riverbed. I killed the skelacreen, bled out alone, and woke up sometime later when my body had repaired the damage. After, I made my way back to the City of Spires. Naalish had praised me for completing the task before succumbing to my injuries.

  And I’d never in my life seen Aidric shift into a lyrriken.

  So why was I dreaming it now? Why was he here?

  Aidric crouched beside me. “Executioner,” he said, greeting me with a nod. “A stirring performance. You lasted longer than I expected. Though, I should have known. I’ve been watching you for some time. You’re strong, capable. Your mind is impressive.”

  Swallowing the pain, I sputtered out a weak, “Thank you.”

  “Naalish tells me you no longer see the nageun in your sleep. That you banished those visions some time ago. Is this true?” He waited for my trembling nod. “But you did see them. That’s what’s important. You relived the ordeal, again and again. And then you pushed it away. You controlled it, commanded it…far better than the others.”

  “Others?” My voice shook. “What…?”

  “What happened to them?” he said, misinterpreting my question. “Most did not survive the testing. The rest were weeded out for various reasons. Except you,” he said with weight. “I truly hope you don’t disappoint.”

  “Why…are you here?”

  “Something dear to me is in danger. I need you to protect it, Dahlia. Care for it. But we will need to hide it very well and very deep. Naalish must never know. She must believe this day uneventful. As must you…for a considerable amount of time.”

  The pain worsening, I struggled to speak. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” Wincing from the spikes, Aidric seized the tail protruding from my stomach and yanked it free. My body bucked. Blood rushed freely from the hole. Watching me shudder, as my breathing slowed, Aidric’s scaled forehead softened. He put a hand on my face. His compassion surprised me. There was none of it in his reputation, or in his voice as he spoke again. “Don’t fret.” A shrewd smile lifted the scales on his face. “The next hundred years will go by in the blink of a dragon’s eye.”

  Thirty-Four

  Golden light flickered high above my head. Originating beyond my sight, the dim glow cast down in broad beams, reflecting off the metal support poles dotting the large room. I was fastened to one of the middle poles. With my hands tied behind my back, I was seated on a strip of pale stone than ran beneath the poles. There were other bands of stone, but the majority of the floor was covered in large sections of metal grating. Beneath the grates was the sound of rushing water and the smell of waste. On top: a half dozen nageun collared and chained to the lattice of metal.

  Restrained in a circle around my position, the creatures were barely out of reach. More accurately, I was barely out of their reach, which they were most unhappy with. Slobbering, straining, struggling to reach me with such frenzy, they had to be in pain. The six kept shifting, but they couldn’t seem to hold their shadowy forms long enough to escape their bonds. Something was interfering with their change and keeping them off me, but their inexplicable confinement didn’t make their nearness any easier to bear.

  I couldn’t guess how long I’d been here, unconscious in their midst. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been dreaming, or even when I woke up. It was hard to remember now, when opening my eyes to my current situation had instantly layered my skin in a cold sweat. My anxiety over Ronan’s whereabouts had dissipated. The unsettling nightmare of the last time I died on Drimera—a time that had, in actuality, ended far differently—became unimportant. With one glimpse of the nageun, ‘real’ past trauma overwhelmed my racing mind. Images of being trapped in their midst set my lungs pumping hard and fast. Fear distorted my sense of time.

  It had been hours, at least, seeing as my bones were whole. And I’d felt quite a few of them snap on impact with the ground in that split second before passing out. My skin was still bruised and swollen in places, though it was hard to see under the coating of dirt and blood. Both were dried dark around the rips in my pants where the broken bones had pushed through. My arms wet and streaked with the
blood coaxed out by the thick layer of razor-vines that tied them. Though tough and fibrous, the vines weren’t unbreakable, but the underside was laden with thousands of tiny blade-like needles. If I struggled, they would shred my human skin. The injury would heal, but the blood loss would be considerable, and I was afraid to lose consciousness again. My vision was finally clearing. A little longer, and I wouldn’t feel the venom’s effects anymore. I’d be able to shift again. I’ll be able to fight back.

  If I live that long, I thought, trembling as I eyed the dark shapes fighting to reach me. I tried to keep still. The vines pricked my skin as I shook, and the smell of my blood and sweat excited the nageun even more. Thankfully, their interest was divided. Someone had fed the creatures, and their snouts were buried deep in the rotting scraps—chunks of hands, feet, and organ meat—like they were choice cuts. Still, it wasn’t what they wanted. The morsels were a consolation prize, a pacifier to suckle on when the frustration of being so near a fresh kill became too great. They’d nibble and strain to reach me, and then nibble again to relieve their ever-mounting stress.

  The pattern repeated in an endless cycle. Each time, the nageun grew more agitated. Slivers of skin and bits of bone fell between the slats with their zealous efforts, and the water below churned with the further sounds of gulping and tearing.

  More nageun were in the drainage tunnel.

  Their presence in the water surprised me. They weren’t afraid of it, but their four-legged bodies weren’t built for long periods of immersion. If they were here, inside the channels that ran beneath the city, there was only one reason. This was their feeding ground. They’d been drawn by the stench and the promise of what might fall through the grates to fill their bellies. Likely for years, I thought, considering the layers of trauma scarring the room. Countless had died here. So many, I couldn’t guess their number. I could only read the sea of misery and death they left behind.