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“That would be a mistake,” I growl. “You’re perched in the entrance to a voratrice tunnel. It’s a predator that even the strongest dragons fear.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to get me to come out.”
“Look at the sides of the tunnel. See the texture of the earth, how it has been smoothed by the nightly emergence of the creature?”
She looks around, worry tightening her features. She’s too smart not to see the signs herself, now that I’ve pointed them out. But she doesn’t yet fear the unknown monster as much as she fears returning to me.
“There are more holes in this slope,” I tell her. “Most are nearly invisible, draped with grass, but some are large enough to accommodate a dragon, once its wings have been broken. That’s what this beast does. It catches a dragon with its tongues, tears off the scales, breaks the wing bones, and swallows the whole dragon down its gullet. But it will accept other prey, too, not just dragons. You’ll be a delicious treat for it. I doubt it has ever tasted human flesh.”
Serylla glances nervously down the tunnel.
“They come out at sunset,” I continue. “Any moment now the creature could emerge. You’ll be swallowed before you can run.”
She crawls forward to the entrance and remains there, poised in a crouch. “If I come out, you’re going to take me back to your cave, or to that pen where you keep the others.”
“Yes. You’ll be safe there.”
“You’re going to destroy this body, my body, the one I was born with, and turn me into something else, against my will.”
“We’ve been over this. I have reasons, compelling reasons.” My voice rises, strident with frustration and fear. “Come out at once, and live. Or stay there, and die.”
The ground murmurs faintly beneath my claws. It’s not so dramatic as a tremor, but it’s movement for certain.
The voratrice is coming.
“Serylla!” I roar, and I leap forward.
She’s already moving, springing out of the tunnel. Too slow—she’s jerked backward, screaming. I can barely see the slimy transparent tongue wrapped around her ankle.
I dive in, slicing at the tentacle with my claws. It’s tough, stretchy, difficult to cut through, but my talons do enough damage to make it let go.
Serylla crawls away, her leg bleeding from the tiny hooks embedded along the tongue’s surface. Those hooks are perfectly evolved for prying off a dragon’s scales.
I open my wings, catching the air as I seize her body in my front claws. But before I can soar upward with her, several tongues wrap around my tail and legs, while more of them coil around the joint of my left wing.
I bellow, straining to break free, but several of the worm-heads have gripped me with their feelers, and their strength is inexorable, like the sucking pull of Varex’s void magic.
Understanding rushes through me like black, icy water.
I’m already dead. But maybe the Princess can live.
With all my might, I throw her forward into the forest. Her body crashes into the undergrowth as I fight to stay aloft, my wings pummeling the air.
“Run!” I roar. “Run, you foolish human, run!”
14
Five writhing, wormlike necks protrude from various holes in the rocky slope. Each one’s blunted tip gapes open, showing rings of teeth, and from those hungry mouths emerge the clusters of long transparent tongues that coil around the dragon’s back legs, his tail, and his wings. All of the worm-things are working together to bind and break him.
Kyreagan strains against them, every muscle in his powerful body surging, his magnificent wings flared wide. He twists around and sprays focused bursts of fire at some of the tongues, but they don’t seem to be affected. More tongues rake along his back and sides, their tiny hooks tearing out his scales, leaving raw red wounds.
The dragon crashes to the ground, caught in a web of tongues. Two of them coil around his throat and tighten. He chokes out a snarl.
Frantically I hunt for a weapon, for anything I can use to help him. There’s no question of leaving him behind, enemy or not. I can’t watch him die. It’s not that I care about him—I don’t. But he doesn’t deserve this.
I find a sapling with a pointed end and run back up the slope. Instead of trying to cut through the tongues, I head for one of the mouths and jam the stick sideways into the monster’s gullet. A stray tongue darts out at me, and I barely avoid it. I’m lucky that most of the voratrice’s feelers are occupied, or I’d be in one of its throats already.
Only one of the five worm-things is big enough to swallow something of Kyreagan’s size. That’s the one I need to focus on.
