by Alex Raizman
Tythel caught a shape crawling up one of the walls and focused on it. It was a lizard, easily the size of the man, another of the unique life forms to this valley. This one Tythel remembered. The drayko were six limbed reptiles, making them part of the ancient order of reptiles that had culminated in dragons. Unlike the majestic being that had raised Tythel, the drayko had no wings. Instead, where a dragon’s limbs would be were two claws folded tightly to their backs. As Tythel watched, one of the fat birds flew close to the Drayko. Its claws shot out, easily fifteen feet long, and speared the bird mid flight.
The drayko brought the creature to its jaws, and Tythel swallowed hard, then risked a glance down. If their path took them past one sunning itself, looking for the birds, it could easily decide Tythel and Eupheme made acceptable pray instead.
No drayko awaited them on the climb down. What was waiting was another two hundred feet of falling and an intense sense of vertigo.
Tythel took her eyes off the drop. You’ve ridden your father’s back amongst the clouds, why does this bother you? Don’t you trust Eupheme? As soon as the thought was in her mind, she was able to answer it to herself. It wasn’t Eupheme she didn’t trust, it was the ropes. If they failed, Eupheme would never have the strength to hold them both to the wall. They would plummet, and all the truth in the world wouldn’t adhere them to the wall.
Flath, why am I letting her climb? I should have insisted on being the one to carry the burden! Guilt welled up in Tythel, and she tried to fight it down again, focusing on the canyon again.
Something was moving through the winding passages of the canyon, something moving with far more grace and agility than the flightless birds. Tythel had never seen these creatures in any of her books. They were flat and wide, shaped like a crescent moon. They reminded Tythel of the manta’s she’d seen swimming outside their under sea base. Spots of flame emerged from under their wings, constant jets of fire that seemed to propel them as they used their wings to maneuver.
The drayko spotted them, and its claws lunged out at one of these new creatures. It swerved in the air to involve claws fast enough to catch birds in the air and then swung its tail towards the lizard.
A beam of unlight went streaming into the confused drayko, cutting it in half.
Light and shadow, Tythel thought with growing horror. Eupheme had mentioned the Alohym were sending something. Skimmers, that had been the word. Apparently, these were them. They flew faster than anything Tythel had ever imagined, faster even that Karjon when he was flapping his wings with full force.
She reached up and frantically tapped Eupheme on the head. The other woman looked over her shoulder. “What is it, Tythel?”
Tythel pointed, and after a few seconds, Eupheme swore. “Get ready. Going to have to speed things up.”
The lead Skimmer banked upwards. The eyes were on the bottom of the creature’s stomach, and they peered at the wall on stalks. Tythel readied dragonflame as soon as the Skimmer came in range.
She spat forth flame, going for a wide gout that would incinerate the creature before it could aim that tail.
Instead, she only managed to spray forth flecks of dark blood. The pain was worse even than having her eye socket broken, and Tythel clutched her neck in sudden agony. Eupheme swore and dropped them a few feet right as the Skimmer shot a beam of unlight, searing the rock where they had been. It missed the two of them.
It didn’t miss the rope.
For a moment, Tythel felt weightless, like she had when Karjon started to dive.
Then gravity began to assert itself, and the ground came rushing towards them. Tythel didn’t hesitate. She swing her shoulders, getting a startled shout from Eupheme as they turned around. Tythel ignored it, instead popping her talons and shoving them into the rock and dirt that crusted the cliff face.
She felt a couple of her talons tear out of her fingers at the first impact. If her throat had not been so ruined, she would have screamed at the sudden agony. Instead she let out a raspy sound that burbled wetly in her throat. The remaining talons held fast, and after digging deep furrows in the rock, they brought Tythel and Eupheme to a halt. Tythel could feel Eupheme struggling to bring out her arclight rifle, could hear Tellias shouting something from the ground below.
The Skimmer crested its body over the canyon, and turned in a wide arc, coming around for another pass. The two below banked upwards towards them.
Tythel made herself begin to climb, ignoring the agony in her fingers, ignoring the way her throat burned like it held a trapped flame. If she didn’t get them to the ground, they were dead.
“Jump!” Eupheme shouted as her arcwand blazed.
Tythel leapt to the side without a moment’s hesitation, grabbing onto a rock that jutted out a bit further from the cliff face. A beam of unlight scored the stone she had just vacated, sending chunks flying free from the wall to crash into the valley below. Her remaining talons bit into the rock. A lance of pain threatened to black out the vision in Tythel’s good eye as her bloodied finger slammed into the rock, but she forced it aside. The rock was beginning to crack under their combined weight, and Tythel had to scramble with her feet and remaining hand to find purchase. “Flath, that was close,” Eupheme hissed. “They’re getting ready for another pass.”
