Through the End

by Parker Jaysen

  Through the End

  Parker Jaysen

  Hellriders in Love, Episode 4

  Three Bunny Farm Press

  Copyright © 2020 by Parker Jaysen

  All rights reserved.

  Design: John Van Pelt

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  EPILOGUE

  More from Parker Jaysen

  Other lesbian romance from Three Bunny Farm Press

  Four of Toads

  Survivors to a purpose reborn,

  Come mages of fire, wind, water, ley, and stone,

  Champions of brawn, lore, craft, and physic,

  To make a path in the darkness.

  To our guild we pledge our lives, seed and root and branch.

  Heir to lost magics, rise like dawn on a broken world.

  Chosen, we choose.

  — Guild initiation rite

  ACT I

  “Okay, let’s do this thing.” I lay down my hand. “Three fives. Cinder high.”

  There’s a hush as guildmates at the tables around us pause in their meals to see the outcome.

  Dinah doesn’t even look at her own cards as she deals them face up in a crisp row. Her eyes are on mine, and their glitter tells me everything I need to know. Dammit.

  “Two. Three. Four. Consort. All toads.”

  A sigh goes up – Dinah won – and the clatter of mealtime resumes.

  Dinah scoops up the six bucks in loose coin scattered on the tabletop, and I scratch the record into her little black logbook with our stub of pencil. She swipes the book from my grasp and tucks it away before I can tease her about how close our lifetime record is.

  She loves her damned logbooks.

  “Make a new bet?” she says.

  I push back my chair, laughing. “I’m out of coin.”

  “Something else, then.”

  All that comes to mind is a category I’m sure to lose at. “Recent stings.” I pull my shirt up to show a half-healed scorpion sting under my ribs, and try to turn my wince of embarrassment into a confident grin.

  “In front of all our colleagues? Oh, you’re on.” Dinah jumps up from the bench and shrugs her own tee-shirt completely off.

  That’s my girl, never give less than 110 percent.

  I make a show of inspecting her torso and arms. She has dozens of puckered scars, at least three of them still various shades of purple.

  “Disappointing.” I shake my head. “I thought you’d have more.”

  “Oh my god, they’re comparing scorpion bites again?” Josephine drops her kale and gives us the finger with both barrels. “You are the most juvenile riders in the entire guild.”

  “Juvenile. She calls us juvenile,” Dinah says. She turns her back to show the room an older S-shaped scar snaking across her trapezius. “That was a blue-iron centipede, I’ll have you know. Poison level five.”

  Josephine, like the rest of us, has probably heard Dinah brag about that centipede at least ten times. She smiles and shakes her head. But at a nearby table, marsh rider Lucy is looking a little queasy.

  Poison level five is nothing to sneeze at.

  “Are we giving up on clothes entirely this time? Or just in the mess hall?” says Mac from the doorway. Usually Transit’s stationmaster would join in the fun, but it turns out she’s here for business. “Charlie, Dinah, out here, please.” Mac points at the nearby table. “Lucy and Thea, you too.”

  As we follow Mac out to the station yard, Dinah pulls her shirt on. With her lips right at my ear, she stage-whispers, “we’ll mark that one in the book later.”

  “Rebrief.”

  Mac squints up through the glare of the setting sun at the lodge roof, and I follow her gaze. Except for one foray to feed, the dragon has been perched there all day. Allegedly, it knows not to take any of the station’s goats.

  Thea’s dragon, as we’ve begun to think of it.

  “What the hell is a rebrief?” says Dinah.

  “Just what it sounds like, I hope,” says Mac. “I’m making it up as I go along.”

  I eye the marsh riders standing there gamely. They probably have last-minute instructions for their darling dragon.

  “Lucy and Thea are going to escort the dragon with you.”

  We’re desert riders, top riders at the top of our game. Babysitting marsh mages isn’t going to change the fact that we’re escorting a goddamn dragon.

