Roc (A Histories of Purga Novel)

The wind howled around three figures trudging up the side of a mountain. Their faces were red. Their eyes were squinted shut against the cold. Their hands were enveloped by thick, wool-lined gloves. Heavy coats with thickly padded hoods covered their heads and bright silver packs were strapped to their backs. They all wore three layers of pants. Despite their best efforts, each one was nearly frozen solid.

“We need to go back the way we came!” one of them shouted as a small drone hovered close to his head. He screamed it as loud as he could, trying to be heard over the shrieking winds.

The figure in the lead turned around. There was a hard, unyielding glint in his icy blue eyes.

“I’m not going back, Asher!” he yelled.

“Rone, this is suicide. Even if she’s up here, it's nearly impossible to get to her. We have to be reasonable!” Asher begged. He hated himself for even saying the words, but somebody had to. If they kept going, the only thing they would get for their trouble was a slow, frozen death. He glanced up. Way up. They were on one of the biggest mountains in the Polaris range. Its snow-capped peak was still a couple of hundred feet up. It was too much.

“Can we go home?” Fowler moaned from the back. His eyes were squinted so tightly they looked like they were closed.

“Shut up!” Rone yelled, whirling on the both of them in fury. Asher and Fowler flinched. “Just shut up! I’m not leaving her. She risked everything to save my life. I’m not leaving until I do the same for her. She’s here, I know she is.”

He turned away from them without another word and resumed the rough hike up the mountain’s treacherous slopes again, his body bent forward slightly to shield himself from the wind.

Asher let out a breath and followed after the Rook.

Fowler grumbled to himself and started walking as well, wishing he’d never left Vitari.

Rone kept walking. He slipped several times, falling heavily onto the icy snow, only to get back up to continue on with single-minded persistence. A voice inside his mind screamed at him to stop being such an idiot. He was going to get himself killed, along with Asher and Fowler, but he ignored it. He shut it out. The only thing he let himself believe was that he would see Keiara again. That he would get to hold her, comfort her, kiss her, love her. He missed her. All he could think about was her. His mind was cluttered with visions of her stunning face. It brought him images of her when she was tied to the post in Roanoke, flames wreathing her like a dress, her eyes streaming as Wilhelm pulled the trigger and shot him. Then the images switched and she was as she looked in Vitari, beautiful and alluring. Exotic. Compassionate. He remembered the first time he’d seen her after he’d woken up in a Terraqouis healer’s hut, scared out of his mind and utterly alone. He’d been disoriented, confused, and a little violent. Still, even during all that confusion, he couldn’t help but think she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

Hours went by and it looked as if they’d made no progress. To make things worse, night was coming on fast and the snow and wind only seemed to pick up. The temperature plummeted. Despite his best efforts, Rone knew that they needed to stop and make camp. They needed to shield themselves from the weather or they wouldn’t last another hour.

He looked through the blinding snow, trying to find a place that would offer some measure of protection against the elements. Thirty or forty feet up the mountain was an overhanging ledge. The protection it offered was minimal at best, but the bleak terrain didn’t offer anything better.

“We’ll camp there,” he said, pointing up the slope to the ledge.

Asher nodded his head, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Fowler just let out a sort of grunt as his entire body trembled.

They hiked to the overhang and Rone quickly shed his pack. His nanos flew out and created a sturdy domed tent with solid metal walls. A circular door opened and they all shuffled inside, including Blink, Asher's nano-machine that Rone had given him.

It was pitch black inside but Rone quickly took care of it. He willed his nanos to create an electric lantern that he placed in the middle of the tent. The shrieking winds could still be heard outside, but their banshee-like screams were muffled.

“Can you make something useful? Like fire?” Fowler asked, hugging himself. His body was still trembling violently.

Rone concentrated for a moment. When he had what he wanted firmly pictured in his mind, he had his nanos create it. A second later, a cylindrical object with slatted vents appeared, blasting 360 degrees of heat into the tent. He turned to his mechpak and tapped a few buttons on the screen. The blueprint for the heater suddenly appeared and he saved it into his database. He knew he’d need it again.

