by Reilyn Hardy
The tone caught Jace’s attention, but only for a second before he turned back to me, baring his teeth. “Maaaaarrrcoooo,” her voice called again.
It was longer and more drawn out that time.
It sounded like it was coming from the trees but I couldn’t be sure. I would have glanced up if I wasn’t too frightened to take my eyes off of Jace — or what was left of Jace — I wasn’t really sure how much of that was still my best friend.
I stared, gaping at the cut that was dripping blood from his face. It ran right over his left eye and down the side. I couldn’t believe I did that — I cut him. My life was on the line and in that moment, all I was hoping for, was that I hadn’t partially blinded him.
The voice continued, unwilling to give up. He finally lost interest in me and followed the mesmerizing tune.
I let out a quick sigh of relief and leaned back against the base of the silver bark tree. When I looked up, I noticed that the moonlight was traveling further upward.
I didn’t have much time now.
I scrambled to my feet and started climbing the tree once more. I tried to move pass the light of the moon, that was somehow shining through the trees, even though there was no space for it to get through. It was breathtaking, and the bark reflected like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Shining, similarly to millions of tiny mirrors embedded in the tree.
I felt something tug on my leg, and I latched onto a thick branch with both arms as I struggled to release my foot. I flipped onto my back and I nearly lost my grip.
Jace came back, now trying to scale the side of the tree after me. Rhiannon’s attempt to lure him away had failed. I managed to shake him from my foot and he snapped at me.
“Jace!” I shouted. I should try reasoning with him again. He was still my best friend — somewhere in there. I had to try. I couldn’t bring myself not to at least try. I didn’t want to hurt him again — until I realized I didn’t have my dagger on me anymore anyway. I couldn’t hurt him. “Jace — stop! Stop! It’s me! It’s —”
I shoved my foot down once I accepted that he wasn’t going to stop. I stomped him square in the face, as hard as I could manage, right beside the gash down his eye that I had given him. He clawed through the bark of the tree as he slid back down.
Jace jumped onto the ground and violently shook his head. There was a faint whimper — but that only lasted a few seconds. He looked back up at me and I attempted to hide in the trees. I managed to get up a little further now, and I saw his lip curling as he growled.
I wondered if he could see me.
He jumped back at the tree, clawing his way up and I tried to climb higher. I was moving as fast as I could, that I passed the moonlight which wasn’t traveling fast enough now. It was supposed to open the path — the light of the Harvest Moon will shine upon the pathway — but where was it?
I had nowhere to go.
Jace whimpered again and I looked down.
A giant, bat-like creature, nearly identical the one that had grabbed onto my shoulders in Thealey, was gripping onto the fur of Jace’s monstrous back, digging its own talons into his skin while he thrashed beneath it. He tried to claw at its feet, and it shifted them so he was unable to reach. The hook, at the bend in one of its wings, latched onto a branch in the tree as it attempted to keep itself up while trying to rip Jace from the trunk.
Thick blonde hair fell in front of its face. Its gray body struggled to hold onto Jace and hold itself up. I could barely see the black beady eyes glinting in the light of the moon, but there was a subtle green hue.
‘Go!’ It screeched at me, and I realized who it was when the voice didn’t come through my ears, and instead, straight to my mind.
It was Rhiannon. I should’ve known.
‘Go, Artemis!’ She told me, her voice surged through my head. She managed to rip Jace off of the tree and tried to throw him onto the ground but he latched onto her leg. I couldn’t look away. He was digging his claw into her skin and dragging his nails down the length of her calf. Tearing her leg open, digging into her foot. She cried out in pain, struggling to keep up her hold in the trees and shake him off of her but his nails were kept in place, the wound in her foot supporting the weight of his massive body.
He attempted to hit her with his other claw and she kicked him in the face.
‘Damn it, Artemis! Listen to me before you miss it!’ She was practically screaming in my head, and kicked her foot forward to fling Jace at the tree. Before he could land right where I was sitting, I quickly scampered higher and into the light of the moon.