  Dinah and I lock eyes. We’re in sync. “Okay,” I say.

  “Oh yeah, we got this,” says Dinah, poised as if she would hop on a raptor right that instant.

  Mac harrumphs, as if she’d been expecting resistance, or at least surprise. “Thea’s only ridden a desert stage on main routes, not backcountry.” Aw, she’s worried about us.

  “And I bet Lucy’s never even seen a scorpion,” says Dinah.

  Lucy shrugs. “It must be nice to have a name for every demon. If we stopped to ID everything in the marsh, we’d never escape it.”

  There’s a flicker of competitive respect in Dinah’s eyes.

  Mac shushes us with a gesture. “Having extra hands who are familiar with the cargo, things will go easier. But I don’t have to remind you, guild and dragon – the politics are sensitive here. You’ll be keeping to the wilds for a reason. Just – try not to die.”

  No fucking way, Dinah and I intone under our breath.

  Mac goes back to work, leaving the four of us in the yard, our lengthening shadows purple in the dying sun, four raptor constructs idling on the apron, and a 200-kilo juvenile dragon on the roof, its scaly chin overhanging the eave above us, observing all through fiery green slit eyes.

  The road through the desert night awaits.

  By the piss light of a gibbous moon, we start out on relatively well-traveled desert tracks. It’s unclear who is escorting whom.

  I get that Dinah and I have to ride ahead – we know the way and we know the dangers – but it’s just annoying to have an elder-slash-noob breathing down our necks.

  I snort in frustration, for the third or fourth time.

  “Let it go,” Dinah says.

  She should talk – she herself has been glaring daggers back at the other two, silhouetted against the moonlight 50 paces behind us, and at the dragon coasting silently in and out of shadow in the air above them, since we left station. “You’re an example to us all,” I say.

  But council drama and dragons aside, this is good. This is more than good. I breathe deeply and try to let all that other nonsense go – I’m on a run with Dinah.

  It’s no secret she’s my favorite partner. The others even tease me about that. But why shouldn’t she be? We work together like a charm, in perfect sync.

  She doesn’t mind ignoring guild guidelines from time to time. She doesn’t mind making off-the-books dowsing excursions with me for occasional minerals, artifacts. I’ve put more new oases on the map than any other dowser. Dinah makes it possible.

  So, yes, she’s my favorite. She’s probably everyone’s favorite partner, if they would admit it. They’re just jealous that she and I manage to pair up more often than pure chance might dictate.

  Even so, this is our first mission together in several months. So I am more than ready for the dose of pure exhilaration that is a desert run with Dinah.

  It’s so close to perfect that I hesitate to even suggest that anything could make it better, though there is one thing. One thing only, but it will never happen.

  Dinah is in perfect balance
on her raptor beside mine, giant cacti gliding by in the gloom. Our rides keep us more or less at eye level with each other as their thrusting strides carry us across the sand. We’ll switch to helmet comms after the first oasis, but right now we’re reveling in the cool night air in our faces and the brief moment of something like privacy.

  Our eyes meet, hers sparkling with the excitement of being on the road. She calls across the space between our raptors. “Can you believe Thea?”

  “Ha!” My guffaw is swept away by the wind. “Seriously, she does one hellride and suddenly she’s hot stuff.”

  Dinah glances back again at our escorts. Charges. Our raptors stride on, whoosh, whoosh. “But she really is. Even for a council member.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “She is.” Gods, it feels good to gossip and banter with Dinah again. “But wait,” I call across, “you’re not going to break my heart and go after Thea now, are you?”

  Dinah laughs. “That would be wrong and impossible in oh, let me count the ways.”

  “So you’ve considered it,” I say with a grin, and she gives me the finger.

  A council member’s presence on this run is so much more complicated than any of that. Plus there’s Lucy. We’ve gathered from reliable evidence, such as they can barely keep their hands off each other, that Lucy and Thea developed a real thing during their just-completed marsh run.

