Page 1 of Skalterra By Nightmare
1. Intro to Siege Warfare
These were not my eyelashes.
Yes, I had bigger things to worry about, like the screams of falling soldiers, the quaking of the battlements, the fact that I was inexplicably on a battlement in the first place…
But these eyelashes! Long and lush and certainly not mine, yet there they were, fluttering at the edges of my vision, illuminated by the bright bursts of neon light that accompanied the blasts that shook the fort.
Right.
The fort.
At least, it seemed like a fort, with stone parapets strung between turrets to protect a mossy courtyard. It might’ve been peaceful if not for the soldiers swarming between its upright stones and gnarled, spindly trees.
An arcing ball of orange lit the sky from above, streaking against the inky black of night. A turret interrupted its path into the courtyard, and it burst in an explosion of light and rubble, rocking the stones beneath me.
I shrank back against the low wall of the battlement. Someone screamed something about a gate being breached, and heavy bootsteps clattered past, taking no notice of the girl huddled against her knees.
This was all wrong.
I screwed up my face, trying to remember how I’d gotten here, but only came up with snatches of foggy battles and muddied greaves. I was somewhere else before all that, though. Somewhere that definitely wasn’t a battlefield.
More explosions. More yelling. The weight of chainmail pressing down on my shoulders.
And eyelashes that were not mine.
“Focus, Wren.” My desperate whisper bounced against the metal of my helmet’s faceplate. This was not the time to get distracted, especially as I was now alone on a crumbling wall that the other soldiers had all had the sense to abandon.
The stones ahead of me turned orange in the light of another bombardment, and the shimmering blaze blasted through the stone to my right.
Sparks and bits of rubble rained against me, and I stumbled to my feet as the cobbled flooring gave way. The parapet rocked and swayed, making it impossible for my heavy boots to gain purchase, and I fell forward.
I scrabbled at the stone as my legs slipped into the chasm left by the crumbling fort. My chainmail, heavy before, was damn near a death sentence now, and I screamed through gritted teeth with the effort of trying to hoist myself back up.
It was useless. With my helmeted face pressed against stone and every muscle locked, I couldn’t see how far the drop was, but the clash of metal and yells of soldiers below were far enough away to tell me my prospects were less than great.
At least I’d die with fantastic eyelashes.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I could try to pull myself up again, but if my muscles gave out—
“Where is the Sovereign?” a voice growled above me. My helmet pulled at my hair, scraping against stone as it was pulled from my head. I opened my eyes to an orange glow bouncing off black boots inches from my face. My hair fell loose of the helmet, long, lush and blue.
Forget the eyelashes, whosehairwas this?
Gloved hands yanked me to my feet and held me by the collar of my tunic and chainmail. Orange irises glowed bright at the center of dark pearlescent sclera, looking all the more black set against an alabaster face.
Sure, this stranger had saved me, but the way he glared over the dark cowl pulled up over his nose, I had enough sense to know that whoever he was, he was an enemy.
“The Sovereign.” He raised a knife that glowed the same color as his eyes—the same color as the blasts that had taken out chunks of the parapet—to my throat. “I won’t ask again, Blue.”
“I don’t know,” I choked. The ragged cloak that hung off his shoulders whirled as he spun me around to throw me to the stones. Maybe it was my relief at escaping the orange knife or my new distance from the lip of the edge, but I added, “and my name’s not Blue. That’s stupid.”
His scowl deepened, and the blade in his hand elongated into a scythe that had me regretting that last quip.
“Oh, no thanks.” I tried to scramble away, but a heavy boot blocked my path as the man drew back his weapon. I tucked my face into my shoulder, thankful that this would be cleaner than falling to my death.
The curved blade whistled through the air, but was cut by a crash and a garbled shout. I opened my eyes in time to see the whip of tattered cloaks disappearing over the open edge, and the darkness swallowed the orange glow of my assailant’s weapon as he hurtled to the courtyard ruins below.
“Stop wasting time, Nightmare!” A young woman pulled me to my feet, and she stared at the spot the cloaked figure had disappeared. At least, I was pretty sure that was where she was staring. It was hard to tell with the opaque, metal-rimmed goggles fixed over her eyes. The green fire that swathed the hand she held aloft cast shadows that carved valleys against her sharp cheekbones, making her appear older than her voice suggested.
