The handler told her that his name was Odameir.
Riding him was a unique experience. It was not unlike riding a horse, but subtly different in a myriad ways. Every step was carefully placed with an eye toward balance. Despite their combined weight they seemed to sink very little into the snow. He was sure-footed and vigilant. While he was mindful of her directions, he was clearly not beholden to them.
When she tried to nudge him in a way he didn’t like, he sometimes flicked an ear back at her, like a dismissive hand wave.
‘I know better than you’, it said.
And he did. That was part of why it was so interesting. He seemed to be teaching her how to ride a ymaek while they moved. He moved like a fighter in a battlefield, considering his footing and the environment around it. She paid rapt attention to Odameir. She was so distracted that she barely noticed as the boreal sun began to dip below the mountains, casting the alpine forest into a twilight haze.
Ymaek had excellent low light vision, but humans were not so lucky. Soon, they had to stop and set up camp.
When she slid down from his back, she found herself appreciating him more and more. She was sore, but not nearly as much as she expected from a full day’s ride—even if that day was winter-sun short. The burn was concentrated in muscles that didn’t get as much of a work out when riding a horse. He had been careful not to jostle his passenger too much, it seemed.
Especially when Windale slid off the other ymaek and landed in a graceless heap on the ground, moaning in exaggerated agony.
“I want to ride in the carriage tomorrow,” they whined. “Make Tibby ride the deer.”
“They aren’t deer,” she corrected, “and you’re my bodyguard, Windale. If I’m out here, you must be as well.”
A louder, more distressed groan was the only answer she received. She smothered a laugh in the folds of her scarf.
A soldier helped her remove Odameir’s tack, and then she thanked her noble steed by brushing the debris of the day from his thick wooly coat. The soldier assigned to take care of her ymaek stood awkwardly at her side, and held the supplies for her until she asked for them. The ymaek took this treatment with stoic indifference.
While she did this, half of the soldiers assigned to her detail were setting up the camp: shoveling snow out of the way, digging a fire pit, laying out a thick canvas tarp, then a layer of padding, then another, then setting up their sleeping quarters. They built a windbreak with the excess snow, though it was hardly necessary in the midst of the trees. With the carriages circled around, the camp became downright cozy.
Her father and a couple soldiers returned after the camp was set up, with a couple pheasants and a snow rabbit between them. She got to watch them prepare the meat, supplemented with fruit from their stores and berries they’d foraged. It wasn’t the fanciest meal she’d ever seen in her life, but there was something… heartwarming about it. Her father had hunted the bird she was going to eat. She would be eating at the same table with all of her friends. It felt magical.
Tibby popped her head out of the carriage.
“All set, your Highness!”
“Thank you, Tibitha.”
Climbing back into the carriage, she was impressed with how much it had transformed. The benches had been stripped of their padding and folded back up into the walls. That padding and pillows were instead laid out on the floor. A low table had been placed in the center. Bette took her seat, lounging against one of the pillows, while Tibitha accepted the steaming bird and the cooked fruit from a soldier and set it out on the table.
Moments later, Windale hopped in as well, shutting the door behind them. With the circuit closed, the runes flared to life, bathing the cabin in a warm glow. Tibitha served all three of them, expertly carving the flesh into manageable strips. She served her mistress first, then Windale, and finally herself.
Bette dipped a piece of pheasant into the warm wild berry sauce and popped it into her mouth. The warmth of the cabin sunk into her down to the bone, flushing out the cold Northern winter.
Windale predictably finished first and curled up on the pile of pillows, closing their eyes and looking for all the world like a big wildcat bedding down in its nest. She smiled at the sight. She knew they weren’t really asleep—merely dozing, eyes half shut, ready to spring up at any sign of danger.
She felt safe, protected by both her knight and her handmaiden, and her father and his soldiers. She was warm and happy and full, content and sleepy. Tibitha helped her out of her day clothes, leaving her in the undergarments designed for heavy winter weather. She wrapped a blanket around Bette before she packed up the dishes and folded up the table. Then she opened the door, deposited them on the ground outside the carriage for the soldiers to deal with, and pulled the door closed again.