  I’m not saying Lucy doesn’t deserve happiness. She does, absolutely.

  What I don’t get is how these pieces add up. How did the guild allow itself to get into this situation with a live, growing dragon? Why is a glamour queen like Thea suddenly suited up doing hellruns, while sort of representing the council, except sort of not? And how has this mission, which I was looking forward to, turned into babysitting a brace of desert novices, while also somehow being a secret mission?

  Technically, Thea’s dragon is the mission. How do you keep a dragon secret?

  At half-night, the first oasis in this direction is just a formality. Packs are still full, the raptors are oiled, and there have been no burns yet. Dinah and I throttle down in sync and dismount by the pool’s sole palm tree, and Thea’s and Lucy’s borrowed raptors carry them into the circle of our solar a few moments later.

  It’s the first oasis I dowsed on my own, if you call finding a three-acre map-certified oasis with an established artesian valve dowsing. Binoculars could have done the job. But I was the first in my training cohort to find it, and I found it on my own, so it’s still special to me. I’ve been catching its scent for an hour.

  Thea and Lucy dismount stiffly, and Lucy limps over to us. “Whoever said riding a raptor was just like riding a bok?”

  “It wasn’t me,” I protest. “Dinah, did you tell these marsh riders that?” Dinah is watching Thea, who appears to be talking to the dragon where it has landed on the edge of a cistern.

  Talking to a dragon.

  “I’ve certainly never ridden a bok,” Dinah says, turning to us with a grin. “I have no idea.”

  I don’t point out that she hasn’t answered the question. I shrug. Some token desert hazing won’t hurt two hotshots out of the marsh.

  Thea joins us, putting a familiar hand on Lucy’s arm. “Mouse could use a drink. Is the pool – ?”

  So Thea’s not going to be bossy. That’s a relief. But I don’t know which would be worse, if she made a bunch of assumptions and got us killed, or made us explain every little thing until we all kill each other.

  At the same time, the dragon is my responsibility. Is this the moment to set some ground rules? How to do that without rocking the council boat?

  I don’t think I’m cut out for the intricacies of diplomacy.

  But Dinah is already answering Thea. “I’ll show you.” She treads on my toe on her way to where the dragon waits by the cistern. It’s a clear signal. Let me rock the boat.

  Which would be fine if it were anyone but Dinah. Dinah doesn’t just rock boats, she flips them, submerges them, turns their bits into other vehicles and drives those into battle.

  But there she is, explaining the dangers of drinking directly from the brackish oasis pool and showing a guild leader and her dragon how to unlock a cistern.

  Strange times indeed.

  The moon is lowering, so the rest of our run to the first daysleep bivouac will be in deeper darkness, but we’re still on a well-traveled road. Tomorrow night we cut cross-country.

  I look over the others’ borrowed raptors to make sure nothing is shaking loose, and we put on helmets for a comms check. It all starts to feel real.

  I think Dinah feels it, too. There’s a forced jollity. I haven’t resolved my thoughts about how to lead this motley crew. I don’t even really know what Thea and Lucy are capable of.

  And it’s suddenly clear that that moment of carefree gossip on the road back there may end up being the only time Dinah and I get. This isn’t the vision of a Dinah run I’ve been nurturing and carrying around like a spark.

  Hard as it is to picture, Dinah and I are going to have to be all politeness and guild bullshit. The prospect stabs me with grief.

  We spur the raptors up a small embankment, away from the oasis, and turn southeast onto the hardpan plateau. The moon squats on the horizon over our right shoulder, occasionally eclipsed by the dragon’s languid wing-flaps.

  I’m probably making it too complicated. There’s no sign Lucy and Thea won’t defer to us on all practical matters. Just think of them as trainees. It’ll be fine.

  I look over at Dinah, start to say something about the route or the supplies, and realize she’s off comms. Her helmet is strapped at her hip.

