World Warden, page 3
“Want to tell me what’s on your mind?” Tristan said in a low, deep voice, his mouth close to Elias’s ear.
Elias considered saying nothing was wrong, but that would have been a lie. Besides, if he had learned anything from his long months of isolation with the Spine queen, struggling to survive, it was that human company was precious and should be treasured. He’d have given anything back then to have someone who would listen to him, like Tristan now did.
Elias sighed and turned around to face Tristan. He hugged him back and rested his head on Tristan’s chest.
“It’s my fault Narev got hurt,” he admitted in a husky voice. “I hesitated. I had the Flyer right there, and I… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill him.”
Tristan said nothing, but Elias knew he was attentive. Tristan was a good listener.
“I could have died,” Elias continued. “Narev could have died. All because of my stupid choice not to kill a creature that wanted to hurt us. But… you know how you mentioned earlier that I can communicate with wurl?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not just with Spine wurl. I sense the Flyers too, sometimes. Right as I was about to kill this one, I felt… I don’t know. His thoughts, maybe. His emotions. He was terrified, Tristan. He hadn’t wanted to attack us, but she’d made him.”
“Dresde?”
Elias’s brow furrowed at the name. The ancient memories he had received from Sizzra ran deep, and Sizzra had loathed the name of her enemy. He couldn’t help but react with animosity whenever he thought about Dresde, her deceit, her violence.
“Yes. She forced him to attack. It made no sense for one single juvenile Flyer wurl to ambush us if you think about it. It was foggy, sure, and that gave him an advantage, but there was one of him and five of us. He couldn’t have won.”
“But he attacked all the same.”
“He did because he was forced to,” Elias repeated, and he hoped it was the truth. “And right then, when the Flyer saw that I was about to kill him, he was so scared, Tristan. Terrified, like he had just woken up from a nightmare and found that he was going to die. He hadn’t wanted to do any of this. So I… I….”
“You showed him mercy.”
Elias shook his head and raised it so he would be looking at Tristan’s face. “It was stupid. I think he deceived me, exactly like Dresde would do. As soon as he saw that I was sparing his life, his emotions changed. They became monstrous, twisted. And he attacked me.”
“I know. I was so scared,” Tristan told him, hugging him tighter for a moment.
Elias looked down. Shame welled up in his heart, and he knew he had to say out loud the thought that had been bothering him for hours now, the pernicious doubt he hadn’t been able to get rid of. “What if it wasn’t mercy I showed him? What if…? What if it was fear? Tristan, what if I’m just a coward?” Elias closed his eyes. The words hurt coming out.
Tristan was silent for a moment. Then he burst out laughing.
It was so unexpected that Elias drew back from him, opening his eyes again, and propped himself up on one elbow.
“By the generation ship,” Tristan said between chuckles, “that’s what has been bothering you?”
“I, yeah, I think… I mean…,” Elias stammered.
Tristan sat up and folded the sleeping bag away. He gave Elias a quick kiss on the lips. “Elias, you’re really smart, but that was the stupidest thing you have ever said.”
“What? Why?”
Tristan sighed. “Let’s do a quick recap, shall we? You defied your entire colony to do the right thing by taking the Life Seed back to where it belonged. Right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“You stood your ground against a gigantic wurl queen who could have killed you with a single bite more than once, right?”
“Yes….”
Tristan raised one of his hands and bent his fingers down with the other as he counted down. “You saved my life by challenging Sizzra that one time when she wanted to kill me. You stared her down, remember? You also saved the entire colony of Portree by bringing back seeds that will grow and give us food for the future. You somehow learned to survive out in the wilderness on your own for months. In the wintertime, no less. Oh, and you actually attacked and wounded Dresde herself even though she is many times your size.”
Elias nodded slowly. All of those things were true, although he hadn’t thought about them together like that.
