Page 25 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“It wasn’t the old man.” His voice was haggard with pain, and he pulled a second sword from the air. “He can make Nightmares, sure, but he’s otherwise useless, as much as he pretends he isn’t.”
He launched at me, his swords melting into twin blurs as he twirled them ahead of himself. I threw my forearms up in defense, but he cut through the bone spikes like they were nothing.
The pain was blinding, and the Grimguard pressed me against the gnarled trunk of a tree, pinning my hands up over my head and holding me there with the weight of his body. His chest heaved against mine as we both fought for air.
His orange irises glinted and shined brighter while his eyebrows drew together.
“Was it the Quillguard maybe? What’s his name again? Ferrin?” he whispered. “Or perhaps Caitria?”
“Caitria is dead.” The venom in my voice surprised even me. The face of the dead woman with blood matting her hair haunted me. Even if she’d never existed, the memory of her corpse felt real.
I tried to procure a sword, knife, flail, anything in my pinned hands, but drew only silver smoke that flickered feebly between my fingers. Whatever Skal Galahad had used to create me must have been running low.
The Grimguard smiled. It was a shame lips as pretty as his had to share a face with such horrifying eyes.
“Caitria? Dead? Well, that’s wonderful news. Then it must’ve been Ferrin. I hear he and Caitria were…” he paused and licked his lips as he searched for the next word, “…close.”
I glared back at him, which he must’ve taken as confirmation that it had indeed been Ferrin who’d killed the other Grimguard because his smile darkened.
“Fine. Kill me,” I spat.He had the information he wanted. I might as well get the gory bit over with so I could wake up and escape this nightmare. “You aren’t real anyway.”
The Grimguard twirled one of my dismembered bone spikes in his free hand and leaned in to plant a tiny, soft kiss on the tip of my nose.
“If you say so.”
His wrist flicked, and the silver lights of my many flails were swallowed by the dark of the forest as pain erupted below my chin.
Wood flooring pressed against my cheek, and I opened my eyes to the space beneath my bed. Jonquil lurked in its depths, her blue eyes glinting in the dark. She looked very much like she was trying to be menacing, but her fluffy coat and pushed-in face made her look more like an angry slipper.
“Crap.” I groaned, pushing myself up off the floor of my bedroom. Night had fallen outside, and the light from my digital clock spilled across the floor. My head pounded where I must’ve hit it when I fell asleep, and the cut of the Grimguard’s killing blow still stung beneath my chin, but both maladies paled in comparison to the cutting pain that suddenly seared across my palm. “Crap!”
I grabbed my wrist and forced my fingers to unfurl. The T-shaped scar of my left palm caught the edges of green light from my digital clock, but a new, angry line cut its way across the trunk of the T. It was shorter than the line that ran perpendicular to the trunk, and I thought it glowed a faint silver for just a moment, but it must’ve been a trick of the moonlight streaming in from my window.
I stared at my palm, my heart thundering in my ears. Then red droplets fell on the pale skin of my arm, sticky and thick.
I swallowed and raised a shaking hand to my neck where the Grimguard had cut me. My fingers came away wet with my own blood.
No.No.
No, no, no, no,no.
This was worse than Linsey. This was worse than being waitlisted.
Because I knew what the new line was. It was a notch. It was a countdown. It was a confirmation of something I hadn’t wanted to consider.
Skalterra wasn’t a dream, and neither was the limit Galahad had placed on how many times I could die while I was there.
I’d lost one life, represented by the new mark on my scarred hand. I only had four more.
The gravity of the mess I was in had only just started to dawn on me when Galahad’s voice echoed at the back of my head.
“I hope you didn’t think dying while the evening was still young would give you the rest of the night off. We aren’t finished with you yet.”
Jonquil meowed at me as I slumped forward yet again.
7. Ballroom Dance II
This was the first time I’d come into consciousness in Skalterra in a full sprint. I stumbled as my feet formed beneath me, but I caught myself mid-step and managed to remain upright. Silver and gold light emanated from Galahad and Tiernan’s swords, illuminating the ring of Nightmares that surrounded us in formation as we ran.
