Her father, Sinred Graves, might have even given her one of his rare approving nods had he known of her resolve. She liked to think he would. She was filled with a pang of longing, wishing he was still above the sands. A child’s wish, she admonished herself. He would not like her wishing for things to be other than what they were, she frowned into the flickering torchlight.
She remembered his last stand, remembered the Shadow One Dressna breaking him. Dressna’s arms were red and wet with the blood of her people. Her callous white eyes falling upon her as if she were a rat to be crushed under her heels.
“What do you see?” Isa hissed.
She slid a few feet where the path curved down into the earth, paused and narrowed her brows at him. “What do you mean Isa?” She saw then what he had likely seen, a pair of needles clenched between her fist. She hadn’t even realized she had drawn them. A potentially deadly mistake. “Sorry,” she stammered, carefully sliding them into tiny sleeves sewn in the bottom of her bracer. “Just thinking.”
He slowly nodded at her. “I understand.” He slid down to meet her and she shifted back a few steps, making room for his landing.
New sounds reached her ears. Muffled squawks, shrieks and the pounding of boots.
“We’re close,” Isa said against her neck, her breath soft. She liked him close, wanted him closer.
Senka ran deft fingers along the ceiling. “She said it was — ah!” She squealed with excitement, pawed at the square of wood making up the overhead door. “This is it!”
Senka grabbed the rusted handle and tried to push it up and open. It didn’t move a single iota. She tried again and gritted her teeth. Her shoulders strained and legs quivered against the immovable door. She gave up with a defeated grunt. Had they come this far to be defeated by a block of wood?
Isa slithered against the wall, dislodging stones and pressing himself against her, hardly enough room for two in the narrow space.
“Together,” he said and flashed her a smile.
“Slowly and carefully.” Senka nodded. “On my three count. One… Two… Three.” they awkwardly heaved their shoulders and arms against an incredible weight. The hinges groaned, sand hissed down from above, and the door inched open showing a razor-thin band of light. The light seared in her night adjusted eyes and the back of her head throbbed while she blinked away tears.
“Wait,” Senka said, but he’d already stopped pressing, rubbing his eyes with the back of one hand.
They listened to the squawking of Death Spawn while their eyes adjusted, the world above painfully bright. Senka’s bones were filled with a sudden ice at hearing a familiar voice. It boomed above all the others, deep and feminine. Her mouth went dry, tried to speak but no sounds came.
“You recognize something,” Isa stated. “What?” He gazed at her and she heard him popping the cork from his waterskin. He brought it up near her mouth, gesturing for her to drink.
She took a quick sip. “Thank you,” she breathed. “It’s the voice of Dressna, the Sha— Death Spawn who murdered my father.”
“Dressna, one of the Wretched,” Isa said, the muscle in his jaw working. A bead of sweat trickled down his hard-angled temple.
Her vision finally came into focus, the light no longer hurting. There were hundreds, no, thousands of Death Spawn lined up into at least ten columns. Hundreds of Cerumal were herded by Black Wynches, screeching what must have been orders. Behind them all her eyes leaped to Dressna, a tower in a field of children, at least twice as tall as any other. She was chopping her carapaced arms through the air, pointing at Black Wynches and kicking the backsides of malingering Cerumal.
Her enormous wings lay propped against her back and trailed down over her bull’s legs. Four horns twisted around and around from the back of her hairless head ending in fierce points. Her skin was the color of a rain cloud, shoulders bare. She wore great overlapping plates starting at her tremendous breasts and ending at her ankles, leaving her talon feet exposed.
Senka’s eyes drew wide. She was more terrifying in the daylight than she’d ever been in the gloom of the Black Furnaces. Dressna had a weakness, however. One Senka discovered during their first encounter. Her hand went to her wrist, rubbing the spot where Dressna had crushed her bones. She had been preparing, waiting for this day every day since they first met. Every needle under her bracers and every dagger in her belt had been laced with essence of Acontium flower. This was her chance to avenge her father’s death, to honor his sacrifice, to fulfill her oaths.
The trepidation that held her captive for the past ten seconds released its hold on her and was replaced with boiling anger. Everything around Dressna became a blurring of colors and sounds.