“Better?” he asked them.

Asher and Fowler immediately sat as close to the heater as they could, nodding their heads vigorously. Blink even beeped happily as ice and snow started melting off his metal exterior.

Rone moved closer to it too, but weirdly enough, he didn’t feel as cold as the other two seemed to be. His body wasn’t trembling and his teeth weren’t chattering. His face was slightly red but that was about it.

After everyone got warmed up, they slid into their respective sleeping bags and tried to get some rest.

Asher woke up first. The wind had died down a little sometime during the night. He put on his heavy coat and went outside. Blink joined him and the two glanced around. Asher had the machine change into a couple different things to distract himself but it was no use. Nothing would keep his mind off their current predicament. He was scared and worried that they were all going to die.

"You won't let us die right, Blink?" Asher asked with a half joking, half hopeful smile on his face.

Blink just stared back out of his glass eye. He made no noise. Not even a small beep.

The message was clear.

I make no promises.

"Well, at least you're honest," Asher responded.

He didn't say anything for the next couple of minutes. Instead, he went back to watching the world around him. It was still snowing, but not as much as before. The sun was filtering through grey, dense-looking clouds that looked like they were headed straight for his little group. He had a feeling the weather was eventually going to be worse than it was yesterday, despite its current mildness. He thought about trying to convince Rone to head back down again but immediately dismissed the idea. He remembered the look Rone had gotten on his face when he’d suggested it before and wasn’t eager to see it again. For a minute, he thought the Rook prince had gone insane.

He looked back up the slope, to the distant peak that was nearly invisible. Somewhere up there was his sister. Or so Rone said. They had trekked across Purga, hurdling numerous situations that almost got them killed (a company of rebel soldiers, a quicksand pit that almost claimed Fowler, and a very angry and particularly mean crocodile in the Farwick Swamp, just to name a few) only to end up at the foot of the Polaris Mountain range. At times, it felt like Rone had no idea what he was doing or where he was going. At others, he seemed like a man guided by something Asher couldn’t see. The closer they’d gotten to the mountains, the less Rone looked aimless and the more he looked guided. It was weird, but true. When Asher asked how they were even supposed to find Keiara in the range, Rone had pointed to one of the highest peaks without hesitation and said that one.

He had no doubts. He said it as if Keiara herself had told him.

Maybe she did, he thought to himself and not for the first time. The relationship between the two was still a mystery to him. Each one put their lives on the line to save the other. One a Rook and the other a Terraqouis. As far as he knew, nothing like that had ever happened before. The fighting between the two races stretched back for centuries.

There was no denying that some sort of connection had been made between Keiara and Rone. A connection that was just as clearly unbreakable. He’d watched a man shoot Rone in the back and try to torch his sister alive and yet both had walked away virtually unscathed. Keiara more so than Rone.

Rone still has that tiny scar from where the…, he paused, searching for the word Rone had used, bullet. Right. From where the bullet was digging into him. Keiara, however, had walked through the flames without getting burned at all. She even controlled them like they were a part of her body. And then she turned into that…that thing.

He shuddered as an image of the monster his sister turned into flashed through his mind. Even flying high overhead, he’d gotten a good look at her and the fear she inspired. He watched hardened, experienced soldiers throw down their guns and run away with panic etched on their faces and blazing in their eyes. He couldn’t actually see their faces, but if he could’ve, he knew that’s what he would’ve seen. He was sure of that.

He went back inside the tent with Blink following right behind him. The cold proved too much for him. The heater that Rone created was still going full blast, creating a thick, enveloping heat as soon as he got inside. Rone stirred fitfully in his sleep and Fowler was sort of twitching.

He was about to go over to Rone and wake him up, but the Rook’s face suddenly twisted into a grimace of pain and his hand shot down to his left leg. The prosthetic was gone for the moment and Asher could see where his leg abruptly ended underneath the sleeping bag.

Rone's eyes popped open.

“You okay?” Asher asked.

Rone didn’t answer for a second. The wave of tingling, electric-like pain shooting through his amputated leg was dominating every sensation and every thought. When it passed, he looked over at Asher.

