by Alex Aguilar
This was no wild creature at all… This was her friend…
“N-Nyx…?” She rose gently to her feet, her weak knees shivering from both enervation and fright. “Is that… really you…?”
Nyx said nothing, only exhaled again. He looked weary and exhausted, possibly due to the flames he’d forced out of his neck. His wings had folded and settled against his scaly ribs, resting until he took flight again.
“Nyx, that can’t be you…”
Robyn couldn’t quite find the words to say. Nyx bowed his head so that he could remain at eye-level with her, and she took the opportunity to caress his cheek the way she always did. Only this time there were no feathers to touch, no fur to graze. His skin was rough and hardened like stone and the spikes running down his neck looked more like sharp black bones from such a close distance. When he opened his mouth to breathe, she could feel the heat radiating from the inside as if he was brewing up another roar of hells’ fire.
“Nyx, you’re… you’re…!”
“Disconcerting?” he asked. “Horrifying?”
Her lips curved into a joyous smile. “Beautiful,” she corrected him.
And though the scales on his skin wouldn’t let him smile back, his glimmering eye said enough. Robyn was looking at him with a dreamlike expression, like a little girl whose wish had just been granted. Overwhelmed with emotions, she chuckled, unable to remove her hand from his face. Her whole life, she’d heard the stories from her mother, and she believed such creatures to be no more than myths and legends.
And yet here she was, standing in front of one…
A live fire-breathing dragon…
By the gods, Robyn… If mother could see you now…
“You’re beautiful, Nyx,” she said again, feeling the urge to throw her arms around him. Suddenly, however, there was the sound of boots crunching against leaves. Nyx’s neck turned faster than the man could take another step.
It was Skinner. He was standing behind a row of willow trees, baffled out of his mind. Robyn smiled at first, until she noticed the blood oozing from the man’s belly.
“Skinner!” she ran to him. He looked alive still, not yet pale from the loss of blood, but he had to lean against the nearest tree for balance. “Skinner!” she lent him a shoulder for balance. “By the gods, are you all right??”
“What in all hells is that…?” the man couldn’t remove his eyes from the dragon.
“It’s okay!” she calmed him. “It’s all right! He won’t hurt you…”
Skinner’s brows twisted, his expression shifting from baffled to concerned. “You’ve some explaining to do, girl…”
She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Skinner, I’d like you to meet Nyx…”
The dragon approached, gently so as to not frighten the man. Skinner’s gaze shifted back and forth between the two of them. “The snake?!” he asked bewilderingly. “Y-You’re the bloody crawler?!”
“Easy there,” Nyx said, jokingly. “Where I come from, that term is not very polite.”
Skinner exhaled, and the sound was something between a laugh and a yelp, as if hearing Nyx speak with such a powerful resonance gave him unbearable chills. “Gods strike me,” he said nervously. “Now tell me, lad… Why the fuck didn’t you do that earlier?”
Robyn smiled again, and then she drew the attention back to the more pressing matter at hand. “Skinner, you’re hurt… We must get you back to the cabin!”
The man nodded, but he looked more agile than his wound made him seem.
“Looks like you won’t be needing that lift any longer, girl,” he said with a grin. “By the gods… Just look at you two…”
He was still quite mesmerized by Nyx, and the loss of blood was making him loose concentration. Robyn tried to press him, but the man seemed confident enough to fend for himself. And it only soothed her nerves further when a limping horse emerged from the trees, a horse that used to belong to one of Malekai’s men.
“Come, we must take you back…”
“No need, girl,” Skinner insisted, removing his arm from her and standing up straight. He kept a bright red cloth pressed against himself, one he had stolen off the body of the dead rogue mercenary. “I’ve survived worse than this. I’ll manage… And so will my friend here.” He gave the horse a soft tap on the neck.
“But you’re bleeding! You can’t jus-”
“I said I’ll be manage, girl… You’ve a long journey ahead, you mustn’t waste any more time… And besides, the cabin’s only a mile back down the road.”
“Are you sure?” Robyn asked worriedly.
