Beneath Stained Glass Wings

by K Kazul Wolf

  The king’s screams aren’t human, despite his form. He thrashes and pulls and wriggles as the vines wrap around him before falling over, silent for one second. He opens his mouth, about to start his tirade again, but the vines rush in. They crawl from the stone nestled in his hands, up his body and in-between his lips. He chokes for a second. The little threads of root-like darkness poke up through his pores, and finally, the vines cover him. His body, something once capable of gold and light, is consumed in obsidian.

  Relief drips through me, and if it weren’t for Vito behind me, I would collapse. Every inch of me feels weighted.

  We did it, and yet, I don’t care. Vito and I toppled a king and his kingdom and all I care is that I can feel his heart racing as fast and jittery as mine, that we’re both, somehow, still standing.

  Well, maybe not exactly standing. And maybe not alive for much longer if this vine keeps climbing my ankle.

  I clench my hands, focusing on the black marks that smother my body, calling to the moisture around me. My head swims. I can’t cast a mirage, the bindings of my markings crushing against me in aching soreness, a new muscle pushed long past its limits.

  But…I don’t think I need to use an illusion. As I touch the water in the air around me, the vines retreat, all the slithering darkness cringing away from where Vito and I lie. Maybe it remembers who broke it. Maybe it knows I won’t hurt it like the king tried to. Or perhaps it respects the life that was taken from it. I suppose I have no way of knowing.

  The vines spread faster and thicker from where they consumed the king, twisting and curling and stretching toward the high ceiling in thick masses, twining together to create large branches and vines. It moves like a snake, but slower, almost more methodic.

  What is this thing? I can barely keep my touch on the water and think at the same time. The ceiling cracks and shatters under the pressure of the moving shadows, a chunk of the golden roof landing maybe a yard from Vito and me. I should move, but where would we go? We’re both broken. Neither of us can fly, crippled and tired and useless.

  But…would we have to fly? Aren’t we supposed to be falling? The stone was what kept this place up, but I’m not sure that’s true anymore. If we fell, I’d have to feel it. The drop should have lifted us off the ground, and if that somehow didn’t happen, Vito and I would be buried in the rubble of impact.

  Perhaps it’s still keeping this place afloat. Maybe the illusion never lost its purpose; it’s giving the trapped life inside the stone a second chance.

  There’s movement against my back. For a moment I panic—there’s a hunter or a dragon or something about to stab me, strangle me. Then my focus snaps back.

  “V-Vito?” It comes out as a gasp with the strain.

  The pressure leaves my back. Panic crashes through me as I nearly fall, my grip on the water fluttering as I try to hold it, try to understand where he could have gone.

  Then his fingers are on my shoulder. My grip on the water firms. His hands move, arms curling around me. His blood sinks through my clothes and I want to do anything I can to help him.

  “What happened?” he whispers hoarsely in my ear, leaning his head on my shoulder.

  I sway slightly, leaning back against him. “I cracked the stone. This came out of it.” I nod at the mass of moving darkness, breaking through the windows as I speak, slowly clogging the windows and draining away our light. “It consumed the king.”

  “Why is it staying away from us?”

  “Because we haven’t tried to kill it. I think.”

  He’s quiet. I almost close my eyes and let myself sleep, but I want to see the last of the light before it fades.

  “So it wasn’t that sort of stone,” he murmurs.

  “What?”

  “The stone. It wasn’t a rock sort of stone. It was a seed.”

  Oh. A giggle shakes up from my gut, bursting from my lips. Of course. In a way, it all sort of makes sense and doesn’t, at the same time. What’s more powerful than a seed? The potential for an entire lifetime in the smallest form imaginable. And somehow, I managed to crack it, let it out to crawl around us, to trap us. I don’t even know how we’re going to escape.

  I don’t even know if we will.

  But the king’s gone. Caelum is being devoured by black roots, the place that brought death and desert to the world below being eaten by illusion and life.

  I snort. Fitting.

  “What?” Vito murmurs in my ear.

  “Nothing.” It feels silly to explain.

  His arms unwind from my middle, picking up my hands from where they lie in my lap. The sun is setting, casting sepia colors from the remaining shards of the one window above us not taken by darkness. The vines are more branches now, surrounding us. It’s a good thing we were by the wall, or it would have pressed us against the stone structure and then broken through and consumed that, too. The window above wouldn’t still be there, either. The gap in it is large enough for a full-sized dragon, but I’ve no idea how we could get to it.

