by Travis Bughi
Luckily, her worries over orcs turned out to be for naught. They neither saw nor encountered any flashes of green skin in the distance, and that was enough to satisfy them both. The orcs would not lie in hiding at the sight of only two humans walking, so no disturbances meant no orcs. Still, though, when night fell, they made no fire.
Yet they slept warmly.
Under piles of thick blankets, huddled beneath a shallow, rocky overhang, Emily’s body intertwined with Takeo’s to heat both their skin and their hearts. In the dim light of the moon, they watched snow fall from the sky while they whispered to each other with weapons an arm’s length away.
“Did you ever fear I wouldn’t find you?” Emily asked, cupping Takeo’s exposed ear to keep it warm.
“It was the only fear I had.” He smiled and kissed her. “Well, that, and that I might disobey you and die. The orcs were cruel. I was whipped bloody so many times I think it was only the cold that saved me from bleeding out. Ah, I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear that.”
“No, don’t hold back.” She shook her head. “You bear no burden alone while I’m here. Remember that.”
He smiled and held her close. She pulled his head down to nestle under her chin so she could comb his hair with her fingers. She loved to touch his hair.
“Every night was cold,” he said, chin rubbing against her chest as he spoke. “They let us huddle for warmth, but otherwise gave us no cover. Food was scarce and—are you sure you want to hear this? Okay, I’ll go on. Out of the five of us slaves they bought, they killed one the first night out of the village. He was an older man, a bit heavier than the rest of us. I don’t know how he became a slave, but I don’t think he anticipated dying so soon. The orcs made his corpse our only food. The others refused to eat him, at first, and they treated me with apprehension when I didn’t hesitate. I suppose it seemed barbaric of me, but I couldn’t be willfully ignorant like them. I knew that I would die unless I ate and that the orcs would see me die before they shared their own food. The others saw it, too, eventually, and they ate the old man, too. They never looked at me the same, though. For me, it was just one more horror to add to my list of sins, and they saw that. They could see that I was a monster at heart. They knew that I’d seen worse.”
“Okamoto guides you even in death,” Emily said. “He raised you to survive in the harshest of realities, and he was successful.”
“How cold does it make me, Emily?” Takeo asked, voice suddenly strained. “How terrible is it that I don’t mourn what I did? It should haunt me. I should have trouble sleeping. I should remember it like I do all those villagers I killed under Katsu’s command. Do you remember those three other slaves you saved alongside me? Did you notice that they disappeared early during the funeral? It’s because they could not stand to be near me. I could see it in their eyes. They knew what I was, a murderer. The angels made me see that, made me see the wrong in what I do, and yet it does not stop me from doing it. I will kill again. More horrors await us, and yet I will not hesitate to charge into them. Both you and me, we will kill again. We are just like the orcs. We are monsters.”
“Ssshhh,” Emily cooed and pulled him close. “Hush now, don’t say that. You’re starting to sound like I did back in Juatwa. Do you remember that? Do you remember when I faced the reality of war for the first time? Of course you do. You helped me then, so I will help you now. I have a story for you if you’ll only listen.
“I knew a knight in Lucifan once, named Sir Gavin Shaw. Yes, that knight. He was a rogue once, too, stealing from people without a care. He did it to survive and was only regretful once that he’ll admit. Thankfully, that regret resulted in him earning both a friend and a position in the Knight’s Order, and that would change everything. He met the angels and, just like you, saw all the wickedness inside himself. The light from their eyes revealed the blackness in his soul. Gavin realized the evil he was capable of—the crimes he’d already committed—and sought to correct the error of his ways. He became good and honorable, swore an oath to the angels, and set himself firmly on the side of the righteous. He would obey the laws rather than break them, enforce them even when others did not. Well, almost—he helped me rob a bank.