“Yeah,” he replied, taking a deep, steadying breath. He pulled his hand away from his leg and opened his sleeping bag. Nanos flew out of his mechpak and created his leg. Then he started getting up. “I’ll be fine.”

“How often does it do that?” Asher questioned, glancing at the bright silver of Rone’s fake leg.

“Every once in a while. Always catches me off guard when it does it.” He started packing away all their things, stuffing them back inside one of the three packs he’d created for their journey.

“What’s it feel like?” Asher asked, curious. If Keiara were with them, she probably would’ve slapped him on the shoulder and told him to quit being rude, but he couldn’t help it. He was curious and when he was curious, he didn’t stop poking until he got his answer. Maybe when he was older, he would learn to control it better.

“It feels like lightning shooting around in my leg. And tingling. Lots of tingling,” Rone replied, not looking at Asher.

They quit talking and the silence was heavy and oppressive. Then Fowler let out a very long and very loud snore. Rone looked at Asher and Asher looked at Rone. Then they both howled with laughter, the tension evaporating with it.

“Wha..,” Fowler asked, his voice still rough with sleep. He blinked at the both of them. They were still laughing like lunatics. “Wha’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Asher managed to say, wiping tears from his eyes.

Fowler looked angry for a moment, but Rone brought out some food and his eyes sort of glazed over. He grabbed his share of crackers, dried vegetables, dried fruits, and water and started gobbling them down.

Asher watched the food disappear into his friend’s mouth with awe, wondering how he never managed to choke himself. He grabbed his own share of the rations and ate, although quite a bit slower and with less vehemence than Fowler.

Rone did the same, eating mostly to nourish his body. There was a distant, faraway look in his eyes. He was concerned about Keiara and while most of his thoughts were of her, he was also thinking about his own people, the Terraqouis nation, and Purga as a whole. A quiet fear stole through him as he envisioned Blak Army soldiers wiping out everyone.

“Rone!” Asher said loudly.

Rone started with a jerk and looked up at the boy.

Asher glanced back with worry evident in his eyes.

“We’re ready to go,” he said, glancing around the tent. He and Fowler had already packed up their stuff.

Rone forced himself to focus on their current situation and worry about Purga and the Blak Army later. He made the heater and light burst apart into nanos. They flowed back into the mechpaks on his forearms. Immediately after the heater was gone, the cold started seeping back in.

Rone headed to the circular door and it opened for him. The wind screamed inside, swirling around them.

Asher started shivering immediately. The cold seeped through his layers and layers of clothes, determined to make him freeze to death.

Fowler wasn’t faring any better. His teeth were clattering together in a rapid series of clicks and he gave them both dirty, angry looks.

“I hate you guys,” he told them, but he was ignored.

Rone stepped outside and the other two reluctantly followed. Then he put a finger to the tent and it burst apart too. The streams of microscopic robots twisted through the air until they were safely back in his mechpaks.

Rone’s focus turned razor sharp again, his eyes trained on the ground directly in front of him. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He blocked out the wind and the cold.

He blocked out how high they still had to go. He blocked out Fowler’s constant complaining. The only thing he didn’t block out were his thoughts of Keiara. That was the force driving him forward and he let it. He let it cement his determination in his mind and turn him into an indestructible engine that would keep going and going until he found her.

They kept the pace that Rone set for four hours. The higher up they went, the thinner the air became. Eventually, he had to create re-breathers for them so they could keep going.

He pressed them to go on for another hour, but after that he could tell Asher and Fowler were getting exhausted. He decided to stop so they could break for lunch. He recreated the domed tent, then recreated the heater, and finally handed out some more food. They ate in silence, all of them cold, miserable, and tired. So, so tired. The same thought kept popping up in each of their minds. They weren’t going to survive much longer.

“Can’t you just use your flying-thing?” Asher had asked yesterday as they all stood looking up at the giant mountain.

“The weather’s too harsh. Too much wind and snow and it will only get worse the higher I fly. I wouldn’t be able to control my flight or see anything. More than likely I’ll run myself into the side of the mountain and die,” he’d explained.

