by D. H. Dunn
That enemy was not Terminus. As terrifying as the prospect of an apparently two-headed, massive Dragon was, the enemy was Tanira. The Dragons were merely resources, weapons in her arsenal. Terminus was the A-bomb, the Manhattan Project. If they could deny her this prize, they might still have a chance.
“Another run through of your plan would be the seventh such execution,” the Speaker said. He was closest to Drew, even his large form rendered small by the size of the immense passageway.
“Are you actually. . . complaining, Speaker?” He gave the Yeti a curious look, trying to inject a little levity into the mood and keep morale up. The Yeti’s expression was unreadable, but Upala’s grin and Lhamu’s giggle were clear positive results.
“Of course not, Altered,” the Speaker said. His dark eyes narrowed from deep in his white fur. “Merely observing.”
“The repetition has value, Drew,” Upala said, taking a moment to lean against the smooth far wall. “Even if we are tired, we will not have the luxury of thought when the time comes. We appreciate what you are doing.”
“We do!” Lhamu said, running back to the front of the hallway, toward the entrance. “Especially since I get to be the Dragon.”
Not surprising to Drew, she seemed the least tired.
“You’ve done a great job at that,” Drew said smiling. “Let’s run it through one more time and then our grumpy Yeti friend can take a break.”
Lhamu laughed again, running out into the snow and taking her place. Drew thought he might finally get a little reaction from the Speaker, but the big creature just lumbered off, heading back to his own spot farther inside the hallway. Upala stepped as close to the wall as she could, blending into the shadows of the poorly lit space.
Drew did the same, though being closer to the opening, he was not as obscured. He hoped that Tanira might be moving so fast that she wouldn’t see him until it was too late. They waited for the Speaker to reach his position, so far inside the shadows of the hallway that Drew could only see the colored glowing of the Yeti’s crystals.
“He’s ready,” Lhamu called from outside. The mental connection she and the Speaker had been able to establish was proving very helpful.
Upala gave a small flash of fire from her hand, a flicker in the shadow that showed she was prepared. Drew stuck his hand out where Lhamu could see it, flashing the Caenolan a thumbs up.
“Here I come!” Lhamu called out, running into the space.
The second Drew saw her cross the threshold into the hallway he threw his crimson energy shield over the doorway, bathing himself and Lhamu in red light and blocking the exit from the Vault.
As she was supposed to, Lhamu kept running forward. He could see her lips working on a three count as Drew had told her to. He figured it would take Tanira that long to realize what had happened.
When she hit three she spun around toward Drew, and he moved his shield farther inside the hallway, compressing the space. He shivered from the sudden rush of cold air as he moved out of the shield and exposed to the weather.
Now it would be up to the others.
Inside, he saw Upala bring up her own shield a bit farther down the passage, standing on the other side of her barrier just as Drew was. Lhamu was caged between the two shields, with nowhere to go and no Manad Vhan to attack.
Lhamu made an amusing pantomime of pretending to attack the shields, making animal noises and clawing the air with her hands. Drew laughed despite himself, her willingness to find fun even in this activity helped bring a little light into the dark affair.
Now the Speaker teleported in from his position outside Upala’s barrier, Lhamu turning and pretending to attack him. She made a funny show of breathing fire, but that fire was the key to the whole plan.
The Speaker would teleport in and out of the space, and taunt the beasts into using their fire. Drew’s hope was the fire would use up the oxygen before the Speaker was killed or Tanira and her Dragons managed to bring the shields down.
The Speaker continued to repeatedly appear and vanish in puffs of lavender energy, finally materializing outside Drew’s shield, blocking out the light as he stood next to them in the snow.
Drew dropped his shield with an exhaustive grunt as Lhamu came running up to him, grinning.
“How did I do?” she asked, her dark eyes squinting against the noon sun.
“Aces, kid,” he said, rustling her bluish hair and feeling the fin-like ridges underneath. “Just like all the other times. Remember what you are supposed to do when this actually is happening though.”
“I know,” she said, shoulders slumping. “Run to that small room at the far end of the hall, the empty one.”
“Yes, the empty one,” Upala said, walking up. “Not the ones with the Dragon heads in them.”
The Speaker walked away from them, moving toward the edge of the rocky outcropping they stood on and peered toward the north.
Drew followed his gaze, knowing what lay beyond his sight, and who. He rubbed his hands together behind his back, trying and failing not to worry.
“I am sure Nima is all right,” Upala said, taking his hand and intertwining her fingers with his.
Drew nodded with a sigh. He gripped her hand tighter, pulling strength from her.
“If I could have stopped her, I would have,” he said. “I actually felt better at the time, knowing she was there to keep an eye on Kater. Now I’m worried he’s as likely to kill her as Tanira.”
He threw his hands in the air in frustration. Now that their exercise was over, the emotions he had been keeping behind bulkheads were leaking.
“I don’t know, Upala. All of you are looking at me as if I know what I am doing. I really have no idea what-”
Upala smiled, putting two fingers to his lips.
“Drew, you have done all you can. It is all right. I think what we all need is a little rest.”
