Chapter 3
“Shut up,” I snarled through clenched teeth, shaking my head violently. “Get out of my head!”
The drake turned toward me, its throat bulging. The air rippled with heat as it unleashed its breath.
A torrent of liquid fire erupted from its jaws, an incandescent river of gold and white flame that swept across the canyon floor, melting the basalt into glowing slag as it rushed toward me.
There was no time to dodge. Behind me, Julian was screaming my name, a shriek of raw, unadulterated panic.
I didn't raise my shield. I didn't turn away.
Instinct—ancient, dark, and utterly detached from any military drill Julian had ever taught me—took control of my muscles. I planted my boots into the stone, leaned forward into the firestorm, and met the blaze head-on.
The fire struck me.
To any human eye, it was an inferno that should have vaporized my flesh in half a heartbeat.
Yet as the flames engulfed me, roaring around my shoulders, licking at my face and tangling in my hair, I felt... nothing.
No agony. No searing pain.
Instead, the flames caressed my skin with a familiar, intoxicating warmth. The smell filled my lungs—not the foul, suffocating stink of burning meat, but that sweet, intoxicating scent of lightning and honeyed resin. It felt like stepping into an embrace I had yearned for in dreams I couldn't remember. The fire danced across my knuckles, curling around my fingers as if recognizing me, parting around my face like water around the prow of a ship.
Through the swirling sheets of flame, I looked at the drake.
The beast had stopped breathing fire. Its massive jaws hung slack, its slitted golden eyes widening until they were nearly round.
There was no malice in those eyes. None of the mindless, predatory cruelty Julian had spent years documenting in his leather journals.
There was only... bewilderment. A profound, agonizing confusion.
The drake tilted its massive skull, its throat making a low, trilling sound—a soft, keening whistle that vibrated with grief. It took a hesitant step toward me, not to attack, but lowering its heavy brow, sniffing the air, its nostrils flaring as if catching a scent it knew better than the sun.
*Sister?*
The word echoed in my mind, raw and telepathic, completely bypassing the throbbing ache behind my eyes.
*Why do you walk with the worm-child? Why do you wear the cold chain?*
A terrible shiver crawled down my spine. The sword in my hands suddenly felt heavy, wrong, an alien intrusion. My fingers loosened on the leather grip.
“Sariyah! Strike!” Julian’s voice cut through the roaring wind like a whip crack. “It’s faltering! Cut its throat! In the name of the Empire, kill it!”
The spell broke.
The training took over. The years of Julian’s voice telling me what I was, who I was, what duty required of my blood.
*I am Sariyah. I am the shield of humanity.*
With a feral roar, I launched myself through the dying embers. The speed of my leap was terrifying, covering twenty feet in a heartbeat.
The drake didn't raise its claws to defend itself. It merely watched me come, its golden eyes filled with an unspeakable, mournful sorrow that made my stomach twist in agony.
I drove my steel broadsword upward, straight into the unarmored soft skin beneath its lower jaw, driving the three-foot blade all the way to the hilt, into the soft gray meat of its brain.
The beast let out one final, shuddering sigh—a blast of warm, sweet ozone that ruffled my soot-stained hair.
Its massive bulk collapsed, hitting the stone floor with a dull, heavy thud. Its golden eyes slowly glazed over, the light fading into dull glass, staring at me until the very end.
Silence fell over the canyon, broken only by the crackle of cooling rock.
I stood there over the carcass, my hands trembling violently on the hilt of the sword. The blade was drenched in thick, steaming black blood that smelled... delicious. The realization made me bile rise in my throat, repulsed by my own grotesque impulses.
*What is wrong with me?*
“Sariyah!”
Julian came running out from his hiding place. He stumbled over the scree, nearly falling, but caught himself against my shoulder. His face was gray with terror, his hands frantically searching my arms, my face, my torn tunic.
“You stood in the fire,” he choked out, his voice cracking into hysterics. He was shivering so violently his teeth chattered against each other. “You... the flame took you entirely. How are you not burned? Your clothes are charred to ash, but your skin—”
He reached out, his trembling fingers brushing against my collarbone.
His hand recoiled instantly. “You’re burning hot. You feel like a furnace grate.”
“I don't know,” I whispered, looking down at the dead drake. My chest felt hollow, carved out, like I had just slaughtered something precious and irreplaceable. “Julian... it looked at me. It made a sound. It didn't fight back.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed, a flash of cold, calculating panic darting through his gaze before he smoothed it away into an expression of desperate concern.
“It was trying to trick you,” he said sharply, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look away from the carcass, forcing me to look only at him. “They are beasts of pure deceit, Sariyah! They mimic speech, they project false memories, they will look at you with the face of an angel if it buys them a second to tear out your throat! Look at me! Look at Julian!”
I forced my eyes to meet his. His gray irises were wide, terrified, pleading.
“You saved my life,” he whispered, his voice trembling with profound emotion. “Do you understand that? That monster would have consumed me. It would have turned my bones to ash and scattered the last memory of mankind to the wind. You killed it. You protected me, just as you were born to do.”
A tear tracked through the soot on his pale cheek.
Seeing his tears shattered the strange, alien fog in my mind. The guilt receded, replaced by that overwhelming, primal instinct to soothe him, to keep him safe from harm.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, leaning down slightly so he didn't have to strain his neck. “I’m sorry, Julian. I listened to its tricks. I let the telepathy get to me.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said softly, reaching around to the back of my neck.
His fingers found the silver torc. It was scalding hot, humming with a frantic, agitated vibration against my skin. With practiced, forceful precision, Julian tightened the latch another notch, pressing the cold silver deep into the flesh at the nape of my neck.
A sharp, needle-like pain lanced through my spine, followed by a total, numbing silence.
The phantom scent of rain and amber vanished. The memory of the drake’s mournful eyes blurred, becoming nothing more than the dull image of a dead reptile on the rocks. The migraine, which had threatened to crack my skull wide open, vanished completely, wiped clean by the biting chill of the silver collar.
Julian exhaled a long, shuddering sigh of relief, resting his forehead against mine.