Just like that, the Whispering Woods were gone as I heard another whimper of the wolf. It died out, fading, a drifting memory, as I was greeted by a black moon in a pale yellow sky.
I made it.
I was in the Iron Realm of Mithlonde, the land of the dragons.
But I didn’t feel victorious.
I laid down against the cool dirt. My body was aching everywhere. I felt nothing but pain, in my limbs, in my heart, in my head. I tried not to think about it but I couldn’t help but wonder if I had lost my best friend to get here.
That was nothing to celebrate.
I closed my eyes and hid my face with my hand. My bottom lip quivered. My breathing was getting jagged and rough again but I refused to cry. I wouldn’t. I tried my hardest to keep myself from falling apart but — what was the point?
My lips parted slightly and a hiccup escaped.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tighter. But a tear managed to slide out anyway.
Friends could break your heart too.
Rhiannon just broke mine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
a skinharvester drake
I carved a symbol into the bark of the tree, whose roots I climbed out of. It resembled both a J and an R. I didn’t have my dagger with me, so I used my nails to scrape at the bark, making the beds of them bleed before I finished. I should make an M too, but my hands ached. I fell back flatly onto the ground again and draped my arm over my face, still too tired to make much of an effort to move, or find the dragon king. I was in the Iron Realm of Mithlonde, a place no one had stepped foot in for over a hundred years, but I had trouble caring at all.
* * * * *
Rubbing my nose, I sneezed. My eyes fluttered sleepily. I rubbed the pain in my neck and twinge in my shoulder. I wasn’t outside anymore, and no longer by the tree. Instead of leaves hanging above me, there was a dirt ceiling with different types of herbs streaming down from it.
I sat up and turned around.
I was laying on a table.
When I turned the other way, I came face to face with a woman, whose eyes were white and glazed over.
“Aw!” She groaned suddenly. “I thought ya were dead!” She crinkled her nose at me in disappointment. The older woman dropped down onto a wooden chair and poofs of her stringy white and black hair fell into her face. “I poked ya with a stick and everything!”
I didn’t remember falling asleep, nor did I remember her poking me. But it explained the new pain I felt. I raised my shoulders in an attempt to stretch.
“No wonder my shoulder hurts,” I mumbled in a low voice, continuing to massage it out with my hand. “Wait.” I notice the herbs in her hand and the blade in the other, “were you going to eat me?”
“Well, I can’t eat ya now, can I?” She drooped her head forward, and the blade slipped out of her hand and dropped onto the dirt ground.
I slid off of the table and reached down to pick up the knife.
Kneeling down in front of her, I put the blade back into her hand, but I didn’t let go of her. For a second, I just studied her face. Her skin was thinner than paper, and she appeared tired — but kind. I smiled a little. I could use kindness.
“I’ll find you something to eat,” I said finally. What I really wanted to ask was when was the last time she had eaten. She was thin, and she seemed so fragile. I wondered how she managed to even get me in here.
But then I remembered where I was.
&nb
sp; She was a dragon, they were all dragons.
Despite her current appearance, I shouldn’t underestimate her. She was still a lot stronger than me, regardless of her age.
With small smile, she told me I was kind, and turned her head in my direction.
“But tell me —” the blade clattered to the ground again, and the herbs dropped to the floor. She took hold of my hands, in the both of hers, and brought them to her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She was taking in the scent of the dried blood caked on my fingertips. “What is someone like ya doing here? Ya aren’t safe here.”
“What do you mean someone like me?”
“His blood runs through ya veins — Drarkodon.”
I pulled my hands away from her and sat back on my feet. I rubbed the dried blood against the front of my pants, trying to get it off of my fingers. I wasn’t sure what to say. Never once had someone actually associated me with my uncle. It was always my father. It was always the chronomancer. Father Time.
Never the Grim Reaper, not once.
