Page 65 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Where the hell did you all get Skal?” Galahad growled. He leaned heavily on Orla, unable to stand on his own, and I wondered what Tamora had done to him to make him look so ill.
A silver flail formed in my hand, and I forced myself to turn away from Tamora on her throne so I could protect us from the back.
“I found the Skal.” I kept my eyes on the Nightmares marching closer.
“I helped,” Orla admitted somewhere behind me. If I died here, I would wake up back at home, but there was no telling what sort of new world I would be waking to if Fana died with me, if the monsters of this world could make their way into mine.
“Ah, soyouwere the thieves my guardsman caught siphoning Skal from the city’s supply,” Tamora sang.
“Youwhat?”Galahad fumed.
“I thought he had to have been mistaken when he mentioned blue hair,” Tamora said, and I blushed. “But here you are, armed with the very Skal you stole. No matter. Justice will be swift. Nightmares, kill the girls first.”
She lowered her hand, and the blank-faced Nightmares descended as one.
16. Intro to Economics
The worst part about the Nightmares was the silence.
There were no battle cries, no grunts, no yelling of commands to their comrades.
Just the slippery hissing of falling Skal behind Tamora’s throne as body after body descended on us.
Tiernan cried out behind me, splitting the horrible silence, but I kept my focus on the Nightmares attacking from the back.
They moved as one, rushing at me in tandem with Tamora’s scimitars in hand. I had banked on dodging in my fight with Ciarán in the woods. If I did that here, Fana and Galahad would be vulnerable.
I tried forming a shield like Orla’s, but ended up with a second flail. I flung it at the nearest Nightmare and willed extra strength into my muscles to brace for the oncoming onslaught. My arms and legs bulged under my tunic and greaves, and Nightmares collapsed into dust clouds beneath my remaining flail only for new Nightmares to quickly replace them.
“Tamora, stop this!” Galahad bellowed. His back jostled against mine, and gold and green flashed in my periphery as Orla and Tiernan fought back against the onslaught. “We aren’t the enemy!”
“No, you are just thieves and liars!” Tamora sang.
“You’ll ruin the Barony if you free the Frozen God!”
“I will not take advice on how to run a province from a Lyrian of all people!” Tamora called.
A fresh wave of Nightmares fell over me, and pain ripped through my arms as I willed my bones to form the lethal spikes I’d used to fight Ciarán. White spikes tore through muscle, skin, and leather, and I drove them into the nearest Nightmares.
They weren’treal,I had to remind myself as the Nightmares dissolved into ash. Even if the resistance of flesh against weapon felt real, I wasn’t killing anyone. If anything, I was freeing them from a poor night’s sleep.
I wondered if I knew any of them. If Linsey or Liam or even Gams might be unwittingly piloting the Nightmares I was skewering. A scimitar cut through my thoughts and my greaves to graze my thigh.
Better armor,I told myself as I ran my bone shards through the Nightmare who’d nicked me. I’d made a Von Leer hoodie. I could make better armor.
Leather turned to kevlar, but why stop there? The Skal in my veins lost its warmth as I burned through it, but I wasn’t done. I needed more. I searched for more magick inside me, feeling for its familiar buzz.
I found it in my chest, trickling in from an unseen source. It had the same sludgy feeling as the Skal Galahad had formed me out of at the beginning of the night, but it would have to do. I drew on it, and my skin itched and crawled as it thickened into heavy scales.
Galahad slumped against my back and slid to the floor, though I wasn’t sure how he’d been hit. Orla cried out in pain, but I couldn’t look away from the descending Nightmares. For each one I destroyed, there was a new one to take its place before the former’s ash had even settled.
The gold to my right sputtered out as Tiernan fell. Ferrin shifted, trying to fill the space left open, but there was less and less room to maneuver. Less room to fight.
Tamora had an endless supply of Skal and Nightmares. We couldn’t fight them all.
But wecouldfight Tamora.
I threw my flail away into the crowd of Nightmares.
