“So I… just like that?”
Tam stood before the swirling Nest Heart. His hand hovered inches away from its outer layers, ready to plunge into its depths, and he made a kind of grabbing, pulling motion.
“Just like that,” I confirmed.
He moved his hand forward, then snatched it back as the first wisp of shadow passed around it.
“Mercies, but that felt strange!”
“Oh, come on! Your baby sister barely hesitated at all!”
“My baby sister is one of the most fearless women I’ve ever known!” Tam countered. “She’s also a little crazy. The best kind of crazy, and I love her with all my heart. I’d die for her without hesitation. But she is a little bit crazy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Your big sister did it too.”
“If you’re somehow trying to shame me by comparing me to women, don’t bother. Mak’s another of the bravest women I’ve ever known. The other two women I’m closest to are Lalia and Rib, and I’ll readily admit that they’re both braver, or at least crazier, than I am.”
“That’s— yeah, fair.”
“Give me a moment, all right?”
After steeling himself, Tam finally stuck his hand in there. Once he got used to the sensation he started moving it about, watching with fascination how the shadowy tendrils twisted and turned around his wrist as they spun. Then he stopped, and focused, and drew.
It worked. Tam, who had only internal magic, who I had not touched in any way that I could control, absorbed a portion of the Heart. I saw with my own eyes how it entered through his skin, followed some kind of channels in his arm, and settled next to his own heart.
“I feel it.” Tam’s voice was full of wonder. “I can feel it inside me. Like a ball of heat in my chest. Do you realize what this means?”
“Anyone with magic can draw power from Nest Hearts,” I replied seriously. I was fully aware of how important of a discovery this might be. At the same time, something felt off about the whole thing. It didn’t feel right that we should discover something completely new like this. Surely plenty of people must have tried this, throughout history? But then why wasn’t it common knowledge? Or was it really so unintuitive that only someone who could literally see the movement of magic would even think to try?
“Anyone with magic,” Tam agreed.
“Anyone with magic, eat Heart?” Kira asked.
“Anyone with magic, eat Heart, yeah,” I told her.
“Anyone, no magic? They—” Kira’s face scrunched up as she searched for the words, then she snorted and switched to her own language. “What about people who aren’t magic users? Do you think you could show Val or Ardek how to do it?”
“I hadn’t even considered that,” I admitted. I turned to Tam, who was full up but was still swirling his hand around, making patterns in the shadows. “Tam!”
“Yeah?”
“Has Val ever tried to draw the magic out of a lightstone?”
“Not that I know of. Why would he? He doesn’t have any magic Advancements.”
“But he hasn’t even tried?”
“Yeah, not that I know of. Sorry?”
“We need to have him try.”
“Wait. Wait! You think—?”
“Credit where it’s due, it’s Kira’s idea. And I don’t think, exactly, but I wonder. Only one way to find out.”
“Right. Right, right.” Tam’s voice was dreamy, and could barely be heard over the rain. He seemed to be thinking along similar lines as me, because he suddenly looked up and said, “We can’t be the first to think of it, though? Surely not. Someone must have tried it.”
“And they either failed, or they kept it secret,” I agreed. “Things like our lightstones can't be too common, either, right? Where you can pull the magic out if them?”
“Don't reckon so, no. We could sell ours for probably ten, fifteen gold each, and that’s what we could get tomorrow. Never mind if we auctioned them off. But the lightstones are just too…”
“Lightstone wonderful!” Kira exclaimed, looking happy just to contribute.
Tam nodded. “Damn right.”
There was a lull, which Kira broke. “I try now?” she said, looking at the Heart with anticipation.
Tam stepped aside. “Go ahead. If I can, so can you.”
At that, Kira stepped up, gingerly putting her hand into the Heart. “Like lightstone?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she began. And then, it was over. She drew the power in, like everyone before her, until she was full. As easy as that. No special dragon Advancements necessary.
