Page 3 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Oh, no,” I said. “This isn’t— I don’t dothis.”
“This is what I made you for!” Galahad boomed. “Now defend the Sovereign!”
“I don’t know what that means!” I hated the panicked whine in my voice, but none of this made sense. I had been atGams’s.
“It means fight!”
I stared at Daithi, and while he remained poised for an attack, he waited for me to make the first move.
He would be waiting a long time, I decided.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, or what’s happening, but—” I started to say to him, but then glanced down at the woman at his feet.
My stomach dropped. From here, in the center of the room, I could see that she wore goggles like the others, but one side had shattered out. Behind the frame of broken shards, her brown eye stared up at the ceiling, blank and unseeing.
“She’s—she’s dead?” I backpedaled from the man.
A cry went up behind me.
“No!” Tiernan tore away from Galahad to meet me in the middle of the cavern, staring down at the woman. He took in her parted lips, gray face, and the blood already drying in her dark hair. A broken gasp worked its way from deep in his throat. “You killed…you killed Caitria.”
And then he threw himself at Daithi.
The gold fire in his hands lengthened into a sword, but Daithi deflected the attack with a blade of orange. I tripped over my leather boots in my haste to escape, and then Tiernan tripped backwards over me.
The yellow glow of Tiernan’s sword sputtered out, and the weapon dissipated. Daithi stood over us and drew back to strike. Someone shrieked a too-late warning, but just as Tiernan was about to meet a quick end on the point of an orange blade, still tangled in my limbs, green light burst in Daithi’s chest.
He staggered backwards, staring blankly ahead as blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and then he tripped over the dead woman at his feet to join her in the dust.
A tentative silence fell over the cavern, and I stared at the dead man and woman on the floor just feet away from me.
“I want…” I whispered through a shaky breath, “I want to go home now.”
“Your Nightmare seems defective, Galahad.” The previously unconscious man at the far wall was upright now, and he leaned against the stone, bleeding from the head with one eye swollen shut over a neatly trimmed beard. Green flames danced at his fingertips. “You’re lucky I’ve got a good aim.”
“Uncle Ferrin!” Orla broke free of the group to rush to the side of the injured man. “What happened? Is Caitria really—”
“He was waiting for us.” Ferrin glared at the dead Grimguard. Tiernan shoved me aside so he could crawl to the woman on the ground and extricate her out from under Daithi. “Tiernan, I’m sorry. I tried, but—”
He cut off to shake his head. Tiernan brushed the hair from the dead woman’s face. She was older than Tiernan, older than me, but looked as if she’d still had so much life left to live.
“Caitria always told you that you’re too hotheaded, Tiernan.” Galahad hobbled forward and bent down to gently remove Caitria’s broken goggles from her face. “She may be gone, but that doesn’t mean you need to rush to join her.”
None of this was right, and bile worked its way up my throat. I needed to find my way back to Gams. If people were being attacked here, wherever here was, I needed to make sure she was safe.
But I couldn’t move. I stared at the two dead bodies in front of me. The orange light in the Grimguard’s eyes had died when he had, and he stared unseeing at the cavern ceiling.
“Now what?” the girl in the golden robes asked in a tiny voice. She clung to Galahad’s leather duster, hiding behind him.
“We need to keep moving.” Galahad straightened up. “The other Grimguard is behind us, and when he finds his friend, he’ll be out for blood as well as the Sovereign.”
Tiernan wrapped his arms around the dead woman and glanced around, as if expecting someone to help him lift her. No one did.
“Tiernan,” Ferrin murmured.
“We’ll come back for her, right?” Tiernan said. Galahad shook his head.
“Cape Fireld has fallen. There is no coming back, but this is her home. It’s a better resting place than any.”
