For Sheilah, the days that followed were wrapped in a gray fog. She was numb and disconnected. She did her chores with only a distant attachment. All of Caidi’s things except her necklace were burned alongside her body; her necklace was given to Mayrin, Caidi’s mother.
Her parents tried talking to her, her sisters talked to her, Fialla talked to her, even Atta came to talk to her, but their words passed through her, as empty as the air on the Terrace. She didn’t want words, she wanted her sister back.
Ever since Caidi had died, people had tried to talk to her. They talked and talked, and they all said the same thing. “Life in the Redstone was harsh.”
“Caidi had gone to be with the Dragon.”
“Caidi was with the ancestors, now.”
She got tired of hearing it, so she stopped listening. Once they stopped talking, things got a little better, though it didn’t fill the hole within her breast, and more importantly, it didn’t bring her littlest sister back.
Nobody bothered listening to what she wanted to say. It was like whatever she said- regardless of what it was- was simply a foothold for someone else to say whatever they felt like saying. So she stopped talking.
Whenever someone would try to talk to her, she would turn away and start walking and hope they didn’t follow after. There was no comfort to be found in words.
Climbing was a little better. Nobody bothered her when she climbed. Other tribes didn’t understand it, but they often said that the soul of the Dragon Clan was in climbing. Dragons liked to climb; they liked the high places, the windy places, the lonely places. But eventually they came up after her and dragged her down.
She knew what was coming before they even did it- discipline. At first it was chores, an endless wave of chores. Working in the communal gardens, the forge, the tannery scraping hides, fetching water until her hands blistered, even peeling the dragon metal scales from the dragonling hides of others and helping the forgemaster forge them into ingots.
Dragons and their spawn dug themselves burrows and dens, swallowing great chunks of rocks that were digested and refined into metal scales that adorned the backs of their leathery hides. Whatever was left rumbled around in their stomachs like a chicken’s gizzard, helping to break up and grind down the food they swallowed. Dragon metal was rare and precious.
She mindlessly went through her chores, mind turned inward, dwelling on how her own ancestors hadn’t even looked her way, dwelling on Caidi’s easy surrender to death, dwelling on her incompetence on the hunt.
She ran every morning. She carried heavy rocks every afternoon. She fought in the melee every evening.
It didn’t matter if she won or lost in the fights, she simply picked herself up again and threw herself into it again and again until she was dragged away, bruised and bleeding, barely conscious.
She stopped eating until her father thrashed her and forced her to. It didn’t matter. Her food was ashes in her mouth.
She grew gaunt, her glossy black hair sweat-streaked and dirty, her blue eyes dim and unfocused.
Sheilah took to wandering the empty, desolate places of the Valley and earned herself a thrashing when she had to be dragged back. It didn’t matter what her father did to her, though.
In her mind she berated herself, over and over again, for bringing Caidi along on the hunt. She upbraided herself for not paying attention. She scourged herself in her mind for not paying attention. Over and over in her mind, she replayed the events of the hunt and punished herself for each mistake, each failure. She could have done better. As a descendant of the First Blood of the Dragon, she should have done better.
*****
She seemed to come back to herself when she found herself in Mountain Cat lands, where Caidi had taken her wounds against the gnolls. She marveled at the scorched grasses and charred bones of the hyena-men.
The Clan of the Dragons had brought their wrath of fire to the lands that belonged to the Mountain Cat, and the whole area was scorched to the earth. She counted skeletons; even if Caidi had lived, they would have been up against fifty of the carrion-eaters.
Her mouth twisted bitterly. Caidi had been much too young for a hunt this large. Rather, their group had been much too small overall.
The strangely metallic scent of blood reached her nose, and she instinctively dropped to her knees, seeking cover against a cracked boulder.
The light came back to her eyes as she glanced around; adrenaline forced her heart to beat harder than she was used to, her chest cramped with pain and her hands clenched into bony fists, her nails digging into her hands as something scraped against the stone ahead of her, just around the stone she was crouched behind.
The scraping noises continued, alongside a grisly sound of flesh being torn, bones snapping.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Sheilah peeked around the boulder, and her jaw dropped in soundless shock as the largest dragonling she’d ever seen tore apart some animal it had caught for its prey.
She silently leapt atop the boulder she was cowering behind, eyes scanning the terrain. It seemed as though she could get closer if she climbed a short ridge to her right, so she scrambled as quickly as she could, as silently as she could, up the short ridge.
The dragonling paid her no mind as it ate.
She reached for her bow and belatedly realized she hadn’t brought it with her.
She reached for her waist for the short-bladed sword she often took with her and stopped. The sword was gone; she’d stopped carrying it at some point. Her families’ weapons felt strange in her hands, so she’d abandoned them.
She still had her knife, but the dragonling couldn’t properly be called a dragonling anymore; the thing had a body much larger than a horse, and its bloody maw was capable of tearing her in two.
