Immobilizingme.
Warm hope drains from my veins, replaced by bitter resignation.
I’m not going to make it …
My next breath is thicker. Barely sufficient to keep the darkness from gathering at the sides of my vision.
Mah died with her face to the ground.
I don’t want to die like that.
I shore myself, using the last of my strength to heave onto my side, then flop to my back, sucking breath past gritted teeth—fast.
Then slower.
Time stretches, twists, and toils as I stare up at the Moltenmaw moons through tangles of thick smoke and luminous silver ribbons …
Even in their death, the dragons are magnificent. Unlike me, withering in the filth. Fitting, given how easily I gave up on Dothea. On a territory that probably needed me, not that I have much to offer.
Still …
There’s a smear of movement to my left, and I tip my head, the entire world jerking with the motion, making my body convulse with a retch. I manage to keep my split guts in check while I scour the inferno I created, right at the spot that took Essi.
There’s athump. A ripple in the air that makes my heart hitch.
Makes a shiver climb my spine.
The fire begins to writhe, swish, and grow, pulsing with life. Like a hatchling just cracked from the flames, now stretching its wings. Tipping its head.
Releasing a trebled cry.
For a moment, I wonder if Ignos is playing games, shaping himself into big, fluttery beasts. Realize it’s far simpler than that as the flames gust back to reveal a mythical Elding Bird tossing its wings wide—all blazing red feathers and a golden hooked beak. A picture torn straight from the pages of my imagination—undoubtedly—appearing just as Mah spoke of them every slumber before she tucked Dothea and me into our pallets and bid us to sleep soundly. Just as I spoke of them to Roan after he was bastard-born into the family, scurried into the shadows the moment he was cut from his mah’s lifeless body.
Guess the poison’s already made it to my brain.
The incredibly detailed apparition lifts its wings and whips them down as it leaps, bursting from the flames like launching from a nest, gusting hot air against my skin that feels real. It tears upward in pulsing increments—embers dribbling from its tendrilled wings and tail like drips of lava that sputter before they hit the ground—then pierces through a dense cloud of smoke that churns in its wake.
Gone … as though it was never there at all.
It wasn’t, to be fair.
With little else to do but wait for life to bleed out of me, I stare at the swirling smoke for what feels like forever, crushed by the pained sounds of wrestling dragons.
And I wait. For what, I don’t know.
Maybe for this fuckin’ pain in my chest to stop.
But it doesn’t. Instead, it gets worse as a small, shapely figure sprints free of the smoke-swathed dimness crushing me from all angles. She’s dressed in smears of muck and ash, not that it does anything to mask her long, vibrant red hair.
Not that anything could.
Essi …
Even in my imagination, her beauty is unmatched—rushing toward me in that fluttery way she moves, like she’s made of air. I can’t help but wish we’d had more time together. That I hadn’t failed her by passing out on the ground at her feet, sleeping while she was out hunting the plains that’ve already swallowed too fucking much.
She falls to her knees at my side, panic struck across her face as she takes me in through wide eyes.
Even the close proximity of her apparition makes my skin prickle. I can feel that. Meaning I’ll feel myself being eaten if I don’t bleed out beforehand.
