Ozias pushes, but he’s been flying for hours now, indulging me in the air, trying to give me the break I so desperately need. Before we can get to the beach, the ravaged is on Ozias’s heels and lunges for us at the exact moment Ozias lowers towards the ground so close it kicks up a gust of fine sand.
Jump,he says and without hesitation, I leap from his back.
I land hard, rolling through the sand, the granules catching in my hair and sticking to my skin. I stop myself and look up in time to see Ozias knock his antlers into the side of the ravaged dragon before spiraling back towardsthe ocean, his body twisting and straightening like a lock of hair caught on a turbulent wind. He’s trying to draw the ravaged away from me, but the dragon has me pinned in its sights and ignores his jab, instead coming straight for me.
Ozias roars, lunging to catch them, but the ravaged slips past and Ozias’s teeth graze along the dragon’s back hip.
Panic surges hard and fast in my chest, and inside my dragon rears up her head. I hear her tell me she needs more energy and something in my gut pulls hard. In a burst of mist I transform, right before the ravaged careens into me, teeth sinking into my shoulder. My head slams against the cliffside and my vision goes dark.
Gasping, I open my eyes to a blinding whiteness—but it’s not the white of the beach. It’s the white of Dyeus’s castle floors. I snap my head up, my wide eyes meeting Zhoric’s.
Zhoric goes preternaturally still. He’s sitting on his throne and I sense a crowd behind me, though I don’t know how great. I’m on my hands and knees, heaving, shaking my head. Zhoric’s fingers seize around the throne’s armrests. In my mind, he asks,Whereareyou?
I can’t answer. Elsewhere, beyond this room, I’m thrown to the side, and it causes me to jerk here, a scream grappling its way out of my throat, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them again, I’m back on the beach, breathing hard, lying on my side in my human form. My shoulder is on fire, but I push myself up and scuttle back until I’m nestled into the short, scraggly grasses and reeds that cling to life on the huge white rocks pockmarking the land. I settle near a crevice, but it’s not deep enough to conceal myself from the ravaged.
Over the ocean, Ozias and the ravaged tussle, though it looks more like a dance. Ozias ducks and weaves, his movements calculated and graceful while the ravaged collector lunges and swipes, jaws snapping and chasing in a relentless drum. The miasma comes and goes, wisps of it coming off the dragon’s body and drifting away on thewind, but never clearing, merely getting carried away like a passing cloud.
Ozias is wearing the ravaged down, his careful movements reserving his energy while the ravaged expends all of theirs. A part of me wishes he would just put an end to the creature, but I know he can’t. Not when it will mean one of our own will die. I wish I knew what his plan was for the ravaged. The fight serves to remind me of what I learned last night. I want to reach out Ozias and tell him that if he can subdue the creature, maybe we can somehow bring it to the Realm with us and we can figure out a way to save him – to save them all. I try to speak to him, mind to mind, but there’s only silence.
They’ve moved to the swell of the surf. The ravaged’s chest puffs in and out, its roar like a tormented prey seeking an end to its misery. As Ozias twists to slam his tail against the ravaged, the beast twists back towards me, coming fast. I press myself deep into the rock, but before the ravaged can make it past where the surf crashes against the sand an enormous white figure slams down onto the beach from out of the sky. In an instant almost too fast to track, Zhoric snatches the ravaged’s neck into his great maw. A spray of red arcs into the air, the ocean waves reaching to catch the drops of blood and pull them into its fold.
My chest heaves. Zhoric looms over the body of the ravaged, its blood-soaked head tumbling down the shoreline. He pulls back a clawed hand and dives it into the beast, yanking out a black mass before tossing it into the water—the ravaged’s heart.
Zhoric lumbers over to me, crimson staining the white of his mane, speckling his shining scales. His breath comes in pants as he pins me with his gaze.
In a billow of clouds, he shifts. The red of the ravaged’s blood stains his mouth and crimson flecks mar his otherwise pristine white attire that I was once most accustomed to seeing him wear. He stands before me, too close and yet too far, watching me, saying nothing.
I’m thrumming with the need to stand and go to him, but instead I keep myself rooted between the rocks, bloodtrickling down my arm.
Ozias hurtles towards us. He transforms a hair’s breadth from Zhoric and uses the momentum from his speed to swerve to my side, kicking up a cloud of sand in his wake.
Ozias’s gaze is hard as he holds Zhoric in his sights, but the king’s eyes are fixed on me. None of Ozias’s casual grace from when he was with Zhoric in Dyeus is here now. I buzz in anticipation, waiting for someone to strike, with words or blows. When Ozias seems satisfied Zhoric won’t move, he half turns to me, placing a palm on the side of my face. The anchor of his hand feels like a restraint. One I fear I’m in desperate need of. “Are you okay?”
I don’t take my eyes off of Zhoric. “Bleeding, but fine.”
Zhoric tracks the path the pad of Ozias’s thumb makes down my cheek towards my mouth. The muscles around his eyes tighten.
Ozias looks between the two of us, but his discerning eyes land on me.
“You’re not usually in the habit of traveling beyond Dyeus’s islands or its provinces,” Ozias comments before finally giving the Sar Dyeus his attention. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
Zhoric continues to look at me for a long moment, then turns his head to the side, his profile awash in the golden evening light. “I wished to see the view.”
Ozias hums.
“Sunsets are quite beautiful from the ground,” Zhoric adds.
“Ozias,” I gasp, my hand seizing his forearm as I realize just how low sun has travelled.
Zhoric follows the movement, but his expression remains neutral.
“We’ll make it,” Ozias reassures. “Enjoy the view, then, your majesty.”
“Ozias?” Zhoric says, casual as a lizard bathing in the sun.
“Yes?”
