The duelist 10, p.9
The Duelist 10, page 9
Even though it was a threat, I was impressed by it. Quite simply I was awed, because it was one thing to encounter people with animal features like goat horns or cat tails, but quite another to see an actual goddamn dragon flying toward you. Zoie and the other inhabitants of Aventoll were close enough to human that, while I’d initially been jarred, I’d quickly grown used to their strange appearances.
But a dragon was a creature straight out of myth.
I then realized as the creature made another lap of the Manta ship that ‘dragon’ was not actually entirely correct. Those leathery wings were directly attached to its front limbs, which would technically make it a wyvern. Not that the etymological distinction would make any difference to whether or not it tried to kill us.
I just hoped it couldn’t breathe fire.
“Alex,” Shay said, and I dragged my gaze off the incredible creature to look at her. I wasn’t totally sure if the phoenix-woman was still standing there because she was rooted to the spot with fear or because she refused to leave me up here alone. Then she wrapped her hands around my arm and tugged imploringly. “We cannot stay out here! We have to get below deck!”
“Why?” I asked. Logically, I couldn’t see what difference that would make. We were in a ship hundreds of feet up in the air, and over open water no less. Going below deck wouldn’t protect us the way going underground would. “What will it do?”
“You can’t tempt its ire,” Shay insisted, and she pulled my arm again. “Skybeasts are creatures of ancient and terrible magic. Looking one in the eye for too long has been said to cause madness!”
“It’ll turn me mad?” I asked, and I thought of all the other things I’d encountered in Aventoll, up to and including a horde of savage koala-people bent on ripping me limb from limb. A dragon was definitely new, but I couldn’t see how it was any weirder than magic that allowed someone to change their face or turn back time. Now that I was over the initial shock of seeing a motherfucking dragon in the sky, I mostly just thought it was seriously cool.
Maybe I could somehow tame it? Or if it was intelligent, I could ask it to join our Crew? Even the likes of Kavo Alda would think twice, surely, if I rode into town on the back of a fucking dragon.
Wyvern.
Skybeast.
Whatever.
“We have to get out of here,” Shay argued. “We have to shield ourselves!”
“Shay…” I laid one of my hands over hers and carefully relaxed her grip on my arm, finger by finger, until I was holding her hand. “We don’t run. Not from anything, okay?”
“You ran from the savage Engish,” she told me, but not like an accusation, like she was begging me. “This is worse. This is more dangerous.”
“Horus, Zoie, and I ran from the horde, yes, but we’re not running from the problem,” I replied. “We need to get to the Heart of Aventoll so you can heal it, and then we can help Eng. And that means we can’t run away from this problem, we have to go through it. Through the skybeast itself, if we have to.”
“Please,” Shay begged me, and she gripped my hand almost tight enough to hurt.
The breeze had turned into a stronger wind thanks to the arrival of the dragon, and her scarlet hair and sheer white dress whipped around her. She almost glowed in the moonlight, and for a moment I imagined she had walked to the Manta ship, right across the clouds, like a herald from Mercedes.
“I’m not worth this kind of danger,” the phoenix-woman continued, and her gaze was pleading. “We have to get inside. Do you have any idea how rare and reclusive skybeasts are? This is a sign, it has to be. A sign from Mercedes herself that this is too dangerous, or I’m not worthy or--”
“Stop saying you’re not worth something,” I cut her off, and I squeezed her hand back. “Please. You’re my wife, Shay, and I love you. Zoie loves you. Amaya loves you. Horus and Anwaar and Jenner and Nova love you. You don’t get to choose how much we would risk or sacrifice for you. That’s a decision only we can make. And I say we’re going to get you to the Heart of Aventoll, even if it means we have to fight or scare off this skybeast.”
As if on cue, the dragon-wyvern-skybeast let out a booming roar. It seemed to echo around in the sky like a roll of thunder, like it was a storm itself, thunder and lightning made flesh. I could feel the press of its magic in the air like electricity, and it seemed more powerful than anything I’d ever felt from Shay’s Incarnate abilities. This, more than anything or anyone else on Aventoll that I had yet encountered, was a creature of magic.