“During that robbery, though, we had a chance to kill Count Drowin’s leprechaun ally. Do you remember Jack Borgan? Also, do you remember Adelpha? The big, strong amazon? She was all for killing Jack, but Gavin wouldn’t let her. He said it was wrong, that death was too harsh a punishment for the leprechaun’s crimes. I sided with Gavin, reluctantly, and Adelpha promised that she would see the knight kill in cold blood before it was over. However, Gavin never did, not even when Sir Mark begged him for it.
“What I want you to see is that Gavin’s actions did not make this world a better place. Lucifan is not better off with Jack Borgan and Sir Mark alive. Imagine if I had been like Gavin. There would still be a Count Drowin, and a Heliena, and a Jabbar. The world would not be safer. Sure, perhaps I am a colder person for what I’ve done. Maybe I am not the good and honorable knight nor the little girl from the plains I once was. Maybe, just maybe, some could find cause to call me just as wretched as those I’ve killed. I would disagree, but say nothing. Just like the orcs, you and I do not balk at death, but that does not make us the same as our enemies. Quartus knew that, and he acted accordingly.
“When Lucifan faced its greatest threat—that of total annihilation from within and without—Quartus did not give his blessing to Gavin, despite his years of training and dedication. He did not place his trust in the good and honorable knight who was sworn to him. Quartus instead chose a little farmer’s daughter from the Great Plains whom he knew would not shy from the reality of what had to be done. Some places in this world are too dark for light to shine, and in those places, only darkness can fight.
“You should know that that little girl didn’t chose Gavin either. He was too rigid to accept the woman she would become. He was bound too tightly to his ideals, and so he lost her. Now that little girl lies with a samurai in the frigid mountains of Khaz Mal, sleeping well, in spite of all the enemies that surround her, because she knows that she can trust the samurai to do what he must. You might have been there for the angels’ death, Takeo, but that doesn’t mean you can’t become a part of what keeps their dream alive. You and I are not orcs. You are mine, and I am yours. And I love you.”
Takeo stayed silent for a moment, circling his fingers along her side while she continued to stroke his hair. The night grew darker, the snow fell faster, and Takeo took a deep breath.
“I love you, too,” he whispered.
She kissed his forehead, and the two drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 6
Lucky for them, the snow stopped falling in the night, and they only had to deal with one layer of puffy white no higher than their shins. The powder crunched under their boots and leached warmth from the air, but at least the snow wasn’t getting any higher. Each time Emily stopped, she had to sweep a spot clean with one gloved hand before plopping down on a cold rock, breathing in enough air until either she regained her breath or her cheeks started to freeze, whichever came first. As they traveled further north, it tended to be the latter.
The mountains grew steeper, but thanks to the map, they found paths and valleys that kept their climbing to a minimum. Emily was relieved to have it, honestly believing it to be the single most important item she carried. There were few times she’d been so fearful of getting lost in the wilderness, and this journey through the Khaz Mal mountains was definitely on that list.
Finding food was a blessing of gargantuan proportions, but ironically, doing so made the going worse because everything needed to be carried. Other dwarven outposts were marked on the map, but they were few, far between, and too much out of the way. Instead, Emily and Takeo turned into the unashamed scavengers they’d been in Savara, taking what they could and eating what could be eaten, no matter how it tasted. None of it was really much worse than the plain bread she’d eaten all her l
ife. Truthfully, it was only the water that bugged her. Cold, always cold, no matter if she stored it or heated melted snow, it was rarely warm enough not to make her stomach churn when she drank it. Her lips would go cold, too, first by the water and then by the wind as it swept across her moistened lips. They dried and cracked, along with Takeo’s, and she found herself sucking them in constantly to keep them warm.
The trip sounded worse than it was, though. They always slept warm at night, intertwined and holding each other close, making whatever happened earlier in the day worth it. Emily was thankful it was just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere, and as they let their walls and boundaries fall, Emily felt closer to Takeo than she ever had before. For once, he even shared her fascination with their surroundings, for as harsh as Khaz Mal could be, it was honestly and truly beautiful.
