Page 20 of Beast of Blood and Ash
The moment my wings slammed down, kicking up dust, he looked over with a smirk. “Who did you piss off?”
I grunted, rough in my dry throat. “I’m here to help.”
He cocked his head, one wing flaring for balance as he stood, his expression unreadable. “Champion of Ignarath, come to babysit recruits?” He let the words hang, a test for bite. “Not what I expected. But I won’t complain. Things have been quiet.”He jerked his chin at the motley crew by the boulders, a few soft-scaled whelps feigning bravado around a spear rack.
I forced my wings tight to my spine and picked up a discarded shield. “Show me around.”
He led me through the camp like I was a visiting dignitary, not a stray let in from the wastes. The tension in my shoulders never eased. Their eyes followed me, the new bloods. Their faces were bright with curiosity and something sharper. Fear. Fascination. The kind of awe you feel for a legend you aren’t sure is real.
Nyx leaned in, his voice a low rasp meant only for me. “Don’t let their stares fool you. Half of them want your glory. The rest want you gone.”
I snorted. “Babysitting children. Maybe that’s all I’m good for.”
“Keep them alive, and I’ll owe you a debt,” he said. “That’s more than most get in Scalvaris.”
I didn’t want a debt. I didn’t want gratitude. I wanted a purpose that was more than violence, a way to carve out the rot of Ignarath’s shadow from my bones.
But I wasn’t thinking about Reika. Not now. Not with the sun burning down like a judgment I could not outrun.
The morning passed in suffocating monotony. Four hours of wind slicing over sand and the slow, steady march of shadows. Long-winged, razor-beaked birds wheeled in the distance, their cries warped by the heat. Each time, a trainee tensed, fingers twitching on a weapon, mistaking simple animals for enemies.
Tarion, the youngest, could not sit still. His scales were a bright, unscarred green, his movements quick with untested energy. He watched me like I was a living myth.
“What’s it like in the arena?” he asked, his voice jumping with eagerness.
My eyes stayed on the horizon. The desert stretched into a fractured infinity of red stone and black sand. Nothing gentle. Nothing forgiving. The arena was in my bones, its memory carved into every scar on my arms. I didn’t want to talk about Ignarath.
Tarion did not take the hint. “I heard you were champion for years. Undefeated. Is it true?”
I grunted, letting the silence sharpen.
Champion. Pet fighter. Skorai’s dog. Survival in that place depended on selling pieces of your soul for one more day above the sand. The price was always too steep.
Tarion looked at me with wide, clean eyes, as if I held secrets he could steal. I remembered being that young, thinking victory meant something more than survival. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it did not.
The suns hammered down. Heat seared every breath. My claws dug into my thighs, grounding me in pain. In the now. I had just begun to let my mind slip blessedly blank when the alarm went up.
A sharp, metallic clang echoed over the wasteland, the signal blown through a battered war-horn. The sound ripped through camp. Trainees snapped to attention, faces blanching, weapons drawn with shaky hands. Nyx’s eyes flashed.
Interlopers.
We sprang into action. Orders cracked through camp. Wings snapped open. The young bloods fumbled with straps and weapons, some trembling. I launched skyward, heat buffeting my wings, the air already choked with sand.
Pursuit was the only thing that ever felt pure. No past, no fear. Just the hunt. My mind narrowed to instinct: track. Chase. Subdue.
We saw them fast, shadow-shapes streaking over broken stone, their clothes flapping with the distinctive style of Ignarath. My blood thrummed.
It was a brutal chase, wind tearing at my face, grit stinging my eyes, my muscles burning with ugly memory. The wasteland stretched open. No cover. We drove them forward, our wings beating a frantic rhythm against the oppressive air.
I caught one as he miscalculated a turn. I slammed him down hard, the impact kicking up a plume of black dust. He bucked, cursed in an Ignarath lilt.
My claws pinned him. I looked down, and the face that snarled up at me was no stranger.
Jerras.
Not friend, not enemy. Someone I had bled beside and ignored as he spat on the weak. Everything ugly about Ignarath lived in his eyes: cunning. Cruelty. Certainty. His dust-matted scales were a dirty gold.
“It is true.” Jerras scowled, straining under my grip. “Dog. Traitor. Prey-loving scum.”