A moment later, as the skybeast’s roar petered out into the night, I heard a more familiar cry.
“Alex!” Horus’ voice shouted from a short distance away, and I turned to see the falcon-man climbing out onto the topmost deck of the Manta ship. His feathers and clothes ruffled in the rushing wind as he came to stand by Shay and me, with Zoie, Councilman Sha-Kane, and Captain Nemis following shortly behind him.
“Horus!” I called back. “Zoie!”
“Alex,” the cat-woman said in a relieved tone. “What’s going on? I heard strange noises downstairs.”
“Where are the others?” I asked her, and I momentarily ignored her question because I needed to know Amaya and all the others were safe and out of harm’s way.
As much as they could be, anyway.
“On the lower decks,” Zoie replied, and I held up one arm as she approached me. “We figured that would be the safest place for--”
She stopped walking toward Shay and I then, even though our arms were still outstretched, because she’d finally noticed the source of the strange noises she’d heard.
“By all the wonders in Aventoll,” she muttered, and her cat ears pressed flat back against her skull in shock and trepidation.
Nemis seemed similarly uncomfortable, and he didn’t bother trying to hide his unease. His expression looked almost disgusted.
“Darkhells!” the Councilman gasped when he saw the creature looming in the sky, and Horus just grimaced up at it.
The ship lurched slightly to the side, possibly thrown a little off course by the skybeast’s flapping wings, and Nemis and Zoie were the only ones in our group who didn’t stumble slightly. Everyone else reached to grab something to steady themselves, and as I gripped a doorway with one arm and held Shay around the waist with the other, I struggled to make my voice heard above the wind.
“Captain!” I yelled. “Can you take the wheel? Can you steer us away from this creature?”
He was the only one of us who’d actually commanded a proper ship and had by far the most experience in steering one. I figured the Manta couldn’t be that much different from the likes of the Soaring Light.
“I could steer it, but where could we go?” Nemis called back. He didn’t flinch or wobble in the slightest as the Manta heaved back to its original position in the sky, and neither did Zoie. They might have been rooted to the deck for how confidently they stood there, and I took a moment to silently vow to learn how to be so surefooted. The Manta was as much my home as Ithaca, so I needed to be just as comfortable on the ship as on solid ground. Just because I wasn’t a sea captain or part cat didn’t mean I couldn’t learn to balance like one.
“In here!” Horus shouted, and we clustered into the tiny captain’s cabin where the steering wheel was. It was a slight protection from the wind, too, so we could speak without yelling to one another.
“Skybeasts are supposed to be figures of myth!” Sha-Kane cried out once we were all safely inside.
It was a bit of a squeeze with six of us, and Shay was wedged under my chin, though that was less about space and more about the fact she was still trembling from shock. Zoie crowded next to us and put her arms around Shay, and I put one of my arms around the both of them, so I enveloped the phoenix-woman twice over.
“In all my seasons traveling across Aventoll, I’ve never encountered anyone who caught so much as a whisper of one!” Sha-Kane continued, and he seemed similarly rattled. I wondered if anyone else took note of his and Shay’s similarities, or if there even were similarities to begin with, and I was just imagining them because I knew he and Shay were related. “They were supposed to have died out centuries ago, before the Scourge! Before Ashers! Assuming they ever existed at all.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, Councilman, but that thing out there is decidedly not extinct,” I said. “Now, do any of you know anything about skybeasts other than the fact they’re not meant to exist? Like, whether we should try to fight it, or if we can just go away, and it will leave us be?”
“I came across a little bit of information when I was studying as an Alchemist,” Horus offered with a shrug. “They’re very ancient creatures of magic. Supposedly, if you have a fang or a scale or a bit of their blood, it would make you very powerful. Some legends even said that skybeasts were the origins of Ashers, that Ashers were Aventollians who were given a bit of a skybeast’s blood, and the magic was so potent it burned them from the inside so they turned anything they touched to ash, if it was impure.”
