Page 106 of Blood of the Sands

On the second night, I took Erix into my mouth, craving even his taste. Erix shuddered and wrapped my hair around his fist, and I reveled in how it bound him to me as much as I to him. It didn’t last very long before he pushed me off him, pulling my hips into the air and driving into me punishingly from behind.

As the nights passed though, the signs indicated that we were gaining ground on our quarry, and the mood became more subdued. The patches of lava we saw now simmered, and the smell of smoke coming off the trail we followed took on the unmistakable stench of decay and rotting flesh.

After a week, we sat around our campfire, using the fire to harden the tips of the javelins we had worked on as we rode. Tonight, I had managed to start the fire without a flint, a spark of my magic jumping forth easily to light the tinder. Now that I could feel the way he channeled the immense power within him through our bond, I learned how to do it myself more easily. I could only hope that the increased use of my power would be enough for us to defeat the lava wyrm. I tried not to think of how many innocent clanspeople would be swallowed by its fire if we failed.

“I think we’ll find the lava wyrm tomorrow or the day after.” Erix drew a whetstone over his saber in smooth motions as he spoke. The metallic grating had become almost soothing to me as this was a nightly routine of his.

I nodded. The nearby lava trail contained areas that still glowed reddish orange and bubbled lazily.

“Do you think we’ll be able to kill it?” I asked.

It was a question that had weighed on both our minds for days. I could tell Erix wondered at it even as he hadn’t voiced it, in the way he contemplated the carnage in our path, his mouth set in a hard line.

“We have no choice.” He shrugged casually, despite the grimness of his words.

I hugged my knees to my chest and watched his hands work, his movements clean and efficient. He no longer wore his gloves, which stayed stowed in packs along with his mask.

“I think we should use the same tactic as last time,” Erix continued. “Even if this one is larger, its weakness should be the same. No matter how thick its scales are, its eyes should still be vulnerable.”

I swallowed, remembering how the baby wyrm had nearly bucked me off, the heat rolling off its hide nearly unbearable as I climbed across its back to dig my saber into its skull. Still, if Erix was volunteering to draw the attention of a fully grown wyrm to give me a chance to strike the killing blow, then I would face down the challenge. Clan Otush had suffered enough of the baby wyrm’s wrath, and I shuddered to think what would happen if a fully grown adult would do if it set its sights on a clan encampment. Still, I wondered if there were another way to defeat it.

“Couldn’t you just destroy it with your magic like you did the oasis?” I asked.

Erix stared into the fire, opening and closing his mouth a few times as if considering his answer.

“I can’t usually do things like that,” he admitted. “Occasionally though, the whispers in my head tell me to try things that would normally be impossible. I almost feel that the desert wants things… that she lets me do things I shouldn’t be able to when it fits her purposes.”

I stared, wanting to argue that his explanation didn’t make sense, but that wasn’t completely true. While some people, like the queen, spoke of the desert like it was a force of nature, powerful but uncaring, it had never seemed that way to me. The desert was a friend and an adversary, and sometimes I could taste her moods and her intentions on the air. I had thought I had given her sentience in my isolation, to make myself feel less alone, but Erix felt it too. The old ways of the clans acknowledged it too, in their belief that the Champion was chosen by the desert, and not just by their skill in a duel.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” I admitted. While I had set out to fell the wyrm without him, I had to admit it likely would have been a fool’s errand on my own, ending in a smoldering grave. It was a mission I had taken despite that risk, for if I could not find acceptance among the desert’s people, then I could at least die for them. This still might be my end, but with the immense power Erix held in the tips of his fingers—magic that he showed me how to use more and more every day—we had a chance.

“I’ll be with you, for better or for worse,” Erix murmured.

“It might be for worse.”

“I knew that when you spit in my face the first time we met, but here I am anyway.” Erix’s smile was small, but it bolstered my courage all the same.

The mood was solemn as we set out the next morning. Even the horses seemed to sense the tension in the air, Daiti forgoing his usual show of displeasure when I loaded our supplies. As we mounted, Erix and I both checked that all our weapons were within easy reach. Both of us carried our sabers across our back and dirks at our hips, along with a supply of javelins lashed to the horses’ backs.

By midday, all the trails of lava we passed were red-hot and liquid, some still trailing in treacherous streams. The horses picked their way across the dangerous terrain, slowing our progress.

The magma became more and more prevalent, making it difficult to make headway, until we came across a patch of molten rock the size of the pool at the oasis. The surface boiled ominously, the stillness of the desert broken by the thick plat of bubbles popping on the surface of the viscous liquid.

Erix squinted, raising a hand to his brow to peer to the other side of the fiery pond. I mirrored him, only to find that beyond the expanse of lava lay only unmarked sand.

“The trail just… ends.”

I frowned, looking around. Off to either side spread pristine golden earth, not even disturbed by variation in the sand to tell us where our quarry had gone.

“It can’t be injured or dead,” I mused. “We would notice a body that big.”

Erix’s brow twisted in thought. “I know the legends say their wings are too frail to support them but… it didn’t fly off, did it?”

I opened my mouth to say that anything seemed possible at this point, but a bone-rattling rumbling cut me off. Even though I screamed for Erix to watch out, it was too late. A roar split the air and the magma before us rippled and writhed before exploding out. A giant blackened form burst forth from the center of the pit, the lava wyrm’s blunt, triangular head cresting the surface before rising up and up into the sky on an impossibly large body.

Daiti screamed in terror. So fixated was I on the beast before me, erupting forth from a lake of its own lava, that I didn’t have time to grab on to my mount’s neck as he reared. I slid from his back, hitting the sand, and rolling. By the time I got to my feet, he was already running away, the black shadow of Alza hot on his heels. Any hope of using our javelins against the wyrm was lost with them as they retreated. Either Erix had dismounted more gracefully or had just recovered faster as he was already crouched, weapons drawn.

The wyrm before us stood up on two hind legs, spread its membranous wings, and shook itself, sending gobs of fiery rock spraying everywhere. I raised my arms against the spray, and a few droplets landed on my sleeves, burning through to scorch my skin beneath.