Heroes, Chapter 14

Preface: Greetings, all! This is the fourteenth chapter of the tale that began with “Heroes – Chapter 1,” and is the third story is a series that began with “What You Don’t Know,” also located on this site, although it features a mostly-different cast of characters.

As always, my standard disclaimer: The monster girls featured in this tale, and many elements of the setting, are based off of the works of Kenkou Cross, and as such this work is intended to be a tribute to his creativity. The characters, however, are my own. Pray neither sue nor steal; I have very little to take, but I love that which is mine.

Chapter 14 – The Magic Flight

     George hadn’t been sure what to expect, but now that he was better informed, he desperately wanted a chance to reconsider his choices.  One moment ago, he had been at least near to the ground – a precipitous mountain peak, sure, and even a bit further above that as he had been sitting on the saddle on the back of a wyvern.  Now, though, the ground was a distant memory, a blurring field off the sides of Callie as she wheeled in the sky, her great wings working to lift them into the air and in the direction of the descending sun. And, to make matters even worse, he was all too aware of how precariously he was secured to her spine: while the saddle underneath him was solid, the web of straps that held it onto her had seemed thinner than what he would have expected, and the same could be said for the criss-crossing harness that kept him secured onto the saddle itself.  The idea that these thin stripes of leather were all that kept him from plummeting an impossible distance to the uncompromising stone below, from long moments of gibbering terror before a sudden end, gnawed at his entrails with frenzied eagerness, but he had no one to blame but himself.  He had, after all, come up with this idea.

     Callie had grasped his plan quickly enough, though she clearly had doubts as to whether it would work.  She had been confident, at least, that she could outfly the dragon, and trusted him to do the rest.  Leuka had been a harder sell on the notion – she was already uncomfortable and grouchy at having to be outside during the light of day – and though her intended role in the battle was much more fluid, George wasn’t certain how much help she would provide during what was to come.  That just left his own contributions, and the thoughts of what he would need to do fed his anxiety nearly as much as the absence of the ground beneath his feet.       

     Finally Callie reached the height of her climb.  George’s stomach reversed direction, soaring beyond him into the sky as, for that thin-stretched moment, he felt entirely weightless, and he looked down at the mountains and slopes and trees below, hazy with distance and unfamiliar from above.  It should have been even more terrifying, mind-shattering and humbling, but- it wasn’t.  Instead, he felt a giddy, uncontrollable sort of joy, and laughter bubbled out of him like foam overflowing a mug.  He was, for that split-second, intolerably full of life, clutching to Callie with white knuckles but feeling like he was meant to be in this place, in this moment, forever.

     But the furious roar from behind stole him from his glory, and he looked down and behind to see the shape of the dragon growing out of the shining blue pool as Venturi returned to her true form once more.

     Callie drifted in the air for a moment as the dragon began her own ascent, and George took that moment to reach out to her, leaning forward to run his hand along the scales of her neck.  Her wide yellow eye glanced back at him as she tilted her head in his direction, and he offered her a reassuring smile. “Here we go, Callie.  We can do this.” He wasn’t sure that he was being honest, but his words sounded confident even to himself. “You handle the flying, I’ll do the distracting and keep her back until we get to the end.”

     Callie nodded, her eye locked onto him.  Her voice was still familiar, but deeper in big-form, and it rumbled into him through her body between his legs. “Okay, partner.”  She looked downward, tracing their path, as the drumming beats of the dragon’s wings drew nearer and nearer.  George resisted the urge to look down, to see Venturi approaching and the size and menace of her true nature.  Instead, he calmly reached back, feeling in his quiver to grasp one of his last remaining arrows, the survivors of the bundle Simon had given him back in New Haven.  The ripping wingbeats were close now, too close, but he took a long, slow breath as he let the shaft of the arrow rest atop the highest finger of the hand that held his bow.  He could even hear Venturi inhaling, likely the precursor to another heavens-splitting roar, but he waited just a fraction of a heart-beat longer.

     “Now.”

     And Callie dove as her wings folded in.  To George’s eyes, the world tilted forward, until the horizon was the summit of the sky, and earth and heaven were on the same level before and behind him.  Venturi’s roar coughed to a sudden end as she watched her prey dart downward in front of her, and she, too, began to descend.  George watched this, turning to observe her, only partly to avoid watching the ground far below racing towards him with heart-clenching speed.  Venturi was fast, but slow to adjust course – only in comparison to Callie, as the massive dragon arched her spine like an illustration George had once seen of a dolphin, and, when she was pointed back towards them, she kicked back and pumped her wings, shooting after them like a meteor.

     Conscious of his own role, George leaned back and twisted further.  It would be impossible to turn in the saddle, considering the harness, but he had enough freedom to point his arrow back in the direction they were coming from, almost straight up into the heavens.  The air rushing past him made it difficult to breathe, and the pressure of the descent flooded darkness into his vision, but his weaving arrowhead gradually tracked towards the furious expression of the massive beast hurtling towards them.  He fought to keep his consciousness, clutching to it as it fought to slip from his fingertips, but Callie’s wings spread as she levelled out, then tilted to one side, now corkscrewing around the mountain instead of diving towards the foothills, and gradually George’s eyes regained their focus.

     What those eyes saw, though, raised another problem.  Now, it was sheer terror that sought to claim his wits, as he realized how much more swiftly the dragon was careening towards them than they were travelling.  In just moments, he knew, Venturi would be on them, ripping him from the saddle and sending Callie spinning away towards the possibility of a stony doom.  Callie was locked onto her route now, and Leuka would be nowhere nearby, so the only one that could save them was him.  Fighting to swallow another breath, George focused on the tip of his arrow, keeping it pointed straight back at the dragon.  His brow furrowed in intense concentration as he demanded that the arrow find its path, chase the beast away from him and Callie-

     And the tip of the arrow flared to life, a brilliant blue that outshone the heavens, that burned with azure fury that put to shame the golden lights that had appeared there before.

     George was so surprised by that eruption that he let the bowstring slip.  Immediately, the arrow was gone, launched unerringly towards Venturi, who had no time to react.  It was a perfect shot, directly between her eyes, and he knew somehow that it would pierce through scale and bone and brain and keep going. “No! Nonono-!” George shouted, panicking as he wished he could swipe the arrow from the air, anything to keep it from finding its mark in the dragon racing towards him.

