by Erik Reid
“Hurry,” the queen said. “The longer you wait, the more besieged the city will become.”
I nodded and turned toward Dani. Her face was pale from loss of blood, her green undertones gaining prominence as the peachy warmth of her cheeks receded. Without a word, I scooped one arm under the backs of her knees and placed the other around her back, whisking her off her feet for the long walk toward the castle’s front doors.
“There he goes,” the queen said faintly to her advisors. “Our second savior: Kyle the Headstrong Human.”
“A title that will surely stand the test of time,” I muttered with an eye-roll. “Muuuch catchier than Kyle the Vanquisher.”
CHAPTER 11
We stepped over fallen draykin and dodged while guards chased bloodhounds through the streets of Varrowsgard. The northern half of the city smoldered considerably less than the southern half, and it was the northeastern corner we wound our way toward. My lungs were grateful for the comparatively breathable air and the lack of a suffocating burning smell.
Dani had insisted she was capable of walking, but she still leaned on me for support the whole way. Gretna was a fast walker, and we had little attention for conversation as we hurried to keep her in our line of sight and follow the path she set.
Just before the sun finally started to sink below the horizon line, she stopped us at a stable and disappeared through its front door. While we waited, Clara lifted my left hand and healed the split skin that still hurt and bled from punching my naked knuckles through Oscar’s glass case.
At first I winced and Clara froze. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll keep still from now on.”
It was an easy promise to keep. Silvery messages from Oscar appeared in my sight and distracted me from the pain of split skin as Clara sealed the wounds.
Sync Progress: 3%
Waypoint Marker Generation: Initializing
Set Current Location as Waypoint Marker? Y/N
Might as well, I thought.
Reading my thoughts — because at three percent sync progress we were pretty much besties — Oscar set a waypoint marker. A spot of pale blue light illuminated on the ground and traced a quick circle around my feet. It formed the outer rim of a column of blue light that shot up toward the sky, then vanished.
Set Waypoint Marker Name?
Draykin Domain, I thought. Hey, you don’t have any pre-set waypoint markers in there, do you, pal?
Available Waypoint Markers:
Draykin Domain
Figures.
I stepped outside the waypoint’s radius once Clara finished with my hand. Silvery text hovered in the air at eye level.
Draykin Domain
1.5 Ft.
“Thanks, Clara,” I said. “This feels a million times better.”
She smiled and looked away.
When Gretna returned, she led two horses with royal dress, along with saddlebags full of supplies. She set the saddlebags onto the horses carefully, though they partially blocked the white glove-and-crown image stitched onto the horse’s royal clothing.
“Look at that, Oscar,” I said. “That royal insignia was always a tribute to you, even if they did get the finger count wrong.”
“Kyle, you’ll take Clara,” Gretna said. “If we get into any danger, I need you within range of her healing powers.”
I started to protest, but Dani cut me off. “That’s a fine idea,” she said. “Gretna, thank you for sharing your steed with me.”
“No one should ride with me,” I said. “I’ve never ridden a horse before unless you count Epona. Which I don’t.”
“We’ll go slow until you get the hang of it,” Gretna said. “Don’t worry about falling behind. I’m not allowed to lose sight of you.”
“And where are we going exactly?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Gretna replied. “Benoch’s location is a well-kept secret. He knows too many things common draykin are forbidden to learn. It’s why he’s kept away.”
“You mean, that’s why he chooses to live a hermit’s life,” I said. “Because he cares so deeply to keep the queen’s secrets.”
“No,” Gretna said, “I mean that’s why he’s kept under constant watch with no one but royal guards to speak with. Now, let’s not waste what little light we have left.”
We led our mounts through the city’s front gates, eyeing a few dark shapes in the distance that ran toward Varrowsgard’s defensive wall on all fours. They weren’t our concern now; the queen would rally her forces or the city would fall against this invasion, but we had a different mission. A different quest. We needed intel that would stop the bloodhounds from coming. For good.
This Benoch character had that intel. He might also tell me how to pry Oscar loose and get back to the quiet little life I had back in Indiana. In the meantime, I had women by my side that I trusted and liked. I also had the captain of the guard to protect us, and a clear goal ahead. It was time to shift into turbo.
I felt less optimistic, however, a mere ten seconds into our sunset ride east.
Riding a horse sucks.
Even with a saddle beneath me, my tailbone got real tired of the constant jostling. My inner thighs hated being bowed out to the sides. My arms kept jerking around when the horse would randomly stop moving forward and buck backward, like it wanted to throw me and Clara off its back.
Gretna would calm the animal and help set things right, then the cycle began again. Onward we rode, watching the stars pop out one by one after the sun had fully submerged itself and the silhouette of the northern mountains darkened against the evening sky.
The only saving grace to this long ride was Clara. Her balance was impeccable, and there were times she shifted her weight to one side or helped me lean at the right moment to guide our horse in smooth, subtle ways.