Tythel nodded and took a moment to make sure her grip was firm. Then, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Tythel shifted away her talons.
For a terrifying moment, all that was holding her in place was the strength of her grip on the rocks and the tiny footholds barely under her toes. Even her enhanced strength could barely support the two of them. Tythel waiting there for a moment, then tentatively lowered her injured finger onto the rock.
The pressure wasn’t painful. Although the digit was still streaked with blood from the earlier injury, without a talon Tythel didn’t have any injury to cause her pain.
“They’re coming back around,” Eupheme said in a warning tone. “Whatever you’re doing, mind hurrying it up just a bit?”
Nodding again, Tythel shifted her talons back into place. She let out a sigh of relief at having them grip into the stone again, and almost wept for joy when her damaged talons grew back with the uninjured ones. It wasn’t much – she could only heal injuries to the parts of her body she grew – but it was something. “Tythel! Move!” Eupheme shouted.
Tythel kicked to the side again. There weren’t any safe outcroppings on the side of her head she could see out of, so she leapt blindly into the spot hidden by her bad eye, turning her head and praying to both light and shadow she’d find something to grab into. Unlight again sheared away the rock from the plateau. Beams erupted from the ground as Tellias opened fire, streaking past the Skimmers.
There wasn’t anything to grab onto this time. Tythel was forced to again dig her talons into the stone cliff, scoring the stone with lines as they fell. They hadn’t gone as far this time – her talons held, although it sent lances of pain along her arms and legs as she slowed their impact. Eupheme opened fire again. “They’re so fast…” Eupheme said, ejecting a spent light cell and slamming another one into place. “Tythel, I don’t know if I can hit them.”
Tythel nodded and swallowed hard as she began to climb. She needed every bit of moisture she could get in her ruined throat. A plan was beginning to form, but it required being able to ask Eupheme a question. “How…” Tythel started to say, but the rest of the sentence died in a series of coughs that tasted of copper.
“Don’t try to speak,” Eupheme said in growing alarm. “Just keep climbing!”
Tythel did, waiting for Eupheme’s warning to jump again, looking out of her good eye with a frantic fear. Have to find another outcropping, she thought. Have to get to safety or-
“Now!” Eupheme shouted.
Tythel leapt again, Eupheme firing wildly. Eupheme let out a whoop of excitement as Tythel managed to sink her talons into a soft spot of dirt that was packed into the side of the plateau. A wave of heat hit Tythel a moment lat
er, followed by a soft “whump” of an explosion. “Got one!” Eupheme said fiercely.
If Tythel could have spoken, she would have congratulated her friend. Instead she kept climbing, her mind racing. The smell when they are near is like burning gas. They only have one heartbeat. Somehow, these aren’t ships, or some new kind of Alohym skin. They’re creatures in their own right!
Suddenly, her crazy plan seemed even more needed. “Close,” Tythel managed to spit out before another round of coughs sent her vision spinning.
“Close? Ground is another hundred feet,” Eupheme said.
Tythel shook her head.
“The Skimmers? They’re coming around for another pass.”
Tythel shook her head again, still climbing.
“Then what do you…oh. Oh no. You can’t be serious.”
Tythel nodded.
“Light and flathing shadow,” Eupheme swore. “About three heights. You’re sure?”
Tythel didn’t even bother to nod this time, continuing her climb and awaiting Eupheme’s signal.
“Damnit,” Eupheme muttered. “Alright, get ready.”
Tythel stopped her climb.
“And…now!” Eupheme shouted.
Tythel leapt, twisting again in the air to face away from the wall. She found herself face to face with the eyestalks on the underbelly of the Skimmer. Although the eyes were markedly inhuman, they widened in a comically familiar expression of shock.
Then Tythel sunk her talons directly into the creature’s underbelly. The Skimmer let out a sound that Tythel assumed was pain, a sound like someone blowing into a broken flute. The creature staggered in the air, and Tythel’s heart stopped. Oh no. I killed it. I killed it and we’re both going to fall to our deaths.
Then the flames emerging from under the Skimmer’s wings reignited, and they began to accelerate. The Skimmer tried to swing its tail around to take aim at them, but Eupheme shot it off with a quick blast of her Arcwand. “You’re crazy!” Eupheme shouted. “You’re madder than the moon!”
Tythel blinked in amusement at the compliment. The Skimmer began to streak away from the plateau, its eyes wild with pain. She could feel it trying to pull up and gain altitude, but the Skimmer wasn’t meant to support the weight of two humans, especially not while losing blood from its abdomen. With every second, the ground grew closer. Tythel could see Tellias racing to follow them, the remaining Skimmer right behind him.