  “What do you say we ditch these losers?” Dinah yells, and thwacks the side of her raptor with a tremendous metallic clang. Her ride roars and leaps forward.

  She’s already well ahead when I tap my mic and confirm what is probably already obvious to the pair behind me. “Uh, we’ll scout ahead. See you before daybreak.” Then I thwack my own raptor and surge into the dark after Dinah.

  In my ear, I hear Thea’s chuckle. Yeah, they’ll be fine.

  And just like that my spirits are flying again. Dinah is hilarious and fearless, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with her.

  It’s near dawn, and we’re waiting for Thea, Lucy, and the dragon to catch up. This sandstone outcrop is one I’m familiar with, but I check for water underneath anyway. It’s a mistake to stay anywhere without water, even carrying full stores, even with charged raptors at the ready for evacuation or escape. Mistakes can be lethal.

  This time, I’m getting a pool ten or so meters down. I take a sight with my pendulum, and position my raptor’s coiled drill head. Many-segmented critters crawl out of the sand and skitter away from the vibration as it sets the tap with a high-pitched whine. We’ll have running water, hot and hotter, the rock is tall enough to give us all shade for portions of the day, and there seem to be no more than the average population of scorpions.

  It’s a good first daysleep stop.

  Thea and Lucy ride up shortly, followed by the dragon on foot. A young dragon on foot – I can barely describe – is the ungainliest thing. Enough, almost, to make me pity the evil, demonic beast. It flaps and flops along like a ludicrous boat-sized puppy with broken sails. I prefer it flying, it’s actually quite majestic. Also, I think it has grown since I first saw it.

  “It’s not quite dawn,” Thea says. “We can go a little longer if necessary.” She shines her light around the little camping base and seems to recognize the prep work we’ve put into the site already. “But this looks great.”

  The only upside to a world with an angry sun and a scarred atmosphere is incredible solar power. Everything else is bad. We set solars on a perimeter and everyone pulls the reflectors and tenting and rations from their raptors’ underbellies.

  We show our escorts how to set up camp, and how to defend against our primary enemies: blazing heat, and every kind of damaging radiation you can put an initial letter to, from UV to
Gamma to Beta, to whatever. We just call it all rads, and it’s why we wear lifetime exposure belts.

  I’m giving the dragon something of a wide berth, even though Lucy and Thea seem completely unafraid of it; Thea skritches the damned thing on the top of its head.

  Fire-breathing dragon named Mouse, and she skritches it.

  Dinah, obviously, is afraid of nothing. She’d probably teach it to take her on its back and soar above us all.

  I don’t notice how quiet Lucy has been until she speaks up. “You’re going to show us how to avoid the scorpions, right?” I suppose she’s still grieving her previous partner, Jess. She moves carefully, as if protecting an injury. It makes me glad again she has Thea.

  “Avoid them?” Dinah drops the tent hardware she’s arranging, and strides to the site perimeter. Scorpions skitter everywhere. “You don’t avoid them.”

  She grabs one, a medium-sized red-eyed orange-foot, and holds it up, squirming and furious in her gloved hand. “I bet your dragon would clean some of these up, though,” she says, her head cocked towards the scorpion. It spits green ichor as it tries to get its stinger within range of Dinah’s hand.

  She laughs and flings it out of the lantern circle.

  Thea is definitely iffy at the sight of scorpions running everywhere. I try to reassure them. “It’s okay, we know you don’t have Dinah’s – talents. As far as the scorpions are concerned, we’ll get you set up.”

  It’s not a lie if I don’t actually promise they won’t get stung, right?

  Dinah is pegging her tent to the rock face. “You need to lock one end down on something immovable,” she instructs the others without looking up.

  It’s getting hotter. The night’s last shadows seem reluctant to be driven away. But dawn is closer than it seems.

  The tent Thea and Lucy have brought is a double. Dinah and I exchange smirks before finishing the set-up of our individual tents.