I had a dream in which I stole a tree made of wood. Of all the absurdities.
Ragheiyont paced the shores of a sour stream. Here and there, blood red blooms of algae freckled the shallows, where the acidic water slowed almost to a standstill. The bank rose steeply, and a cluster of mundane, fibrous trees grew from the usual single root stock. No wood here in the Third Sphere. Nothing so alien could survive. Ragheiyont tried to shake the dream, but it would not go.
Crouching, he took a dry bit of claw thistle and prodded the stream with it. The pointed leaves flinched closed as though some life remained in them, but it was a lie. Nothing survived long in this harsh environment, mostly owing to the scarcity of potable water. No matter. He had no intention of staying long. No, Ragheiyont found the sandstorm brewing over the next ridge a greater challenge. The dry wind and swirling dust would maul his delicate draconiform airways in minutes. Could he heal the damage? Perhaps. Best not to risk it. He found a seat beneath the spongy fungal trees, and he settled down to plan.
He really couldn’t think of a better location to build a vault. Out there in the middle of an arid plain prone to storms sprang a tower too tall to climb, with windows too narrow for most winged creatures to squeeze through. Certainly none could manage it in the high winds that characterized the weather here. To approach the tower required magic, and the six spires that rose from its corners emitted resonances that discouraged most types of spells. Cracking this vault presented a unique challenge.
Ragheiyont would have taken the job for half the price.
He doubted he could shore up enough magic to dispel the storm—he would hesitate to name a dragon who could—but if he could ride the winds above it, he might only need to break through at the precise location of the tower. Assuming he could locate it. He would need magic to get through the window, and again to creep undetected through the door, and beyond that… Well, no one who had survived seeing the interior of that vault had ever described it. Artifacts of power, protective wards, perils galore. Ragheiyont’s fingers flinched toward the dagger strapped to his forearm. Not yet. He needed to conserve his strength. He could go a few more days without tasting blood if he didn’t waste any.
From his seat beneath the trees, he could watch the orange sky purpling toward dusk. Did he dare make his run tonight? Or should he wait and see if the winds would abate?
“Looties need coin again.”
Old Baaz gave Gavi a reproachful look. “Now you hear me, girl,” she said. “You keep clear of them’s as would solve every problem on the point of a sword.” Settling back in her seat, Baaz scoffed. “Can’t fight their way outta a burlap sack, anyhow. What’s the like o’ them need wit coin?”
“Come on, Baaz.” Gavi set her tray on the bar and filled it with glasses. “Y’know they’s doin’ good work, liberatin’ slaves an’ all.”
“People ain’t all they steal. You keep clear o’ their like, or Boss’ll have you out on the street, y’hear?”
Gavi rolled her eyes, but she bustled away to distribute another round of drinks to the good, paying customers. The front door swung open, delivering another wave of travelers, and a gust of peculiarly cold wind. The telltale groans of a building storm carried in as the door sighed closed again.
“A travelin’ wind,” Baaz confirmed as Gavi returned for another round. “Some damn fool opened a portal hereabouts.”
Why, Gavi wondered, would anyone deliberately cross Spheres to this remote Hell? She had heard of plenty of jump points closer to the capitol, mostly in towns with better amenities. No one should ever want to come to this hardscrabble frontier.
Not that it hadn’t improved in recent years. The prince, that Puppetmaster of Seyzharel, had acquired these lands in a treaty, which had immediately liberated all the slaves. Of course, that left the newly freed, like Gavi, scrambling for employment. She was lucky to have this job, she reminded herself as she loaded her tray again. Keep quiet. Keep Boss happy. Keep getting paid.
Gavi delivered the drinks, then made a circuit of the newcomers, taking orders and avoiding grasping hands. Most of them clustered together, but one had elected to sit alone in the gloomiest corner he could find. Lovely. That sort usually meant trouble. Steeling herself, Gavi made her way toward him.
“Good evening!” she said, putting on her brightest smile and her best diction. “Can I get you something? Blood? Bile? The stew is good toni—” Her words ended in a gasp as a hand shot out and seized her by the wrist.
“Nothing,” rasped a voice from the depths of the traveler’s tattered hood. A pair of eyes glittered in the darkness, enormous pupils just visible. A mask shrouded the lower half of his face, and even his hand was wrapped in strips of rags. Gavi’s pulse thundered, and her mouth went dry. What kind of criminal needed to cover himself so thoroughly?
“A room, then?” Gavi felt her smile wearing thin. In another moment, her fear would show on her face. None of the customers would come to her aid. Could Baaz cross the crowded dining room in time to save her?
“Just this,” hissed the masked demon. “Which way is the castle?”