  “Ava?” His voice is so quiet. “I’ve been wondering, who is Maur? And that woman before, you called her ‘Mom’…what did I miss?”

  I snort again. “Never thought to ask before?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t care. I had you back again.”

  There really wasn’t much of a chance, either. We’ve been running ever since I woke up.

  Quietly, I explain everything. How I built the wings, how I found Maur, how I found my mom and discovered my grandfather. And how I found my words. Maur had to have told him some of it, but he doesn’t interrupt or seem impatient. He nuzzles his face into the crook of my neck, and I lean my head against his shoulder.

  “Will you tell me what the rest of them mean someday? The new ones?” he asks. “Will you show me, once we’re out of here?”

  A slight flush creeps along my face and neck as the light dims the room to blue-grey, the vines all but stopped in their reaching and stretching. Can he feel the heat of my skin?

  “Of course.” I close my eyes, listening to his breathing. We should try to leave. We need to. But even thinking is hard, and every part of me hurts. “I want nothing more.” It’s kind of scary to think about it now, to show Vito everything, all the words he may have not understood or known before, the meaning behind every inch of my skin. But it still makes me excited, too. The idea of him maybe showing me more of his own words gives me a jolt of queasy excitement, a little smile curving across my lips.

  Time passes. I can’t tell if I’m awake or dreaming. But the blue-grey light from the window never changes. I should say something to Vito about it, but I can’t seem to find my voice. It’s as worn as my muscles are.

  I start. My touch isn’t on the water and the vines aren’t inching closer. The stone’s stopped growing.

  “What’s wrong?” Vito murmurs, breath warm against my skin.

  “It…it’s…” My words are hard to string together, so hard to think straight.

  A new voice. “What’s wrong? I swear, I face an army to come and rescue you, hoping you’re alive, and there you two sit. Hugging.”

  I push away from Vito, though he turns to look, too. I try to crawl forward, toward the window, but I fumble over my own wings. A figure crouches in the jagged opening in the stained glass above us.

  “M-Maur?” I choke out.

  He jumps from the window, rippling between forms for one moment to glide down, but his feet touch the floor as a human.

  “Y-you’re alive?” Tears stream down my face and I don’t know if he can understand my words, garbled as they are. He comes to me, lifting me from the ground, and holds me.

  For a moment, shock stops my tears, freezes my muscles. Then it breaks and I clutch him back, a loud sob breaking past my lips. Not everything’s gone and broken. The place I called home for most of my life is probably destroyed, considering how long the vines crawled outward from the stone, the life that I once took comfort in is wiped from existence, but I have Maur and I hav
e Vito and things might be okay.

  “There, there.” He pulls me away awkwardly, but still supports me—if it weren’t for his grip, I’d be a heap on the floor. “We’d better get out of here. I can’t imagine the structure of this place is any sort of intact, and there are a few confused and angry hunters and dragons out there.”

  “Th-thank you.” The words slip and slur from my mouth.

  He blinks. “Of course, Ava. Thank you.” He does something that makes me wonder if I’m hallucinating: he smiles. “Don’t let it get to your head, but I have to wonder if any other illusionist or dragon could have pulled this off. You’re a hell of a kid, serpent. Now, enough with this talk. Vito, support her.”

  My dragon’s arms wrap around my middle, his body leaning against mine as we hold each other up. Maur’s skin seems to roll and his scales flow out until he’s as black as the darkness around us. Carefully, he balances on his hind legs and grabs us. He leaps for the window, the movement so powerful it sets my head spinning, the wind ripping blood and sweat-soaked hair from my forehead.

  Everywhere I look, it’s blue and black swirling together, like we’re trapped inside the stone. The idea sends my heart trembling in uneven beats around my chest, but then I catch glimpses of the white stars, the full moon breaking through the black and blue.

  Maur sways as he navigates through thick branches, but my eyes can’t focus on the blurs of blue surrounding us. What are they? Finally, Maur crashes through a collection of blue and we descend slowly.

  I look back and gasp. The blue belongs to giant, long, pointed leaves hanging from the branches of a massive tree. The entire city’s been consumed by the branches, and I catch glimpses of golden roofs gleaming silver in the light of the leaves.

