Warrior Everlasting

by Knight, Wendy

  Not the best thought-out plan.

  “They will not leave us here. I would never have come if I didn’t know Havik well enough to believe he will do everything in his power to bring us home.” Ashra raised her head with a stubborn flick of her ears.

  Again, Scout caught Trey’s gaze. They might not be able to have an actual unspoken conversation, but he knew exactly what she was thinking by the worried crease in her forehead. Iros’s betrothed, Aella, was trapped here. Along with tens of thousands of souls. And Iros had closed the gate anyway. He had to — to save the world. A couple of his favorite unicorns and two people he barely knew didn’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things.

  Somehow, Ashra, too, could read their thoughts. “Havik will not leave us here.” She snorted, the breath coming hard and fast through her soft muzzle.

  “Hey.” Scout stopped, tugging lightly on Ashra’s wing until Ashra stopped too, refusing to look at her, her chest still heaving. Scout moved in front of her, pulling Ashra’s head until the mighty unicorn had no choice but to acknowledge her. “I know Havik won’t leave us here if he can help it. I know he’ll do everything in his power to get us out. But we have to do everything in our power to help ourselves. So let’s focus on that — we need a plan.” As Scout spoke, surrounded by the dim blue mist that forever hung in the air, Trey could see why they called her a soother. Ashra’s breathing calmed, and the angry tilt of her head lessened. Behind Trey, Torz, too, stopped fidgeting.

  Ashra leaned her head against Scout’s, and Scout stroked her soft cheek. It was so unlike them — both sarcastic — and Ashra, clearly, didn’t love being touched at all. Where Trey kept his hand near Torz all the time, because it felt natural, reconnecting them, Ashra and Scout teased and played. But the bond was stronger than their animosity.

  “We can’t form a plan until we see the layout.” Ashra finally pulled back, brushing Scout forward gently with her wing. “We will go, and we will observe, and we will rest. And then we will attack.”

  Torz followed her, and they started walking again. The end of the canyon was within sight, only several hundred yards in front of them. Trey couldn’t help but feel an ominous foreboding at the thought of leaving their canyon and venturing into the open.

  “We will have to find a way past the soul stealers, and break the cage that holds the souls. Iros says it is made of unicorn bones. It will be hard to get into,” Torz said. A thread of nervous energy ran under his usual mildness.

  “Okay then. Nice plan. Let’s get on it.” Scout clapped her hands once like a coach calling the end to a huddle, and Trey smiled. She jogged ahead to catch Ashra but Trey hung back, watching. She fit so well with the unicorns — it was like she’d been born to ride with them.

  And she was as majestic and beautiful as they were. Her black cloak swirled behind her as she walked silently across the grass-carpeted valley floor. She’d tied the long, honey-brown waves he loved so much back into a braid, although silky strands had escaped to curl against her cheek. And those sea-foam green eyes nearly stopped his heart every time she looked at him. Somehow, he had to convince her that he wouldn’t hurt her again. That he was safe. In a world where nothing seemed safe, he was.

  He had no idea how to do that.

  He was so lost trying to figure that out, staring at the ground in front of him, that he ran into the back of Torz and knocked himself over. “What the snowball?”

  Scout glanced back at him for only a second before she turned her attention forward, but she backed up to help him to his feet. “Trey, look.”

  Trey had known something bad waited for them on the other side of the canyon. Through the hazy blue mist, a black castle rose, all turrets and hard, terrifying angles. The roof disappeared into the darkness. Light blazed from the many windows, light that was obliterated every few seconds by the hunched, decrepit form of a soul stealer. There were hundreds. Thousands. Even after all the soul stealers they’d killed in that last, desperate battle, there were still countless numbers inside that castle.

  “Ashra was right. They must stay there because they’re attracted to the souls,” Scout breathed, her hand covering her mouth in horror so her words sounded muffled.

  Ashra snorted. “Of course I was right. I seriously wonder when you will stop doubting me.”

  Scout didn’t even acknowledge Ashra’s comment, which told Trey how truly upset she really was. Getting past the soul stealers to the cage looked more impossible the longer they stood there.

