Page 175 of Cast in Conflict

Free me.

Kill me.

She had completely sympathy with the former, and a bitter kind of empathy for the latter.

“Kaylin.”

But Mandoran didn’t feel like Shadow to her, and she wondered if that were, in part, because the hand attached to him was the hand that she had gloved in strands of Shadow—inert Shadow, as her hand had never tried to speak with her or control her.

The idea of inert Shadow didn’t exist for Bellusdeo. But Kaylin had come to understand that Shadow was a single word that was meant to cover a plethora of living, sentient beings. It meant—had meant—death. Until Gilbert. Until Spike.

She didn’t know what normal for Mandoran was. She knew, however, that he wasn’t being transformed into a thing of Shadow. “You’re not in pain?”

“No. I really, really think we should leave.”

“No problem. You lead.”

“How did you even get here? I’m only here because you dragged me in!”

“I got here through you.”

Kaylin—not the time for this.

Right. Right. She exhaled. She missed Hope. She missed someone who had some sense of what was happening. Even Terrano would be better than Mandoran.

“Can we reverse it?” she asked, when she was certain she wasn’t going to be pointing figurative fingers. “Because I think you were already almost here when I grabbed you. Terrano meant for me to pull you out and drop you on Bellusdeo’s back.”

“I was almost cut in half,” Mandoran replied, more edge in his tone, but less blame.

“Healer here,” she replied.

“No one is going to care if I’m almost cut in half on the way out. Everyone’s going to be pissed off at me if you are.”

“Look—if you’ve got better ideas—”

The rest of Kaylin’s words were lost to a roar; the ground beneath their feet buckled. Kaylin fell because Mandoran lost his footing. She was afraid to let go of him—the last thing she wanted at this very moment was to lose him to...this place.

She banged her knee; Mandoran landed on his free elbow. Pushing themselves to their feet was an act of coordination that the ground only barely allowed. The buildings were now entirely retracted, as if they were hunkering defensively beneath thick shells. Kaylin tightened her grip on Mandoran’s hand.

“Where are we—” The words were lost, again, to thunderous roaring; the whole of the road buckled, as if attempting to shake the sound off. Kaylin was better prepared for this, and managed to retain her footing; Mandoran, however, had ceased to rely on the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. His arm remained solid, and he remained visible, but the roar of the Dragon—and it was draconic—no longer caused him to stumble.

Kaylin’s weight, when she did, didn’t pull him down.

Mandoran didn’t bother to ask her another question; mixed in with the roaring that caused the ground to buckle was other roaring: Bellusdeo, she thought. Emmerian. The fiefs weren’t Elantra—but they were close enough that Dragons in aerial combat would be seen across the city the Emperor did rule.

The first roar, the roar that caused the breaking of this Shadowed ground, was no doubt the outcaste’s.

She kept running, stumbling, righting herself, and running, because she could see one building that had not withdrawn, like a turtle or snail, into its shell. That building, unlike the streets, wasn’t cracking and fissuring as the cadence of the outcaste’s voice grew louder and louder, and it appeared to have a door.

Well no, it appeared to have something that might have been a door. It might have been a mouth. Mandoran’s grip tightened and he yanked Kaylin off her feet as the stone beneath her soles cracked; the crack spread, like dark lightning in a sky of stone, and the rock surrounding the crack began to tumble and fall.

Door.

Mouth.

Kaylin cursed in Leontine and followed Mandoran’s lead as he dragged her toward the only solid stretch of ground: inside.

In between one step—outside and inside—the roaring died. She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t feel the aftershocks beneath her feet. She checked her hand—the one attached to Mandoran—and exhaled. This was a door, not a mouth; no Shadow saliva or breath greeted their entrance. Mandoran came to stand upon something shiny and hard that nonetheless carried both of their weights.

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