“Oh,” Asher replied, feeling stupid for asking the question.

“That would be bad,” Fowler commented.

They finished their lunch. The water they brought with them was gone, but Rone grabbed some snow and started boiling it after he made a modification to the heater, adding ingredients that Asher had found during their trek to the mountain range to make a sweet, and vaguely spicy, tea. They all drank, relishing the heat. Rone let the two boys rest up a little more before he forced them to hike up the mountain again. He closed his eyes for a moment.

She’s close now, he thought. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. It was a simple, flat-out truth. Like the sky is blue or the grass is green. Keiara is close.

He wondered, idly, if she could feel him. If he could feel her presence then it stood to reason that she could feel his. He hoped she could. He wanted her to know that he was coming. That he would save her.

“Let’s get started,” he said, standing up.

King Rowan looked over the vast seas, watching the water ripple and churn. He was on a balcony in the highest suite of Lord Jared Valentz’s private tower in the floating city of Edaeri. He could see for miles in every direction. The water was a shocking crystal blue that was almost too bright on the eyes and there were little to no waves. The sky was a deep indigo with flecks of clouds floating lazily in it and the sun was high and shining bright. It was a beautiful day and everything about it screamed peace and tranquility. That was, of course, except for the three warships slicing their way through the water.

Rowan’s eye narrowed as he watched them come. Close to a month had passed since he escaped what was left of Roanoke with the other refugees and he’d been hoping for more time before Wilhelm sent his army after him. He watched the ships a moment more and then walked away from the balcony, limping badly as pain shot up his right leg. The best doctors Edaeri had to offer managed to heal a lot of the injuries sustained from his torture, but his right leg was going to take more time. The nerve damage from the electric shocks had been extensive, they explained.

“What are your orders, sir?” Lord Valentz asked. He was a man of average height and slightly portly but he carried himself with an air of nobility and dignity. His dark hair and brown skin had a film of sweat covering it that he constantly dabbed at with an expensive silk handkerchief. He was staring at the ships too, his light brown eyes narrowed in agitation. Flanking Edaeri’s Lord was an army of advisors and several high-ranking military leaders, while standing off to the side and slightly behind everyone else was Darvian Tims and Fiona Rosburg.

The King’s gaze lingered on Fiona for a moment as he remembered the monster her father had been turned into. She’d been eager to know what happened to him and ever since his recovery; she’d asked a relentless barrage of questions. He’d debated telling her the truth but he decided against it in the end. He deliberately withheld the information from her. He needed her focused. He needed her mind clear. Edaeri, being isolated from the mainland, didn’t have a highly-trained military presence and he needed all the fighters he could get. He knew she was young, but because of her father’s tutelage she was more dangerous and capable than five Edaeri soldiers combined. It wasn’t ideal, but he wasn’t left with a lot of options.

“Make sure the defenses are prepared,” he responded, his voice commanding and strong. He looked at Lord Valentz with no sign of fear. “Ready the soldiers and make sure they are armed with the new blaster blueprints we’ve designed.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty,” the Lord said.

Valentz bowed respectfully and left, along with the advisors and military leaders. Fiona and Darvian turned to leave also.

“I need a word with you both,” he told them.

They stopped and looked at their King with identical expressions of unease. He’d recovered a lot since they’d found him, but he still looked too thin and his face had new wrinkles on it that seemed to age him ten years. “Sit.” He gestured to two chairs and took a seat himself.

Darvian glanced nervously at Fiona for a second and then sat down. She took the seat to his right.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” she asked, not bothering to hide her impatience. She’d seen the warships too and was eager to help defend the city. After losing her father, fighting the ones responsible for his disappearance seemed like a great outlet for her aggression. She kept her eyes on King Rowan but her feet tapped incessantly on the carpeted floor.

“Tell me again what happened in Roanoke. Tell me what happened to Rone. And leave nothing out,” he ordered.

Darvian was uncomfortable at once but Fiona just looked angry. She let out a quiet huff of breath.