The white snow covered the rocks and scattered trees like a blanket frozen in mid shake. White, sparkly mounds rolled like grassy hills over all, leaving only those things at least waist high—like trees and large rocks—to jut out like tiny boats in a frozen ocean.
Only the ocean had been in a storm, the greatest storm of all time, creating the largest mountains Emily had ever seen. Their sheer size and steep rises made her jaw drop and her head shake in wonderment, contemplating how such a thing was even possible. Some mountains were so steep that they seemed like swords sized for a creature of unimaginable height and strength, thrust into the air, point up. Their shadows, both deep and long, covered Emily and Takeo’s travels for hours. For the first time in her life, Emily felt like she was in a place where she could escape from the life she’d chosen. In Savara, she’d felt like she was in a land that time forgot. In Khaz Mal, she felt like she was in a land that time had never touched.
And then a dragon would come, and the world would shatter.
Huge, magnificent, and powerful, they flew in solitude across the skies. They were larger than thunderbirds, but smaller than rocs—the only things Emily had ever seen fly without feathers. Their scaly bodies were always a solid color—whether red, white, blue, green, or black—and this made them seem regal and uniform, almost purposeful and deliberate, as if they’d chosen their colors at birth. Emily envied their ability to traverse the mountains so easily, soaring through the cold air and over the mountain peaks without any concern for the difficulty such terrain posed to the likes of humans.
“They breathe fire,” she remembered one villager, a former pirate, in the foothills warning her. “It comes out like a jet of water, only it’s liquid fire they breathe, so hot it melts stone. They are hot to touch, them dragons, or so goes the legend. That’s why they stay up in the mountains, see? It’s the only place with enough food and cold weather for their liking. The frozen wastes beyond is too scarce of game and no caves for them to make their lairs out of, lucky damned vikings.” She recalled him wagging a wrinkled finger at her, saying, “Don’t go sleeping in no caves bigger than they have a right to be! If you hear one of them fire-breathers coming, you best find some place to hide from the skies, you hear?”
She did hear, but so did her curiosity, and so when a dragon came, it was with great reluctance that she dove for the nearest cover. On average, she saw one every two days, usually at an extreme distance, but occasionally too close for comfort. No matter which, though, she watched them with parted lips and unblinking eyes.
Once, just once, a dragon had landed nearby and breathed fire. That moment had been one of the few times Emily had been as equally terrified as she had been mesmerized.
She and Takeo had heard the dragon coming before they saw it. The two of them had been trudging through a shallow, open valley when they heard a distant roar, like a battle horn echoing off the mountains all around them. With such an echo, they had no way of knowing from which direction the dragon was coming, so the two shared a frantic, knowing glance and dashed for the nearest valley peak, which they hoped would hold an overhang or oversized boulder to hide under. It was the safest bet, they thought.
They dashed through the snow as fast as their legs could carry them, breathing the icy air so deeply that it hurt their lungs. White steam flew from their mouths, but they kept going until they had scaled up and over the nearest ridge. On the other side, they stopped, locking eyes with a cyclops headed straight for them.
Humanoid in appearance with two arms and legs, the cyclops was three times as tall as Emily and as ugly as an ogre. Its one eye, placed in the center of its forehead, topped a bulbous nose and a mouth with smashed and crooked teeth. It wore nothing but a giant loin cloth, apparently unfazed by the biting cold, and in one of its hands was a wooden club the size of Takeo, which it dragged in the snow behind it. The two humans and the one cyclops stared at each other for a moment, both shocked to see the other.
And then they all heard a whoosh of giant wings.
Emily and Takeo dove for the nearest cover—a boulder wedged atop the crest overlooking the valley where the snow and ice had eroded a crevice beneath it—while the cyclops roared and charged for the same space. None would ever know whether or not it would have fit because the cyclops stopped when the dragon landed in front of it.
