Page 96 of Blood of the Sands

Now the creature charged. Swinging its claws at me again, I used my saber to knock it aside. The blow reverberated through the blade and up to my shoulder. For the first time ever, I worried that Kelvar’s saber would not hold up to the strength of my opponent.

I took advantage of the creature getting close to me to dart forward, trying to shove the blade down its throat, but it skittered backward at an incomprehensible speed. Clearly threatened, it made a furious hiss before vomiting up a gout of lava, forming a veritable moat around itself.

“Erix!”

Sometime during the fight, Keera had worked her way around behind me. I chanced a glance over my shoulder to find her charging at me full tilt. I only had a moment to realize her intentions before I crouched down.

Her boots landed between my shoulder blades. I heaved upwards with my body, also reaching out to pluck the strings of the desert’s magic that clung to her. They were shockingly easy to grasp, and I tugged on them, flinging her through the air with the combined force of her jump and my magic.

She hung suspended in the air for a moment, and I could only watch in awe. Then the gravity defying moment slipped away, and she landed on the creature’s back with a thud. She tried to roll upon landing, but the wyrm bucked at the attack, knocking her off to the side. She just managed to grab the base of its wing to avoid plummeting off, saber dangling uselessly in her other hand. Her toes brushed dangerously close to the lava covered ground as she kicked out, trying to climb back on.

The creature bucked again, spinning around, and trying to push itself up on to two legs before crashing down again. I knew I had to distract it if Keera was going to climb atop it. Using scorching lava around me, I pulled on the heat of the desert to shoot a small spurt of flames at the wyrm.

As expected, it was immune to the fire, but its attention snapped to me. Still it continued to spin away from me. I jumped forward, just to be knocked back as its muscular tail swiped a rock the size of a red wolf from the ground in my direction.

Having found a new way to attack, it continued swiping its tail back and forth, knocking rocks in my face. As it managed to send another boulder flying at me, I released a feral yell, unleashing some of my power as I swung my saber down. The rock split down the middle, skidding to a stop on either side of me in a spray of pebbles and ash.

As the dust settled, I blinked my vision clear just in time to see Keera climb astride the wyrm’s back. If I thought seeing her ride a horse was incredible, watching her atop a creature of legend was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Still, I had no time to consider such things as the wyrm resumed its efforts to unseat her. With a roar, I launched the broken half of the boulder at its side. It whipped around to face me, clearly no longer satisfied with swiping at me blindly. As it spat more lava, I darted to the side to escape its deathly breath. I ran out of space quickly, finding myself up against another smoldering patch of black rock.

Its lips pulled back from its strangely toothless gums as if to grin in triumph, clearly winding up to shoot another stream of fiery rock to where I was standing, trapped. I crouched down, ready to launch myself into the air to jump over the attack.

A fearsome cry spit the air, and Keera leaped over the crest of its head, saber held aloft. She landed on the creature’s brow, digging her blade into its glimmering orange eye all the way up to the hilt.

Blood spurted out of the wound, soaking her entire arm, and splattering across her chest and face. The wyrm let out a grunting hiss, crumpling to ground in a scaley heap. It twitched violently in its death throws, but Keera drove her saber in deep, twisting it for good measure.

With one final shudder, the creature went limp. Magic still roared in the base of my neck from the fight, wanting to be let loose—to launch more stones and pull at the edges of the desert until I was the one breathing fire. Still, my gaze remained fixed on Keera, hoping she was uninjured.

She pushed to her feet as she yanked her bloody weapon free of the carcass beneath her. As she stood, she looked at me, and her face split into a dazzling smile, brighter than the sunshine starting to cut through the lingering smoke around us. As she shook her hair back from her face, splattered in blood and grinning in victory, my heart stuttered, but my magic calmed.

I smiled back, irritated that she couldn’t see my face as I had put my mask on this morning. Without a thought, I reached up and ripped it off.

“I might need a hand down,” she shouted from her perch. There wasn’t a safe place to climb down where the ground wasn’t half molten.

“I don’t know. I think you look lovely up there.” It was out of my mouth in an instant, and I found myself biting my cheek violently. Even if I could control my magic, the adrenaline of the fight seemed to have left my tongue on a loose leash.

Keera thankfully didn’t react to my comment, instead spinning in place and surveying her surroundings. “I can certainly see a good amount from up here.” She pointed behind the beast. “It looks like it has some sort of nest over there.”

I headed in the direction she indicated, picking my way around still smoldering patches of lava and bones. Keera mirrored me, walking down the spine of the felled wyrm toward its hind quarters before picking her way down its tail. She paused at the end, crouching.

I nodded to her, and she leaped. With a jolt of my power, I helped her fly over the moat of lava to where I stood. I caught her around the waist without thinking, my free arm wrapping around her and pulling her close to break her fall even though it wasn’t strictly necessary.

She didn’t pull away immediately resting the hand not holding her saber on my shoulder and smiling up at me.

“Let’s go check out the nest,” she said. “It’s not every day that you get to see the lair of creature straight out of legend.”

I followed her toward the dense pile of bones she indicated even as I frowned. “I think legends exaggerate. It wasn’t nearly as big as I thought it would be.”

“Are you complaining that it didn’t block out the sun as it reared up and spread its wings, as the fireside tales like to say?”

“No, although its wings were disappointing.”

Keera shrugged. “Even in the stories they couldn’t actually fly.”

By now we had approached the circle of bones that marked the creature’s home. Keera vaulted over the waist-height barrier, and I followed suit. I paused, my frown deepening as I took in the sight that greeted me inside.

A large amount of what looked like blackened pottery littered the ground, leading in a trail to a large orb of the same material. It was shattered as if broken from the inside out.