Chapter 64 The Weakness of Solitude pt2
Snarling, snapping.
The yelp of a canine.
Something huge slithers over my body and roars.
More yelping, barking, and snarling followed by the snap of jaws far too big to be a canine’s.
The final yelp of a canine dying, the death gurgle of a crushed rib cage.
Howling growing quieter, more distant.
Something hot slithers over my face, something cold slips off my body and pushes against my side. Something else, just as cold, slithers under my legs and wraps around the other side of my body. The something is growling quietly, threateningly, its body shaking with adrenaline.
The brightness behind my eyelids is fading to darkness, but I can’t move, can’t open my eyes. I can barely breathe with my own crushed rib cage.
Something hot strokes my face again, hot and wet. Something covers my body and pulls me close, blocking the chill of the night wind.
Something is protecting me, something huge.
I can’t think about it now…it doesn’t matter…
Help is coming, please don’t give up.
How can help come for the dead?
“I thought you said she was here? All I see is that…thing…”
“I’m telling you, she’s here.”
“Alric, honestly, how do you even know? Do you have an Ana tracking sense I don’t know about?”
“Something like that.”
“Would you two be quiet? I’ve never seen one of these so big. We might have a fight on our hands. If it ate her…”
“It didn’t eat her!”
“What makes you so sure, Alric? If it looks like a dragon and flies like a dragon…”
I groan in my sleep, the voices making my brain rattle. If this is the afterlife, it’s fucking noisy as hell.
The voices go silent when a low rumbling growl echoes around me and the cold shape circling me stirs. As it moves, bright light assaults my eyes. It makes me wince and jerk, which is a mistake because my whole body hurts like hell.
“Okay, not dead,” I groan, trying to roll over, but something large settles over my midsection and growls again.
“Holy crow, I think it’s protecting her!”
Is that Sylvain?
“Anara, are you alright?”
Alric and Sylvain?
“Anara Hellbane, if you’re alive, give us some sign or we’ll attack this wyvern for eating you!”
Shit, that’s Captain Blight. What’s he doing here? What are any of them doing here?
…what am I doing here?
Flashes of the volcano assault my mind. I replay Cinder’s death in my mind's eye, then the dragon takes me to the sky. The primal battle between silver and black dragons.
Did he say wyvern?
I crack my eyes open, wincing at the brightness of early morning. My face is turned toward the ground and for a moment I stare in awe at a drop of dew rolling down a blade of grass.
“Alright, she’s either unconscious or dead. We’re going to have to—”
A searing heat makes Blight's sentence turn into a startled scream.
“It can breathe fire?” Sylvain shrieks. “Wyverns can breathe fire!”
My head jerks up, a mistake which I pay for in blinding pain, and register the wedge-shaped jaw of a massive scaled creature. It’s hovering over me, tail tucked protectively over my body, and it’s breathing an impressive torrent of fire toward the line of trees on the other side of the clearing. The line of trees that I fell through by the look of the broken branches.
“I did not break every damn rule in Hellbane to die by a fucking overgrown pest!” Sylvain hisses in anger. “Why is it so gods-damned big?”
“If it was trying to kill us, we’d be dead. Look at the size of that thing, it’s like a yearling dragon! It’s protecting her and trying to scare us away. Let me try and calm it,” Alric begs.
“It’s your funeral,” Blight scoffs.
I stare up at the brown scales of the creature looming over me. It finishes its stream of fire and angles its head toward me. Its golden eyes make me suck in a sharp breath.
“Is it you?” I whisper.
The wyvern coos, much like a mother chicken, and rubs its maw against my cheek lovingly.
“It is you!” I breathe reverently. Memories of rescuing Elsie’s pet wyvern flood my mind. The creature was grateful, but the last time I saw it, it could fit in the palm of my hand. Now its long body is big enough to wrap around me completely, its wings stretched over me like a blanket.
“Gentle beast, the human you have is a friend of ours,” Alric says gently. “We’re here to rescue her, not hurt her, this I swear.”
“He knows that’s just an animal, right? It can’t talk,” Sylvain grouses.
“A few moments ago we thought they couldn’t breathe fire or grow to be this size…” Blight’s voice trails off, but I can hear a glimmer of awe and excitement buried in his doubt and fear.
I struggle to sit up, the thin bones that frame the Wyvern’s wing pressing into my middle and holding me down with sheer force.