“Look. They’re going through portals,” Isa said.
“What?” Senka snapped, turning a dagger gaze on him.
“The time is not right for your vengeance, child.” Isa narrowed his sunken eyes, not even bothering to look at her.
Child? The disrespect. His impudence. Did he not know that vengeance was her right? She inhaled sharply, had to get control. She slowly exhaled, letting her vision relax, broadening, taking in the whole of the scene. He was right. There were too many of them. It would only serve for a quick death. “Portals. But if there are portals there must be something, something—”
“Who can cast them,” Isa finished her thoughts. “There!” he hissed, pointing with his eyes.
An abyss of living shadows stood beside the tens of portals, gleaming chains and blood-red cloak hovering in the air above it. It was the demon god, Asebor. Senka’s resolved melted like wax, wanting to shrink into the earth. His hands glowed like violet suns, using his powers to keep the portals opened, she realized.
“We need to do something,” she said weakly, entirely unsure of what. She felt despair at seeing her chance for vengeance slipping away. They would be twigs in a sandstorm.
“There is no sense in throwing ourselves upon the sword, Senka. We wait.” He gripped her shoulder, both of them slowly lowering themselves and letting the door gently close over them.
Her heart thudded against her chest, the earth cold at her back. “We wait,” she repeated. She let her head drop back against something with a sharp edge. “Dragons,” she barked, rubbing at the bump forming at the back of her head. She felt at the wall, found a rock as sharp as a knife where she had laid her head.
“Are you well?” Isa tightened his belt, his face wrinkled with concern as he checked his weapons.
Was his concern for his weapons or for her? Perhaps it was only nerves. Senka watched as the last of the torchlight winked out then, leaving them in total darkness. “I’m well,” she muttered. What was happening between them? She had never had much time for leisure, for ‘wasting days’ as her father called it. She didn’t know what to call it, but she liked being near him. She shifted her bottom a few inches closer to the door above, between Isa’s legs and slowly lowered her head against the earthen wall, soft here.
She heard Isa shift and sniff. His armor creaked, boots scraped on loose stones. She furrowed her brow, wondered why he couldn’t manage to stay still lest their position be revealed. She understood it was a foolish thought, as sound could not travel very far at this depth. The careless man gets the Fire Lizard’s bite, her father always said.
She felt Isa’s breath, close and warm. Her heart hammered in her temples. Something pressed against her lips. His mouth. She grinned and opened for him, moaning as his tongue flicked at her upper lip. She licked his mouth, his tongue, inhaling his wonderful sweat and leather scent. He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her close, and she felt her small breasts pressed against his rocky chest. Her hand traced his elbow, over his bicep, slipped under his armor so she could touch his skin.
Something boomed from above.
Her breath caught and her hand jerked back. Isa gasped, pulled away, hand still holding onto the back of her neck. Metal hissed from their sheaths. She licked his saliva still moist on her lips,
gripped her drawn dagger in clammy hands. She stared into the dark, imagined where in space he might be.
She started. “What—”
“Shh,” Isa said, nearly inaudible.
Hinges roared. A giant square of blinding light. Black shape darting down. Isa screamed, his hand torn free from the back of her neck.
“I thought I heard mice.” A demonic form towered over the opened door, blocking out the worst of the sun. Senka shielded her eyes. Isa squirmed in its grip. Dressna peered down into the tunnel, horns like black snakes. “Ah, another little mouse.”
Senka twisted, avoiding her grasping black talons. Senka growled, wrapped both hands around the dagger’s hilt and stabbed, driving the blow with all of her body weight. It pierced through Dressna’s carapace, sticking into bone. The great arm jerked from the hole with a warbling scream. She heard Dressna stumbling back, Isa cursing.
She jumped, threw her arms over the hole’s edge, and rolled out into a fighting stance. She scanned the environment, expecting to see an army behind the horrible woman. All that remained of it was an ocean of prints. Thankfully, no Asebor.