     And, a second surprise: the arrow obeyed, exploding in the air a moment before it would have stabbed into and through Venturi’s brow, turning into a roiling blue fireball that momentarily blinded George.  The dragon fared no better, roaring in pain, her eyes screwed shut as she passed through the flames and onward, wobbling in the sky from the turbulent burst of heat that sent ripples through the air.  Even as George blinked, fighting to clear his eyes from the dark shapes  that clouded it in the explosion’s aftermath, he could see Venturi sailing on straight, out of line with Callie’s course as she looped around the mountain.  The dragon floundered in the air, and Callie took that opportunity to put on a burst of speed, pumping her wings and surging forward, skimming near to the jagged tors and arching cliffs along the eastern side of the mountain.  Feeling himself wobbling atop the saddle, George readjusted himself, grabbing onto the saddlehorn with his free hand and leaning forward to shout to Callie. “We’ve lost her for the moment, but keep-”

     “NO ONE STEALS MY TREASURE!” came the piercing roar from behind them, and George glanced over his shoulder to see that Venturi had taken back up the chase, her wings chopping at the air as she fought to regain the ground she had lost during her brief detour.  She was still a good measure behind them, but he was sure she would close the distance quickly once she had recovered.

     “Dumb fat dragon won’t catch me,” Callie snarled, as the ground blurred past them in lumpy swatches of brown and grey.  

     The northern side of the mountain was considerably more steep than the others George had seen, and Callie descended more swiftly as she rounded it.  George kept an eye behind them, and to his alarm discovered that Venturi was regaining her previous speed and making up the difference between them. “How much further?” he called out to Callie, leaning over her neck as he clutched to his bow.  He didn’t want to shoot again before he had to – he only had a few arrows left, so he had to make them count.

     Callie growled, tightening her wings around her body as she flew swifter and straighter. “Snowlands up ahead.  Not much further to go.” Her eyes were narrowed against the force of the wind, and likewise George kept himself hunched forward and shielded his face as best he could against the wind’s biting pressure.  It felt like they were piercing through the air like an arrow, faster and faster- but the thunderous sound of flapping drew his gaze behind, and that was when he saw Venturi, like a ballista bolt hurtling right in their wake.

      George started to open his mouth, to warn Callie, but he knew there was almost no time.  The dragon’s eyes were locked onto him, and he could see her extending her foreclaws out, like a raptor diving on a fish-

     With his gaze enraptured, like a mouse staring up at a hungry serpent, George nearly missed the violet blur as it fell from the heavens, on a perpendicular intercept course to both wyvern and dragon.  Her wings billowing open, yanking her to a near-stop not far from where Venturi was about to pass, Leuka unleashed her scream upon the dragon, a sonic explosion that, despite the wind ripping past his ears, stabbed deep into George’s brain and made him flinch away.  The effect was far greater on the dragon, and she flailed away from the noise like she had touched fire, her eyes closed and her frustrated cries failing to overcome the volume of the continuing shriek.  Underneath George, Callie wobbled in her flight, but with a lunging flap of her wings she began to curve more sharply around the mountain, away from the dragon’s wobbling trajectory.

     As Callie’s curve steepened, George recognized the terrain ahead.  They were now arcing towards the mountain’s north-western slope, and he could see familiar fields of snow underneath a hazy mist of fog.  For just an instant, a glimmering shine in the distance caught his eye, and when he looked that way he thought he saw a large structure, like an elaborate castle made of ice.  But then they were among the haze, and Callie dove even more sharply, aiming to skim over the smooth surface of the rolling white-coated hills as thin flurries of snow stung their eyes and faces.  George had no idea how she knew where the ground was beneath them, but could hardly spare the effort to consider the question as he held on for dear life as Callie wove around occasional looming boulders or overhanging outcrops.

     George had other things to worry about, as well.  Primarily, it was the monstrous shape that he saw following in their wake, a shadowed blur that glided through the mist like some vast aquatic predator, locked onto their course and single-mindedly mirroring their every sway or turn.  Even with Callie’s weaving path, Venturi was gaining ground, her wings chopping at the icy mist with a sound like thunder, and George knew that they had failed, had underestimated the dragon’s might and speed-

     “Almost… there…” Callie growled, and when George looked forward, he saw that the mist was swiftly clearing ahead of them.  He could see the hard line where the ground ended, and where the snow gave way to stone ahead of it, and even the bridge they had crossed.  Just ahead were the hot springs, but in front of that, the gorge, and the tumultuous air currents of the in-between.  They burst out of the mist, raced over the last dregs of snow, and then- Callie’s wings flared open wide, and to George it felt like the ground had fallen away beneath him as they rose sharply and immediately into the heavens, trading speed for a dizzying surge upwards.

     Woosh, and then… swoosh.

     Everything happened at once.  With a practiced fluidity that the Orders had beaten into him, George drew and nocked one of his final arrows.  Beneath them, Venturi sailed past, and for a fraction of a second George could see her eyes go wide, and she spread her wings to emulate their stalling climb.  George stood in the saddle, rising just that little bit higher into the sky despite the crushing pressure forcing him forward and down, as Callie shifted her head to one side.  Venturi rose, almost perpendicular to her previous descending angle.  George’s arrow tracked the place where her neck met her back – a perfect killing shot – and then the space between her wings, then the joint of her left one.  The dragon’s head turned, and she stared back at them, outraged.  And the tip of the arrow flared blue, an azure nova of purest flame, and George didn’t look away from his target.

     And then he let go.

    Looking to all distant, unaware observers like a shooting star, the arrow crossed the distance in an instant, and then exploded just before it struck the dragon – at George’s mental command, and to his immediate relief.  Venturi’s wide-open left wing buckled inward even as the climbing thermal pressed her forward and up.  Meanwhile, her right wing stayed open, and thus she began an immediate spiraling turn in that direction as her body reversed its tilt.  Now, she was aimed away from the jagged stones of the hot springs, and instead towards the valley that they drained into… and the simmering mud bog that those waters had formed.  The dragon flailed to regain her control, but her previous speed worked ruthlessly against her, and soon she plummeted nose first towards that burbling mire, her wings beating out of sync as she fought, catlike, to right herself.   Venturi’s crash landing was far from a picture of feline grace, however, and it was punctuated with a sky-high eruption of silt and a rude sucking splash that made both George and Callie wince, even as they coasted in the direction that the dragon had plummeted, eager to see the results of their handiwork.            

