Saebrya

Saebrya sat up, scrambling across the bed to get as far away from the boy as she could. It followed her motions with the eyes of a sipper, but it wasn’t a sipper. She knew this much instinctively. It was something much more dangerous.

The boy sat upon her bed and touched a finger to the silver ether that Ryan had left there. This he brought to his lips with a smile. “I want your friend,” he said as it sucked the droplets from its fingers.

Saebrya froze.

“I’m not stupid,” the boy continued. “I won’t kill him. But I intend to use him. Don’t get in my way.”

Saebrya felt a trickle of sweat running down her back.

When she did not respond, the boy said, “I’ll keep the two of you free of feeders in exchange for his essence.”

“Why’d you save me?” she whispered.

The boy smiled. “So you can keep him happy while I eat him at my leisure.”

Coldness pooled in her gut. Ryan…

“He won’t feel it,” the boy scoffed. “Like I said. I’m not a feeder. I don’t kill my stock.”

“What are you?” she asked, afraid of the question.

The boy didn’t answer her. “We have the same goals, you and I.” He patted the ether-stained blankets and smiled. “We want to see this particular human live as long as possible.”

She believed him. She let out her breath in relief. “Do you have a name?” Saebrya asked, tentatively.

The boy looked at her. Considered. “Zan.”

“Zan.” Then, taking a deep breath, Saebrya asked the question she had always dreamed of asking a sipper: “Do you know why I can see you and no one else can?”

Zan smiled. “I know a lot of things.”

“Please,” she whispered, the spots of her skin still itching where the Auld’s ether had infused it to make it whole again. “I need to know.”

“We’ll see,” Zan said, jumping playfully off the bed. “Maybe after I feed off your friend a few times. His essence is simply delicious.” He wiped his fingers on the bed again and brought the silver fluid to his mouth. As he tasted it, he smiled at her. “Maybe.”

“Please don’t hurt him,” she whispered.

Zan laughed. “If I had my way, he would live forever, have many children, and spread this beautiful stuff throughout the land. You have no fear of me, child. He’s in good hands.”

At that, he turned and walked through the wall, scattering a tide of terrified sippers in his wake.

Trembling, Saebrya sat down on the bed and stayed there. After perhaps an hour, she heard a light knock.

Ryan gingerly stepped inside. “You all right?”

She nodded and glanced behind him to see if the boy followed. He didn’t.

Ryan glanced around the room. “Is whatever it was gone?”

“Yes,” Saebrya whispered.

Looking like he wanted to ask more, Ryan instead flopped down on the bed beside her. “That Auld is stubborn,” Ryan said, sighing. “He says there’s something you need to tell me, and I can’t for the life of me get it out of him.”

Saebrya closed her eyes. After everything that had happened, her will to maintain the deception had been worn away. “Ryan, you’re an Auld.”

By the silence that followed, she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. She turned to look.

Ryan sat up on his elbows, grinning. “I was wondering when you were gonna come out and say it.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“Saeby…I knew I was an Auld the moment you told me about the ether.”

“Oh.” She felt stupid. Fooled.

He patted her arm. “You need to give me more credit sometimes. Why else would I slosh the stuff around like the Vethyles?”

“You’re not mad?” she whispered.

He laughed. “No. I never wanted to be an Auld. And it just cinched things when that old fart kidnapped me back in the village. They’re used to having their way, regardless of who they hurt. That’s why we’re getting out of here just as soon as that old bastard turns his back.”

She felt a rush of hope upon hearing the words. “Ryan, I think I love you.”

He sat up, moving closer. “Now that’s what I wanted to hear,” he said softly.

Dustin

Dustin felt a wash of steam rising from his body as yet another bucket of water fell on it.

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“Don’t get near it! Look what it did to the house!”

“Yeah, definitely looks like that’s what caused it, right there. It’s still sizzling!”

“What the hell is it?”

“Kinda looks like a baked pig.”

“A baked pig that caught fire?”

“But how could it get that hot? It burned the rocks away.

“No way, that’s a hand. That’s a man under there.”

“That hermit with the sword? No real loss…guy was a dick.”

“Guys! There’s a girl over here! And she’s still alive!”

At the excited clamor that followed, Dustin groaned and sat up, making ash drift away from him in fluffy puffs. He was surprised that, when he blinked, his head was not split in half, and was definitely still attached to his shoulders.

The remnants of Olthon’s cottage, however, left no doubt that the fight hadn’t been his imagination. There was nothing left but powdery white dust. The two soul-stained weapons—and his own death energies—must have combined to utterly obliterate Olthon’s home. Even the rocks of the fireplace were just a pile of fluffy ash.

And yet a few feet away, Maelys of the Rockfarmers was sitting up from her own pile of ashes, lit up by the yellow morning sun, looking dazed and hairless. “Where’s Olthon?” she asked the startled villagers around her.