All that was left for Tythel to do was grit her teeth and get ready to leap off the bottom of the Skimmer before it scraped her and Eupheme to past on the canyon floor below.
Chapter 11
Tythel felt Eupheme’s weight vanish from her back as the ground grew closer. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her friend reappear in the shadow of a shrub and roll out of it. Tythel heard a sickening snap, like a twig being broken in half, followed by a sharp scream by Eupheme. The only thing that assured Tythel that her friend was alright was that the scream was followed by a series of curses. Please don’t be her leg, Tythel asked the Light, and then the time for worrying about Eupheme was past.
It was time to worry about her own safety.
The instant she was close enough to the ground, Tythel dropped her feet and started to run along the ground. As fast as the Skimmer was moving, she accomplished little more than tapping her feet against the ground at first, but with each footstep she robbed the creature of a bit of its momentum. Finally it was enough for her to dig her heels into the ground, dragging the Skimmer to a stop. Its flame sacs were still running, and Tythel had to grit her teeth to wrestle it to the ground.
She got it on its back and removed one claw to slam the creature between its stalk eyes. As she hoped, that seemed to be where it kept its brain, and it fell still, either unconscious or dead. Tythel hoped for the former, but didn’t have time to check. The second Skimmer was coming up fast. Tellias was somewhere behind it, and Eupheme was still recovering from her roll. And I still can’t breathe or speak.
The remaining Skimmer drew closer. Tythel heaved up the one she had taken down, putting it between herself and the approaching attacker, and sunk her claws into the unconscious creatures skin just below its throat. A trickle of blood rose up from around her talons, letting her know it was still alive.
The Skimmer still in the air curved away. It had gotten the unspoken message – come any closer and this one dies. It started to circle the air around Tythel, keep its whiplike tail pointed towards her. Standoff, Tythel thought. If it shot her, she’d kill the one she had captured. If she killed the captured one, it’d shoot her.
Tythel had one hope she could hold on to. She just had to stand on the ground. The Skimmer was airborne. As tired as she was, as much as her legs shook from the sheer effort of supporting her weight and the creatures, she had hope she’d tire out long before her adversary did.
The Skimmer was clearly intelligent by the way it had backed off when she’d grabbed its companion. It was doing the same analysis Tythel was – or at least, she hoped it was. You can’t win, she thought. So back off.
Instead, its flight began to slow down. It brought itself near a tree and wrapped its tail around a branch, swinging its body so the eye stalks were facing Tythel. Tythel fought back an urge to swear. Now it just had to wait for her to get tired, for her attention to slip. Then it could drop off the tree, swing that tail around, and…
Tythel fought back an image that rose to mind, of what unlight beams that could sear stone would do to her face.
She could hear Tellias in the distance, but he’d fallen far behind the chase. How fast were we moving? Tythel wondered, not taking her eyes off the Skimmer. Imperiplate could cover a league in seven minutes when at a dead run. For Tellias to be so far behind, they had to have been moving at least twice as fast, if not more. Crawlers could outpace Imperiplate, but not by that much.
Tythel shook some of her hair out of her good eye. It was clingy and wet with sweat. Focus, she chided herself. She had no help coming any time soon and didn’t doubt the other Skimmer would try something when Tellias arrived. With Eupheme injured, possibly out of the fight…
“Release him,” the Skimmer said in a wet, burbling voice. Tythel nearly jumped out of her skin. It can speak? She thought, her mind racing furiously.
Tythel shook her head, then shifted the unconscious Skimmer to free up one of her hands and gesture towards her throat. “Can’t,” she said, letting the Skimmer hear how raspy her voice was, hear the wet coughs she made as she tried to speak. It was a risk, letting it see how weak she was, but she still had a claw to its companion’s throat.
“You cannot release him, or you cannot speak?” it asked, fixing those stalk eyes more firmly on her.
Tythel held up two fingers to indicate the second option.
“Release him or die.”
Tythel just rolled her eyes at this one. The Skimmer was intelligent enough to speak. Surely it was intelligent enough to understand why that was a stupid option for her.
“You are weak,” it burbled. “Your posterior limbs shake. Your skin excretes saline. You vocal apparatus is damaged. You have no projectile weapons. You cannot win.”
Tythel gave a slight shrug and tightening her grip on the unconscious Skimmer. The one in the tree let out a sound like a dribbling snort that Tythel took for anger.
“Do not!” it croaked.
Tythel took a deep breath. She pointed to the Skimmer in the tree, then to the sky, then to the unconscious Skimmer, and then to the sky again.
“I fly away. You release him. Is that claim?”