Tristan smiled. “Elias, you’re the bravest man I know. You hesitated with that Flyer because you’re also the most compassionate man I know. You care about life, and you don’t kill for fun or because you’re angry. When you fight, you do it to protect others. You are selfless and kind, and those are two of the things I like most about you. In fact, you would make a great Colony Patrol soldier if you wanted to be.”
“But Narev got hurt,” Elias insisted, although a warm feeling suffused his chest at hearing Tristan’s words.
“Trust me, it’s good that you felt bad about the possibility of killing a living creature, one with emotions. When I think back on the way I gloated about all the wurl I’d killed, like I did back at the Midwinter Feast last year when I showed their spines as trophies, I feel ashamed.” Tristan cast his eyes down for a moment, his expression regretful. “And as for Narev, yes, he got hurt, because what we’re doing is dangerous. There are no guarantees, and we are going to get hurt sooner or later. Those three wurl outside are ready to fight to the death to save the egg of the new Spine queen, but today you saw that Narev is also willing to die to save you. It’s a complicated situation, but everyone’s fine tonight. That’s what’s important here. We made it through one more day. I’m thankful for that, and also to be able to spend one more night with you.”
“Me too,” Elias said softly. He smiled. A great weight was sliding off his shoulders.
“And you are not a coward,” Tristan told him with a grin. “You’re strong. Resourceful. And very attractive.”
Tristan placed his hand on the back of Elias’s head and leaned forward to share a long, tender kiss with him. Elias reciprocated, glad to be in Tristan’s arms, glad to be safe, and glad to be alive.
Their kiss became more intense and urgent as seconds passed. They made love with the vigor and passion of youth, and afterward it was Elias holding Tristan in the sleeping bag as the two of them panted, hearts still racing, allowing their bodies to relax. Elias caressed Tristan’s arm absentmindedly, tracing the outline of the scar.
“Does it still hurt?” Elias asked, remembering how Tristan’s forearm had been fractured by the bite of a juvenile Spine wurl last winter.
“No, it healed really well. And I think the scar looks cool.”
“It does. Makes you look dangerous.”
Tristan grinned. “Nice. Narev will also have a cool scar to show off, you know.”
Elias nodded. He was at peace now. “Thank you, Tristan.”
“For what?”
“For listening. For saying the things I needed to hear. For being here with me.”
“Anytime,” Tristan answered in a sleepy voice. “I will always be with you.”
“Me too,” Elias replied. Then he closed his eyes and, with a yawn, surrendered to sleep. His last fleeting thought was of Oscar, and he hoped his little brother was okay.
Chapter 2. Oscar
CRUSHING FORCE. Dizzying motion. Oscar Trost was jostled in so many different directions he stopped being able to tell which way was up and which was down.
He struggled, but it was no use. He tried to bite, he tried to kick. The taloned foot around him merely tightened its grip, threatening to smother him. Panicking, he screamed. He voiced his terror until his throat was hoarse, but no one would help him.
He was thrown violently to the side, together with the creature that held him. The impact was jarring, and Oscar felt one of the sizzling talons dig into his shoulder. Skin burned, muscle tore.
He screamed again. The horrible pain was gone as fast as it had come, but his shoulder did not feel right.
It’s broken.
I’m trapped.
Eli!
“Eli!”
Dresde roared, drowning out his desperate cry for help, and he was sure he did not imagine the way he also heard the roar in his mind.
Dresde was angry, bloodthirsty, unpredictable.
However, Oscar also perceived that she was scared. She had been hurt.
Suddenly he was flying. He tried to twist around to see where he was going, but he could not move. He realized he was still clutching something tight against his chest and tried to let go, but he couldn’t relax his arms around it.
The egg. I have the egg.
It dug against his abdomen, and he squirmed and twisted until he was able to breathe. He was rising, fast. His legs dangled over nothing, and he saw another big flying reptile from the corner of his eye. This one was blue. There was a girl riding it.
Oscar tried to call for help again, trying to get the girl’s attention, but he couldn’t even hear himself over the gale. Tears blinded him, and he was forced to close his eyes. His shoulder hurt. He couldn’t let go of the egg.