He could feel his mind still racing like a flag in a windstorm, trying to think of everything he might be forgetting. But she was right, there was no way to prepare for every eventuality, and if they were exhausted they were sure to fail.
“Fair enough,” he said, leaning over and kissing her lightly on the forehead. “You know, I’m pretty lucky to have you around to keep me in check.”
“You are right, you are,” she said with a smile. “Even luckier, there’s a few cots I left in my pack out there. I think a short rest under the blue skies might be just what we both need.”
“I’m not tired,” Lhamu announced with pride in her voice.
“Yet I am,” the Speaker said, walking slowly towards one of the walls in the massive hallway and dropping his white-furry bulk into a sitting position.
“Foretold, perhaps you might sit with me?” With one paw, he indicated an empty space beside him. “To watch over me while I rest?”
“I suppose.” Lhamu let out a sigh as she walked over to the Yeti. “But it sounds boring.”
“The trials of life,” the Yeti said, exhibiting what sounded to Drew like a contented noise as Lhamu sat down next to him.
“Shall we?” Upala asked, her hand already gently pulling him away. He followed with a smile, listening to the complaints of every limb and muscle.
Perhaps all of this won’t be needed. It was possible that Nima and Kater would succeed after all, and they would return with the Helm in tow and then all they’d have to deal with was Kater.
He chuckled. Things had gotten so bad, that was the outcome they were hoping for. She took his hand and began leading him towards the cots, the broad snow-filled plain beckoning, promising rest and perhaps hope.
Hope that things were going better for Nima.
When the Fourteenth Fear came for Upala in her sleep, she was already frightened.
The nightmare entered her dreams in pieces, as it always did. Its claws would tear at whatever happy fantasy her mind had tried to create, pulling at the flesh of her hopes and ripping them apart.
Whatever scene her heart had placed her i
n before had been washed away and forgotten, now depositing her by the familiar stones and the three low, barren trees that had been scarred into her memory.
Always the Dragon would bring her back here, to where her parents had been killed and her fear was born.
It was a nearly featureless land, though she still remembered the heat. The feeling of perspiration dripping down the back of her neck as she and Kater walked alongside their parents.
There was a dry wind here, something she had never felt in her years around Ish Rav Partha and its mountains. It was a sandy, rocky place with few trees and no one save their small family, on the run from some crime neither she nor Kater had ever fully determined.
She could see her mother’s hand, olive-skinned like hers as it gripped her tiny fingers. Beyond the hand was an arm, and then the rest was lost to the shadows of memory, features erased like stones in a river. Her father was nearby, just a presence. Void of detail, his form still brought a feeling of safety and security.
When the Dragon came, it came from behind. As it always did. There was no warning, no fearsome roar or the rush of wind running through its wings as it dove. The only sign was the sudden clasp of her mother’s hand, tight upon her own.
The scream was next, and each time it seemed a little louder as it pierced her ears, just as the first claws ran through her mother’s skin.
The hand that had been holding Upala’s fell to the ground, severed as her mother’s blood seeped onto the blistering sand. Then the screams in the air were her own.
In a flash, she was encased in a shimmering field of crimson energy, a sphere created by her father that surrounded both her and her brother. It pushed them away from the beast, her father reduced to a dwindling shadow as he turned to face the creature.
Looking back while Kater pounded on the sides of the shield, she got only a glimpse of the Dragon. But it was enough.
Through the red dots of her father’s energy barrier, the beast appeared to be red as blood as it raised one powerful arm, her father a tiny form in the shadow of the Dragon’s wings.
The talons of the Dragon tore into her father as if he were made of paper, the shield around her and Kater collapsing like shattered glass. They tumbled to the rocky ground as a pair, the sharp stones cutting into their skin and drawing long wounds across their arms and legs.
Those cuts would heal in moments, but the terror that gripped her heart would not. Kater’s hand replaced her mother’s, pulling her away from the Dragon as it continued to tear into the dead bodies that had been her parents only moments before, its triumphant roar piercing the sky.
On that day, she and her brother had run and never looked back. In every nightmare that had burrowed through her dreams since, it had been a blur of that mad dash, with the beast’s cries at their heels.
Kater would lead them deeper into the desert, then into a canyon. Through day and night, they would run, always feeling as if the Dragon was just behind them, claws ready to dig into their backs.
Yet on this dream, she turned back again. The form of the Fifteenth Fear still stood over her parents, yet now there were new figures present, standing about halfway between her and the Dragon, like cattle waiting to be slaughtered.
She planted her feet, ignoring Kater’s pulling hand as she squinted at the people standing there. Drew’s face became clear, deep green eyes looking at her without judgement, offering her a chance for a new life and direction.
Next to him stood Nima, her short, dark hair framing a beaming smile. Slightly behind was Merin, brows furrowed as she looked back at Upala, one child holding each of their hands.
Behind them all was the onrushing figure of a Dragon, but no longer the Fifteenth Fear but an even larger beast, a vicious mountain of teeth and malice, crimson scales giving way to a skin as dark as night.
Terminus blotted out the sun, leaving all before it into shadow as it raced forth, casting waves of malevolence before it that crashed into Upala like a tide of anger and hatred.