Skinner chuckled. “What’s your plan? To fly me back? That ought to be interesting… Half the folk in Grymsbi haven’t seen a tree nymph in their lives, you think they’ll react kindly to a… Gods strike me… to a fire-breathing dragon?”
She looked down at his wound. It didn’t look great, but his confidence reassured her. She swung her arms forward and embraced him, causing him to grunt mildly from the pain. “Thank you, Skinner,” she said. “Thank you for everything…”
He smiled down at her.
“Go on, girl,” he said. “Go and find your brother…”
Robyn glanced back at Nyx. So majestic, he looked, standing there on all fours with his neck held up a good six feet high. She walked closer to him, hesitating. But she didn’t even have to ask him… He lowered himself on the ground like a hound, low enough for her to climb on his back. She’d lent him her shoulder before, as a crow and a snake, and now he was to return the favor.
“Careful,” he said to her.
She came to a halt right where his neck ended and his back began, placed one boot onto his shoulder, and leapt on top of him, using the spikes on his collar to keep herself balanced. She could hardly believe where she was sitting. The scales beneath her legs were warm from the heat and yet she didn’t mind it. She welcomed it, even felt thrilled by it.
“Farewell, Robyn Huxley,” Skinner smiled at her from afar. “And always remember… Should you ever need us, you will always find shelter with the Wardens of Grymsbi…”
She smiled back at him. “Farewell, Skinner.”
And so Nyx walked towards the cliff… His steps were slow and heavy, causing resonating thumps that shook the earth beneath them. Robyn’s heart began to race as they approached the depth of the Great Rift. She was both terrified and thrilled all at once. Nyx stopped right at the edge, his claws digging deep into the dirt for a good grip.
He craned his neck back. “Ready?” he asked her.
No… Not in the slightest…
She took a deep breath and gave him a hesitant nod. Then she pressed herself against his neck, gripping onto his scales for dear life. Nyx’s wings stretched back as he released a thundering roar. And then his body began to tip forward…
Robyn kept her eyes open. Her gaze shifted from the blue horizon to the darkness of the Rift. They fell… And within seconds they were falling at such great speed that Robyn nearly lost her grip as she felt the air escape her lungs for a moment.
Then Nyx extended his wings… They soared with the wind, circling above that pit of darkness, defying it the way a seagull defies the ocean current. He started flapping, and before Robyn knew it they were going up again, heading for the clouds.
“Hold on,” Nyx muttered.
Robyn could feel the rumbling beneath her whenever he spoke. She took a moment to admire the view; as they got higher, the trees shrunk down to the size of shrubs and the roads looked like they were just an inch wide, as if she were suddenly staring down at a map. She could still see Skinner down there, trotting gently back into town on horse, keeping his gaze up at them.
She smiled. She almost wanted to wave, but her hands were clasped tight around Nyx’s spikes. As they flew ahead, she saw the people of Grymsbi starting their morning routines, only they looked like ants from so up high. She squinted her eyes, suddenly realizing that they were all starting to look up…
Folks ran in and out of thei
r homes, staggered and thrown aback…
They were pointing, waving, dropping to their knees…
They were scattering to spread the word, climbing to their rooves for a better view, scared out of their minds and fueled with amazement all at the same time…
Robyn Huxley couldn’t believe her eyes.
She felt as if she was in some sort of dream.
“They’re watching us,” she said. “They’re all watching us!”
“Are they, now?” Nyx asked, bending his neck downward. “Well… Let’s give them something to see, shall we?”
They flew down towards the village… Slowly the roads and the trees grew larger and larger, until Robyn was able to make out the stunned expressions in all the peasants’ faces. The more frightened ones were running to take cover while the bolder ones stood and watched. They must have been as low as twenty feet when Nyx soared upwards again, and Robyn watched as the people turned their heads with amusement, pointing up at them… at her… Their bewildered gazes were not just fixed on the dragon, but on the woman riding it…
She smiled again. She not only felt thrilled now, she felt invincible.