The dark red dragon shook the earth so hard with its landing that Emily and Takeo bounced completely off the ground. Its huge body and grand wings blocked nearly their entire view, and its swishing tail whipped long and fast over where they hid. They heard the cyclops roar again, this time closer to a shriek, and in return, the dragon gave a deafening roar and breathed fire.
Its whole body seemed to glow, and despite it breathing fire in the opposite direction, Emily could feel the heat all the way through her thick layers of clothes. It was so hot she couldn’t even watch, having to close her eyes and turn her head to protect her face. The cyclops screamed for one brief moment as the thunderous roar of flames overtook it, making Emily’s ears ring and her whole body shake.
And then the flames stopped, and total silence held sway for a moment before she heard the clomp of jaws smacking shut and felt the ground shake again.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh faded into the distance, and Emily opened her eyes.
The valley’s edge was still burning. Raw stone was melted, glowing red and still alight with flames in some areas, while in others, it flowed like a river to the lowest point. All the snow was gone, and not a single drop of water remained—all had been turned to white, hot steam. There was no dragon, nor cyclops corpse.
After that, Emily decided she’d seen enough dragons for one lifetime.
They walked in silence for the rest of that day, but when they settled down for the night, their encounter was the only thing they could talk about.
“I have never seen anything like that,” Takeo said, slowly shaking his head. “That was unbelievable, amazing.”
“It was.” Emily nodded. “When I was warned about them, they didn’t seem much different from thunderbirds but . . . wow. That was incredible.”
“It’s too bad you don’t control one of them.”
Emily laughed and slipped under their pile of skins and into Takeo’s arms.
“That certainly would be terrifying, wouldn’t it?” She kissed his neck. “And think of all the useful things I could have it do, like light a fire or carry us out of here. I would love to fly again. I hope there’s still a pegasus left in Lucifan when I return.”
“You don’t think there will be?” Takeo asked, suddenly concerned.
“Well, you tell me. I don’t want to sound harsh, my love, but it was Sir Mark O’Conner we left in control of Lucifan. Count Drowin had planned to slaughter all the pegasi during his brief reign from the shadows. Who’s to say Sir Mark won’t carry out that same plan? For all I know, it could have been his plan, originally, and Drowin agreed to it. I don’t want to think about it, honestly, but I have to prepare myself for the worst. O’Conner helped assassinate the angels. Who knows what else he’s capable of?”
Takeo didn’t offer his opinion. It might have been that he felt guilty a
t the mention of the angels, or perhaps he didn’t want to add his own dark insight to Emily’s brutal outlook. Instead, he held her close, and their combined heat warded off the ever increasing chill.
“It would be nice if your colossus was here already,” he said. “I’d feel better, I think, not that I’m uncomfortable being in danger. However, I prefer to face enemies I can kill—or at least those I have a chance of surviving. It’s not even the dragons, really. I keep worrying about running into orcs or a cyclops. Did you see the size of that last one? He could have used my katana for a toothpick.”
“Don’t you worry about the cyclops. They only have one eye, and I have a bow. If they have any intelligence at all, they’ll back away slowly. If not, and they ask me who blinded them, I will tell them no one did.”
“That still leaves the orcs,” he said, tracing a finger down her spine. “And as skilled as I am, it will count for nothing in an open landscape with nowhere to run. It will only get worse once we’re beyond these mountains and out on the frigid, northern wastelands. There will be nowhere to hide out there, and we are only a few days away.”
She didn’t have an answer to that. She let Takeo trace her skin and enjoyed the feel of it. He always made it so difficult to fall asleep when he did that.
“You’re still having the colossus come to you, right?” he asked.
“I am,” she said and sighed. “I second guess myself a lot, thinking I should just have it head back to Lucifan and squish Sir Mark, but it’s moments like that, with the dragon, that make me think I’d be better off with the colossus nearby. Not to mention if it was here, we could ride on its shoulders. It wouldn’t be flying, but it would beat walking.”