  “We’ll make camp here for the night. First thing in the morning, we will attack,” Torz said. He turned his back on the monstrosity before them, his horn lighting as he approached the river to drink. “Try not to let it upset you. I am sure that was his plan when he designed it.”

  Images of a monster Trey had never seen gleefully designing a castle fit only for horror movies flashed across Trey’s mind. Well that’s not odd at all.

  Scout, too, turned her back on the horrifying creation, although Ashra stayed where she was, horn glowing fire-hot red and angry. Blood lust practically vibrated from her as her razor-sharp hooves clawed at the ground.

  “Not now, Ashra.” Scout’s voice was quiet in the falling darkness, and Trey felt the tension ease from his shoulders as Ashra’s head dropped in agreement. “Soon, but not now.”

  Chapter Seven

  With one last glance over her shoulder at her unicorn, Scout joined Torz at the water. “Why is it that the mighty unicorns can make us magic scepters and cloaks that look like they’re from the dark ages, but they can’t make us food that won’t kill us?”

  Torz snorted, raising his head indignantly. Scout snickered as he shook his head, splashing her with droplets the size of tears. Ashra blew out a long-suffering breath as she passed Trey. “She’s a pain in the tail. You realize this?”

  Trey shrugged. “It seems like a legitimate question to me.” He didn’t even see Ashra’s big wing until it was knocking him backward for the second time in ten minutes. He glowered at her as her amused whicker bounced off the canyon walls.

  “We create magic from magic. Your cloak is magic. The scepter is magic. Food is not magic,” Torz finally answered.

  “I don’t know. It feels pretty magic to me.”

  Scout grinned up at him from where she was perched on the riverbank. “That’s because eating is your favorite thing in the world to do.”

  “Second favorite thing in the world,” he answered quickly as his eyes dipped on their own accord to her mouth. She swallowed twice as a blush rose to her cheeks. But it was a momentary distraction as his eyes moved back to the canyon opening and the nightmarish castle beyond. The nightmares would come easily tonight.

  “Maybe third favorite?” She rose to her feet dusting her hands off on her tattered, dirty jeans. She leaped gracefully over the river and landed like a ballerina on the other side, before she pulled a large blue fruit from a tree’s low branch.

  Trey raised an eyebrow as she hefted the fruit in her hand then paused to smack it on a rock. It didn’t split.

  “Kinda looks like a football, huh?” With a wicked gleam in her eye, she raised her arm and hucked it across the river.

  Trey barely had time to get his hands up before it barreled into his chest.

  Grinning, despite the fear behind him, he shook his head. “You never forgot how to throw a football, apparently.”

  “It’s like riding a bike.”

  From across the river she winked, so much like his Scout that it nearly stopped his heart. And then she held her hands out, motioning with her fingers.

  “Gimme.”

  He cocked his arm and threw it back, a little over her head, and she leaped easily, like some bright, graceful, but totally non-lethal jaguar, snatching it out of the air. They tossed it back and forth, throwing wild passes every so often to make the other one pay for the last wild pass, and he realized belatedly that she’d done it on purpose.

  She was distracting him. He could think of onl
y one other way that would have worked as well, and since she was still holding off on being his girlfriend, he didn’t see that one happening. If this whole war between good and evil hadn’t landed on their doorstep, Trey would probably be playing in the state championship right now. Or yesterday. Next week. He had no idea what day it was. Only that he’d worked so hard for something that didn’t even matter now. Even so, he loved football. More than anything, except his family.

  And Scout.

  She giggled as she threw it way over his head, and Ashra blasted it backward with a shot of hot air. She sounded so young. So like the Scout he remembered, before hate and pain and anger had made her hard. But his Scout was still there. He could see her in the smile Scout shot him…

  “Hey Scout.” He tried to make his shoulders bigger, like his dad’s. Hoping she’d notice that he was growing again. She barely looked at him from where she sat, dejected, on the curb, staring out at the field below them where a bunch of boys were playing football. Where he and his brothers had been playing until he’d seen her sitting there. He’d left, and they’d followed, of course. Heaven forbid he ever get to talk to her without them nearly standing on top of them both.