     The furious roars and awkward, mud-flingling flailing did not agree with the image of dragonslaying that George had shaped in his eager imagination when he set out on his journey from New Haven, but in this moment, George felt triumph burn in his breast nevertheless.

******

 

     By the time George stepped to the edge of the squelching bog, Venturi had shifted back to her more human-like form.  She had obviously discovered that the marshy pit was far from shallow, and her greater size had only dragged her deeper into the sucking mud.  However, even her lighter form was hardly suited for climbing out of the gunk, and so she scrabbled and lunged to stay atop the surface, her face and long hair matted with chucks of the clinging, dark-brown ooze.  When she noticed George, she scowled at him with eyes narrowed and smoke emerging from the corners of her mouth, but there was too much of a pout in that expression for the laughter that grew in his chest to emerge into audibility, and he was glad he had convinced Callie to stay back at the edge of the hot springs and to save her taunts for another time.

     “I’m sorry,” George began, his tone formal and words loud enough to ring over the gurgling of the water draining into the bog, “but I was charged with a quest.  I swore to answer New Haven’s griefs with you, and that is why it has come to this.” He noticed that her eyes fell to the sword belted to his side, which he had recovered from where Callie had bound it to her mother’s saddle, but, instead of drawing it from its sheath, George kept his arms crossed in front of his chest. “You are at my mercy, but I will gladly set you free, on two conditions.” He watched her exhale a puff of smoke, her baleful glare at him made only marginally less effective by the rivulet of muddy water trickling down her brow and along the line of her nose.

     “First: you will leave the town of New Haven, and its residents, in peace.  All you have taken from there that you still have, you will return.  You will steal nothing further from them, and cause no harm to them.”  George had extended a hand in her direction, with two fingers upraised, and as he finished that demand he lowered one of them. 

     “And, secondly, you will return to Callie the nest that you took from her.  I know that the hoard in the lair is yours and yours alone, and aside from the things taken from New Haven, I won’t ask for you to part with any of it.  But the nest was Callie’s first, and you bested her to take it – now, she’s helped to beat you, and it’s only fair that she gets it back.”

     Fury blossomed in crimson across the dragon’s face, and she opened her mouth to roar defiance at him, but her words died in a splutter that had little to do with the grime still dribbling down from her brow.  Her head cocked slightly to the side, and she paused, though she was forced to continue struggling to keep her head above the surface of the mire. “Just two conditions?  Only those?” she asked, a faint note of incredulity in her questions.

     George paused, considering what he may have missed.  Those were the promises he had made, to John Foster and to Callie – Leuka had been less interested in gaining something specific from the dragon than just humbling her, and he had no desire to take anything further from the dragon than he had sworn to.  His mind flashed to her pride at her trove of loot, and he nodded grimly to himself. “I have no desire to take your treasures from you.  I’m not a thief or a looter; I am fulfilling an oath, and beyond that I have no grudge against you.”

     Treading mud as best she could, Venturi looked up at him for a long moment, her slitted eyes narrowed in a mixture of suspicion and confusion.  He met her gaze boldly, waiting for a response.  After that pause, she looked down into the grime, her brow furrowed.  Finally, she looked back to him with an odd expression – an odd combination of a scowl and, at the edges, a half-smile. “I agree.  Things go back to the town, and I won’t take anything else.  The wyvern can have the nest back; I’ll find another.” She hesitated, waiting as she stared up at him. “I can go?”

     Triumph swelling in his chest, George restrained a grin as he turned around, looking for something he could use to leverage Venturi out of the mud.  With no trees around this particular slope, long branches weren’t an option, and wading out into the mud would only get him stuck as well.  He was considering going back to where Callie waited and checking her saddle for rope when he heard the deep, churning burbling coming from the swampy goo sucking at the dragon.  He turned swiftly, worried for Venturi, only to find an unexpected different reason to be concerned.  Massive mitts made of the mud had grasped Venturi by the arms, and for a heartbeat George was certain he was going to watch the dragon be dragged under the muck.  From the look in her wide eyes, Venturi feared the same, and at the edge of the bank George tensed to leap into the filth in order to try to rescue her.  Instead, the hands began to lift, pulling Venturi out of the mud with a squelching protest.  As George watched, the bodiless arms carried the dragon up out of the swamp and to the edge of the bank beside where he was standing, depositing her onto her feet with the calm gentleness of a kind soul returning a baby bird to its nest.

     Sensing something behind him, George turned to discover the culprit for Venturi’s rescue.  The familiar, relaxed face of the mud woman from George’s first visit to the hot springs above hovered just behind where he stood, and she met his shocked expression with a languorous smile. “Hiii,” she moaned, her head tilting to the side as if preparing to melt back into her shoulder.

     Memories of his panicked flight through the waters up above drove tension like stakes into George’s muscles, but he restrained his defensive urges with a heroic effort.  Despite his instincts screaming at him to take up his bow, George instead took a deep breath. “Hey,” he managed, glancing down to the ground in front of him. “About before… I’m sorry that I nearly-” He paused as he felt something distressingly squishy press against the top of his bowed head, once and again several times more, and he glanced up to see that the woman’s oversized muddy hand was softly patting him as she offered him a wide, if still torpid, smile. “I’m sorry,” he finished lamely, “and thanks for the help.” Her smile somehow got even bigger, her eyes squeezed closed, and with a swaying wave she turned and oozed into the mire, lowering down as she went until even the top of her head submerged beneath the mire without a ripple.

     George turned back towards Venturi to find that she was staring at him with conflicted hesitance, one clawed hand idly combing mud off her body.  Her eyes sank, and then darted back up to him, and the pout found its way back onto her lips. “I’ll honor our deal.  I’ll go now and look for somewhere to take my things.” Her eyes shifted over towards where Callie stood on the rise near the springs, and her gaze hardened, but when she looked back to George that resentment had faded. “I’ll see you again.”

     Knowing that it was a lie, but wanting to spare her feelings, George grinned at that assurance. “Keep your ears open.  By the time you hear of me, I’ll be a famous hero.”