They circled back and flew up again, away from the village, heading south. “Hang on tight, Lady Robyn!” Nyx said to her. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”
She leaned in and embraced him, welcoming the heat beneath her ribs.
The wind grew colder with the elevation, her wolf furs hardly able to withstand it all, but she paid it no mind.
The cold struck her skin, reddened her nose, paled her face and chest, but she paid it no mind.
The height quickened her heart’s pace, sent cold shivers up her spine, but she paid it no mind.
She was flying…
XVIII
The Strong & the Weak
Lord Yohan Baronkroft stood on his balcony, high above the dead city of Drahkmere, fingers tapping the black stone that bordered the terrace. He gazed over the horizon at a small company of horses, some two dozen of them, riding towards the city gates. The landscape outside of the ruined city was nothing but barren hills of black soil and rocky terrain that went on for miles. And beyond the northern hills was a dead forest, blackened and dry, trees with thick leafless branches poking out like thousands of needles. The Dead Moors, they were called, and there was no possible way to cross them on foot; it would be like trying to cross a narrow tunnel with nails sticking out of the walls.
It gave the lord great comfort to know that there was only one direction from which an enemy troop might attempt to attack the city, and that was from the hills to the west, the direction from which the small company of horses was approaching. With a grin plastered on his face, he paced back into his personal chambers, the only somewhat elegant place in all of Drahkmere, decorated with stolen furniture and tableware, none of it matching in design or color.
A red armchair with a tall backrest rested near the fireplace, and in it sat a bloody man tied down by ropes and beaten beyond recognition. He had his trousers on but no shirt or shoes, and there were small cuts all over his body, hundreds of them, as if he’d fallen inside a barrel of razors. None of the cuts were deep enough to cause him severe damage, but all of them stung brutally, and his skin was bound never to look the same again.
“My dear Sergeant Weston,” Lord Baronkroft said, pacing back and forth around the armchair. “You’ve no idea what your cooperation means to me and my company. Truly, I must thank you. May the gods smile down at you for the rest of your days.”
The lord placed a hand on the sergeant’s head and caressed it like he would a hound’s.
Once, the sergeant was an experienced man of great prestige and repute, a respected man in the Qamrothian royal guard. He was handsome even, in his own rugged way. Now, however, he was pale and weak and dripping blood from all over his body. His right eye was swollen shut and his tongue had been sliced off. For the last few days he’d had no choice but to sit and listen to Baronkroft, beaten down to submission, his sense of humanity all but ripped away from him.
“Now, don’t you wish you had signed that contract willingly when you had the chance, sergeant?” the lord asked, gradually rubbing his palm over the brown fuzz on the sergeant’s head. Strange as it was, it hadn’t been the first time Baronkroft petted him that way, and the sergeant knew it wouldn’t be the last. Whenever he had resisted in the past, he’d get another cut, and so the sergeant eventually yielded to it.
“How different would things have turned out between us?” Baronkroft asked, chuckling like a madman. “How funny, life is.”
The doorknob rattled suddenly, the doors squeaking as they opened gently, and in walked a towering figure with a leather mask over his jaw. Baronkroft’s face lit up instantly with a wide grin.
“Ah, my dear Harrok… Come in, we’ve been expecting you!”
The lord motioned the Butcher to another armchair by the fire, across from the bloody sergeant. There was nothing but a wooden center table between them, where there rested a tin jar and a lone silver goblet.
“I believe you’ve met my right-hand man, sergeant?” Baronkroft asked, well aware of the answer. “Supreme Commander Harrok Mortymer. ‘The Butcher of Haelvaara’, they called him once. The deadliest warrior that ever hailed from Ahari. Built like an orc, isn’t he? Even now, after so many years.”
A boy entered the chamber at that moment, a nervous boy dressed in rags with caramel-colored skin and matted hair full of grease. He had his head down, careful not to look anyone directly in the eyes, and headed straight for the center table. He may as well have been invisible, for the lord paid him absolutely no mind; the boy was only there to do his duty and leave. He grabbed the jar carefully with both hands and began pouring.
