Page 181 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Wren—” Tiernan started, but Ciarán shushed him.

“Either I ash you just to get you out of the way,” Ciarán warned Stanley, “or you go inside. Now.”

Stanley took an uneasy step back towards the door.

“That’s it,” Ciarán prompted. “Now faster. I want to see you run.”

Stanley slipped back into the carriage, and Ciarán gave chase.

“What are you doing?” Tiernan yelled after me.

“I have no idea! I’m sorry!” I called back but let Ciarán hound Stanley through the carriage until he stopped at the far door.

Stanley slammed against the metal, a hulking mass of tattoos and bloated muscles, and turned to watch me bear down on him with my spear still in hand.

“I didn’t say to stop!” Ciarán thrust the spear forward, and Stanley ducked through the door to avoid its point.

“Are you insane?” Stanley screamed, sprinting down the length of the next carriage with me in pursuit.

“Ask me again in a couple minutes!” Ciarán laughed.

Stanley didn’t hesitate at the next door this time but kept running.

And kept running to the carriage beyond that one, and beyond that, until—

He ripped a door open to a rotsbane towering inside the cramped space, its shoulders hunched near the ceiling and its head in a barrel of Skal.

“Brought you a snack!” Ciarán called.

“What’re you doing? It’ll kill me!” Stanley tried to push behind me, but Ciarán shoved him towards the rotsbane.

The beast whipped its head towards Stanley, and the barrel on its head shot off to slam into a wall.

“I just needed to get its attention,” Ciarán crooned. “Good news. I think it likes you.”

The rotsbane’s mouth unhinged, and it gave a whining squeal as it dove for Stanley.

Ciarán loosed the metal spear, and the rotsbane’s head snapped backwards with the force of the hit at the back of its throat. We shoved past Stanley to retrieve the spear from the dying rotsbane.

“See? You just have to trust me. A little trust goes a long way.” Ciarán pushed my hair back from my face as we turned back around.

Stanley, however, had turned passive, staring straight ahead, unseeing, as another rotsbane tore through the carriages behind him.

“Stanley!” I yelled, but my warning fell on deaf ears as the rotsbane took him in its four claws.

I threw the spear through Stanley’s muscled back before the rotsbane could devour his consciousness, and the rotsbane screamed as the point embedded in its chest.

Stanley dissolved into ash. He’d be waking up back at home, safe and undevoured by the rotsbane that now staggered back into the open space between carriages. The wind pulled at the shadows that hung off its form, and its sunken eyes flickered in their sockets. A twitching, shadowed claw ripped the spear from its chest and threw it into open air, away from the train, leaving me defenseless between a feral rotsbane and a room full of Skal.

“Sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t think, I just—I don’t know.”

“It’s fine,” Ciarán assured me. “You saved Titus.”

I ceded control back to Ciarán, and he wielded an empty Skal barrel ahead of us as he charged at the rotsbane where it stood in the space between carriages.

Its top set of claws reached around the barrel to rake across my shoulders, but Ciarán managed to maneuver the rotsbane to the side. Its back foot slipped from the narrow platform, and it tumbled from the train with a shriek.

Ciarán climbed us back to the roof despite the screaming pain in my shoulders, pulled a bottle from my backpack, and chucked it into the night.