  We glide, no clouds protecting the base of the city for once. There’s only rock and stone cracked by the thick tangle of the dark tree, branches spreading thinner and thinner as we descend the length of the trunk that’s nearly as thick as Caelum itself was.

  It’s all gone. Devoured.

  My eyes flutter shut. My eyelids display sparks of blue and white as my brain slowly quiets, Maur’s warm paw rocking me off to a hazy sleep.

  For the last time, I fall.

  45

  The Resolution

  It’s a few days before the rain begins to fall.

  People recover beneath the strange blue leaves, staring at the tree that’s planted itself on the edge of Mercatus’ moat. We’re all refugees with the king gone, dragon, Azelain, and Story Collector alike. Most of the dragons disappeared or fled after Caelum was destroyed—or perhaps most were killed. I haven’t met any since the fall, mostly just illusionists and ground dwellers. It’s a relief to see familiar faces in the crowds, lined among makeshift beds.

  My mother is not one of them.

  We hold a funeral without a body, though I keep searching for days after, hoping beyond hope that she isn’t really gone. The only traces of her are crumpled wings and too much blood. My mind wants it to be the king’s, but my heart knows better. Mourning for my mother the second time hurts more than the first.

  Maur stays busy puzzling over the tree. The leaves are made mostly of water, tied together by the plant’s membranes, the daylight shimmering over them and casting rainbows like dragons’ wings. The composition doesn’t bother him so much as why it didn’t let the city fall, or why it didn’t crush it. You can still travel through its tangled trunk and find bits of the city in there.

  Maur guesses that it has some loyalty to the place since it was its home for so long, since that plot of land once homed the forest it once was.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe even the strange tree understands what a home is.

  Maur, Vito, and I plan to visit the ruins again when we’re done here. Vito’s still recovering, Maur’s still helping out, and when I’m not with either of them, I’m working.

  Most of the Azelain disappeared shortly after the battle ended. The Story Collectors took charge, started planning what would be the next move for them. For everyone. They reach out to other towns to establish what food sources we have, what resources are at our disposal. They send people to try to contact the other countries that Caelum so long shut out, though they haven’t heard back yet. The thick border of unforgiving sand at the sides of the country kept out everyone but traders, but now with the rains...

  I'd known there were other countries, I’d gathered bits and pieces of outdated information in my father’s books, but otherwise, I've never known too much about them. It seems the Story Collectors are the same. Any solid information they have is from years ago; anything more recent is just insignificant gossip from traders who have passed through. Who knows what sort of people—and what sort of dragons—lurk beyond the border. Fitz might have been able to tell us something since he had told us he was an adventurer, but he was one of the ones who didn’t show up after the battle. It’s just the rest of them, now.

  I don't trust the Story Collectors. I can't. Maybe all of them truly didn't know about Vito, but I remember what Dantea said. How she knew more about Carita than I ever did, how everyone knew the lengths she’d go to except me.

  "What are you doing?"

  Vito’s voice makes me grin no matter how much I want to scowl. I glance to find his head hovering over my shoulder, tawny eyes fixed on the movements of my hands.

  “You always ruin the surprise,” I mutter, tightening one last joint. “But you have perfect timing.”

  I lean back a little so my head touches his chest, so he can see the wings lying on the table in front of me.

  They were my mother’s. The colors and fragmented words that I found on the remnants make it hard to think of them otherwise, except now…they’re Vito’s. They’re patterns and words that are only for him, only from me.

  “Do you like them?” I turn a little in my chair, reach out, and run a hand along the side of his face.

  His breath hitches, quiet stretching on for a second. Then he leans over me, pressing his lips ever so gently against my forehead.

  I reach up, tangling my fingers in his hair and bringing him close.

  This is all I have.

  And it’s all I want.

  Tags/Warnings

  General Tags:

  High Fantasy, Dragons, Dragon/Human Hybrids, Friends to Lovers, Elemental Magic, Illusions, Deception, Outlaws, Runaways, Tattoos, Asexual Character, Friendship, Family, Happy Ending

  * * *

  Content Warnings:

  Violence, Decapitation, Past Dismemberment, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Minor Character Death (Yes, I swear only minor), Familial Loss, Oppression, War, Slavery

  For a more up to date list (or to suggest something be added), please visit: kkazulwolf.com