How had such a monster been allowed to wander so far south without warning?
She glanced about, looking for a proper weapon, as if she expected one to materialize before her. She could push down a scorched sapling onto it, but it would be out from underneath it in a flash, and then her life would be over in a searing blast of flame.
She recalled one of the stories that had been told about her father’s trial in the Ashlands- The story went that he had heaved a boulder down on the dragon from above and crushed its head.
There was no way that had happened, of course, but-
She attacked the sooty soil beneath her and clumsily tipped over a large rock, her nails gouging into the stone, striking sparks.
She could hurl it down on the dragonling’s head; if she was lucky that would be enough to daze it long enough for her to get a killing blow. Who knew, maybe it would crack the thing’s skull.
She picked it up; the thing slipping in her hands as she raised it to her shoulder. The stone was large and heavy; she could definitely do some damage with it. She judged the distance, settled her feet, and hurled it with all her strength.
She knew it wasn’t going to hit the moment it left her fingers, but she had no way of snatching it back. She was riding the edge of malnourishment, she’d lost most of her normal strength as she’d vacantly wandered the Redstone.
Her foot slipped, her toss went awry as the stone slipped in her fingers, and as she heaved she realized it would never reach the head of the young dragon and could only helplessly watch as it floated through the air as if in slow motion and dropped on its back, right above its rear legs.
She heaved herself back as the dragonling screeched its surprise and whirled. It roared a warning as Sheilah dropped in the blackened soil in an attempt to avoid its followup fire breath.
When no such attack came, Sheilah poked her head up and dared a peek at the dragonling.
The dragonling twisted its head left and right, cocking its head as it sniffed the air. It roared again, and waited. Sheilah stayed perfectly still as it eventually stretched out its sinuous neck and snatched up its prey and went back to work tearing it apart.
She carefully eased herself up; the only thing she was certain she could reliably use was a sapling, but something like that could never harm a dragonling, let alone one that was so clearly close to adulthood.
She could change ground, however. The area she was in was like a box canyon, and if she went down the side she’d gone down and climbed back up on the opposing side...
She scrambled backwards, heading back the way she came.
Hatchlings, dragonlings, and, according to lore, dragons, had a skull plate that protected the vulnerable joint where the head met the neck. If she was very lucky, she could wedge a sapling into that joint between the head and neck and with even more luck, force it to keep its head pointed down, saving her against the dragon breath that was certain to immediately follow such an attack.
She scrambled up the other side of the box canyon, but the dragonling heard her and tried to face her. Bafflingly, its rear legs didn’t want to support it correctly. Even so, it spat a spectacular jet of flame into the trees she was near, causing her to once again land flat on her belly as it struggled to properly turn around and face her.
She poked her head up after no followup blast came, and watched with shocked fascination as the dragonling turned and twisted, dragging its rear legs behind it as it turned, its hindquarters refusing to function correctly.
This was clearly a chance; she planted both of her hands against the trunk of a sapling that was burning merrily, planted her feet and heaved.
The wood beneath her hands was heating up as she groaned, sweated, and heaved. She dug in with her feet and shoved. Her feet paddled the ground as she put her strength into it.
The sapling groaned and shuddered and finally heaved over just as the wood was getting blisteringly hot.
The sapling, a little bigger around than her clenched fist, toppled off the cliff and fell, scattering burning leaves. The dragon struggled to move, but the young tree simply struck its body and clattered off.
Sheilah shook her head and grit her teeth in frustration; she knew that the sapling wouldn’t do anything, but she’d tried anyway.
The smoke was thickening now, embers and bits of burning leaves floated around her, and it was getting harder to breathe. She wanted to choke and cough; she grimly held it back as she peeked over the edge.
Once again she glanced around frantically, despite knowing the futility, hoping that some weapon, some great equalizer would suddenly appear and solve her problems.
Some of the other saplings that dotted the edge of the box canyon began to topple inwards as they burned, churning up the soil and dislodging rocks as they tumbled over the edge, trailing fire and thin streamers of smoke.
Her eyes watering, Sheilah spied a much larger rock that had been partially unearthed and stuck out of the dirt like a molar tooth.
She stared at it numbly for a few moments, trying to understand what it was that caught her attention.
Rock. Half-torn from the ground. Smoldering sapling nearby.
Her eyes widened and immediately teared up; she moved to rub them, but instead picked up a fallen sapling and jammed it into the crevice between the rock and ground and heaved on it over and over, trying to pry the rock out of the ground.
She lost track of time; how long had this been going on? Had the clansmen from the Mountain Cat noticed the smoke from the fires? Surely they had already. Had those of the Dragon? The Dragon’s Terrace offered impeccable sights over the whole of the Redstone, a blaze this large should have been easily visible.
Eventually someone would come. They had to.
She dropped to her knees and coughed and choked as the wind blew smoke over her, burning her eyes and blinding her.