Kira looked at her own hand in wonder, then between me and Tam. “Do we tell everyone?” she asked in Tekereteki. “This seems important enough that we should either tell everyone, or tell no one, and I do not know which.”
“Right,” Tam said. He didn’t speak the language very well, though he was getting better, but he understood much more than he could express. “We tell friends? Wolves? Or secret in family?”
“Only the family, for now,” I said. “Once the secret is out, it is out. We need to really think about this.”
“You will never get the cat back in the basket,” Kira said, nodding. The internet would have disagreed with her, but Tam nodded along with her.
“Back to city, then talk,” he said, then grinned. “First dry, then think.”
“First dry, then think,” I agreed. “Let me just eat this, and we can go.”
Neither Tam nor Kira had seen me eat a Nest Heart before. They were impressed, to say the least. Especially at the end, with the anti-sound explosion that knocked me right out and left me lying in the mud, while they sheltered best they could under my wings with no idea when I’d wake up.
“You could have warned us,” Tam scolded me as we got ready to return. “It’s lucky Kira could tell that you were still alive and healthy, or we’d have lost our heads! You just dropped like a sack of beans!”
“Ah, yeah, you’re right. I probably should have,” I agreed happily. The world was beautiful and my mood, like always after I ate a Heart, was unassailable. “But now you know! And you can tell Val, in case I forget again.”
Tam just sighed and pulled his hood up further, to keep the rain off his face a little better. Then we waited for the exceedingly relieved Kira to stop hugging my neck, so that I could pick her up, and we returned to the city.
----------------------------------------
“Hey, uh, Draka?”
Clinging to my back as he was, Tam had to shout pretty loudly to be heard.
“Yeah?” I shouted back.
“I’ve got a bad feeling!”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
That made my neck itch. “A bad feeling like you ate the wrong thing and we need to land, or a bad feeling like your intuition is telling you something?”
“The second!”
When Tam had a bad feeling, anyone who knew him paid attention. He had three minor Advancements that I knew of: Endurance, which did what it said on the box; Luck, which was just straight “God’s dice are weighted in your favor” bullshit; and Intuition, which was most visible when it alerted him that something bad was about to happen.
“All right, shit, I suppose! Any idea what might be triggering it? Should we land?”
“I was thinking about the Tesprils, and I got this knot in my stomach! I think we should go to their house, as fast as we can!”
“Ugh! Right, if you say so. Hold on!” Switching to Tekereteki I told Kira, “Hold on, Kira! I’ll be going as fast as I can! Tam thinks something is happening at the Tesprils’ city estate!”
“Uh, okay?” Kira’s grip around my arms tightened a fraction. “Why would he—?”
“No time to explain! Just hold on!”
With that I kicked myself into overdrive. I’d been keeping a nice, lazy pace of perhaps forty miles per hour, for Tam and Kira’s sake. Now I locked both my arms and legs, keeping them both as tight and steady as I could without hurting them, and really pushed myself. Hard, fast beats of my wings pushed us to seventy miles per hour, maybe more, and both my passengers screamed as the wind started really tearing at their cloaks, the speed turning raindrops into painful projectiles. They were in real danger at speeds like that, especially with the rain, and while I had confidence in my own grip on Kira I paid close attention to Tam’s arms around my neck and the pressure of his feet against my hips and his front against my back, vigilant for any sign that he might be slipping. At least with his endurance Advancement, supercharged as it was, there was little risk of fatigue making him lose his grip.
Fortunately for them both, we had already been close to the city. They only needed to endure for two or three minutes. Soon I shot above the walls, crossing the rooftops between the city’s edge and the part of the high city where the Tesprils had their home in no more than twenty seconds. I didn’t bother with subtlety. I simply landed in the small garden behind the house, letting my passengers stand on their own shaky legs as I prowled towards the building.
The back door stood open. Blood and death hung in the air.
“Tam, with me,” I commanded. “Kira, stay behind us. Eyes open. People died here. Very recently.”