     Venturi snorted, but her smile kept it from being cruel. “I’ll see you sooner than that.”  Before he could ask what she meant, she turned and walked away, making it uphill a few steps before she began transforming back into her larger form.  Pausing only long enough to shake, dog-like, to free the remaining mud from her scales, she tensed, and then launched herself into the air, her vast wings stirring a downdraft that gusted past George as she steadily climbed higher and higher into the sky.  He watched her go, feeling a relief and satisfaction glow in his heart as her slate-green scales sparkled in the sunlight. 

     He had been charged to slay the dragon, or to chase her off.  John had expected him to fail, to end up slaking the dragon’s lust as her captive.  He, himself, had imagined that only fatal violence would be possible.  They both had been wrong – he had defeated Venturi without killing her, had earned New Haven’s safety, and had walked away unharmed from it.  It wasn’t what anyone had anticipated, but it felt like the best possible conclusion, and that left him paradoxically proud and yet humbled.

     That feeling was why he walked up to Callie with a big grin on his face.  The wyvern had changed back into her human-like form, and was sitting petulantly at the edge of one of the pools, kicking her taloned feet idly to make arcing splashes.  To George’s surprise, Callie was speaking over her shoulder to another woman nearby – and one he knew.  The blue-skinned snow woman glanced up at him from the edge of the small pool she was half-immersed in, one eyebrow raised as she smirked in his direction.  She looked, from the darker blue of her skin and her rapidly-rising chest, to be in the midst of an overheated bath, but the pool she was sitting in had partially frozen from contact with her, ice forming in an expanding ring around the edges of the spring.  The gelid sheen of the water didn’t keep him from noticing she was now nude, and he glanced away quickly, keeping his attention towards Callie, who was watching him expectantly. “Bad dragon gone?”

     “She isn’t a bad dragon,” George corrected, missing the shadow that passed over Callie’s face. “But yes, she agreed to my terms.” His own face took on a quizzical frown. “I had thought you would be happier… I got you your nest back, after all.”

     “She agreed to give up?” Callie all-but-shouted, her eyes wide. “She surrendered?” And George barely had time to nod, words tumbling half-formed from his lips, as the wyvern bolted to her feet and charged him, throwing her winged arms around him.  His choked laughter did nothing to dissuade her as she tightened her grip, nuzzling her face against his chest.

     “What’s with you?” George asked, looking down with a bemused smile at the top of the wyvern girl’s head. “I told you that I could convince her.”

    “Dragons don’t give up treasures,” Callie explained, looking up at him with a grin. “Stupid nest-stealer learned a hard lesson from getting her butt kicked!”

     “Serves her right,” offered the chill voice from the nearby pool, and, as George glanced over at the snow woman, the thin layer of glassy ice before her cracked as she raised her leg above the surface of the water, examining it casually.  A twinge of shame gripped his gut as George remembered the cracks that had been present in that limb after their fight, but it looked like the woman had put the healing properties of the pools to work: only thin fault lines remained in the ice of her leg, most of the cracks having filled back in. “Just last week she stole an ice sculpture off my queen’s castle walls.  It’s probably melted by now, but the idiot reptile just thought it was pretty and nabbed it.” She snorted spitefully, scooping up water and letting it run in slowing rivulets across the vanishing scars in her leg. “I pity her new neighbors.”                              

     George’s mind was on other matters, despite the proof that his handiwork hadn’t permanently marred the icy warrior. “Look… I’m sorry about what happened back in-”

     “Don’t,” the woman interrupted, and she glanced back at him with a bladed smile. “It was a fair fight, and you won.  And, even though you smelled like one of those Order freaks, you let me go.  I can’t complain – though I wouldn’t mind a rematch.” Her pale blue eyes met his, and her grin thawed.

     “I think I’ll pass,” George chuckled, absently noticing that Callie still hadn’t released him but not certain how to comment on that. Instead, he kept his attention on his former enemy. “But, if I meet anyone looking for a challenge, I’ll send them your way.”

     “Sounds fair to me,” she commented, and she leaned back in the water, relaxing with a sigh. “Just tell them to ask for Blanche – I wouldn’t want one of my sisters to get to them first, but they’ll know better if they hear my name.” Her eyes closing, Blanche snuggled against the stony wall of the spring with the air of one settling in for a nap.

     With his apology to the other woman handled, George turned back to Callie, who was looking up at him with an expression he couldn’t read.  She lowered the arms clutching him, and her gaze drifted to the side. “So,” she began, the word lingering in the hissing steam of the pools for longer than it should have, “where you going now?”

     The question was forcedly casual, unconvincingly disinterested, but the implications behind it finally stole the smile from George’s lips.  The earlier triumph he had savored now returned to reveal its other side: just as he could never have expected where his path would lead him, he also didn’t know where to go from here.  To New Haven?  West to the Orders?  

     …Back up the mountain, with Callie?

     That last thought caressed him, a siren’s song that he could comprehend no reason to resist, but some unthinking part of him held him back.  It took him too long to answer her question, he knew, but that was only because even he had no taste for his answer.  There was only one correct response, he knew, but he searched for a way around it, an escape, a fresh miracle to save the beautiful dream that was right here for the taking.

     “I’m sorry… I have to go back.”

    “What?” Callie blurted, pain obvious on her face as she looked back to him with wide eyes. “Back… to town?  Or…” She only found answers in the way that he wouldn’t meet her gaze, and that avoidance meant he didn’t see the moisture beginning to well up there.  Her shoulders slumped, and her gaze flicked back and forth at nothing as she tried to understand, but everything like an answer hid from her. “…why?” The question was small enough to be crushed thoughtlessly, as delicate as a maiden’s heart.

    “Because I was wrong.” That brought her gaze back, and she could see the tension and regret on his face, on the scowl that deepened as he continued. “Because I believed what I had been taught, to the point I wouldn’t listen to the truth.  And I nearly killed because of it.  Killed Venturi, Leuka… you.  Innocents.  All because of a hate that you never deserved, and because it was just simpler to believe everything they told me.” George hissed a sigh, his own self-recrimination heating his voice. “I… I’m not the only one who would want the truth.  I can’t be.  There are others who would listen, back there – people who could change things.  There have to be people who would listen to me.  And I have to do this, because…”

     “Because I got hurt.” Callie’s wings folded inward, covering her body as she stepped away from him.  He started to reach for her, a feeble gesture, and she turned away, her face lowered. “Because you are a stupid hero.” Even her favorite insult had lost its spirit, shrunken into a small sad thing.

