Page 66 of Skalterra By Nightmare
Armor,I told myself. Gray and green scales peeked at me through the tears in my clothes. I pulled on the diluted Skal I could still feel trickling into my system.Strength. Speed.
Pain lanced my fingers as each one elongated into a talon, and I tore into the crowd of Nightmares, pushing past Orla and Ferrin. I kept my eyes on Tamora’s bright red hair as I ripped a path of Skal and ash through their ranks. Titus, the large man who’d held Galahad, stood between me and the throne, but he stumbled back at the sight of my bone spikes, dyed red by my own blood.
To her credit, Tamora sat unfazed as I pressed a spike against her throat. She rolled her eyes behind the monocle and raised a lazy hand.
The room stilled behind me, but I kept my boot on the lip of the throne and my spike at the ready.
“Now, aren’t you disgusting?” Tamora drawled. Her eyes raked over my arm spikes, my kevlar armor, my talons, and the scales that crept up my neck and to my face. “I should’ve known what you are when you walked in here with blue hair, Nightmare. What’s your real name, then?”
“You may call me Blue,” I said with a wry smile, remembering Ferrin’s warning about sharing my full name.
“Ferrin, you know lucids are illegal.” Her voice was light and airy, though she remained tense underneath me.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ferrin grunted. “Kill us harder?”
Tamora’s red lips twisted.
“I could feed this one to a rotsbane. We’ve got one under the mansion. Would you like to see?”
“You’re going to give us passage to where we want to go.” I pressed the spike tighter against her throat. “And you are going to give us the Skal we need to get there.”
“You’re formidable, I’ll give you that,” Tamora conceded. “But you won’t last. Your Skal’s almost gone. Just look at what you did to your poor nocturmancer. Bled him damn near dry of his Skal. If this temporary threat upon my life is my only reason to help you, then you have nothing.”
I glanced back at Galahad where he was collapsed on the floor. Had I done that? I didn’t remember hitting him.
“You’ll help us because Ferrin is right.” I twisted back towards Tamora. I could worry about Galahad later. “If you release the Frozen God, or if we fail to protect Fana, your kingdom is ruined.”
“Kingdom?” A red eyebrow arched over Tamora’s monocle.
“Barony. You’ll ruin your barony.”
“Oh? And you know all about keeping a barony running?”
“Not really,” I admitted, “but I know enough about supply and demand, and that’s what this place is built on, right?”
“Supply and demand?” Tamora mulled over the words for a moment. “Explain.”
“You have power because you have Skal and other people need Skal. You have supply. They have demand.” I pointed at the waterfall behind her throne. Hunger rumbled in my stomach at the sight of the Skal. I wanted it. Ineededit. But I forced myself to focus on Tamora. “If Fana dies, and Keldori with all its Skal opens up, you don’t have control over supply, and they don’t need you anymore.”
Tamora scoffed.
“Even if I lose control of the Skal supply, I still own every steamtrail across Skalterra. No one has technology as advanced as ours. We will expand my province into Keldori—”
“Steamtrail? You mean the railroads? I don’t think Keldori will be as impressed with those as you think.”
“Your land doesn’t stand a chance against the technology of the Grand Barony,” Tamora sneered. “The Keldorians will have no choice but to bow to me and—”
I laughed, forcing as much false confidence into the sound as I could. I drew my spikes away from the Baron, and pushed off her throne with my boot. I did not know who this new, threatening, scaly Wren was, but I liked being her, as hungry as she was.
“I’m almost tempted to let you try just to watch.”
Tamora’s gaze flitted away from me, and she locked eyes with Titus. I took the moment to look towards my friends. Tiernan was still on the floor, but he was breathing. Fana hid behind Ferrin, clutching the straps of his leather armor in her fists. Orla’s short hair ran with blood, and she held Galahad in her lap on the floor.
Ferrin stood with his blazing sword ready as he stared up at me with a new apprehension. I gulped and felt my scales sink back into my skin. My burning thirst for Skal dampened just a little as they did.
“Congratulations, Nightmare.” Tamora clapped her hands, and I spun to face her again as she stood. “Very few people are able to convince me to change my mind once it’s made, and you’ve just become one of them. We leave tonight. Let’s take the river to avoid any rotsbane.”
“We?” Ferrin growled.