The brief chill brought by the open door didn’t overcome the blanket, and was dispelled quickly by the warming runes.
Tibby stripped down to her underclothes as well and lay down next to her mistress. Bette gave her a small smile and offered her the edge of the blanket, which the woman gracefully accepted.
Bette settled down to sleep, tucked into unconsciousness by her full belly and her warm heart.
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It was always going to come to this: two armies arranged against each other on the field of battle. On one side, the humans were cloaked in metal and magic, astride their domesticated beasts and fanciful mechanisms. On the other, a mélange of races, mighty and magic and wild, brought together under the banner of the black dragon. Only a dragon could have convinced such disparate creatures to fight alongside each other, and only in the most desperate of circumstances.
And these were desperate circumstances indeed. They faced not only subjugation and ruin, but banishment. Annihilation.
The humans had made it clear that one side could not exist while the other drew breath. Their tribes had also banded together, unifying into one nation under the goddess-in-flesh, the holy woman, the Lady of Light. She did not rule by fear and not by respect. She ruled by awe. By belief. By faith.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
She was as close to the divine as the humans had ever come. They worshipped her as their messiah. She was the light in their darkness. How foolishly they clung to her skirts, begging for succor, for relief from the harsh realities of the world. She offered them a beautiful dream—and everything else looked like a nightmare.
The earth quaked beneath the steps of the dragon as it followed behind its army, long neck held high though she was crowned by heavy horns. The humans quaked as well, at the sight of her. This was their nightmare. The reality they refused to accept, the power they continued to deny. One look at the black dragon as it rose above the lines of battle on mighty wings, long and dark enough to eclipse the sun as she climbed into the air, just one look was enough to tear their gossamer dreams to shreds.
The woman at the front of her army was armored in silvery metal, draped in white fabrics. Her hair hung in a heavy braid down her back. She raised her sword and the air ignited. Mana rolled from her in waves, each cresting higher than the last. It was so thick it was visible; she glowed.
She stepped forward and raised her sword, gleaming tip pointed directly at the heart of the dragon. Her face was shadowed by her hood, but the message was clear. A challenge. She dared the dragon, dared it to face her, declaring that she would drag it from its dark throne. Her people cheered behind her, awash in her power.
Drakuhl roared and reality trembled.
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Bette inhaled sharply, coming awake all at once.
It took a moment to figure out why. Then she shivered. The temperature, she realized, was dropping rapidly inside the carriage. She looked around, but neither Tibitha nor Windale seemed to sense something was amiss. The door was still locked, so the runes were still in place…
The runes. She focused, sharpening her attention and feeling her way towards them in her mind’s eye. They felt like candles in a stiff wind, sputtering and gasping for life. She realized they were not taking in enough mana to feed the spell woven into them. She pulled back, examining the way the mana moved in the air.
It was rushing towards her, a violent whirlpool draining into her spirit.
Again, she thought, it’s happening again.
Then she thought, stop. Do not panic.
She shut her eyes, turning her awareness inward. The whirlwind fell away, and she was left with the raging rivers of her own mana circuits as they hemorrhaged mana—it fell away into her spirit like a waterfall into a cave. She followed it, stretching her mental arms and pressing into her spirit.
It was like plunging into icy water, mana filled her vision and for a moment, her senses whited out. She was blind. She struggled frantically for a moment, trepidation rising in her throat. But she swallowed it back down.
She repeated her early command: Do not panic.
She needed to filter what she was receiving. She shuttered the window to her spiritual self, blocking out any mana that was not moving—the so-called reserves that the spirit circulated within itself as an emergency supply for the body. Instead, she followed only the rapids, swimming down and down still further.
Finally, she reached the source of the pressure: the aperture of her soul, to which the spirit stretched like a rope bridge between the physical and divine planes. It was open wide, pulling the mana in. She surged forward, grabbing the edges of her spirit and tugging them closed. It was hard. She could feel sweat breaking out on her corporeal body. She grit her teeth and pulled with all her might.
The spirit was willing, but her soul struggled. The pressure of moving mana made it doubly difficult. Then it felt like she hit a groove and it fell into place. The pull from her soul lessened.