“Wait, is there a chance that could actually be true?” I asked. We already knew the demons had come from Aventollians, transformed by the Moon, but no one had ever specified exactly how Mercedes created the first Ashers. She could have fed her worthiest followers dragon blood. It made as much sense as any other method to imbue them with her power.
“Sources vary,” Horus said. “It seems to be the most popular telling. Though I did come across one account that said Mercedes laid with each of the first Ashers, and a portion of her power was transferred in this way. That’s not really thought to be true. Though some people try to use it as a way to explain why Ashers are all male.”
“Well, I don’t have Aventollian ancestors, but I’m an Asher, and I definitely didn’t sleep with any goddesses to get that ability,” I said, and Horus rolled his eyes in agreement. I could only imagine what kind of insufferable, creepy weirdos he might have encountered during his studies who had insisted this account was the true one.
“Either way, sources seem to agree Ashers were somehow imbued with a portion of very powerful magic,” the falcon-man said.
“I guess that makes sense.” I pursed my lips. “So, are skybeasts able to breathe fire or something? Is that where the ash comes from?”
“Oh, no,” Horus said with a shake of his head. “They’re just too magically potent. It’s too powerful for something as impure as a demon to withstand, so they just crumble to ash when they encounter it. Why? Do skybeasts breathe fire where you come from?”
“Uh… sort of,” I said slowly. “We don’t really have magic and skybeasts. But we have myths about them. And usually skybeasts can breathe fire.”
“Do you know anything on how to subdue or evade them?” Sha-Kane asked.
“No, sorry,” I sighed. “Not that it would matter, anyway. This thing just looks like a skybeast in my world. It’s not actually the same thing.”
“Exactly,” Horus said, and he nodded. “But what I read in my studies might help. They were old texts, but they were historical records rather than stories and mythologies.”
Just then, the skybeast gave another thunderous roar, loud enough that I could feel my teeth rattle in my skull, even inside the captain’s cabin.
Shay somehow managed to get even tenser and pushed herself closer to me.
“Like what?” I asked. “I don’t think that thing is going to wait around for us to plan some kind of assault to beat it, or flee.”
It was really a miracle it hadn’t attacked us yet. Maybe this meant it was somewhat sentient, like it was studying us to see if we were a threat.
“Horus,” Zoie said, and her blue eyes were bright with determination. “What did your books say about skybeasts? Do we evade, or battle them head-on?”
“We certainly can’t let it land on the ship,” Nemis said. “It’s far too heavy. Even if it doesn’t break the Manta beyond repair, it will send the entire vessel plummeting to the ground. I wouldn’t recommend fleeing. It would just give the beast opportunity to pursue.”
“Nemis is right, we can’t flee,” the falcon-man said with a nod. “We’ve already flown into the skybeast’s territory, it’s noticed us. But even with all our skill, there’s no way we could beat it outright by killing it or something.”
“I don’t want to kill it,” Shay then said in a small voice.
“Neither do I,” I agreed. “I can feel the magic coming off that thing. It’s strong. And probably really old.”
“The records I found said skybeasts could live for a thousand seasons or more,” Horus said with a nod. “Even rich, healthy Aventollians don’t live much beyond one hundred.
“All the more reason not to kill it,” I told him. I didn’t want to have to kill such an ancient and powerful creature. I was sure it would feel like killing one of Mercedes beloved pets, or like some kind of sacrilege.
“So, if we can’t run, and we won’t kill it, what can we do?” Nemis asked.
“We scare it off,” I answered frankly. “The open sky is enormous, there’s no way it just found us by chance. It either thinks it can eat and intimidate us, or it wants something from us. Even if that’s just for us to leave its territory. We’ve got to show it we won’t be cowed, and that we just want to be on our way, but we’ll fight back if we have to.”
“That raises a good question,” Sha-Kane said. “If skybeasts exist, someone would have seen one. I would have met someone who had seen one. I refuse to believe we just… happened upon one right now, as we’re heading for the Heart of Aventoll.”