The jaws of its twin heads opened, Drew and the others still standing still as they looked at her, oblivious to their danger.
Upala opened her mouth to scream, and found herself shouting her panic into the mountains.
The scene slowly blurred away, the hot temperatures of her dream world giving way to the harsh, cold realities of Ish Rav Partha’s snowy plains.
She sat up, blinking away the sleep as her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the crisp, blue sky as she and Drew lay on the cots they had laid outside the Vault of Terminus. Drew was next to her, his arm coming around her shoulder as he asked if she was all right.
She barely heard him, her eyes coming to focus on the figure standing several paces ahead of them. A man she thought dead, immolated by Drew’s angry rage on the bridge of Rogek Shad.
Garantika smiled back at her, the sun behind him casting his dark beard in shadow. He bore the results of his attack, his skin covered in burns, much of his hair singed away.
He had one strong arm wrapped around Lhamu’s neck, the girl’s eyes wide as her head crystal gleamed like a second sun. His other hand dropped the thin metal shell of a blink tube onto the snow, her brother’s invention used against them.
“I live,” he rasped. Drew bolted upright as he heard the man’s voice echo across the small clearing of snow. “Thanks to Kater’s inventions.”
Of course! She berated herself for not thinking of it sooner. They knew the Line had been to her brother’s fortress, studied and stolen his technology. Garantika must have used the device to blink away from Drew’s attack.
We should have looked for him, her mind cried. We should have made sure he was dead.
Upala stood, taking a few steps forward into the snow, one hand held out, praying he wouldn’t harm the girl. But of course he would, she knew. Garantika had shown himself capable of anything.
“What do you want?” Drew shouted. From the massive shadowed doorway of the Vault, the huge form of the Speaker bound into the snow.
“Your surrender,” Garantika said, staring with intensity directly at Upala. The terror from her dream whirled inside her like a maelstrom, Lhamu’s panicked eyes mirroring her own from so long ago.
“I demand your surrender, or the girl will die.”
22
Garantika’s burned and scarred visage sneered back at Drew, white teeth showing through what remained of his beard. Only slightly taller than Lhamu, the leader of the Line glared back at them from over her shoulder, one powerful arm wrapped around her neck.
Lhamu’s eyes were wide, two small webbed hands gripping the Rakhum’s forearm while her headcrystal blazed a brilliant deep blue. Her stare darted back and forth between Drew and the Speaker.
“I caution you to release her, Rakhum.” The Yeti’s deep voice vibrated across the snowy plain, a current of menace running through his words. “I will not permit harm to the Foretold.”
“No.” Garantika smiled. “You will not, Yeti. It is not within your rocha. Which is why you do not act now. You are uncertain if you can remove the girl before I can kill her. A quick snap of her neck is all it would take.”
Drew held his breath, feeling the heat of his anger pushing into his hands, flames licking his flesh. He could hit Garantika from here, he was certain of it. But could he do so before the man could act?
Next to him, he could see in Upala’s eyes she was coming to the same conclusion with her own abilities. Separating Lhamu from Garantika with a shield might be possible, but the risk was still too high.
Sighing, she shook her head.
“Fine,” Drew said, lowering his hands but allowing the fire to stay there. “What do you want then, Garantika? You’ve lost, the Line is defeated. What is this, petty revenge?”
The man tightened his grip on Lhamu, laughing back at Drew. The frayed remains of his beard fluttered in the wind with the action.
“You think us defeated? You think I am the Line?”
With one hand, he pointed off towards
the distant mountains, snow-capped peaks with white plumes streaming from their summits.
“She is the Line!” he shouted. “She is not defeated, you cannot defeat her. She will rain Dragons and death down upon you all!”
“You really think your Rakhum will be spared by the Dragons? Upala cast her hand toward the yawning open door to the Vault. “You think Terminus will step with care as he seeks his revenge? Are you that naive?”
“We shall see,” he said, shaking his head at her. “I watched your brother leave, headed for the north. You think he will take the Helm from her, but I have faith. Faith in my daughter, and in Kater’s foolishness. When they return-“
“Listen, Garantika,” Drew said. “This is-“
“-when they return, Manad Vhan. You will surrender to her, both of you. Surrender to the Line. Once that is complete, I will release the girl.”
“Why would they do that?” Lhamu’s voice was clear as it rang across the small plateau, free of panic or worry. Drew was impressed with the girl’s grit. “You plan to hurt a lot of people, and I am only one person.”
“You are a wise girl,” Garantika said with a chuckle. “But they are not. They cannot make the hard choices needed, pay the difficult costs. As I have.”
“Hard choices?” Drew spat the words back. “Those were not agents of the Line your daughter killed, they were just regular people, innocents simply living their lives!”
“You never trusted these people,” Upala added. “Your people. Never told the Rakhum the truth of the Line. Let them decide if this is what they wanted!”
“What we have done,” Garantika seemed to grind his teeth as he spoke. “We did for the good of the Rakhum. You dare speak to me of trust, god on high? The Line could not afford to trust!”