Her chest pressed against my back and her face hovered beside mine and just a little further back. At odd intervals when we hit a rough patch of terrain, her nose would graze past my ear. She whispered encouragement when my muscles tensed in frustration and compliments when I started to get the hang of using the reins.
She held me close for support, though I doubted she really needed to. Maybe it was more for warmth as the night turned cool. Or maybe she just liked an excuse for prolonged contact after a lifetime lacking in affection under Momma Jumbo’s constant belittlement.
Whatever it was, I wouldn’t complain. There’s something about the soft touch of a beautiful woman on a silent night that makes a man feel important. Necessary. I felt that way with her.
A large lake opened up before us, the light of Silura’s oversized moon reflecting off its surface. Gretna slowed her horse to a trot as we approached the water, then pulled on the reins and brought the old mare to a stop.
“Benoch is still a ways,” she said. “We should camp here with the water to our backs so we can travel the rest of the way by sunlight. I’m sure the old man will appreciate us not knocking after dark anyway.”
Gretna fixed us a small meal from the supplies she had packed into our saddlebags and we ate without lighting a fire. I would have welcomed the heat, but not the bloodhounds it would have attracted. Or just regular hounds for that matter. Come to think of it, what the hell else was lurking out there in this ridiculous world?
Gretna was the first to lie out on the ground, positioning herself face down on the grass and allowing her golden-scaled tail to drape to the side. She tilted one cheek and bent her arms to cradle her face.
Clara was next, curling up into a ball and hugging her knees. Dani, however, sat with her head turned away and her arms wrapped around her knees, huddling against herself to keep warm. She didn’t seem ready for rest.
I moved closer to her and sat in the high grasses, bending my knees to brace my outer leg against hers.
At that angle, my jeans rode up and exposed my bare ankle, letting the breeze tickle long blades of grass against my skin. I plucked one from its base and squinted at it while Dani gazed out at the lake.
>
A long strand of something thin and coarse sat pinched between my fingers.
Sensory Assist: Initializing
Point of Information: Sensory Assist provides access to a suite of heightened observational inputs
Sensory Assist Request for Herbaceous Analysis: Acknowledged
Sensory Assist: Failed
Insufficient Sync Progress to Commence Herbaceous Analysis
I shook my head. Herbaceous analysis. It’s grass, dummy. I stuck the end of it into my mouth and set it up like a toothpick, letting its length poke out from my face in a thin straw-like strand with a small puff of seeds at the end, the way a farmer might hold a piece of hay in his mouth in an old movie.
Dani sighed. That was my cue.
“You’re not planning to run away when we’re all sleeping, are you?” I asked. My words came out with a slight lisp, so I adjusted the grass’s position in my mouth.
“No,” she said. “I’ll just accept my new role as slave girl. At least I’m still alive.”
“Look who’s an abolitionist all of a sudden,” I said. “You’re not my slave. That little ‘blood debt’ scene back there doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means something to me,” she said. “Our people honor blood debts. When you save someone’s life, they owe you everything.”
“You owe me nothing,” I said. “I’d save your life again in a heartbeat, no strings attached. If you need me to say some magic words to release you, I will. “Expelliarmus. Blood debt canc—”
Dani put a finger to my lips. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m ashamed enough that I didn’t pledge my life to you right away, and under the queen’s watch to make it even worse. I won’t become that girl who begged to cancel a blood debt without earning the right to resume the life she nearly lost.”
“It’s not about earning anything,” I said.
“I don’t fault you for not feeling the same way,” she said. “The human world must be very different, but this is my culture, and these are our rules. I’m only asking you to respect that.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder and I dropped that topic. It wasn’t making either of us feel better anyway.
“What is it like, your world?” she asked.
“For a few people, it’s a wonderland of exotic foods, perfect bodies, rampant sex, and adoring masses who shower money on you.
“For the rest of us, it’s a shitshow. A few highlights include: student loans; a do-not-call registry that doesn’t work; PC games that run short unless you pay extra for the DLC. And, you know, waterboarding. That exists. But that’s for when the government thinks you tried to bomb someone we like. For most of us, it’s the DLC problem that takes top billing.”
“What is the purpose of a… do-not-call registry?”
“Every few hours, a robot dials a special number to disrupt your thought process and make your phone ring with a useless incoming communication,” I said. “If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say it was the government controlling our minds.”
“You mentioned having a communication device,” she said. “What does it do?”
I reached into my pocket for it while I used my tongue to switch the side of my mouth the grass hung from. The stem was already getting dilapidated now that my saliva had dampened the outer husk.
I pulled out my phone and ran a thumb over the crack that stretched across its glass screen. Fucking Jasmine. She never did offer to fix this thing, even though I dropped it saving her neck.
To be fair, I did terminate our date without spending a dime on her, then I vanished in the midst of a purple lightning storm. On the other hand, fuck Jasmine.