I tried not to think too much on it. After all, the dragons only really came into contact with the Reaper. I didn’t think I could really hold it against her to make that connection first.
“Do you mean me harm?” I asked, once I decided I was tired of the silence that fell between us. She turned away from me for a moment — like she was contemplating her answer. I sat uneasily, as I shifted my weight on my feet.
“I’m just hungry,” she said. Her voice was small in response as she turned back toward me. “I mean no harm to ya, I don’t want him to harm me.” She shook her head and threw her arms up in the air. Her fingers began to massage her temples. “Not again,” she mumbled, over and over to herself, in a voice barely loud enough for me to hear.
“What do you mean? Who?”
I managed to get her to put her arms back down before she ripped out her own hair in her frantic outburst. I kept holding her arms down, gently resting my own palms on top of her wrists. She wasn’t trying to fight against me and I was quite grateful for that. I barely had enough energy to stand. I knew I couldn’t take on a dragon, no matter how old she might be.
“It’s not easy,” she whispered then, “to blind a dragon.”
She told me stories, stories of King Solomon’s arrogance and the pride in his rule over Mithlonde. How he was fierce and bold, able to take down anyone and anything that dared to challenge him. But many years ago, a young boy betrayed him, his very own son. Male dragons, they fall in love. Captivated by the beauty of their female kind, they fell in love and they were bound to them for life. But female dragons, they cared for themselves and each other more than their male counterparts.
They didn’t fall in love — only lust.
But the dragon prince, he was unfazed by the female dragons. She told me how he fell for someone else, someone who wasn’t a dragon — nor of mun. She was dead where she walked. She was Death, and she captured his heart, digging her nails deep into it’s core until it bled in her hands. The dragon prince did everything he could to please her, but it was never enough.
Happiness didn’t come to necromancers, nor did it come to those who sided with them. The Grim Reaper killed his own daughter and returned the stone. An alliance was formed out of supposed gratitude, but when the dragons began questioning King Solomon’s rule, the Reaper moved the land, locking them away as punishment for questioning the alliance their king held with him.
“Or at least that’s what we’re supposed to believe — but he was tricked, and manipulated. He had to have been. He was a good man once. But King Solomon would never admit that someone was able to deceive him or that his son betrayed him. He’d rather kill him than face the embarrassment.” She shook her head and it drooped forward again. “That poor boy, he was so young — so confused.”
Her version of the story differed greatly from the ones I’ve heard, mostly because it didn’t include the two stones that I knew about. But the truth was, I had never heard of what happened to the actual heart of Mithlonde, only that two had been made. One to move the Iron Realm out of Aridete, and one to move it back.
One of which I had in my bag.
I didn’t know what happened to the original stone but if the Grim Reaper had it, maybe he managed to manipulate the Dragon King into an alliance after all. Maybe he did force him into it. I felt a little relieved to think that maybe not everyone here would mean me harm. Maybe some would be kind to me, like the one sitting before me, who initially brought me home for dinner, and not as a guest.
“In Aridete, not many of us know what happened between the Grim Reaper and the dragons. We were told your kind sided with him willingly. Only recently news broke about King Solomon being manipulated.”
She shook her head.
“We had no choice. But even now, what is it we know? None of us were there but those three. The dragon prince — but he’s long gone. Poor boy, that poor boy. We’re not savages, Apollo.”
“No, I’m not — wait, how did you —”
The older woman slouched against the back of her chair and leaned her head back against the wall.
“I don’t have the energy right now,” she said.
“I’ll find you something to eat.” I nodded, and got to my feet.
I needed to know how she knew about my brother.
“Change,” she warned, lifting her arm to point in the general direction of a pile of clothes. “Ya smell — and dip ya hands at the door before ya go.”
“Where’s my bag?” I asked, as I pull the shirt over my head. I tried not to seem frantic, but I needed my bag. I grabbed the tunic at the top of the pile.
