Page 27 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“I’m just Wren!” I shouted.
“Do you want the Grimguard to find us faster?” Tiernan clapped a gloved hand over my mouth. The muscles in my arm rippled with strength I wasn’t used to, and my fist flew, smashing into his jaw. He fell back in the dirt with his goggles askew, staring up at me with shock and loathing.
“Maybe you’re just Wren in Keldori,” Galahad conceded, “but here you are a lucid Nightmare, and there is no weapon more powerful than a lucid Nightmare.”
He nodded at Tiernan where he sat sprawled in the dirt, rubbing his jaw.
Green light flashed through the trees ahead, shooting upwards to arc over the forest.
“That’s Ferrin.” Galahad offered Tiernan a hand up, but he batted it away and climbed to his feet on his own. “We’re near the edge of the forest then.”
Orange flashed behind us, and the screams of Galahad’s Nightmares had me second-guessing what he’d said about non-lucid Nightmares and their immunity to pain.
“Then move!” Tiernan grabbed Galahad’s elbow and pulled him towards Fana and her Nightmare. “I’ll buy you time if he catches up.”
Galahad adjusted his goggles and procured a silver staff to lean against.
“Keep Wren with you. She might prove useful.” He turned his head towards me. “And try not to die. You know what’s on the line now.”
His silver light faded behind us as he led Fana and her last remaining Nightmare bodyguard deeper into the trees.
Tiernan’s golden light, meanwhile, simmered and hissed, catching the rim of his protective goggles. The golden rapier flickered as it crackled with the energy of the Skal that made it.
Right. I probably needed a weapon too. Or else I’d die again.
But worse than the thought of dying a second time tonight, the image Galahad had put in my head of the Grimguard hunting Gams had stuck with me.
I didn’t even bother trying to draw a sword and settled for the inevitable, pulling a silver flail out of the air.
“Do you know how to use that?” Tiernan kept his eyes trained on the shadows of the forest, scanning for signs of the Grimguard.
“I was using it just fine earlier.” That was, at best, a stretch of the truth. Lobbing flail after useless flail at the Grimguard had only kept him dancing for so long.
Tiernan stood ready, staring into the shadows. He might’ve looked stoic had I not noticed him gulp in the light of another orange burst.
“Look,” I started, “I’m sorry about punching you, but—”
“You will not speak to me, Nightmare.”
“Excuse you?”
“You will not speak to me.” He said it slower this time. He kept his gaze trained on the trees. “And you will not speak to Fana. The others think you can help, and unfortunately for me, I’m outvoted. But from here until we reach the Second Sentinel, you will not address me.”
“Excuseyou?” Pain registered as shards of bone erupted from beneath my skin to form three lethal blades. Blood dripped off their tips to dot the dirt at my feet. “And what makes you so much better than me? Both our worlds are at stake, aren’t they? At least youchoseto be here!”
Tiernan ignored me and grabbed his rapier handle with both hands. The gold light crackled and split to morph into two curved picks, and Tiernan launched himself at the nearest tree. He clambered up it with ease, sinking the barbed points of his picks into the soft wood one after the other as he hoisted himself upwards.
“I don’t think I’m able—”
“What did I just say about speaking to me?” he growled down from where he perched on a thick tree branch.
I took a steadying breath, suddenly very much missing Orla. I grabbed my flail handle the way he’d grabbed his rapier and tried to apply what Orla had taught me earlier in the night. The Skal buzzed in my hands, and when I ended up with two flails instead of two picks, I looked up at Tiernan helplessly.
The orange bursts of light were growing closer.
“I can’t get up there!” I called after Tiernan. He turned his back to me, balancing on his branch with a hand braced against the trunk.
My cheeks burned with indignant rage.