     The words died in his mouth, and so he just nodded.

     They stood there, miles apart while they were still within a desperate grab’s range.  They ached to cross that gulf, but it stretched as deep as the chasm that separated the springs from the snowlands, and had the same frigid howl.  Flowering hopes withered as they thought in vain, until finally Callie looked up at him once more, and he fought to ignore the moisture on her cheeks. “I’ll take you, at least to the other mountains.  I’ll… I’ll get the saddle.” And before he could say anything, and long before he could think up anything that he would say, she whirled and rushed towards where the leather contraption waited, just where she had changed shape after they had landed.  He watched her go, his chest aching like he had been disemboweled, but he had nothing to offer her.

     Nothing but more lies.

 

******

 

     Joy returned to George as he sailed through the air, an experience like nothing he had enjoyed before this day, and he didn’t expect to find anything better in his life to come.  He spread his arms wide, barely conscious of the bow and quiver still strapped to his back, and let the wind tear at him, toying with his hair like a lover’s fingers.  The sun glowed more brightly here, and the grass flowed in sheets and waves over bumpy hills fit for toys.  He breathed in deep, drinking in the cleanest air he had ever tasted, and found he was drunk on it all, giddy and weaving atop the saddle.  

     They had left the mountain perhaps an hour ago.  It was hard to be certain; George was enjoying himself so much that it could have been mere moments.  The experience of riding wyvernback was markedly better now that they weren’t being pursued by a wrathfully-amorous dragon, and George got to see the lands spread out below him in a perspective he shared with only birds and the gods.  

     The flight was mostly a smooth and silent one, and for that George was grateful.  They had barely spoken even when he had adjusted the saddle that she had shifted into, her transformation pulling the seat onto her bigform in a way that the saddle had been cleverly designed to facilitate.  Still, he had performed a check of the straps beforehand, and what he had seen had been no small matter for concern: more than a decade of lack of use had left some of the straps and fittings worryingly cracked, and their rough ride down the mountain had made those faults much worse.  George hadn’t told Callie yet; he didn’t know how he was supposed to hand her another painful loss right as he was leaving, but he supposed there would never be a good time to explain the decay of her memento of her mother, either.

     He forced thoughts of that out of his head, at the very least due to their proximity to his awareness that the saddle’s buckles wouldn’t hold up to many more battles like the last they had just survived.  As much as he enjoyed being so high above the earth, he would enjoy it more knowing that there was something sturdy between him and a lengthy, tragic plummet.  Instead of dwelling on that primal fear, he leaned forward as he sought for something to say to Callie, something that would make this less painful for her – and him.  

     But the landscape whirled by, and, as his mood mellowed, the shorter, rolling mountains of the west drew ever nearer.  They were passing over scrubland towards rising cliffs and meandering, steep paths when he finally found something to say – embarrassingly insufficient, but something. “The letters,” he called out, leaning over Callie’s neck to shout against the wind. “The ones you wanted me to read for you.  I said that Simon could do it… he’s in New Haven.  You can take them to him – just say my name, and-”

     Even in her draconic form, he could see the stubbornness in her expression. “No.”

     “But, why?  He won’t mind, and the people in New Haven will know the difference between you and-”

     “No!”

     “Callie, please…”

     “You take the letters to him.” Callie did not look back in his direction, but he could see the set of her jaw.  There was a long pause before she continued. “When you come back.”

     Now, it was his turn to spend long moments thinking before he could manage a response, and a dozen ephemeral emotions flowed through him as he tried to catch hold of at least one.  He took a deep breath, and let himself smile.  Let himself be honest, with her, and even with himself.  “I… want to.  Come back.  Callie, you know that, after I-”

     But, with an explosion of golden light, everything dissolved into pain and panic, as a tightness clamped down on his chest, and Callie roared in surprise and fear as the horizon began to twist without an axis to support it.

     The pain, biting into him, but with a snap of metal it was gone-

     He was flying, flying- but Callie was over there, wrapped in glowing strands-

     The mountains, above, the sky, below, and around again and again and again-

      His arms, flailing, for something, anything, but there was only sky and wind, and the earth racing up-

     His chest still radiated pain, and he grasped at it, as if trying to lift something off of it to breathe, but the world was growing dark-

     The terrifying whirl of blue and orange and brown and blue began to slow, and the shades of earth became more dominant, almost made sense as ground once more, but it was still racing towards him.  He gasped for breath, and tried to brace, but nothing made sense, and he didn’t know how to defend himself.  He could only roll up into-

     And then he was rolling horizontally, rocks biting and tearing at him, gnawing at his ribs and back, gashing open whatever skin it could brush.  Even when he stopped, it felt like the world kept gyrating madly, and he wanted to throw up.  He wasn’t sure whether or not he did, as he began to cough, because his eyes were watering and his head ached.  He rolled over, onto his side – maybe – and panted for breath, trying to force his vision to stop swimming around him.

     What… how?  How had he…?

     Where was Callie?!

    That question, at least, had an answer.  He heard her roar approaching, and then going past, and with a crash that sounded at least as brutal as his own had been she came to a halt.  She was behind him, not terribly far away, and so he had to stand up, to make it over to her to see if she was still…

     But, even as he staggered drunkenly to his feet, something ahead of him caught his gaze, and the blood in his veins froze solid as his confusion cleared in an instant, old familiarity immediately making sense of the bodies marching towards him.

     He was looking at a column of members of the Holy Orders, dressed in the finery of war.

     No matter how chaotic the present was, his lessons of old could take the reins, and so he immediately read the marks of the tabards of the men approaching.  Most were Knights, with some older Errants nearly ready for that promotion.  There were dozens of them, at least, or more.  Even more concerning, though, was the handful of men at the fore of the column.  The skinny, middle-aged one with the glowing hand and curly red hair bore a Knight-Inquisitor’s colors with a Radiance, a halo around the flame and symbol of the staff and eye.  That marked him as a Captain, a leader of usually at least twenty men – same as the tall, lean Purifier with pale blonde hair near him, who had the hilt of a two-handed sword extending over his shoulder.