She came back to herself, sweating and shaking.
There was a curious sound in the cabin, like a very small whistle, and a warmth pressed against her chest.
She looked at her companions. Still asleep.
She checked behind the curtain. Still dark out.
She touched the spot and felt something angular beneath her underclothes.
The pendant from her uncle!
She pulled the chain up and over her head and out of the shirt. Behind the crystal, the runes were softy glowing—the light running through the crystal threw shards of rainbow across the carriage interior. It was making a noise, but she couldn’t tell how exactly.
Windale murmured in their sleep.
She grabbed the coat and cloak and pulled her hat on, then her boots, and jumped out of the sleigh, closing the door quickly behind her.
The night was bitingly cold. She focused on her internal mana, on the way it circulated, and encouraged it to run faster. She pulled it to her fingertips and the ends of her toes, letting it creep out over her skin. A makeshift barrier. It wouldn’t last long—her mana dispersed quickly and she hadn’t the time to convert it, as she’d practiced with Lysander.
She stumbled in the dark, moving mostly by touch around the cabin. Whoever was on guard was not actively in her line of sight.
She raised the crystal to her face and examined the runes within. Now she could see that they had been carved onto the surface of the crystal itself. Where it connected with the plating, it formed a full circuit, a complete sentence.
Why had it activated? It was beautiful, but she couldn’t see what its purpose was.
She touched the glassy surface of the gem. Immediately, it reacted. It pulled her mana from her finger tips like a static shock. She squeaked in surprise, pulling back her hand.
Light moved through the crystal. She watched, awed, as it slowly formed an image. Had her uncle made some kind of photographic display?
The image appeared to be a snapshot of the inside of Lysander’s nose and a bit of bronzed cheek.
She frowned at it.
Then the image moved. She was hit with a strange vertigo. It was déjà vu and muscle memory– but not these muscles. She traced her finger over the image of her uncle as it moved away and zoomed out, showing her his whole face.
It was not a saved state. This was a transmission.
“How?” She breathed. How had he made something like this?
Lysander appeared to tap on the screen. Then, in a sound just barely above a whisper, she heard his voice. Tinny and distorted, but his voice nonetheless.
“Bette, can you hear me?”
A phone. He had made a video phone.
She fell back against the carriage, letting it hold her up. She couldn’t imagine what her face looked like at that moment. Lysander’s laughter sounded like a softly babbling brook.
“How did you do this?” She asked, immediately burning with a need to know. “How did you even think of this?”
“I can see your mouth moving but let me tell you: I only managed to get audio transmission to go one way! I ran out of time before your birthday. This also won’t last very long. Once the gem overheats it has to shut off until it cools down again.”
“So I can’t ask you what happened, but I can tell you that this thing alerts me whenever it detects a sudden spike in your heart rate! I started making this when you were still laid up in a coma after the Closkill incident.”
She winced at the memory. She could just imagine Lysander scribbling furious notes despite his injuries. Resolved to never let her out of his sight again, even if she wasn’t by his side.
She was hit all over again by how brilliant he was. She smiled at him, mouthing ‘thank you’ as clearly as she could.
“It’s actually something I was working on for the Duchess before, but that was just to transmit orders over long distances. I had to tweak it a lot to get what I wanted! It’s still experimental so whether it lasts long is one thing! But I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone! No matter where you are, if you’re afraid, your family is with you!”
“I love you, Betsy. Your family loves you. We’re on–“
The image winked out suddenly, and the tiny sound of his voice vanished in the night.
It had been enough, though, to distract her from her fear. She held the pendant by the chain, admiring his handiwork.
It was a valuable tool in her belt, especially in the mission they were on. Even on a very small scale, it was revolutionary. Did it have a distance limit? What process had he used to etch the runes directly into the crystal like that?
She let her head fall back, staring up at the stars. The memories of alien stars, of dim twinkling through light pollution, were a pale imitation of the velveteen darkness studded with diamonds.
She watched them until the tips of her fingers felt the bite of chill. Then, she returned quietly to the carriage.
She had a lot to think about, but for now, she needed to sleep.