  “Hi, Trey.”

  “What’s wrong?” Liam asked, pushing past Trey to squat next to her.

  Liam was nine. Tate was ten. Trey was twelve. Shouldn’t he be the one she smiled at just now, not his little brother?

  “They won’t let me play.”

  Trey raised an eyebrow, looking from her to the field and back again. “You want to play football?”

  She nodded and sniffled.

  “But you’re a girl. And you’re little,” Tate pointed out somewhat unhelpfully.

  “So?” Scout raised her chin. Her beautiful eyes narrowed.

  Trey’s dad had told him he was too young to think about girls. But Trey didn’t think about girls. He thought about one girl. Scout. And he had loved her since he was eight years old.

  “Come on. We’ll play with you. Right guys?” Trey asked, glaring both his brothers into submission.

  “Yep. Let’s go, Scouty.” Liam pulled her to her feet and they raced down the road to Trey’s house.

  “Do you even know how to throw a football?” Tate asked, snatching the ball from Trey’s hands and throwing it to Scout. It smacked her hands and fell to the ground.

  “Not yet. I will.” Scout picked up the ball and struggled to wrap her small hand around it. Even though she was three years older than Tate, she was smaller than them all.

  From down the road, a tiny Lil Bit emerged, as if sensing her sister’s presence, and came to watch, dark eyes wide, following Scout’s every move.

  “Scout, honey, you’re holding the ball wrong. That’s why it flies through the sky like a wounded duck.” Brandon, Trey’s dad, left the garage where he’d been changing the oil, wiping his hands on a rag that he tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “My dad… hasn’t had time to show me. He will though. He’s just busy.” Scout dug her toe in the grass and blushed furiously, her eyes dropped in shame.

  “Well, until he has time, how about I show you? I taught these three terrors everything they know. It’ll be a piece of cake for a bright girl like you.”

  Scout’s face lit up, and she grinned like he’d just given her a medal. For the next several hours, and then the next several days, Scout spent every spare minute with a football in her hand, memorizing Brandon’s instructions, muttering them under her breath until her movements were second nature.

  Brandon had always been Trey’s hero. Watching him take all that time to teach a neighbor girl to play football, though, raised him to nothing short of a god in Trey’s eyes. And Tate and Liam, ignoring their friends every day so Scout would have someone to play football with? His brothers were a pain, but no other brothers Trey knew would do that.

  They were playing touch football several weeks later. Brandon played with them, and some of Trey’s friends from school. Scout never got the ball — if Trey did try to throw it to her, she froze, afraid of all the boys who were about to mock her. Brandon called a time out, and Trey jogged over.

  “Scout? You really want these boys to think you’re a scared little girl?” his dad asked.

  Scout’s eyes blazed, and her small hands clenched into fists. “I’m not a scared little girl.”

  Brandon nodded, standing up and clapping her on the shoulder. “Good girl.”

  As he walked away, Trey caught him looking pointedly at Tate and Liam. And then at Trey.

  Trey got the message.

  The next play, he threw the ball to Scout. She leaped like a cat and snatched the ball out of the air. She landed hard, spun on one foot, and raced for the end zone.

  Screaming the entire way.

  Tate and Liam raced ahead of her, blocking all the other boys, clearing a path all the way in. The look on her face when she scored that touchdown was something Trey would never, ever forget…

  “Trey? Helllo-o-o-o?” Scout was standing next to him, waving her hand in front of his face.

  “Where’s the ball?” He jumped, startled out of his own memories. And with awareness came pain. His dad. His brothers. He missed them so much it felt like the pain would eat right through his heart.

  “Hey.” Her eyes widened, and she reached a dirty hand up, her thumb brushing away a tear he hadn’t even realized he’d cried. “It’s okay, Trey. Torz ate it. We’ll get another one.”

  He half-laughed, half-sobbed. “I miss them, Scout.”