She will not let you sit up. You’re too broken.
“She? You’re a she?” I ask.
“Anara! Anara, are you alright?” Alric sounds shocked more than he does relieved, as if he didn’t truly expect to find me alive.
Alric holds more secrets than you can ever imagine. I do not trust him.
“I’m alive!” I call out. “Whether or not I'm alright is questionable.”
My wyvern friend lowers her head over me and bares her fangs as Alric moves closer.
“Shh, sweetie, he’s here to help,” I say gently, stroking her neck as I attempt to calm her.
Her lips close slowly, twitching in warning.
“May I see Anara?” Alric asks gently. “We have alicorns with us, we can heal her.”
As if to accentuate Alric’s words, an alicorn whinnies.
“Is that Shivvers?” I ask, shocked.
“Yes, Anara. Whist loaned her to me so I could find you. She is…more understanding than I expected.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Blight shouts, clearly slighted.
“That’s between my captain and me, Blight!” Oberon calls.
“Hey, show him some respect!” Sylvain barks. “He came with us to help!”
“Just because he’s in love with you!” Alric bites back.
Sylvain gasps in shock.
I can hear Blight laughing loudly. “Well, he’s not exactly wrong now, is he?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the wyvern rolled her golden eyes before she reluctantly lifted her wing. But not for Alric, for Shivvers.
The magnificent alicorn thunders toward us with her horn lowered. She blows through her nose like a dragon herself, stopping inches from us and stomping her hooves for emphasis.
“Shivvers, you're a sight for sore eyes.” I try to smile, but even that hurts.
She lowers her head to mine, chuffing air on my face before assessing all my injuries like a healer would. When she gets to my feet, she neighs indignantly and rears a little. She sounds angry. Then, lowering her horn, she touches me between the eyes. I watch her lovely eyes flutter closed as her power pours into me.
It’s cold, but not like ice. It feels like being lowered head-first into a babbling brook. Her healing energy flows over me like trickling water, covering me from head to foot, before the sensation begins to warm.
Prepare yourself, this will hurt. You have many broken bones.
Before my mind mentor’s words can fully register, the pain hits.
My scream is so loud that birds take flight from the trees around us. Alric rushes up to me, sliding the last few feet on his knees. The wyvern roars and snaps her jaws, but he just shoves her face away as if she’s nothing more than an offensive fly.
My wyvern snorts derisively and bares her teeth again, but doesn’t snap again.
I’m still screaming, feeling like I’m on fire when Alric takes my hand and squeezes. “She did a number on you, Anara. I’m so sorry no one was there to protect you.”
“Not…your…fault,” I bite out between clenched teeth. The tip of Shivvers’ horn pierces the skin between my brows and a trickle of blood slips into my eye.
“If she hadn’t done it right in front of the prince, we would have never known. Zaries raised the alarm. He’s out right now with his whole battalion looking for you. Oberon…well, he knocked Oberon out. He’s in the infirmary.”
I almost choke on my laugh. “For someone who wants me dead so bad, he sure gets pissed when Obie wants me alive!”
“Love is funny like that,” Blight says, stepping into my line of sight with Sylvain tucked under his arm. “You never know when it’s coming, but when it hits, it can’t be denied.”
“Love? You must have him and Oberon confused. Zaries despises me.”
The pain is ebbing now. I watch Shivvers’ muscles twitch in exhaustion as she slowly lowers herself to the ground and lifts her horn from my head. She nuzzles me with her soft mouth before walking away a few feet, tucking her head under her wings, and going to sleep.
“Anara, we have a lot to talk about,” Alric tells me, his face set like hard stone. “A talk that can only happen when we’re alone. Blight, I probably don’t have to ask you twice to take Sylvain somewhere private?”
Sylvain gasps. “Hey! She’s my friend! I’m not leaving her, I—”
Blight tilts his head toward her, his lips moving against her ear as he whispers something no one else can hear. By the blush on Syl’s face and the way she bites her bottom lip before he draws her away, I can guess what he was promising.
“That’s love,” I state matter of factly. “What Zaries feels for me is dark, blistering hatred.”
“He’s got a funny way of showing it,” Alric says dryly. “Now, do you want to tell me how the largest wyvern in history wound up protecting you?”
“Only if you tell me why Cinder tried to roast me alive.”