After the first time the King had woken up and been lucid enough to talk, both of them explained (in as much detail as possible) everything that happened to Roanoke and Rone. However, the King kept making them retell the story, as if by doing so it would somehow change. Rone’s betrayal of Roanoke, of his entire kingdom, seemed a worse torture for the king than his son’s supposed death had been.

“Tell me again!” King Rowan suddenly thundered.

Darvian jerked and Fiona lost the look of anger on her face.

They both began the story again, with Darvian starting from where he found Rone in the desert near Terraqouis land. Fiona jumped in when Darvian got to the part where they ran into her outside of Raleigh. Then they went over the plan they’d come up with to get inside Roanoke and into Detention Sector 1. After that, they told him about the battle there and how Rone had changed. Rowan asked for more details about this but neither one was entirely sure what happened and were not much help. They explained in detail about the tunnel and its collapse. And then Darvian explained why Rone left.

“They used the Terraqouis girl as bait. They drew him out so they could kill him,” Darvian stopped talking. This was the part the King seemed unable to grasp.

“A Terraqouis girl?” he asked. “He gave up everything to protect an enemy.”

“She wasn’t an enemy, Your Majesty,” Fiona broke in. “She saved his life.”

“She is the enemy!” he roared back.

Fiona tried to stand her ground but the anger burning in the King’s eye was too much for her. She turned her head and studied the suite’s dark brown walls.

“I don’t care. She’s a savage! A killer. Just like the rest of them.” He got up from his chair, rage whirling inside him. His only son and the heir to the throne of Roanoke was now a traitor. He chose a savage over his own people!

Just like…he thought but he squashed it flat. There were wounds a person suffered throughout their life, both physical and mental. For the most part, the physical ones healed. The mental ones, the emotional ones, however, have a tendency to stay open. They always seemed to be raw and bleeding and Rowan's emotional wounds were no different. Thinking of what happened, of everything that lead up to it, was a wound too vast for his mind to heal.

I hope the Blak Army killed you, son, he thought harshly.

“Your Majesty, if you would just listen,” Darvian stuttered.

“Leave,” he said. “Now.”

Darvian felt a huge wave of relief at being dismissed. He got up and grabbed hold of Fiona’s hand, hauling her up as well. He was focused on escaping the King’s wrath and he didn’t want to sit there and provoke him further. In his hurry to get out, he completely missed the defiant look on Fiona’s face. Before he knew what she was doing, she wriggled out of his grip and was crossing the space between herself and the King.

“You arrogant, self-righteous bastard!” she yelled. “Look around you. Look what you’ve been reduced to. Roanoke is nothing but rubble now. A rebel army has murdered hundreds of thousands of your people. They’re coming, as we speak, and the only thing you care about is that Rone fell in love with a girl that saved his life? A girl that went out of her way to help him even though her people hate us as much as we hate them? You’re unbelievable.”

King Rowan turned and stared at the girl in front of him, speechless. No one ever dared talk to him as brazenly as Fiona just did. He stared hard at her, his eye narrowed warningly. He admired her guts and the fact that she spoke her mind but that didn't mean he was going let a seventeen year old girl yell at him as if he were a child. He was beyond angry now. He was furious.

“Get out,” he said, his voice strangely quiet. “Get out before I have you thrown in jail.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she sneered, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She bowed stiffly before she turned on her heal and left.

Darvian grabbed her arm and nearly dragged her out of the room. When they were in the hallway, he rounded on her.

“Are you insane?” he whispered roughly. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I’m tired of the king being a damned moron!” she shot back, yanking her arm out of Darvian’s grip. He was angry with her for the things she said back there, but she could tell he thought the king was being unreasonable too. "You know I'm right so don't get mad at me just because I had the nerve to say it out loud."

“Yeah, but you don’t tell that to his face!”

“It was time someone did.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t have you arrested,” Darvian hissed.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it,” she explained.

Darvian stared hard at her for a moment more and then finally relented. The tension in his body evaporated and he hugged her.

“First I thought you were killed in that miserable tunnel and then you try to get arrested. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you were trying to get away from me,” he joked.

“I guess you’re smarter than you look,” she shot back with a laugh.