It was covered in dirt, probably dirtier than the shirt I was wearing, but I wasn’t in a position to take any chances. If she told me to change, I would change. I changed my pants too as she gave me my bag. I tied the drawstring around my waist before I flipped open my satchel. I opened the dragon book and tore the first page out and stuck it into my pocket. I started to dig in my bag again for my dagger, but then I remembered that I didn’t have it.
Suddenly, I was haunted by the Whispering Woods. By Jace and Rhiannon.
I nearly dropped everything in my hands.
The old woman brought me back from my daze when she started nudging my arm with what reminded me of a large iron clamp.
“What’s this?” I asked, as I put the bag down on the table and attempted to take it from her. I nearly dropped it too — it was so heavy. I could hardly manage to put it onto the table.
“It catches Skinharvester Drakes,” she said as she picked up the clamp with ease. “Ya hold it like this.” One hand was on a lever while the other pulled a crank back, but she didn’t latch it. “It locks and ya place it out just behind a bush and the clamp will crush its head.”
I swallowed hard.
“But ya — ya just hold it in front of ya.”
“What?”
“Our skin, see, it’s not like humans. Ours is an imitation — but ya — they will try to eat ya alive. They will cut ya skin right off ya body. But they are delicious.”
I gripped the handles of the clamp tightly as I took it back from her.
“This is the only way to kill it?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Cutting em, stabbing em, that will only make em angry. Ya have to crush the whole head.” She put my finger on the crank. “Just pull this back and latch it here and ya set yaself a Skinharvester trap.”
“What if I don’t catch it?”
“Run.”
She smiled widely, her teeth were long and sharp. After what she said about the Skinharvesters, she could probably tear through my flesh easily too.
“What do they look like?”
“Ya can’t miss em.”
Her shaking hands brought me the bowl that sat near the door of her home. It contained a murky, muddy water that smelled like tar and feces.
“Dip ya hands.” She heaved the bowl toward me and I took a step back, cl
utching onto the iron clamp.
“I don’t think —”
“Dip!” She screeched.
I nearly dropped the trap.
I put it down on the table and reluctantly stuck my hands into the thick, foul-smelling liquid. It burned at the cuts beneath my fingernails as it soaked into my skin. I pulled my hands back out, and they came out clean. None of the mud stuck to me and it beaded off like I was covered in wax. My nails were no longer broken and cracked, and the skin beneath them had repaired, as did the deep cut in my palm.
The woman’s head was tilted down, but I could see her smile a little.
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded and put the bowl back where she had gotten it. I grabbed the iron trap and this time it was easier to lift. My grip was better, my hands were no longer aching.
Now I just had to trap one of those Skinharvester Drakes.
* * * * *
She told me to walk out barefoot to further mask the smell that encompassed me. The smell of actual human. Any little bit would help, including smelling like the earth.
I gripped the iron trap and left the old woman’s home in the side of a small hill. From the outside, it was nothing but an old wooden door resting up against the dirt mound.
I observed my surroundings, and there was nothing familiar about it. I had no idea where I was, nor did I know which way I came from.
I looked up at the now pink sky, with yellow rays of sunlight shining through. I held tightly onto the trap and made my way away from the hill, farther into the forest.
I didn’t know what to do aside from what she had told me. I kept one hand on the crank and held it back, but I didn’t latch it yet. I didn’t want to accidentally set it off on myself.
The forest was quiet, full of moss covered trees and smell of dirt; my feet sank into the mud with every step I took. It almost reminded me of the Woodlands.
Mithlonde was beautiful. It was entrancing, from the pink and yellow sky, to the green moss growing on the dark blue-brown bark of the trees.
I sat down against the base of a large tree, that stood behind several thick bushes, with blue and purple colored leaves. I held tightly onto the trap and latched the crank back. The clamp was huge, with two iron plates that both had jagged edges. If I were to accidentally set it off on myself, it would crush me down to the bone. I never handled anything like this, and I was a little scared to know what a Skinharvester Drake looked like if this was what it took to kill one.