Dressna roared. “You! I know you!” She pointed with a gleaming talon, Isa flailed from her other fist, held by his flexing arm. “The cunt from the Nether!” She turned her ivory eyes on Isa, drew her veined arm over her chest to throw him. A hatchet shone in his hand, teeth pulled back in a snarl. She snapped her arm out and Isa’s hatchet collided with her wrist, dragging through it as he was tossed. She hissed as bits of broken carapace fell free from her forearm.
“Isa!” Senka fruitlessly reached for his tumbling form, rolling end over end and throwing out plumes of sand. His sword spun from his side, mirror bright in the sun.
Dressna pounded towards her, plucking Senka’s dagger free from her arm as if it were but a fly. A line of blood trickled from the wound. “Now you will pay for your defiance. Should’ve been a good little cunt and died like your daddy.” Dressna flashed a mouth that was all gums and broken teeth.
She remembered the wound Dressna had given her father. She punched a hole through him like he was nothing at all. He had taunted her in his last stand, giving Senka precious seconds to run. She realized then the only reason her father had led the Shadow Ones to the Black Furnaces was to give her a chance to flee. Since then, Senka’s mouth had been left with a strange mix of bitterness at the betrayal of his oaths and longing to avenge his death. Within the confines of the furnace chamber, Senka had the chance to escape through the hidden door. And she had. She left him there. Dead. He betrayed his oaths to save her, a final act of fatherly love. Senka’s eyes swam with hot tears, blinked them away, stepped back as Dressna advanced.
“Come here. I can make this quick, child. Just like your daddy.” Dressna flexed her arms and chest, striated muscles pulling taut. Her flesh was ribboned with what must have been the scars of hundreds of battles.
Senka ground the ball of one foot into the sand, cool against her soft boots. “Taste my sting Shadow!” Senka loaded a needle into her gun, raised it to her lips.
Dressna grimaced, wings rasped open, making her look twice as large. Senka narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips around the narrow tube and pushed the needle with a burst of breath. Dressna’s wings encircled her in a leathery shield, needle glinted from a wing. With an astonishing surge of power, she lunged at Senka, head dipped, horn tips shining.
Senka dove, fell into a roll, air whooshed against her side. She rose up on a knee, reloading her blowgun with shaking fingers. The needle fell, gone with the sands. Senka swallowed, fumbling for another under her bracer. She licked her salty upper lip.
Dressna let out a low, rumbling laugh. She dashed at her like a bull and Senka started to dodge. Dressna changed direction at the last second, catching Senka across the ribs with the side of a horn. Senka cried, hurled from her feet, legs thrown up. Something popped in her chest, breath choking out from her lungs.
Colors spun. Her guts lurched. The ground went away. She saw the cool blue of the sky. The glittering stone of the Tower. Her eyes widened. She let out a ragged croak, ground rushing horribly up. Seconds passed. She gripped the blowgun as hard as she could. Don’t let go, she told herself. She had the sense to get her feet under her, death beckoning for her to land head first, to spread her blood across the pale earth.
The sand welcomed her back with what should have been soft arms. But pain filled her world. Fire roared through her knees, muscles molten, tendons twanging. She rolled over onto her side and tears of agony streamed from her cheeks. She sucked air in hard through her mouth, drew in a clump of sand. She spat and coughed, sand coating the sides of her cheeks, under her lips, over her tongue and teeth. When you’re out of water, the sandstorm comes. Her father’s words thudded in her skull.
She stared at the ground, her vision fading in and out of focus. She watched as the mix of her spittle and blood was swallowed in those golden granules. Some granules were tiny shells, others were diamonds. Some were translucent shades of purple, green, yellow, and there were even pink bits. There was a hidden world there she had never learned to appreciate. How long had she carelessly walked over all this beauty?
The sand darkened with a looming shadow. A cloud? “No,” Senka whispered, knew it for a false hope. She flailed around to face her enemy.
Dressna was grinning down at her, eyes a terrible, pure white. “You are resilient. Now the wheel stops turning for you.”
Surprising herself, Senka dropped a needle into the gun on the first try. She shot. The needle hissed into one of Dressna’s breasts, the upper part of one gray tit spilling out over her armor. Senka started to wobble up to her feet, one of her legs not working properly. Any second now, Dressna would be a babe in her hands. Victory was within reach, vengeance hers for the taking. This beast would not die slowly.