“Ha. Ha,” he responded sarcastically, leaning down to kiss her. He felt her hand slide into his hair while the other one came to rest on the back of his neck.

They stayed that way until the entire building erupted in loud, warning alarms.

The Blak Army was getting closer.

Rone stood with Asher and Fowler on a broad, flat ledge that stuck out of the mountain’s side. Directly in front of them was the entrance to a cave. The ground around and in front of it was black and covered in scorch marks. All the snow that should’ve been blanketing the area was burned away, leaving only the bare earth of the mountain. He heard Fowler gulp nervously.

“What do we do now?” Asher asked, his voice slightly garbled by the re-breather he wore. He glanced at the cave with obvious fear. He’d gotten a good look at what his sister had turned into at Roanoke. He knew that Keiara and it were the same, but that didn’t seem to matter to his brain. All it knew was that the beast terrified him. He glanced into the cave again, his heart rapping against his chest painfully. He could feel his hands trembling and all his instincts screamed warnings at him. “Is she herself again, or is she still, you know, that thing?”

“Stay out here, both of you. I’m going inside,” Rone replied, ignoring Asher’s concerns. He didn’t give them any time to argue, not that they would. Asher and Fowler were more than happy to stay out in the freezing cold and wind.

Faintly, a low rumbling sound came drifting out. It was a deep, frightening thing that belonged to something enormously huge.

Rone stared at the tunnel for a few seconds as the sound slowly died out. He fought to control the sudden panic racing through him. He didn’t want to go in and face Keiara’s dragon, especially not by himself, but he knew he was going in anyway. That resolution helped calm him and he took a couple steps forward.

The rumbling, growling sound suddenly grew louder.

He processed the sound and then shoved it to the back of his mind. He took a deep breath and then went inside.

Asher and Fowler watched Rone for as long as they could. They watch him until the darkness seemed to surge forward and swallow the Prince whole. Asher fought the urge to call out his name but he stifled it and tried to wait patiently.

The cold, bitter winds continued to whirl around the two boys.

Nothing happened for a long time. Rone was still gone and the only thing they heard was the wind. Then out of nowhere, a huge roar came bellowing out of the cave, loud enough that Asher and Fowler had to clamp their hands over their ears and bits of snow and rock slid down from the upper slopes. They both jumped like they'd been shocked and fear pumped through their bodies.

When the sound died out, they looked up to try and get a glimpse of Rone.

That's when the cave entrance lit up with fire.

Rone looked around the cave. He couldn’t see much. The light disappeared about ten feet inside. He focused on his nanos and his mechpaks opened. The little cloud of micro-robots quickly converged and created a flashlight. He turned it on, swinging the beam left to right. There still wasn’t much to see. The walls were scorched and the floor was churned up by a beast’s giant claws. There was no sign of Keiara. He walked around aimlessly for a while, feeling helpless. Then he froze in his tracks.

Faintly, he heard the rumbling growls again. They were closer now.

He turned in the direction they were coming from. In the back of the cave wall, he could just make out a narrow tunnel. He walked over to it, his heart hammering in his chest. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to squeeze through the crack, but the closer he got to it, the more sure he was that the growls were coming from a room beyond the tunnel. The only thing that made up his mind for him was the chance to find Keiara and try to help her.

He was examining the tunnel some more when far back in its depths, he saw an orange glow. He paused there, staring curiously. Then curiosity gave way to outright terror when he realized that the orange glow was racing toward him. He dived out of the way and shielded his face just as a column of fire exploded out of the tunnel and into the cave.

The roar of the flames was deafening and the heat was nearly unbearable but he managed to avoid getting roasted.

For now, he thought darkly.

The flames winked out of existence a few seconds later and Rone cautiously took his arms away from his face.

He stayed on the floor of the cave for awhile so he could get his body to stop trembling. He breathed deeply several times. After a minute, his heart finally slowed a little. His body stopped shaking uncontrollably and he was able to stand. He rubbed absently at his left leg. The sudden dive didn’t do it any favors. He felt a slight burning pain from where his stump rubbed painfully against the metal of the prosthetic. He grimaced slightly and then went back to inspecting the tunnel.

