Page 100 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Then who are you? How are you lucid?”
He grinned.
“No clue, but here’s a word of advice. Don’t question it. You can be anyone you want here, so enjoy it as long as they let you.”
“Does the name Maxwell Brenton mean anything to you?” My estranged father was still my number one theory on how I was lucid.
“Is this really the time for an interrogation, Blue?” Ciarán asked. “The rotsbane is getting closer.”
Titus’s face screwed up.
“Never heard of him,” he spat.
“Where do you live?” I ran through Ferrin’s other theories on lucid Nightmares in my head.
“I live here, at Tamora’s side,” he asserted. “Whatever life I have in Keldori is only so I can keep living this one.”
“Then why are you working against us?” I asked. “We’re trying to save both KeldoriandSkalterra. If you ruin that—”
“I’m not going to hurt the girl.” Titus pushed up onto his hands. “Tamora only wants the Skal from the old man’s hometown. How does that put your mission at risk?”
Admittedly, it didn’t, but I didn’t need to know much about the Baron or Skalterran politics to know she didn’t need any more Skal than she already had.
“You’ll leave us alone,” I said.
“I’ll do whatever Tamora tells me to do so I can keep coming back here every night.”
“He’s about to attack,” Ciarán warned.
Sure enough, a red knife appeared in Titus’s hand, and he threw it at my head. Ciarán’s warning gave me the time I needed to duck out of its trajectory. I procured a silver flail, ready to retaliate, but the weapon dissolved before I had the chance to so much as swing it.
“What—” I looked at my empty hand, trying to figure out where my flail had gone, but then a screeching howl ripped the night.
A rotsbane towering as tall as the waving grass, all shadow, bone, and claws, broke through the foliage and charged into our clearing. Titus leapt to his feet and threw another knife, but the rotsbane sucked it into the black hole of its mouth.
I turned and ran. I couldn’t fight a rotsbane. I didn’t want to die.
“You can’t outrun it, Blue!” If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought Ciarán sounded worried. “Yield to me! Let me save you!”
A strangled scream brought me to a stumbling halt at the edge of the clearing, and I turned around in time to see Titus trying to take to the sky with regrown wings.
However, four sets of dark claws clamped around his torso and dragged him back down.
“Tamora!” he wailed, struggling in the rotsbane’s grip. “Tamora, please!”
But Tamora was too far to hear Titus.
The rotsbane unhinged its jaw and screeched its unearthly wail, preparing to devour Titus, consciousness and all.
“No,” I breathed, taking the first shaking step back towards Titus.
“He’s already dead, Blue! Now yield so you aren’t next!” Ciarán demanded.
I ignored the splitting pain as I snapped a bone spike off my arm. I forced strength and power into my legs, ignoring Galahad’s warning tug on his end of our connection.
“Dammit, Blue,” Ciarán growled, “at least aim for its mouth if you’re going to be this stupid!”
Fallen stalks of grass slipped beneath my boots as I ran, then leapt, at Titus and the rotsbane.