Where is she going? Where are they taking me?
Oscar shouted again, but it was barely audible to him. It was useless to call for help, he realized, and now that he was so high up, he was seized with terror from a new direction.
What if she lets me go?
He froze in a new surge of panic. He would die if Dresde let him go. Or she could crush him at any moment if she wanted to. He could barely breathe as it was, maybe because the grip around him was slowly tightening.
No. Focus.
With an effort of will, Oscar wrenched his attention away from his panicky thoughts and tried to evaluate his situation. He couldn’t really think straight. He was trembling, not only from terror but also from the cold. They had reached whatever altitude Dresde had deemed acceptable, but the air at that height was freezing. It sliced cleanly through Oscar’s formal clothes and numbed every part of his skin that was exposed to the elements.
Minutes passed. The cold got worse. Oscar realized he was having trouble breathing once more, and he vaguely registered that this time it was because the air seemed thin and insubstantial. Dresde took a dizzying turn at one point, and he was able to see the ground, incredibly far away, a blur of tan and dark green and gray. Another spiral turn a few seconds later made Oscar’s stomach heave, and he saw the girl again, flying very close to him on top of that cobalt-scaled wurl.
She has a helmet, like a pilot, he thought to himself, struggling to focus. So she can breathe in the… In the….
His consciousness flickered. He came to after what seemed like barely a moment, but the pain in his shoulder had magnified twofold, and he could not open his eyes. He could not feel his face. Panicking yet again, he tried to move, but a white-hot stab of agony in his shoulder forced him to remain stationary.
I can’t breathe.
Another jolt. Warmer air. More pain, and it seemed to Oscar as though somebody was holding him by the waist. It was still cold, but he could breathe now. A monumental headache exploded between his temples, and he struggled not to lose consciousness but failed.
He regained awareness choking on some water. It seemed to him that he was not moving anymore. He thought he saw a face in front of his, but it faded.
Consciousness returned, and he trembled in the cold. He was flying again.
Flicker. Freezing rain on his face. Flicker. Sleeping in a cave. Flicker. Choking down some food. Flicker. Riding on something blue, dozens of kilometers above an endless expanse of a different blue. There was no end to the water below.
Oscar blinked. His mind felt sharper. He took stock of his surroundings and realized he was riding the cobalt wurl, headed for the distant but unmistakable outline of solid ground. And below him….
It’s the ocean!
He was jolted to full attention by the realization. He tried to move, but two strong arms restricted his motion. Oscar looked back and saw the girl from before, sitting behind him and holding him by the waist. Her eyes were narrowed to mere slits, and her hair whipped in the wind. Oscar moved his head again and realized he was wearing her helmet, which allowed him to breathe. He wasn’t shivering anymore because she had put some sort of tight-fitting jacket around his upper body.
“Who are you?” he tried to ask. His voice was muffled by the helmet. “Where are we going?”
But she made no answer.
It was more than a day before they approached an enormous mountain, nearly conical in shape, rising from the shore of a strange continent. The western flank of the peak looked as if it had been torn away by a titan, exposing dark caves, jagged rocks, and what Oscar could only think of as rivers of flowing lava. It was bizarre. He had never seen anything like it in his life.
Oscar struggled to make sense of the direction they were taking, but it was useless. He was riding on a saddle of some sort, but even so he was in constant danger of sliding off and falling to his death. He used every bit of his strength to keep still when the blue wurl began to descend, heading straight for a cave opening in the side of the mountain, which glowed red in the twilight. The arms around him tightened their grip until it was painful, and suddenly Dresde flew overhead, terrifying and magnificent as she spread her wings to their full extent and her amethyst scales glittered in the last few rays of the sun.
The descent took much longer than Oscar had expected. They approached the cave in spirals that brought them progressively closer to the ground. Oscar grew dizzy and was forced to close his eyes, using his good arm to hang tight. His left arm was hurting much more now, and the horrible and sudden jostle when the wurl finally hit the ground made Oscar howl in pain.