     But the most alarming were the two at the fore.  Their tabards had personal devices at the corners, and the respective shield and staff at the center were much more ornate, and tooled with golden thread.  Lords, then- George had rarely met men of such personal and political power, and never two at once.  In an instant, he feared them nearly as much as he did the rest of the men behind them all put together – and that had only a little to do with the imposing size of the one at the lead, who could easily have passed for a grizzly bear in an ill-fitting man costume.

     That man stopped not far from George, and the rest of the army came to a halt behind him, heels rattling at the earth in a dreadful unison that echoed from the hills.  George was instantly aware of the sorry shape he displayed, battered and bleeding and drunkenly swaying, but he offered the best salute he could manage in his state.  That, if nothing else, drew the entire force up short, and both of the Lords goggled at him before exchanging a glance, as if hoping the other hadn’t gotten the joke before they managed to.

     “Purifier-Errant George Lambton reporting, sirs!  On deployment from Olympus City!” he barked, standing as upright as he could manage, while his ribs and limbs and nerves screamed bloody agony at him.  He waited, holding his rigid form as the two shared another slow look, still not able to laugh but about to just for the hell of it.

     “Well, I’ll be damned,” growled the larger man with the bald pate, a shaggy mountain that spread his arms in a casual greeting. “What do you all think about that?” He pivoted, turning to look at all of the men around him, reading each of their faces with a smile that swelled like a black eye. “A brother of the Orders!  One of us!” he barked a laugh, though none reciprocated.  George was painfully aware of the stares directed at him, and they each felt as sharp as the blades at the men’s sides.  The Guardian Lord turned back to face George, and his ugly smile split his rust-colored beard as his dark eyes combed over the man in front of him. “How lucky.” The sentiment sounded more like a death sentence, and George felt an instinctual urge to see if his bow and any of his arrows had survived his fall and roll, though he kept his arms locked at his side.  Shamefully, he couldn’t tell if his stillness was from prudence or cowardice, but at the moment it didn’t really matter.

     “Of course,” continued the brute, swaggering in a stroll in front of the line of soldiers as if engaging in pleasant chitchat, “it seems things have changed quite a bit in the capital while we’ve been away.” His smile at George was almost convincingly genial as he tilted his head in the single man’s direction, or perhaps at something beyond him. “I’ve met a lot of Purifiers in my day… but I never heard of one riding a damned wyvern.” George’s throat tightened, but he kept still, not wanting to push this matter in the direction he feared it would slip. “How about you, Gebhard?  You ever study flying in your days in the Academy?” The leader’s attention was focused on the Purifier-Captain that George had noticed, and the man’s angular face set into a smile bereft of softness as he played along with his commander’s good humor.

     “No, sir, can’t ever say I did,” the tall man with the white-blond hair replied, meeting the amiable Lord’s expression with a feral grin, before turning a much colder gaze on George.  He could see the hatred simmering there, and could read the way the man wanted to reach for the hilt of his zweihander in the tenseness of every muscle of his body.

     “Well, you never struck me as a very good student.  Maybe you were more for sports, eh?” continued the bantering Lord, his cruel smile turning back towards George. “I must say, though, you’ve ridden that beast a long way to get here from the capital.  Or did you come from somewhere else, hmm?” There was steel in the question, a barely-hidden blade, but George couldn’t stay silent.

     “I am truly from the capital, sir.  I was deployed on a mission to Videre, under the guidance of Lector Themras-”

     “Filthy lies,” spat the man with the tabard of an Inquisitor-Captain.  His hand still glowed with magic – likely a restraining spell.  Probably, now that George thought of it, the same spell that had bound Callie’s wings, dropping them both to the ground below.  At least she had managed to glide, partially, but he could only hope she had survived the landing. “I’ve worked with Jonathan Themras on several missions.  The man is as pious as a saint – destined for leadership in our faith.  It’s despicable to suggest that he would indulge such… damnable heresy!” The man’s lean face was quickly turning as red as the fringe of hair that decorated his scalp, darkened by his smattering of freckles, and he glowered at George with naked disdain.  George could easily imagine the bellicose priest getting on quite well with this firebrand – and hastily decided that it might not be the proper time to inform them of the Lector’s recent demise. 

     “Well, haven’t we all disappointed our pastors from time to time?” offered the hulking man at the fore of the army, spreading his arms wide in a benevolent gesture of mercy.  His smile slid to the other Lord, the one with the black mustache and the darker eyes. “I certainly can’t say I haven’t.  Why, my own list of sins would bring shame on you all,” he admitted, in a faux-whispered confession, and chuckles rippled through the ranks, though their eyes were still hard and cold. “But, you see, what matters most is… repentance.  Making up for your misdeeds.  Admitting your crimes.” He whirled, looking at George, and his smile was so wide that George managed to convince himself for one thin second that maybe they might just survive this, they might manage to escape. “So, boy… sorry, ‘Purifier-Errant,’ – why don’t you start now?  Hmm?” He looked at George, and his smile slipped away, like cooked meat falling off the bone. “First, just tell us where you came from.  And then…” One finger, as merciless as a headsman, pointed past George to the crumbled form of Callie. “You go back there, find yourself a nice big rock… and smash her head into pulp.”

     Icy gripped at George’s heart, and his hope crumpled into ash.  This was it, then. “What did you say?” he asked, and somewhere he found a bit of an edge to force into his voice, a stiletto’s worth of steel in the face of an army.

     “I’m sorry, did I stutter?” The Guardian-Lord pressed his hand to his keg-shaped chest as if horrified he may have offended. “Tell us where you came from, and then kill the scaly bitch.”

     The whole army paused, waiting.  George’s eyes slid through the ranks, looking for a glimmer of horror, of hesitance, of quiet regret.  He looked, and looked.  He found nothing.

     George didn’t even let himself sigh.  He just, in a single fluid motion, drew his bow and nocked an arrow, aiming it towards the entire force arrayed before him. “No.”

     “Why, look at the mettle of Purifiers these days.  Imagine that: a monster hunter that won’t kill a monster?  What’s the world coming to?” Shaking his head in affected resignation and indifferent to the arrow pointed his way, the Lord at the head of the army looked to the man with the two-handed sword. “Gebhard, redeem your Order: go slit her throat.  Then Nasario and I will get all the answers we need from this monster-lover as we set up camp for the night.” Across from him, the blade hissed as it emerged from its scabbard, and the lean Purifier began to march towards George with an open smile.

