“Alina?” I tried to soften my voice, suddenly desperate to see her face.
When she looked up, her eyes were void of any emotions, as if she was not fully there. I shook her shoulders.
“Are you hurt? Answer me, damn it!” I lifted her chin and checked her arms and neck for bites.
“No!” she said, shaking her head frantically.
“We need to go.” I tried to pick her up.
“No!” She pushed me away.
“You can’t stay here.” I caught her arm.
“Leave me,” she whimpered and attempted to fight me.
“You are going with me!” I pulled her up off the ground.
“Why can’t you leave me alone? Let me die a free person. Is that too much to ask? Please... Tynan... please,” she sobbed.
Her hands clenched my arms. I looked into her beautiful eyes, full of tears.
In moments like this, I truly hated myself, hated who I had become. Everything that happened to me, all my lifedecisions. Things I was not able to control. She looked at me as if I was the most worthless man who ever lived. And she was right, to someone like her, I was the villain. A person with no means of redemption. I kept telling myself that I had no choice, that the lives of my friends depended solely on me, but that mantra was quickly wearing out. That had been enough for so many years, but it hardly worked anymore. I did not know what she did to get imprisoned, and I no longer cared. She was a creature from another world, beautiful and not broken. This life, the endless struggle that all of us had gotten accustomed to, had not corrupted her soul, and she was still alive.
I straightened. “Get up!” I said.
“Damn you. I hate you! I hate you so much!” she whimpered.
I moved back when she picked up the poker and swung it at me. I clenched my teeth and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to drop it. Then I dragged her toward the exit.
“It doesn’t matter how strong you are. I will never stop fighting you.”
Alina caught the doorframe and dug her feet in, trying to slow me down. She was so light, I easily picked her up. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she kneed me in my groin and the sharp pain forced me to let go of her. The next moment, she took off, running toward the well.
A sudden growl came from the distance, and my eyes darted to the horizon.
I ran after her, and in one swift motion, I grabbed the girlwho stood frozen to her spot, her eyes fixed on something in the sky.
“What is that?” Alina whispered.
“We need to get out of here.”
I pushed her to the closest building, forcing her to crouch behind a window frame of glass mosaic that was leaning against the wall.
I glanced back at the building, trying to figure out if we had time to get behind the door when the massive silhouette landed just twenty feet away.
I had never seen an infected dragon. Even when the dragonborn was bit, the disease would spread into our bodies and turn us into regular crawlers. No one has ever documented a case of an undead dragon.
Alina clenched my bicep, watching the distorted shape of the dragon through the colored glass panel.
“What –” she started saying, but I pressed my hand to her mouth.
My eyes returned to the space beyond the glass. I moved my head, watching the dragon. Its skin was peeling off, showing the bare bone of its legs and the exposed, rotting flesh of its belly. The creature had moved closer to the well when one of the crawlers plodded out of the burning building. The dragon angled its wings and lowered its head, watching the undead. I stared in disbelief as the dragon flew to the crawler and swallowed half its body. It shook its massive head, forcing the still moving corpse further into its mouth.
My eyes followed the dragon as it moved through the open area looking for more food.
It was no wonder people rarely returned from the wastelands.
I took a deep breath, forcing my heart rate to slow. As it was, we only had a couple of options. One was to try and lose it in the air, but the speed and agility of the undead vastly increased after sunset, the dragon could be much faster than us. The other choice was to take shelter, spend the night, and hope that the monster would move on by daybreak.