“Where I’m from,” I said, holding the power button to turn the screen on, “I can use this to speak to anyone I want, all over the world.”
Dani’s eyes widened. “Is it magic?”
“N… yes. Conjured by the wizards of the valley of silicon. Everyone has one of these though, so it’s sort of like a familiar. The way a witch keeps a black cat around.”
Dani’s brow started to furrow.
“Maybe your witches don’t do that here,” I said. “Anyway, I can’t call anyone in Silura. No signal. All I can do is swipe through a bunch of my old photos until the battery dies.”
I opened the photos app and started thumbing through old shots of home.
“These are images of the human world?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s me at the gym. I’m not vain or anything. It’s customary for men to photograph themselves after a good pump. Anyway, this one’s a cheeseburger I ordered, and it was just so goddamned juicy and beautiful I felt like I had to share it with the world before I could eat it. You know how that is. And this is Selena.”
“I see,” she said, a touch of disappointment entering her voice. “You have a woman at home. She is beautiful.”
“I guess she is kinda cute,” I said. “But she’s not my woman. She’d punch me in the arm if I ever said that. She’s just a friend, who is oddly supremely like me in too many ways.”
“Like what?” Dani asked.
“Sarcastic,” I said. “A total nerd for superheroes. Works too hard on other people and then gets super lazy about her own life. Always got her guard up and yet weirdly co-dependent. Sort of a mess, really.” I laughed, forcing my and Dani’s bodies to jostle. The straw started slipping from my mouth, but I caught it and popped it back in, clenching it with my teeth this time to keep it in place.
“Why not form a closer bond with her?” Dani asked.
“She’s not the settling down type,” I said. “Her therapist says she uses humor as a defense mechanism to push people away. Also, I’m her therapist. That she doesn’t pay for and doesn’t want any advice from.”
“Another trait you share?”
“Hating unsolicited advice?”
“No, pushing people away,” Dani replied.
“I dunno,” I said. “I don’t want to be that way. I want to pull people close.” I shifted my position and reached my arm around Dani’s back, grasping her shoulder and pulling her tight as we sat side by side. “Like this.”
“I like this, too,” Dani said.
She misheard me, but I rolled with it. Our noses were only a few inches apart now as it was, so I glanced down at her lips to gage their distance.
The moonlight reflecting off the lake cast her face in a faint glow. Her eyelids fluttered. Her full lips begged for me to make that first move. She twisted slightly, angling herself to face me better and shifting her position until her breast pressed against my arm.
Status Change: Arousal
Not helpful, Oscar, I thought.
Arousal Notifications: Muted
I turned away and half-blew, half-spat that stupid blade of grass out of my mouth. It didn’t go very far, landing on my shirt and sticking there.
“Didn’t taste very good anyway,” I said. “Sorry in advance for that.”
Dani glanced down and picked up the plant with hesitant fingers. “Kyle, this is noxyweed. It’s very potent. You didn’t bite through the stem did you?”
“Yeah,” I said, leaning close for my kiss. “Why, what does it—”
I couldn’t finish. My tongue was suddenly heavy and my eyes rolled toward the back of my head. I tipped backward and smacked my skull against the ground.
Status Change: Sedation
Dani’s lips landed a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Goodnight, monkey.”
CHAPTER 12
When I opened my eyes, the sun had half-risen in the eastern sky. A pillar of pale blue light rose in the distance, with silver text floating nearby.
Draykin Domain
8 Miles
Neato.
I wiped the crust from the corners of my eyes, expecting my body to punish me with a caffeine withdrawal headache and no hope of morning joe. Instead, I felt alive. Refreshed. I didn’t question whether that was Oscar’s doing, or a side effect of my accidental overdose on noxyweed. I just accepted a tu
rn of good luck and got to my feet.
Dani slept face-down beside me, while Clara stayed huddled in a tight ball not far to the side. Gretna, however, was already awake. She stood waist-deep in the lake with her blonde hair still wrapped tight in a bun atop her head.
Her platemail chest piece and skirt lay beside the lake. When Gretna spun around in the water and saw me, she raised her arms and beckoned me to join her, unfazed by her massive breasts hanging out totally exposed.
I averted my eyes. This woman could slice my hand off with the same sword she had speared several bloodhounds with. I did not need that kind of trouble.
“Kyle!” she called. I could tell she tried to keep her voice low to avoid waking the others, but I cringed anyway. Volume control was a skill she lacked.
Still, I couldn’t just ignore her. “Good morning, Gretna,” I said. “Lovely time for a bath.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “I was worried you wouldn’t want to. Get in here. I need you to wash my back.”
God help me, I thought. Or, I guess in Silura, it’s ‘Goddess help me?’
I thought back on my recent history. A hot shower, a few sprays of middle-shelf cologne, and a date with Jasmine… then a storm, a kobold hole, a fishing pond bloodhound fight, lots of walking across grassy plains, the smoke of a hundred arsoned buildings, a demon battle, and a horseback ride.