Why, everyone knew that, unless—
Gasping, Gavi flinched back, but the traveler’s grip held her fast. He had come through the portal! This was the man mad enough to transport himself to the fringes of civilization! “What do you want with the fancy folk?” she stalled, wondering if she still had time to avoid becoming dinner.
“Fancy,” scoffed the traveler, scorn in his voice. “You’ve heard of their decadence, their corruption.”
“You’re three hundred years late for that,” Gavi snapped imprudently. “Unless you mean the Mortal-Born,” she amended, trying to cover her lapse. “They say the prince made himself a son of human blood.” Not that she shared the usual prejudice against such demons. Many of her fellow slaves had been Mortal-Born, as was Baaz. Sturdy, tough-as-tendons Baaz. Where was she? Gavi dared not glance over her shoulder.
“Just so.” The outworlder’s grip tightened. Gavi felt the bones of her wrist grind together, and she fought back a gasp of pain. “Which way?”
She owed no allegiance to the prince of Seyzharel, other than that she paid her taxes like any good citizen of his lands. Still, could she betray the man who had, however unwittingly, freed her? “What do you want with that lot?”
“Directions!” His grip tightened, and the snap of Gavi’s bones breaking jolted through her body, resounding in her ears from within. With a soft sob, she sank to her knees. She shouldn’t, but the reflex was written deep in her muscles, trained into her from childhood. Someday she would stand tall. Someday she would spit in the face of oppression. Today, she crumbled.
“North,” she gasped. “You’ll see it when you get to the mountains.”
The betrayal drained her more than she expected it would. She slumped in defeat even as the traveler rose to his feet. A flicker of light beneath his cloak caught her eye, a glint, a reflection on metal, a pulse of power that drew her forward. Gavi had lifted her uninjured hand before she quite realized it. The traveler snapped his cloak back over the sword.
“I’ve come to save you,” he growled, his voice cold beneath his mask. “To save us all. The King of Shadows will be no more.”
The traveler strode back out into the night, into the wind and the thunder. Gavi remained on the floor, clutching her broken arm to her chest, numbed from the inside until Baaz came to apply healing spells and a warm cup of blood. Restored, Gavi wondered at the stranger’s words.
The King of Shadows.
What in all the Spheres could that mean?
Ragheiyont bobbed over the churning winds like a skiff on a restless sea. Below him, the sandstorm swirled on, obscuring the barren landscape. Above, endless stars traced unfamiliar patterns across the night sky. Within him, the familiar itch hummed in his blood, urging him onward, tempting him to make reckless decisions, to act impulsively, to make a ruin of his careful planning. He ignored it.
Fortune favored him with a glimpse of his destination. The spires of the tower broke through the clouds of dust, points of darkness against the whorls of silver and white. Ragheiyont furled his wings and dropped into a steep dive.
The cold wind tore at him, numbing the points of his ears, snatching strands 0f plumage from his tight braid. Soon… Soon… Just above the roof of the tower, he snapped his wings open wide. He ground his teeth tight against the force as he banked into a turn that would bring him even with one of the windows. His shoulder muscles screamed against the effort, but his aim was flawless. His gloved hands gripped the casing, and his soft-soled boots pressed flat against the wall. Clinging like a spider, he folded his wings snug into the harness he wore on his back. If he could somehow make them vanish entirely, squeezing through the narrow window would hurt a good deal less.
Ragheiyont drew a deep breath. As he exhaled, he stretched magic through his own body, compressing every available space, flattening himself. It was a simple spell, not disrupted by the spires’ resonances, but profoundly uncomfortable. It felt somehow like the opposite of an engorged stomach. Ragheiyont squeezed through the window as quickly as he could. He relaxed, released the spell, returned to his natural shape.
The wailing winds muffled his steps as much as his soft boots did. Under the cover of the noise, his movements masked by a subtle camouflage spell, Ragheiyont tiptoed between a pair of cat-eared guards. What Sphere did those come from? Surely cat demons had better taste than to live in this horrible place on purpose. His senses straining for any sign of movement from the guards, Ragheiyont selected a pair of lockpicks and got to work on the vault door.
The lock itself had no wards protecting it. The slim metal tools manipulated the tumblers unimpeded, and when the last one clicked into place, Ragheiyont saw why. The heavy door sighed open just a crack, and if not for the wind, even that much noise would have alerted the guards. He dared not press it open farther. Well, this task would take considerably more magic. Tonight, Ragheiyont would go home hungry.
He reached deep, summoning the power in his blood, calling upon the magic of transformation. Bit by bit, he dissolved his body into smoke, and he seeped through the tiny opening and into the vault. He solidified again before his thoughts could drift away into the stale air.
Ragheiyont had expected absolute darkness within the vault. He was wrong. A soft, silvery light emanated from above, from fine threads strung from the ceiling. All around a central pit, artifacts of great value and greater power littered the hexagonal chamber. Here and there the gentle light caught on metals or gems, gleaming, tempting him. The itch in his blood roared to a boil.