     “With pleasure,” the captain began, but he paused as George turned the arrow his way.  The lean man’s eyes slid over to his commander, who only shrugged, picking at a bit of meat in his teeth.

     “Better get to it.”

     And so the Purifier began forward again, and without hesitation George lowered his aim, and loosed an arrow at the calf muscle of his right leg.

     George winced away from the flare of crimson light, but when he blinked his eyes clear, he saw that his arrow was buried in the ground just behind the knight.  He knew he hadn’t missed – not at this range – but something in the Purifier’s laugh brought his eyes higher.  It was then that George noticed the man was wearing a medallion, with a sunflare pattern around a fat red gem.  The stone glowed with the same light that had flashed when he had released his shot, fading into a darker quiet, until it was a deep blood red instead.  As he fought to understand, George noted that several of the soldiers – actually, everyone he could see – wore the same piece of jewelry, something he had never encountered before, complete with a symbol foreign to their faith.  The one exception was the Lord doing all of the talking, whose beard failed to hide an even larger and more ornate version of the same.  

     The monster hunter with the naked blade glanced over to the Lord, who preened like a cat crouched over a dying mouse.  That man looked back to George with a nod, and the Purifier started forward once more, only to pause as George took up yet another arrow – and aimed it this time right between the Lord’s eyes. “Stay back,” George snarled, his own eyes wild, “or I will kill him, and then every one of you I can manage.”

     The only sound was the Guardian Lord’s slow laughter, and he met George’s gaze without a hint of fear, only uncoiling menace. “Boy,” he spat, taking a step forward, his hand sliding down to the long-handled warhammer at his side, pulling it from its cradling loop, “you don’t even have the stones to try.  But, if you did, just know this little beauty has caved in the skulls of better men than you, and it is going to do that for years to come.  So shoot.” George paused, his chest heaving for breath as he tried to calm himself, but the man came on, cold fire in his eyes, his skin darkening red with passion. “Shoot, damn you!  Or I swear I will make you watch as I beat her to death myself!”

     And the bowstring creaked as he pulled it that final bit back, and blue light gleamed at the tip of the arrow- but it never left the string, as a horrifying roar ripped through the canyon.

     George didn’t dare look behind him to see where it had come from.  He recognized the sound, and so he kept his eyes on the face of the men he had called ‘brothers.’  He saw the fear there, wild panic taking over as they grasped for their weapons.  Even the Lord snarled up at the source of the thundering cry, before looking back towards George, the ugly violence of his heart on full display.  George lowered his bow in response, and offered the man a cold smile of his own – a salute, from one enemy to another.

     And then the dragon’s claw grabbed him, and lifted him from the pebbled stone of the canyon, carrying him high into the air.  George had time enough to see the full extent of the army that had stopped to confront him, before he glanced to the side, relieved beyond words to see the shape of Callie’s smaller form grasped in the dragon’s other claw.  And with that they rose into heaven, leaving the men of the Orders snarling and scrambling in defiant impotence in their wake.

 

******

 

            When Venturi lowered George to the ground, they were miles and miles away from the canyon that had held the forces of the Orders.  She delicately lowered George to the ground first, and then Callie, who immediately sank to her knees with a groan, the saddle that was still partially looped over her falling to the ground with her.  George was ecstatic to see that she was still alive, but rushed to her side anyways, checking her for signs of serious injuries as he pulled her free of the trailing straps.  She looked as battered as he felt, but there were no obvious broken bones, no signs of deeper trauma than the bruises sprouting in patchwork across her body.

     As George swept the hair back from her brow, examining a scrape that ran from her temple to her jawline, Callie’s yellow eyes flickered open, and she looked up at him in confusion.  George watched her eyes closely, knowing well the signs of concussion from his years of training, but he felt hopeful that her wounds were mostly surface-level.  Her eyes focused on him, and he could see his own relief reflected in them, and Callie offered him a wearied smile. “Stupid knight needs to stop getting kidnapped,” she mumbled, her eyes drifting over to where Venturi was taking on her own humanlike form, “Now he’s getting me kidnapped too.”

     “Callie, I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her, stroking her hair to comb free the dirt and trickle of dried dark blood. “If I hadn’t asked you to take me back east, then-”

     “Dummy,” she grumbled, but let him continue fussing over her. “Wyvern’s job is to go with rider.” The heat in his cheeks was only partially from happiness, but he didn’t stop tending her wounds, checking each place carefully in turn.

     The sound of clawed footprints behind him drew his attention to Venturi, who was approaching him with wariness clear on her face.  She was clearly reading his expression just as closely, and he could see her relax when he nodded his gratitude towards her.  Her eyes did sharpen as she looked past him, but she drew nearer anyways, and when George returned his gaze to Callie he found her glaring daggers up at the taller woman.

     “Why were you following us?” Callie demanded, and George gaped at her.

    “Callie!  She saved our lives!” His scolding did nothing to dissuade the wyvern as she climbed to her feet, shortening the gap between the two scaled women, though sadly failing to eliminate it. Callie merely came up to the level of the other woman’s prodigious chest, which made her wrathful glare seem more petulant than intended.

     “I saw you were taking him away.  I figured you were going to drop him off.  I was just going to take him back,” Venturi explained bluntly, crossing her arms before her chest and smirking down at the wyvern.

     “You made promise to leave him alone!” snarled Callie, pointing a claw back at George, who, unnoticed by the shorter woman, paled and looked away.

     “Uh uh,” Venturi replied, wagging one clawed finger. “Only promised two things: to leave the town alone, and to leave the cave.  I never promised anything about Treasure.”

     George squirmed as Callie slowly pivoted, turning her enraged stare back in his direction. “You didn’t make deal to make her leave you alone?” When he spread his hands helplessly, her nostrils flared in clear rage. “Stuuupid!”

     “I didn’t think I had to!  We beat her, and I assumed she wouldn’t, you know… Plus, I had escaped, and I didn’t think she would follow…” His excuses did nothing to quench her simmering frustration, but he pressed on. “I was just trying to finish my quest, and then I thought I would be going back west, so it wouldn’t matter.” Callie recoiled a bit from those words, but when George stared in the direction they had just flown in from, she softened as she discovered the pain writ large across his face. “I should have listened – to Simon, to John.  They were right, and I was just too stubborn to see it.  I thought…” He paused, the words choking him, and remembered the looks in the eyes of the men that had been ready to kill him.  His ‘brothers.’  He couldn’t continue, his head lowering in shame.