Someone snatched the helmet off his head. For the first time since his capture, Oscar realized that the wind wasn’t screaming in his ears. He felt oddly light-headed, confused by the silence.
“Do not shout again. You understand?” the girl snapped.
Oscar turned back as far as he was able in order to see her face. He was interrupted by her pushing him off the wurl.
“Quickly, male! Doran is taking off!”
Oscar lost his balance and collapsed off the wurl, hitting the ground in a heap. He cried out again, holding his left arm with his hand as he lay on what felt like coarse sand, strangely hot to the touch. A second later the blue wurl took to the air again and blasted them both with wind that reeked of burning rock. The wurl’s serpentine body was quickly lost from sight as he appeared to fly off a cliff.
Oscar grunted, trying not to cry from the pain.
“Quiet!” the girl ordered. She stood above him and pulled him to his feet, ignoring his protests.
When he took a step back, Oscar was able to focus on her properly for the first time. She wasn’t as old as he had thought at first. She looked to be about the same age as Oscar himself, in fact, but her youthful features contrasted with the severity of her expression. She had beautiful bronze skin, and she wore her long raven-black hair in a tight braid. Her eyes were a shade of emerald green Oscar had never seen in the colony.
“Where am I?” he asked in a shaky voice.
The girl looked at him as though she didn’t understand what he was saying.
“Please, you have to help me. Where is my family? What is this place?”
The girl opened her mouth as if to answer, but a shadow blocked out what remained of the sun, and they were almost thrown to the ground by a much more powerful gust of buffeting wind.
Dresde landed nearby with feline grace, folding her massive wings against her body so their back tips would point skyward. She moved on the ground as though stalking prey, her head low, the cluster of three glowing red eyes terrifying in the deepening shadows. There was a slow-flowing river of lava several meters away, and by its reddish light, Oscar saw that in her right front foot, Dresde still carried a large egg of purest white, perfect and unbroken.
The events of the day of the storm flashed by Oscar’s mind. His terror was briefly pushed aside and replaced with heart-wrenching concern for his family. He stepped away from the girl and walked toward Dresde, holding his injured arm as he went.
“Where is Eli?” he demanded in as loud a voice as he could muster. From behind him, he clearly heard the girl gasp. “What did you do to him?”
Dresde paused for a moment. Her neck snaked up, and she unfurled her wings halfway.
The little male speaks, she said, and Oscar stumbled, falling onto one knee. Her voice was in his mind, like a shout that blocked out everything else. How amusing.
“Whe…,” Oscar tried to say, but his tongue felt sluggish. He took a breath, swallowed. Then he tried again. “Where is Eli?”
Oscar’s eyes roamed over Dresde’s face, and he saw something he had not noticed before: there was a slash mark next to her left nostril. One of her glittering scales had been cut open, and the flesh underneath was still visible.
Dresde lowered her head with shocking speed until her cluster of red eyes was less than an arm’s length away from Oscar’s face. Under the intensity of her full gaze, Oscar flinched as she stabbed his mind with her overwhelming attention. She forced him to focus on a memory of Elias, seizing it, analyzing it.
You are kin to him, she mused.
Oscar covered one of his ears with his good hand, but it did nothing to block out the voice.
I see. Will he come for you? I wonder….
“Let me go!” Oscar shouted with as much defiance as he could muster.
With a languid flick, Dresde whipped her tail around and slapped Oscar on his injured arm. The pain was beyond imagining. He dropped to the ground, crying.
Dresde smiled with her mind, eyeing Oscar as if enjoying his pain. She brought her tail up again, and Oscar cowered. The mental smile broadened.
Samantha, keep this whelp alive for now. He will come for this one. And when he does….
An emotion shattered Oscar’s pain and replaced everything in his mind. It took him an instant to realize that the emotion did not come from him, but from Dresde. It was something like joy, but twisted and bent. Hungry. Evil.