Just inside the back door, two men lay dead in pools of blood. Their weapons were still at their belts. They were very obviously dead — One had his throat slit, and the other had multiple stabs to the chest and stomach — but Kira gasped and went to confirm the fact anyway.
Tam drew his sword and gently pulled Kira to her feet, and we continued inside.
A fear and a rage were growing inside me. I could only see one reason anyone might have died here, in this house. Anyone who attacked this place would have been after Zabra or Kesra, or both. And they were mine. Zabra more so, perhaps, but they belonged to me. Someone had come here to rob me of my servants.
There was more blood and more bodies inside. One man had died on the stairs to the second floor, his blood smeared where he’d been dragged down and out of the way, crimson prints leading upstairs. Another man lay on the landing. Zabra and Kesra were not there.
“Do you hear?” Kira asked as we returned to the ground floor.
“No,” Tam and I both said, and I added, “What is it?”
“Thump! Thump! From… below, I think.”
“A cellar?” Tam said, and I agreed. A quick search turned up a secret door in the kitchen; not so secret anymore, since the cupboard hiding it had been left pushed to the side. Beyond the door a wooden staircase descended, narrow enough that I had to Shift to fit. And from the staircase, a rhythmic thumping could be heard.
“Follow me in ten seconds, unless someone comes,” I told my two companions before Shifting and gliding down. The stairs only went down one floor, switching back on themselves, and below was a well-lit room with some tables, overturned chairs, and three bodies on the floor. I didn’t pause. Closed doors presumably led to other rooms, but the thumping was coming from an open doorway which by my reckoning should lead beneath the front of the house.
At the end of a short corridor were four men. Two were trying to break down a heavy-looking door, using what looked like a make-shift battering ram. The others were facing my way, and one reacted as I came into view, alerting the other.
“I think someone came into the cellar,” he whispered between thumps, barely at the edge of hearing. “See that shadow? More of the whore’s worshippers?”
The other man replied by inching forward soundlessly, a short sword held with a relaxed grip in one hand. At that moment, I could hear Tam and Kira coming down.
All four intruders reacted to the sound of steps on the stairs. The two nearest me stalked forward immediately. The two at the back dropped their ram, turning and drawing their weapons. They all looked professional, calm and focused, and while the room was open enough for Tam to swing his longsword effectively I would not like his odds against all four of them.
But Tam was a lucky guy. He didn’t need to face four of them. He didn’t need to face them at all. Because in front of the invaders, at the mouth of the corridor, which was barely wide enough for two men to squeeze in next to each other, I Shifted back, blocking it off entirely.
The looks on their faces before I filled the small space with a spray of venom was priceless.
All four immediately started cursing and coughing. I’d spread the venom out, aiming to blind all four rather than try to kill one or two, and it had worked beautifully. They still had their guards up, and were blinking rapidly, trying to see anything at all. I waited for a beat, looking for an opening where I could go in without getting stabbed, and—
And something entirely unexpected happened. The door behind the men, which they’d been trying to break down, slammed open. Dressed in one of her fine silk bodywraps, her torso and one arm covered in dark blood, Zabra practically flew out. I only realized that she had a sword when one of the men at the back suddenly had a crimson blade protruding from his throat. He stumbled and fell as Zabra drew her sword back, parrying a wild swing from the other man at the back, who’d started turning the moment the door opened. She didn’t move with Mak’s grace, or her speed. Nor did she show any of Val’s strength, or Herald’s reflexes. But from what I’d learned watching my friends spar, the Night Blossom had Gods damned near perfect form, and I understood just a little better how she’d survived and risen to the point she had in the city’s underworld.