Take it all. Kill the guards. Wallow in the riches.
He wasn’t dragon enough for that sort of nonsense, illness or no. Ragheiyont edged to the rim of the pit and peered into the darkness below. He could see nothing, but he had a vague sense that it plunged deeper than the foundations of the tower. An injured wing would mean certain death. Steeling himself, he turned his gaze upward.
A crystal hung suspended above the pit. Innocuous in design, no bigger than Ragheiyont’s closed fist, it occupied the most defended position in the entire tower, perhaps in any world.
Heartstone. The name burned within him, hammered his sick blood in his ears, brought him right to the brink of a frenzy. Closing his eyes, Ragheiyont drew several slow, calming breaths. He would have plenty of time to fight himself later. For now, he needed to focus.
The silver threads would prove troublesome. He had not seen their like, but he assumed they were a type of tangle-ward, a snare for the unwelcome. Unraveling it would take him hours, precious time he did not have to waste. The alternative would be messy.
No time like the present.
Wardbreaker came too easily to his hand, the blade as hungry and eager as his own tainted blood. With his other hand, Ragheiyont drew a device from his pocket. He depressed the button on it, and he let it fall.
Ragheiyont unfurled his wings, stretched them wide to shake off the cramped confines of the harness, then sprang into the air. The dagger in his hand thrummed with magic of its own, dark and insatiable as the pit below. Above him, the silver threads stirred to life and reached for him.
This would be costly.
Ragheiyont struck at the first wave of threads. As Wardbreaker slashed through them, they darkened and fell away. No time to study the magic of that. He twisted in the air, narrowly avoiding getting one wing caught. Wardbreaker flashed left and right, up and down, the gleam of light on the blade a little duller with every pass. It almost surprised him when he cut through the threads that suspended the crystal. The Heartstone dropped into his palm with a dull slosh.
The remaining threads—about half—stopped trying to ensnare him. Instead, they arrowed for the intruder, fine as needles, aiming to kill. Ragheiyont snapped his wings close against his sides, and he dropped for a heart-stopping moment before snapping them open again, angling for the door. He had to get close before his timer ran down…
Hungry! wailed Wardbreaker, more a sensation than a word. If Ragheiyont had been running, his steps may have faltered, but his wings carried him onward. The device on the floor emitted a loud click! and with it a negative pulse, a vacuum, a momentary void that drew everything in the chamber toward itself.
Including the door.
Ragheiyont shot through as the door swung wide. He twisted sideways, forced his body to compress, and still bruised himself as he hurtled out the window. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He held his victory in the palm of his hand.
The fierce winds caught at him, buffeted him, threw him back against the roof of the tower. Dazed and weakened, Ragheiyont struggled to sit up. The sandstorm. He needed to get clear, to breathe fresh air, or the swirling dust would shred him from the inside. He had neither fire to melt the sand nor craw to store it. Anatomical deficiencies of his species.
Hungry!
And there was that. Ragheiyont looked down at Wardbreaker, still clutched in his hand, still ready. He held back a sigh, for fear of drawing sand deeper into his lungs. Time to feed the beast.
Wardbreaker’s blade bit deep into his arm, and it stayed a moment, feeding, drawing his blood into itself. Ragheiyont felt its relief, but the nasty thing would drink him dry if he let it. He pulled the blade away, no longer fascinated at how it came clean after it fed, and he pressed the Heartstone into the wound. Flesh closed over it, securing his prize. Ragheiyont pressed a cloth over his nose and mouth, stretched his wings, and vaulted skyward.
He tried, anyway. The winds tore at him, forcing his ascent into a shallow, arduous angle. Perhaps he had used too much magic, too much blood, too much of his strength. Perhaps he would die here, another broken body on the wasteland. Perhaps…
He broke through the top of the sandstorm, into the thinner, colder air above. In other circumstances, this victory would call for a whoop of joy. Tonight, his strength was fading. Ragheiyont sped clear of the storm, his keen gaze skimming the ground below, searching for water. Any water would do, even that vile, acidic stuff.
A stream glistened in the starlight, narrow and winding, but far from his trickiest target of the night. Ragheiyont tucked his wings into a tight dive. He muttered the right incantation against the roaring wind, and he threw the spell from the point of his cursed dagger. The portal split the surface of the water, and Ragheiyont burst through.
He tumbled into sunlight, faltered at the reversal of gravity, and crashed on a field of soft moss-grass. Plowed up and scattered in great clods all around him, it enveloped him in its sweet, spicy scent. The world whirled as his body came to a full stop at last, and a laugh of pure joy bubbled up within him.
He was home.