The walls glowed bright orange and were hot to the touch. Experimentally, he laid one of his gloved hands against it and instantly pulled it back with a slight hiss of pain. A curl of smoke drifted off it.

He backed away, irrational anger surging forward. He slammed a fist on the cave wall next to the tunnel. Pain blossomed in his hand but he ignored it.

I have to get to her!

That helplessness, that anger, all seemed to swirl and coalesce inside him. There was a faint, odd pull at his mind and then a screaming, icy wind flowed into the cave. It swirled around him and then shot down the tunnel.

A roar erupted from its other end. It was so loud, the insides of his ears vibrated and left them ringing.

Rone wobbled clumsily as a wave of intense dizziness hit him and he had to lean against the cave wall for support.

What was that? he thought to himself and not for the first time. He suppressed a shudder as visions of the prison came back to him and what he did to the Blak Army soldiers there. What is happening to me?

He didn’t know and although he was scared and wary of his newfound abilities, he ignored them for now and refocused on getting to Keiara.

When he felt stronger, he walked back over to the narrow crack and put his hands against its walls. The sizzling heat that had been there moments before was almost completely gone now.

He let his flashlight disperse, turned sideways, and wriggled into the crack. The air in the tunnel was still cool from the blast of frigid wind that had funneled down it, but the farther he went, the hotter it got. There was an overpowering scent of burning wood. It got so bad he coughed harshly and couldn’t seem to breathe. He managed to maneuver an arm up to his mouth and nose to filter out the smell and then pressed on.

Sweat started to run down his face. He could feel each drop collect on his chin and jaw line before they dropped and splattered on his clothes. His heavy coat wasn’t helping and he was pretty sure the shirt underneath was drenched. He looked ahead, but the tunnel seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

It got even hotter. So hot that he wasn’t sure he could make it all the way. The walls pressing in on him on both sides felt like they were cooking him. He tried to block out the pain, but the heat was soon too intense for that. For a panic-ridden second, he thought he was going to be trapped in that tunnel, unable to move forward or backward, and end up being cooked alive. Roasted like a plump turkey. He was too wide to keep going and he struggled as hard as he could to keep pressing on. Inch, by slow inch, he managed to keep a forward momentum going and he popped out of the tunnel. He burst into a much larger cavern than the cave he was in before. Up above, light poured in from some sort of opening.

He looked around and stopped suddenly. He could feel his fear working inside his mind but he calmly pushed it back.

In front of him, in all her magnificent splendor, was Keiara in her dragon form. He was awed. She was easily the biggest creature he’d ever seen. She crouched on her haunches, her massive head staring directly at him. Her glistening scales shimmered from the faint light of the opening above. They were a deep red that tapered off to black at their edges. Horns sprouted from her brow and down along her spine. A long tail lay curled behind her, twitching slightly. Blazing yellow eyes glared down at him and her white fangs seemed to sprout out of her maw. A long, forked tongue slithered in and out her mouth, tasting the air.

He couldn’t speak for a long time. The only thing he could think was that she was beautiful, even in that form.

After a couple of seconds, he finally got his scattered wits together again and he stepped toward her. His motions were stiff and awkward. He held out his arms, but they trembled with fear. He could feel his heart hammering at his ribcage, like it was trying to burst free. He tried to calm his fried nerves, but they didn’t want to obey any of his commands. They just continued sending signals to his brain to get out of that cave and get far away from that monster.

His heart, however, was telling him something completely different. His heart wanted him to stay.

He listened to that instead.

More steps brought him even closer to the monstrous beast. He was almost near enough to touch her. The smell of burning wood became nearly unbearable. He coughed several times. All the while his mind was racing. Two questions circled inside it, each one chasing the other.

Will she attack?

Or…

Will she let me help?

He got his answer a second later. The dragon growled deeply, her voice menacing, and then lunged.

Before he could even think to move, a huge, clawed paw slammed him into the ground and pinned him there. The breath was knocked out of his lungs. He spent a few dizzying seconds trying to breathe. When he finally gasped in a lungful of air, he struggled to get out from under her paw. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. She held him there, trapped.

