Page 2 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“You killed him,” I said blankly. Better him than me, butstill.
“I wish.” She twisted around, the movement made awkward by the leather armor strapped across her chest. “To the tower, pet! We need you with us down below!”
She spoke with an air of fake authority that I could tell she was forcing into her tone, but I wasn’t in any position to disobey. Glowing bottles hung off the woman’s belt, and they clinked against each other in time with her strides.
“Look, I don’t know how I got here,” I tried to explain. Green light from the fire in her hands danced ahead of us, illuminating the heavy, oaken door of a turret.
“Down the stairs, now. They’re waiting.” She threw the door open and watched over my shoulder as we disappeared inside.
The air inside the tower was dusty and stale, and the woman’s firelight cast the claustrophobic stone walls in shades of emerald. I staggered down the steps, trying to see past the shadows.
The sounds of a door being blasted off its hinges echoed behind us, prompting a gentle prod between my shoulders.
“Usually you Nightmares are faster than this,” the woman mused behind me. “I wonder if Galahad isn’t feeling well.”
“Please.” I tried to go down the steps faster, but the chainmail on my shoulders was cumbersome and awkward. “I don’t know what’s going on. My name’s Wren Warrender. I’m supposed to be at my grandmother’s.”
Yes, that was it. I had been at Gams’s, but this war-torn fort looked nothing like the coastal town where she made her living. And while the memory of moving into the guest room above her gift shop had finally resurfaced, it did little to explain how I’d found myself in the middle of a battle on a castle.
“Orla, what’s taking so long?” The dark head of a young man poked out of a trapdoor at the foot of the stairs. He shielded his goggled eyes as another tower-shaking blast shook dust loose overhead. I braced just in case the stone steps I’d just stumbled down came falling after me. “Ferrin and Caitria went ahead to clear a path, and if we’re late to follow—”
“Sorry, Tiernan. Ran into a Grimguard.” The woman, Orla, placed a hand on my shoulder to guide me to the trapdoor. “Careful, pet! It’s a bit of a drop.”
The young man ducked away as I stumbled through the trapdoor. The golden firelight in his hand caught the metal of the beads he wore at the end of short, twisted hair locks. While his goggles made his expression hard to read, I got the feeling he was glaring at me. He held a protective hand out to bar me from the cloaked girl who stood behind him.
“This one has blue hair!” Orla announced as she landed in the passageway. “Galahad, do you see this? Blue hair! You should do them all that way.”
The room had a low ceiling, and its walls stretched into shadow so that I couldn’t see where they ended. The little alcove where we stood was crowded, though there were only three people waiting for us here. The oldest of them pushed his way forward.
His white beard clashed with bronze skin, and, despite his age, he wore warrior’s armor similar to Orla’s under a knee-length leather duster that made him look like a steampunk motorcycle grandpa.
“Blue hair, you say?” He pushed metal-rimmed goggles up his forehead, revealing pale gray eyes that reflected the greens and golds of his companions’ fires. I flinched away when he took a clump of my hair in his gnarled hand and let the tresses slide between his fingers. “Well, that is certainly different.”
A shriek echoed from deep within the shadows ahead.
“Caitria!” The young man, Tiernan, looked towards the darkness. “That was Caitria!”
Muffled shouting ensued, and the others surged forward to leave me in the dark.
“Protect the Sovereign!” the old man bellowed back at me. I glanced around in the lengthening shadows and found the small girl who’d been hiding behind Tiernan. Her large brown eyes glittered in the fading light, and the carried fires of her comrades sent multi-colored shadows through her halo of dark hair.
“I don’t—” I sputtered, then pulled the girl after the others by her wrist. “Wait, I don’t have a light!”
“Make one!” the old man commanded without looking back. A crash overhead made me run faster still, and, to her credit, the girl kept up despite her thick robes and thin frame.
“You don’t seem like a very good Nightmare,” she whispered between labored breaths. I chased after the yellow and green fires of the others, not wanting to get left behind in the dark, still struggling to remember how I’d somehow gotten from Gams’s apartment to a fort under siege.
The corridor bent and widened into a room, and I careened into Orla where she and the men had stopped to stare at the grisly scene ahead of us.
A man slumped against the far wall, and blood flecked the stones above his head. A woman lay in the center of the room at the feet of a man shrouded in dark cloaks. He looked up from the woman with eyes that glowed orange, just like those of the assailant Orla had blasted off the roof.
“Caitria!” Tiernan lunged forward, reaching for the woman on the floor, but Galahad grabbed him by the back of his cloaks and pulled him back. “If he hurt Caitria, I’ll kill him!”
“Daithi, Grimguard of the Frozen God,” the old man growled. “You’re a bit far from home.”
“Galahad.” His voice was raspy and low, not unlike that of his friend on the parapet. “I’m here for the Sovereign.”
“Send the Nightmare,” Galahad said, and several hands shoved me forward to stand between them and Daithi. I staggered backwards under his orange gaze, but someone pushed me forward again.