     “It’s okay,” Venturi said, in a deep, soothing rumble.  She stepped closer to George, and her hand pressed gently against his back, rubbing up and down. “When you come with me, they won’t be able to hurt you any more.”

     Those words ripped Callie’s attention from George back to the dragon, and she audibly growled. “New deal!” she erupted, storming closer to the taller woman. “You keep cave, and give me-”

     “No.” Venturi’s smile was lopsided and taunting. “Plenty of caves around.  What matters is what goes in the cave.” The direction of her gaze obliterated all subtlety, but George was too lost in his own thoughts to notice.

     Callie spluttered at that statement, having a much firmer grasp on the innuendo. “He’s rider!” she snarled. “Mine first!”

     Venturi replied with a casual shrug. “Sometimes, he can ride on your back – other times, I will ride his front.” This utterly failed to placate the wyvern, who looked about ready to lunge at the dragon’s throat, human-form or not.

     George, meanwhile, was in his own world, barraged by thoughts out of his control.  He still ached from his rough landing, which he was trying to make sense of.  His chest hurt the worst, from where the saddle’s harness had bitten deep before snapping, but when he rubbed at that soreness he discovered a clue to his survival.  Feeling a lump, he reached into his shirt to pull free a simple leather thong, the end wrapped in a tight knot around the snapped stem of a red feather.  He stared at it for a long moment without comprehension, before his memory supplied him with the image of what the necklace had looked like when the feather had been whole.  It was the harpy feather necklace John had given him, back on New Haven’s tower – the one with the spell on it to protect someone from falling.  It must have been crushed by the harness, or perhaps George had done so himself by accident – however it had happened, the item had saved his life, because otherwise his fall would have had a much more abrupt, and messier, conclusion.

    Even with the mystery of his survival solved, George found no peace of mind.  His earlier decision to return to the Orders was meaningless now.  He had nearly just gotten himself and Callie killed, and there was no reason to believe any attempt elsewhere in the Empire would end differently.  He owed Callie a debt that he couldn’t repay, and Venturi too, but they weren’t his only concern now.  A force that size had to be headed somewhere on a mission, and the only likely place was New Haven.  More than that, the protective magic that had shielded the Purifier from his arrow would be nothing that the people of that town would be expecting.  John’s darkly prophetic idea of monsters attacking his people was coming to pass, and even the mistrusting warlock might be fooled by the size of the force – if the men were all similarly protected, then their might would be that of an army several times their size.

     Behind him, he could hear Callie and Venturi bickering, but he whirled to face them, need searing at his lungs. “Please,” he burst out, and both women looked at him in surprise. “I need your help.”

     “Of course,” preened the dragon, arcing her body and trailing a clawed hand down her side. “Mighty Venturi will do anything for her Treasure.”

     Callie snorted in disdain, but when she looked back to George her eyes were concerned. “What do you need?”

     “I need to get back to New Haven.” He could see the distrust on both of their faces, but he pressed on. “Afterwards, I… I will do what I can to settle what is right for you both.  But, for now, those people are in danger.  The Orders are coming for them, and I have to warn them.” His impassioned plea only somewhat thawed their hesitance, and so he stepped closer to them. “I owe them a debt.  If it hadn’t been for the chance they gave me, then… I would never have met either of you.  And I would still be like…” He motioned vaguely towards the canyon they had flown away from. “But I’m not that.  Not anymore.  And I have to do this, to do the right thing.”

     Venturi still looked cautious, but Callie wore a small, teasing smile. “Stupid hero,” she muttered, and despite himself he shared the smile with her, feeling more like himself than he had in a long time.  Seeing the look passing between the pair, Venturi frowned, but nodded, and together they all turned back to where the saddle lay draped across the ground.

     George had been given yet another chance to make things right – and this time, he knew who he had to defend.  And so, as he took back into the heavens with a wyvern underneath him, and a dragon flying just behind, he set his eyes on the distant speck that he thought was New Haven, willing Callie to fly even faster regardless of the broken harness.  The wind ripped at him, but he clutched to the saddlehorn and leaned forward as her wings beat at the air.  They couldn’t get there fast enough, because he knew the Orders marched at their heels.

     War was coming to New Haven… but it wouldn’t arrive unheralded.

 

Continued in “Heroes, Chapter 15”

---

Author’s Note: “Ooooh, this will be a short chapter!  I should have it wrapped up in a week!  I can get ahead of schedule!”  Yeah… that ended poorly.  Granted, I made my usual deadline, but… this is over forty pages, proving once more that my stories only get longer as they go.

Thankfully, there are only a few chapters left in this one, maybe five or six.  This particular chapter ends the predictable arrangement that I had been playing with since the third chapter, but not the current ‘day’ that the story has reached.  The next chapter will do just that, and will likely be from Simon’s perspective as I bring everyone (and multiple plots) together for the upcoming climax.  My heroes have a bit of preparation to do before the battle to come… and that includes John.

If you are one of those who enjoyed the action in this particular installment, know that there is more to come.  One of my reasons to write is to constantly test myself to get better, and thus this book is going to include something I have never had a chance to write before, at least since my juvenile efforts in high school: a larger scale battle that will last for more than a chapter.  But don’t worry, if you instead favor the romantic or character-conflict sides of the matter, as there will be plenty of that as well… it is what I do most, if not best.

I should restrain my wordiness, if the bulk of the above chapter has anything to say on it, but I will gab just a bit more to say that I enjoyed writing Gunther Walberg’s character in this chapter.  He’s a different sort of villain from Themras, and from the one in the next book – and I get to feature him quite a bit in the chapters to come.  Zealotry takes many forms, and while his is as much loyalty to another man as it is his faith, this Lord is not someone to be taken down easily. 

But, before I can get to that, I have several hours of pre-planning work to do for this final arc of this story.  There are a lot of moving pieces with three viewpoint protagonists coming together, and so I have to get everything in order before I return to writing… probably.  I will, in my departure, offer my gratitude once more to those who comment, and those who question – I try to reply as thoroughly as I can, without spoiling what is to come – but to all of you who still read my works, in general.  You help me on this journey, which would be far more difficult without you.

But, speaking of journeys… I am exhausted.  To plan, or… to sleep… that is the……

~Wynn Pendragon   

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