He looked up as her head swung down. Her blazing yellow eyes glared into his, spewing hatred and pure rage.

[Why have you come here?]

The voice in his mind was scary, even more so than the beast in front of him. It terrified him because it was obviously not Keiara’s voice that resonated inside his mind, but at the same time, it was. He recognized the lilting, almost melodic tones. What he didn’t recognize was the menace to it or the coldness he heard in it. Those were two things that he never would’ve associated with Keiara. This thing she was now almost seemed like a separate entity. Something completely opposite to the girl that he came to know…and to love.

[You come here to torture me further? Does your master send you here to taunt me? To show me that he’s won?]

She put more pressure on the paw pinning him to the ground. Rone let out a gasp of pain. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.

She brought her head even closer to his. He choked on the smell of her.

[You are not RONE!]

He screamed as the will of her powerful mind rampaged over his. The pain was enormous and several blood vessels in his eyes popped, turning the whites a horrible red. A trickle of blood flowed out of each ear as well. He struggled, but she only pushed harder on him. He tried to speak but couldn’t get enough breath to force the words past his throat.

[Rone is DEAD!]

He managed to pull in air, but he let it out in a scream of pain. More blood flowed out of his ears. It poured out of his nose now and he thought he was really going to die. It hurt so much he almost wished it would happen.

He stopped struggling. If he was going to survive this, then he needed to get through to her. He forced himself to be calm. He forced himself to just breathe. It was hard to get enough air past the crushing weight of her paw on his chest, but he was able to do it. When he thought he would be okay to speak, he talked to her.

“P-please,” he told her. His voice came out more as a whisper but the dragon heard him just fine. “I know you think I died. I know that’s what they made you watch, but I survived. I’m not exactly sure how, but I did. Asher is with me and Fowler too. They’re outside the cave right now.”

[LIES!]

This time the sickening wave of pain from her mental assault was almost enough to knock him out cold. He pushed the blackness creeping over his vision away and continued.

“I-it’s the truth,” he replied. “I can prove it to you, if you would just listen to me, Keiara.”

He could feel her hesitation. He could read it in the set of her body and it was clearly visible in her eyes. At that moment, he could tell she wanted to believe him.

[How can you prove it?]

Rone’s mind worked furiously. With a sigh of relief, it immediately supplied him with what he needed to verify his identity with her.

“Underneath Gar’s hut, on the edge of the Qarri Forest, I kissed you. It was the first time we kissed but you ran away. I tried to follow you, but Gar wouldn’t let me past,” Rone began. Gradually, the pressure on his chest eased. “It was also the first time I realized I was falling in love with you.”

The dragon backed completely away. There was confusion in its eyes.

[I saw you. You died. He killed you.]

“I guess he thought so too,” Rone replied. He got off the cave floor, wincing. He could feel numerous aches and pains across his back from where sharp rocks had dug into him. Luckily, the heavy coat he had on protected him from getting any gashes. Unfortunately, he was going to be feeling that pain-on top of the pain in his amputated leg-for a couple days at least.

The dragon was watching him, the confusion in her eyes even more pronounced. Rone walked over to her and she brought her head down to inspect him more closely. He could almost feel the hope that he wasn’t lying radiating out of her.

[Is it truly you?]

He laid a hand on her snout, careful not to cut it on the extremely sharp edges of her scales.

“It is.”

That was all she seemed to need. Her form started to shimmer and warp. A second later, Keiara was standing there. She looked worn and tired. Dark rings circled her eyes and they had trouble staying open. Despite all of that, however, she still looked as beautiful to him as the day they’d first met.

“Rone,” she said, whispering his name.

She smiled lovingly at him.

Then her eyes rolled up inside her head and she pitched forward. Rone moved, amazingly fast, and caught her before she could hit the ground. He brushed the hair out of her eyes. His fear for her was like a living thing inside him. It curled around his heart and stomach almost simultaneously, squeezing mercilessly.

“Keiara?” he shouted. He tried to shake her awake but that didn’t help. “Keiara, wake up!”