Page 48 of Keldori By Daybreak

Ferrin grinned at me from between the statue’s feet, two empty bottles of Skal in hand. He’d summoned the Nightmares just to force too much magick into their skal-constructed bodies and transform them into rotsbane. Now they quaked between us, clawing at their own faces.

“Do you like my new trick?” Ferrin beamed. “I’ve been practicing.”

“You killed them.” This was evil. Ferrin was evil.

“Not technically, though killing them might have been kinder, I’ll admit.”

The shadowy beasts raised their monstrous heads and sniffed tentatively at the air as they regained their bearings. I knew firsthand the insatiable agony and hunger for Skal that was flooding their systems.

They needed to feed.

Their heads snapped towards me, and I staggered back. They wanted Skal. This body was made of Skal, but if they devoured me, they’d suck my consciousness into the void inside their skulls.

I could destroy my body if I wanted and force myself to wake up safe and sound by the lake, but that left Ferrin free to chase after the others.

I brandished the bone blades that lined my forearms. I’d killed a rotsbane before. I could kill these too.

The monsters lunged, crossing the cavern in a single bound. The jaw of the closer one unhinged, revealing the dark nothingness of its maw, and every shred of mettle fled my being.

“Wren!” Orla’s shriek accompanied the zip of a metal spear slicing the air overhead.

The projectile ripped through the rotsbane’s open mouth and straight through the back of its skull, threading a length of chain through its head and coming to a rest embedded in the chest of the second rotsbane.

Their twin screams split the cavern, high-pitched and wailing. The first rotsbane convulsed, held up by the chain strung through its skull, and then sloughed away as sludgy smoke.

The charging form of the remaining rotsbane barreled towards me through the smog, but the chain, still attached to the spear, pulled taut, yanking the beast to the side.

“Move, Wren!” Ciarán’s shout brought me to my senses, and I scrambled away. The rotsbane continued to try to reach for me, but Ciarán had wrapped the chain around a series of lava pillars, creating a pulley system to help hold the monster back.

He passed the chain off to Orla and loosed a second chain and spear as they formed in his hand. The spear pierced the rotsbane’s neck, and the rotsbane screamed and writhed as Ciarán wove the chain through a second set of lava pillars.

The rotsbane twisted where it was trapped in the snare, but it had the sense to clamp its jaw shut so I couldn’t strike it in the mouth and end it. Instead, I ran to relieve Ciarán of his length of chain.

His hands quaked with fatigue as I took the metal, and sweat glistened on his forehead. The rotsbane jerked on its end of the snare, but I dug my feet into the rock and forced more Nightmare strength into my arms and legs.

“You were supposed to leave!” I grunted as the rotsbane yanked again.

Ciarán bent over, heaving to regain his breath, but somehow managed to smirk between gasps for air.

“I got the others out, like I said I would. I came back as soon as the Lyrian agreed to leave with us.”

“And Orla?”

“She followed me.”

“Wren!” Orla shouted a warning, and Ciarán and I both twisted towards a fresh Nightmare pulling itself from the dirt.

Ferrin’s grin glinted green in the light of his glowing hands. He could easily make more rotsbane than Ciarán could make spears. Ferrin would kill as many people from my world as he needed to create his monsters without a shred of remorse or restraint.

“Ciarán,” I said.

“Tell me what you need.”

A dark resolve settled in my stomach. “Kill Ferrin.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

Orange fire solidified into a dagger in his hand, and it flew ahead of him as he charged to dispatch of the new Nightmare before Ferrin could transform her into another rotsbane. Her head knocked back with the force of Ciarán’s weapon hitting her square in the forehead, and she dissolved into dust. She’d be waking up in her bed at home, shaken by a bad dream she couldn’t remember, not knowing how close she’d come to being stripped away into a hungry nothing.