Dustin, who had to take an extra moment to process the fact she was still alive after his own implosion, found his jaw dropping open. “You’re…” He wasn’t exactly sure how to finish it. …supposed to die when three drakes explode around you? The only thing he knew of that could withstand a drake was another drake, and usually one of them ended up biting the dust, if things came to that. Just from the moments Olthon had been present prior to the explosion, the Rockfarmer would no doubt be scarred for life, if it hadn’t actually killed him. Dustin should have died from the ice drake’s soul being freed, but he would have bet anything that the pent-up energy from a hundred and nine years of captivity and the simultaneous release of the fire drake from the dagger had somehow shielded him from not only that, but had probably also regrown him a head, which was definitely a first for him. He’d regrown hands and feet, but never a head. When he reached up to touch the place where the sword had sliced through his body, his fingers traced a hot, puckered seam that ran from his neck down the center of his face, just to one side of his nose, over his scalp, and around his throat. Even more annoying, though, was the fact that the skin over his entire body felt inflamed and raw, like a good cold burn, but Maelys… She looked like she’d just stepped out of a bath.

He must have been staring, because Maelys frowned accusingly across the ashes at Dustin. “Why’d you set Olthon’s house on fire, you stupid drake?”

“I…” Dustin swallowed. “Uh…” He glanced at their rescuers.

The men surrounding the remnants of Olthon’s house quickly backed well out of reach, looking like they wanted to bolt like startled hens. As they backed up, they held their palms out in peace.

“We want no trouble with your kind!” an old man said, quickly side-stepping to his mule, which was prancing nervously, sending up little puffs of ashes with its hooves. “We just saw the smoke at dawn and came to see if we could help.”

“You can help,” Maelys said, her words bringing the villagers’ retreat to a tentative halt. “Did you see where Olthon went? I need to find Olthon.”

Dustin bit his lip, reminded that the tattoo-bearing weasel had stolen part of her soul, and that was why she was probably feeling the pull to find him. With the Ganlins dead on the Slopes, he knew that the best person—maybe the only person—to help her was probably at the Spyre, living under the guise of a Vethyle, so he quickly said, “Olthon probably went to Siorus to buy you a gift, butterbun. We’ve gotta get you to Siorus to meet him.”

But one of the mortals didn’t catch his pointed look and screwed the game before it had a chance to start. “Huh-uh,” a particularly slack-jawed one said. “I saw Olthon on the road to the mountains as I was headed out to check on the fire. I didn’t realize it was his place that was on fire until I got here.”

“The mountains,” Maelys said, turning to the west to look. “Come on, Dustin. If we start now, we can probably catch him in a couple days.”

“No way,” Dustin said. “He went to Siorus.” He gave the man who had spoken a look so pointed it could have stabbed him, this time.

The slack-jawed yokel still didn’t take a hint. “No, I saw him headed to the mountains.”

“Then that’s where we have to go!” Maelys got up almost in a panic. “Come on, Dustin.”

“I saw him head towards Siorus.” Dustin scowled at the man. “Obviously, this bumpkin is mistaken.”

‘Bovine’ was definitely in the monkey’s family tree, because he frowned stupidly and said, “But you were sleeping—”

“In a bed of ashes that I made,” Dustin interrupted. He held up one of the melted weapons so that the bovid could see the drippy patty of gold and steel.

The big farmer gave a confused look and opened his mouth again, but the older man quickly put his hand on the big guy’s shoulder and, with a nervous look at Dustin, said, “I’m pretty sure I saw him go towards Siorus, too.”

Maelys squinted from them to Dustin and back.

“Besides, we just came from the mountains,” Dustin said, getting to his feet, tossing the metal patty from the former sword back into the ashes. “Snows’ll hit soon. Only someone in league with the Vethyles would head that direction.” From this new vantage, he saw that it wasn’t just the house that had been burned to dust, but about five hundred yards in any direction. Every indication that this had once been a residence had been utterly obliterated in what was essentially a crater-like bowl of fluffy white cinders. His eyebrows went up.

So that’s what happened when three drakes died at once.

Or…something. Two of them had technically already been dead, and Dustin was pretty sure he was still alive.

Well, partially alive, at least, a familiar voice that he hadn’t heard in a hundred years told him. You gods-favored idiot.

The ‘voice’ was so ‘loud’ that Dustin felt his mouth fall open and he glanced around him in horror. “Kriscilla?”

So this is what it’s like to have a cock, another vaguely familiar female voice said. It’s smaller than I remembered.

That’s the breeding fever for you, Kriscilla said. Nature’s way of ensuring the continuation of the species, however…dubious…the partner might be.

The second female voice chuckled. I don’t know. Some of his young didn’t kill themselves flying headlong into a mountain.

Dustin blinked, finally recognizing the voice. “Daegra?” The voice had belonged to a fire drake that Dustin had warned off his territory a dozen centuries ago—followed by copious amounts of sex, and then a clutch of eggs approximately three and a half decades later, to her consternation. She had thought she had been between cycles, as she had just hatched a clutch for one of his competitors. They had stayed in touch after the hatch, she had delighted in reminding him at every opportunity that he had produced a child that had actually killed himself by flying through a cloud and snapping his own neck on a mountainside right in the final moments of dusk. A one-in-a-million chance, and she just had to keep reminding him of it.

Kriscilla gasped. That was him? No wonder Olthon was playing him like a flute. I hear he’s got the brains of a horny goat.

As far as I’ve seen, he lets his friends do his thinking for him, Daegra said. He just sets things on fire and drinks their beer.

Dustin floundered through a mental haze, trying to piece together why two of his long-ago lovers now seemed to be inhabiting his—

“No,” he gasped, falling back on his ass in the ashes in horror. Two blades. An ice drake and a fire drake…

Oh yes, Daegra said. Welcome to Hell, little man.