Page 61 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

Act V

“ O ros.”

Yeinri touched his shoulder with care. Her familiar, grounded scent fell around him like a wind-woven blanket. He lifted his head and blinked at the sharp-eyed redhead, sluggishly noting the light of dawn touching her brown face, brightening her clear blue eyes.

“You’ve been out here for a while,” she murmured. “Do you need a break? I could take her.”

My chest…

Like barbed wires twisting around his heart, winding tighter, and tighter.

“Something horrible is coming,” he muttered, offering his pinky for Indra to grip. “We should think about leaving.”

His packmate frowned. “Leave? What do you mean exactly?”

“I mean this valley. Maybe convince as many of the other tribes as will come with us. Find somewhere else, far from V’Gedra.”

“Will you tell us where you’ve been?” she asked, glancing at his wings. “And what happened to Pennilil? You seem so changed.”

“I am changed. And she…” A persistent tremor arose, becoming visible. “I-it’s so much, I-I don’t know where to start.”

She sat beside him, touching shoulder-to-shoulder. “Don’t think. Say the one thing that scares you most right now.”

“The Desert Dragon is injured.”

Not what she might have expected to hear. “Huh?”

“He’s the guardian of the Red Desert,” Oros said with conviction. “And he’s been injured badly enough that he can’t keep the exploiters out.”

“Wha… what are you talking about?”

“I met him in a dream, after I flew away with Ur… with Penni. She gave me an old gift Elves sometimes have, to seek out others in reverie. I sought the Flame for his counsel. And I found him. And we talked.”

Oros stopped talking then, giving the huntress a chance to absorb anything at all in what he’d blurted.

Sounds like Desert madness.

Yet the pale-skinned baby was his proof it wasn’t.

“I don’t think,” Yeinri began, “the guiders of the other tribes will follow you based on that.”

He slumped. “I know.”

“But I do believe you,” she continued. “That you saw this and it scares you. That it’s important.”

He swallowed, nodding gratitude.

“What else happened? Where is Pennilil?”

“Going after a demon in V’Gedra,” he said.

“A…what? ”

“You remember the acolyte with the Queen’s sister?”

“Yes…you charged her.”

“She was wearing a flesh mask.”

“She’s a shifter, too?”

“Worse than that.”

“How so?”

He trembled to remember. “Imagine a spider… weaving a cocoon around a fly and feeding on it. Sucking it dry, leaving a husk.”

“Alright.”

“Now imagine the spider can slip into the husk and appear like the other flies to get closer, to trick some of them into giving the spider more flies. Except we’re talking about Elves.”

Yenri’s face collapsed in disgust. “There are things like that?”

He nodded. “Normally they are kept out.”

“By the Dragon?”

“I think so. But V’Gedra is not ‘normal’ right now. The royal family is harboring a demon, and they were just here asking for tribemates to join their wars.”

His packmate swallowed. “And you can see these demons?”

“Yes. Pennilil can, too. That’s why she did what she did. She wants to break the demon’s hold on the Seer.”

“If she succeeds, perhaps we don’t have to run?”

Oros shook his head urgently his heart racing loud enough to disturb Indra from her doze. “There’s another problem.”

“Oh?”

Oros looked down at Indra, rubbing her cheek until she calmed. “You know how we were fairly sure the sire was none of us?”

A sure nod.

“He’s still out there.”

Yeinri waited for more. “And… he is reason enough to run?”

“For me, yes. I must leave today.”

“What? When will you be back?”

“I… I don’t think I will be back.” Oros winced to see her di stress, reaching out one arm to pull her in for one more touch.

“I wasn’t coming back when I flew away with Penni, but I needed to warn you.

And I wanted most to see you all one more time.

I am grateful for my time with you all last night, even if there is a lot I can’t explain. ”

Yeinri drew in a shuddering breath. “I-I thought we had time to let you explain when you were ready. Not this shaman vision and then you fly away again!”

“I’m so sorry, Yein.”

“The guiding siblings were willing to wait, too, but they need to know!”

“They do. And I need you to tell them.”

“Can’t you?!” she begged. “Right now? Let’s go find them, I will be there with you, I promise!”

The shadows loomed in the back of his mind as the morning grew brighter. He stood up in dread certainty as his feathers ruffled beyond his control. “No time. Be my messenger, Yeinri. Please.”

“Why?!” she said, exasperated.

The chill up his back nearly paralyzed him.

“Because something horrible is coming,” he repeated, looking toward the capital city. “And this infant will draw it here, among all of you, unless I leave now.”

Oros flew as fast as he could, avoiding Koorul this time, and pushing against the Ley to maintain his direction north and west.