Dressna plucked the needle free, examined it between her unnaturally long fingers. “Your trick will not work on me again. Every day since we last met, I’ve been consuming Acontium petals. My resistance is quite strong.”
“You lie!” Senka didn’t want to believe her, but knew in her gut she spoke true.
Dressna’s smile widened, edges of her black lips almost reaching her eyes.
“No!” Senka loaded and shot again, needle striking her scarred cheek. She brought no other poisons she realized with icy horror.
Dressna flicked the needle off with a growl and slashed at Senka. Senka dropped, and the talons whipped over her head. Senka drew her last dagger and sliced in one motion, aiming for a crippling strike. She watched her dagger cut true. It dragged through the upper part of Dressna’s forearm and traveled so deep she felt the tug of tendons.
Dressna shrieked, wings flapping and blasting sand at Senka. She held her bloody arm in the other hand; the fingers on the wounded hand uncontrollably twitched. “What have you done?” Dressna cried. “My hand!”
“Know my sting!” Senka screamed into the sand pelting her cheeks, uncaring of what more got into her mouth. Her legs burned, ankle throbbed, ribs stabbed at her. She felt a trail of wet trickling down her chest and over her stomach. She trudged into Dressna’s storm. And then it stopped.
Dressna screeched. Isa withdrew his sword from the back of her thigh, her back arched, her arm grasping at him. Snakes of blood pumped out from between overlapping plates. Somehow he’d managed to masterfully slip his blade between them, she thought with adoration.
She had to take the opening. She snatched a needle from a hip pouch tipped with a canary yellow gel, the essence of Angel’s Moss, and rammed it into her own neck. She gasped. Her pains were wiped away and her energy soared as if she had feasted and slept for days. She had about half a minute before the effect would wane, leaving her far worse.
“Worm!” Dressna swung her flopping arm at him. He easily ducked to avoid it, might have even been smiling. In a flash, her other hand clamped around his neck, one of his arms wedged between her palm and his throat, the sword trapped and stabbing the air.
Isa abandoned the blade, drew a hammer from his belt with his free hand, awkwardly bashing it against Dressna’s iron arm. She growled and Isa’s face turned red as blood, eyes bulging out.
Senka sprinted. Her knee roared with pain beneath the haze of Angel’s Moss. She twirled her dagger around into an overhand grip. She leapt, one arm reached out, fingers clawed and hooked onto the top of Dressna’s backplate. Dressna lurched, head whipping back.
Senka raised her blade, her lips peeled back into a wolfish grimace. In a burst of strength, she jerked herself up with the clinging arm, shrieking with the pain of her slaughtered village. Her dagger found home in the side of Dressna’s neck. Her flesh was wonderfully soft here.
Dressna threw her head back, dropping Isa, and reached for the girl, but Senka would not let go. Thinking of her father, she closed her teary eyes and waited for the inevitable plunging of talons through her ribs and lungs.
Senka’s eyes snapped open at a sudden shifting of weight. Dressna was tottering over, a gray hand falling by her side. Senka held on, riding her back as she fell with a thud. Was it over? She stared at the gouts of blood spurting over her sore dagger hand and up her arm.
Dressna’s legs twitched, her back waving with sputtering breaths. She groaned, started working a hand out to push herself up. Senka saw Isa, a mirage standing in front of Dressna’s head. He had his brutal hammer in one hand, bloody sword held like an extension of his arm in the other. He gave her a sharp nod.
All the struggle surviving the desert, searching for the Arch Wizard. All her hate for the Shadow Ones. All her pain. She closed her eyes, felt the salty breeze cool the sweat on her upper lip. She thought of how proud her father would have been. The years of enduring his cruel tutelage had only been to prepare her, not to make her life hell, she realized.
“For my father!” Senka screamed. She grabbed her dagger in both hands, fingers wet and sticky. She ripped her blade up, carved a line of scarlet up to the back of Dressna’s neck. Her life essence came out in waves, soiling the beautiful sand with her dark blood.
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 44