“I agree,” I said, and I frowned a little as I began to think. “They must normally be able to avoid Aventollian ships, otherwise someone would’ve seen them. So, this thing must be here on purpose. We must be entering its territory or be somehow unusual.”
“More unusual than a flying house?” Zoie asked with a wry smile.
“I think you’re right there, Alex,” Horus jumped in. “We’re not in a part of Aventoll that normal inhabitants can reach, after all. Maybe Shay, or Nova, or both of them… maybe they summoned the skybeast here. Like it’s some kind of guard or gatekeeper to the edges of Aventoll, something to defend the lands beyond from the unworthy.”
“Well, he’s shit out of luck, here,” I said, and I looked firmly over at Shay as she clung to Zoie. “Because we’re all worthy here. Every last one of us on this ship.”
Shay smiled at me a little shakily, but it seemed genuine.
“Nemis, keep the ship steady,” I ordered the captain. “Zoie, you and Shay go back below decks. Tell the others what’s going on but make sure they know it’s okay. Don’t let anyone else come up here.”
“Not even Bodin?” Shay asked, and I shook my head. “But he’s an Asher.”
“Then he can help Zoie keep the rest of you guys safe in case the skybeast decides to go for the underbelly of the Manta,” I said. I kissed both of them on the foreheads quickly and then pushed them toward the steep stairway that led to the lower levels of the ship. “Go! We’ll be fine.”
After all, when the Manta had been caught in a terrible storm only a few weeks ago, Nemis had been flung overboard, but I’d used my time-reverse ability to save him. If necessary, I could do the same again. We’d all come too far to be defeated by a territorial dragon.
“Horus, Councilman, you’re with me,” I told the two Natavian men. “We’re gonna make this thing regret messing with us.”
I pulled open the door to the captain’s cabin, and we were met with a wave of frigid air. The skybeast was still circling the ship, like it was checking us-- or perhaps the Manta-- out. Did it think the Manta was some kind of beast? Or did it know it was an airship, and the skybeast was trying to figure out what its crew wanted?
“Okay, Chief,” Horus said as he looked through the doorway and out at the circling beast. “How do the three of us scare off a creature that’s nearly the size of our ship?”
“We make ourselves seem bigger and stronger,” I said. “Too dangerous to bother fighting.”
“Just as well I brought these, then,” the falcon-man replied, and he pulled a bag of weapons that he must have dragged up to the top deck from the lower levels.
Then he reached into the bag and pulled out a pair of blades, one of which I hadn’t seen for what felt like forever.
One of the blades was new, just a normal sword since I’d lost Swiftness several adventures ago, but Decisiveness felt comfortable and familiar as I gripped them in my hands. It had been forged from the core of a herald demon, and I now knew the cores once been Aventollian citizens, so I wondered if that meant those Aventollians’ souls were what gave the cores their power. If so, their souls were fighting against the dangers that plagued their homeland, and they were being used to protect instead of terrorize.
I hoped the people they’d once been were content with that idea.
Next, Horus pulled out a weapon of his own. It was a sword I hadn’t seen before, but I recognized the Alchemical runes carved into the length of the blade. The falcon-man saw me looking and smiled.
“Just a little pet project I’ve been working on,” he told me, and when he swung the sword, it began to glow like it was made of light.
“Oh, very cool,” I remarked. “You’ll have to make one for me.”
“If we survive fighting a skybeast, I’ll make you as many as you like,” the Alchemist said with a laugh as Sha-Kane pulled out another sword, though this one wasn’t carved with runes. He’d been an Asher for a lot longer than Horus and I, though, and I was confident he had some secret Asher Council wisdom hidden up his sleeve.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” the osprey-man said, and I wondered who in Aventoll’s history had brought over Shakespeare’s Henry V and made it popular enough that Sha-Kane could quote it to me now.
“Once more,” I replied, because right now it didn’t matter, and the three of us charged toward the dragon.
We wouldn’t be able to reach it from our ship, so we were going to have to do something a little drastic.