Indra cried for longer periods before he could land. He needed to be sure of his source for food and water, and he needed some way to clean her new wrappings and sooth her skin. He couldn’t stay long.

By dusk of that first day, Oros felt the moment he reached a different flow of the Ley. This one pulled him west; he did not have to struggle. He relaxed and conserved his strength, though it proved short-lived as her message swept over him like a rain cloud.

*Oros!*

Her influence spread through him, granting him a second wind.

“No,” he whispered.

*Set her down somewhere! Hide!*

Conflict.

*Just drop her! You’re free! Don’t look back!*

Contrary to everything she said. He would not drop her!

Indrath responded dryly. *Just abandon the defenseless again, hm?*

*She won’t be undefended for long.*

*Indeed. A pity your tastes always skewed toward entrapping real leaders who keep their word.*

Oros sought a safe place while they bickered, needing to touch the ground as fast as possible.

Somewhere the only collateral damage is me.

The Wilder could hope the immortal siblings just killed him and move on, but he had a sense he was much harder to put down now.

And probably still too useful to one of them.

Much like the child in his arms.

With barren rock beneath his feet and a shield of tall red stones on three sides of him, he whispered to Indra, “I’m sorry. I know one of them wants you badly and the other not at all. But letting you go to your father without a struggle…”

I wish it were an option.

Submitting anything of value to one’s adversary without resistance was never an option with Uradri.

“I know it makes no sense, little one,” the young Elf said, doing what he could to clean her without water before her parents caught up. “Would that we could both go on living without that game. ”

“Oros!”

To his left, Uradri rose up on her knees, her attempt to spread shining wings restricted by thick metal bands binding them.

Indrath stood next to her, his hand clasped fiercely between her shoulder blades to a disturbing, haphazard wire harness wrapped around her torso and binding her hands behind her.

A rune-marked iron collar had been added for good measure, but the Sovereign’s sandstone eyes still blazed like a desert storm.

“Leave the baby there!” she yelled. “Run! Go back to your tribe!”

Oros groaned, holding the girl tightly. He couldn’t fly. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t leave her.

Indrath laughed, shaking his head in disappointment. “Try ordering him to hand her to me.”

She snarled up at him. “Absolutely not! You and I aren’t done!”

“Ah, Adri, how right you are. Truly a pity. I admire his unwavering loyalty to my daughter.”

“ Our daughter.”

“We’ll see who she remembers in a century.” Indrath’s tail flicked near his feet as he bared fangs at her. “Did he tell you he named her after me?”

“You’re lying.”

The devil cleared his throat. “Oros, the conditions for your silence are met.”

The Wilder’s throat loosened.

“What does he mean, Oros? What conditions?”

Damn them.

Indrath’s gaze fixed upon her face like he didn’t want to miss one facial tic. “Go on, grandson. I didn’t just find you fleeing with my daughter, did I?”

The barbed wire inside his chest tightened. Indra whimpered when he squeezed too hard.

“Oros,” Uradri said like a mother who had waited too long for an explanation to a child’s mischief .

“I wanted to warn my tribe before I pushed new boundaries,” he said. “You didn’t listen.” His chin quivered. “But he did.”

Shock and horror.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Th-that was foolish! Making a deal with him is why you can’t obey me now!”

“I’d wondered,” Indrath interjected, clearly amused. “Oros only seems capable of following the initial geas you wove into his aura.”

“It’s not a geas!” she barked. “It’s a cause.”

“I prefer crusade. Regardless, you’ve already vanished from the ‘cause,’ and left him alone to deal with the fallout.”

“ Pfeh! I’m right here .”

“And oddly powerless to give him another suggestion.”

I hate this. Oros took a step backward, testing his wings. They opened easily and felt good, as if they had their own suggestion: Try again.

“Let us negotiate another deal, Oros.”

“No!” said Uradri. “Don’t listen! He’ll captur?—”

The devil jerked hard on her harness, snapping her head back with the wire flashing red against her skin, making her yelp. “Grandson. I can send you home without the burdens your carry.”

“Exchanged for anoth— Yaaii !” Uradri jolted in pain, whacking the Infernal Elf’s wings with hers as she threw herself into his legs. “Don’t do it! It’ll be worse with the Hells, Oros! Hear me! Run!”

Take her to her ancestors.

Oros turned around, holding Indra tight as he sprinted and opened his wings, ready to launch.

“STOP.”

An arrow of ice-fire struck him square in the back, seizing his muscles and folding his wings as he collapsed. Rolling twice, Oros curled into a ball to protect the precious bundle as Indra was startled into loud, sustained wail.