I doubted that Zabra could have taken on the three remaining men — the one she was fighting clearly had an edge in speed and strength — but her sudden attack from the rear was the perfect distraction. The two men at the front, already coughing and half blinded, took their attention off me for just a fraction of a second, giving me the opening I’d been waiting for. With a growl I surged forward, raking one man from collarbone to hip with my claws. The other stabbed at me, off balance and off target, and I slapped the blade to the side, then sunk all ten talons of both hands into his flesh and lifted, smashing his head into the ceiling, slamming him into the floor, and then using his convulsing body as a club to knock his badly bleeding partner into the wall. I finished by throwing him at the remaining man, who was pressing Zabra back through the door.
Zabra saw it coming and leaped back. Her opponent went down, hard, under the body of his companion, and with a bent knee and two quick cuts, she slashed their throats where they lay.
One man remained, trying to get to his feet. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have taken him prisoner and either had someone question him, or broken him so that he’d tell me anything I wanted to know about why they were here and who they were working for. As it was I saw my Zabra covered in blood, her eyes wide with desperate fear, and mercy and reason were not on the table.
I grabbed him by the face, and then I smashed the back of his head into the wall until the wood panel cracked.
“My lady!”
Zabra’s voice drew me out of my red rage, and I released my grip on what remained of the man’s head. She was well past the point of tears. Her face was twisted with desperation, but the streaks in the blood on her face were already drying.
“Please, my lady! A healing potion! I need a potion! For Kesra! Please!”
I stared at her dumbly. For a moment all I could understand was that she looked fine, which was all that really seemed important at the time. Then I heard quick steps behind me, and Kira’s voice in her beginner’s Karakani. “Healing? Kesra need healing?”
“Yes! Yes, she—” Zabra turned to me again. “Please, my lady! May she?”
Kira didn’t wait for an answer. When I said, “Uh, yeah, of course,” she was already past me and into the small room. I only understood how bad it was when I heard her gasp and shout, with more urgency than I’d ever heard from her, “Potion! Find potion!”
“Go!” I told Zabra, trusting Kira’s tone. “Tam, go with her. Watch her and help!”
If Zabra’s panic and Kira’s demand hadn’t been enough to tell me that things were bad, the smell as I approached the door would have. The smell of blood was heavy on the air, and the stench that accompanied it told me that someone’s intestines had been cut.
“Gods and Mercies, how are you still alive?” Kira muttered as I stuck my head inside the reinforced room, and saw just how bad it was.
Kesra sat propped against a wall, sitting in a much too large pool of her own blood. She was pale as a corpse and her eyes were closed, but I knew that she was still alive by the way she shuddered, and the thick layer of sweat on her face. A savage cut ran all the way through her right breast to her left hip, and despite her desperate efforts to keep it closed I could see a bit of gut peeking out at the corner, right above where Kira had her right hand.
My first thought echoed Kira. How the hell was she still alive? Did she have some Advancement she hasn't told me about, or was this just human resilience in action?
My second thought came out as I pushed my way inside the room. “Why the hell is she sitting up? Her guts are falling out! Get her on her back and pull her knees up!”
Kira was already hard at work, pinching the cut closed at the edges and pouring magic into Kesra’s torn flesh, bright pulses of golden light flashing down both arms from her heart into the wound. She didn't even answer me, too caught up in her own head. Her only reaction when I squeezed in opposite her was a muttered, “Always fucking gutwounds with these Karakani.”
“Keep doing what you're doing,” I told her, and she nodded without taking her hands off Kesra, only moving them slightly inwards along the cut. “I’m going to move her to the floor.”
Why am I doing this? I asked myself as I carefully slid Kesra out from the wall, cradling her head in one hand and raising her knees as I laid her on her back. I could just let her die. It would make sure she doesn't slip up and hurt Zabra again.
Because you're still not a bloody monster, Conscience answered me. Because you took your bloody first aid training seriously. And because you know that, right or wrong, losing her sister would hurt your little pet far more than a slap or two.
As Conscience told me that, as I could hear Zabra taking the stairs three at a time, as Kira did all she could to close the massive, horrible wound, Kesra opened her eyes, and looked into mine. We stared at each other, and she released an agonized breath, stopped shuddering, and lay still.