A red liquid filled the goblet until it nearly overflowed, a liquid that was far too bright and thick to be red wine. As if Thomlin wasn’t already intimidated by the eerie tension in the room, his eyes suddenly widened upon realizing exactly what he was serving.
“Do you know why my dear Harrok wears this mask?” Baronkroft asked the wounded sergeant. “It’s not for intimidation, if that’s what you believe, though it certainly does help. About a decade or so ago, there was a battle in Ahari. I take it you remember it, sergeant? Qamrothian troops invaded the city of Haelvaara in order to steal something that wasn’t theirs. Imagine that… And they call me an extremist,” he chuckled. “A precious piece of treasure, it was, one that would bestow great power to the man that possessed it. Anyway, as you’re well aware the Aharians won the battle. And the scriptures say that the notorious Harrok Mortymer, the Butcher of Haelvaara, was struck by a war hammer to the jaw. They say it took nearly a dozen men to kill him.”
As Baronkroft spoke, the Butcher slowly raised his arms and began untying the lace on the back of his mask. Thomlin set the jar down and stepped to the side, remaining in the room so as to observe what would happen next.
“What an unfortunate fate for a warrior of such talent, don’t you think sergeant?” Baronkroft asked, as he came to a halt next to the Butcher’s chair. The Butcher’s teeth-lined mask dropped to the floor; the face that it revealed was something from a nightmare…
The man was as pale as his own silver eyes were. His nose was chipped at the tip and the skin just beneath his nostrils was wrinkled and scarred. He had no chin; it had been entirely broken off by the war hammer. Instead there was a wide gap where his chin should be and his jaw was unfinished, leaving nothing but two pieces of bone and flesh sticking out like a set of horns. His tongue was still there along with his upper teeth, rotten as they were. He looked more like a walking corpse than an actual man.
Sergeant Weston’s eyes widened with horror.
“Is something the matter, sergeant?” Baronkroft asked; even when his face was blank, there was always the hint of grin concealed within it. “You’re not intimidated by my dear Harrok, are you?”
The Butcher grabbed the overflowing goblet and began pouring it slowly into his chinle
ss mouth. Most of the blood made it down his throat, while some of it splattered over his malformed jaw and cheeks. Thomlin watched from a corner, his mouth hanging open with shock, feeling as if his innocent eyes deceived him. There was a moment in which Baronkroft noticed the boy, only he wasn’t angry or upset. In fact, the eerie grin returned, splitting his face in two. The Butcher savored every last drop and then wiped his face with a wet towel, every movement slow and placid and ghostly.
“There you go, my friend,” Baronkroft placed a gentle hand on Harrok’s shoulder, in a similar form as he had done with the sergeant, except perhaps with more respect. It was as if the sergeant was a mere pup while the Butcher was his most trusted hound. “Feeling better, I take it?” he asked.
The Butcher placed the empty goblet on the center table and said nothing. His chinless jaw was still smeared with red and his eyes were pale and hungry.
“Do forgive him for his unlikely habits,” Baronkroft said to the sergeant. “It’s not my dear Harrok’s fault, the poor man. He needs it.”
A tear escaped the sergeant’s face. So many years of service to the Qamrothian royal guard, and for what? For this? At that moment he knew that his life was over. He wouldn’t see his family again. He wouldn’t see his home again. He was to die in this forgotten city, along with many other souls under Baronkroft’s rule. Accepting it all nearly calmed his nerves. Nearly.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Sergeant Weston,” Baronkroft began pacing away. “I’ve some business to tend to before your superiors arrive. They should be here within the hour, I imagine. In the meantime, try not to do anything stupid… Otherwise I’d have to cut you again… My dear Harrok could always use a bit more energy for our gathering tonight. And by the gods, does he have an appetite,” he chuckled.
Nervously, Thomlin began drifting towards the doors. He was so startled and shaken that he almost wondered if it was real or if the hunger was starting to make him hallucinate.
“Leave us,” Baronkroft said, and Thomlin wasted not another second.