  Her face softened and she nodded. “I know.” She slid her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. His hands shook as he pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head.

  Don’t give up on me, boys. I’m coming. We’re coming.

  Chapter Eight

  Ashra paced like a caged beast, snorting and pawing at the ground. It was terrifying, really. Scout watched her, feeding off Ashra’s angry, nervous energy. When Trey stepped on a stick and it cracked; Scout nearly jumped through the roof. If there had been a roof. Which there wasn’t because they were at the mouth of a canyon and… “Scout. It’s time.”

  Scout gulped and looked up at Torz, who had moved silently, unlike his rider who, Scout was sure, was making as much noise as possible. She scowled at Trey, and he grinned at her unapologetically. Did he not feel it? Something would happen today — good or bad, this is where their journey ended. The journey that started with a race across the sky several days ago to save her sister and her parents and his brothers and his parents and pretty much everyone they’d ever met…

  Scout swallowed.

  But Trey seemed oblivious to it. He ate his weird blue fruit and drank his purified-by-unicorn water, and his hands didn’t even shake.

  “Scout, eat. You don’t know when you will have the chance again,” Ashra snapped.

  Scout bounced on her heels. This was like facing Nationals in dance, only ten thousand gazillion times worse. Nervous energy was the same, but Nationals didn’t have the fear of death. Usually.

  “Hey.” Trey stopped next to her, pushing fruit into her hand. “Everyone we love is in those cages.”

  She took the fruit, biting into it viciously. “Thanks, Trey. That helps so much,” she said sarcastically, waving her fruit at him.

  “They need you to not panic. Pull it together, Scout.”

  Tough love. She smiled. Somehow, even after all this time, Trey knew what she needed to hear. “Got it. Calming down, sir.” She saluted him and he rolled his eyes, leaving her to take care of Torz.

  Trey and Torz had a much different relationship than Scout and Ashra. Ashra was clearly in charge, and Scout just did what she was told. But with Trey and Torz, it was more symbiotic. Trey treated Torz like a beloved friend — brushing weeds off Torz’s back, being within arm’s reach all the time. If Scout was within arm’s reach of Ashra, she usually got knocked sideways by a giant wing.

  And it worked, the way things were. She wouldn’t have
it any other way.

  They moved silently, like ninja unicorns with not-so-ninja-humans on their backs. Out of the canyon, across the valley. The castle sat in what looked like a crater, although Scout was fairly positive Aptavaras had never been hit by a meteor, and she hadn’t seen any indication of volcanoes. Wild mountains rose around it, except for the valley she and her friends were in — it acted as something like a front driveway to the castle. If there were cars to drive… Scout shook her head. Her thoughts were all over the place. She needed to focus.

  “We should go up. See if we can get a better view.” Ashra tossed her head toward the peak closest to the castle. Without waiting to see if anyone agreed with her, her mighty wings snapped out, and she launched herself into the air.

  Scout, taken totally by surprise, squealed and grabbed Ashra’s thick neck. “You think this is funny, don’t you? This little let’s-try-to-throw-Scout-on-the-ground-at-least-twice-a-day thing you do? It’s. Not. Funny.”

  Ashra’s snickering bounced around in Scout’s skull.

  Torz followed, landing easily on the narrow ledge Ashra had chosen, apparently based on it being the least likely to support their weight. Scout didn’t dare slide off, in case the whole thing collapsed, and she needed Ashra’s wings to save her. She squinted at the castle but couldn’t see much beyond darkness and shadows. She nudged Ashra with her knee. “Use your super-unicorn powers and tell me what you see.”

  Ashra snorted indignantly. “I kill demons with magic from my horn. I made you a magical cloak and a magical scepter. I fly faster than any other Irwarro to ever live. Isn’t that enough for you, Princess?”

  Torz rolled his eyes toward them. “What she’s saying is we don’t have super-sight. We see the same as you.”

  “Oh. Well then, why are we up here? I can’t see a thing.” Scout squinted harder. It didn’t help.

  Trey chuckled.

  “Princess has a point. We need to get closer.”