Page 10 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

The low roar of tires on pavement shifted into something harsher and faster, and the jostling of the cab jolted me awake.

I blinked in the dusky light, expecting to see the back of Liam’s headrest but instead found Orla’s face inches from mine. Her green eyes grew wider as I gathered my bearings.

“Wow!”

she breathed. I could see my reflection in her tinted goggles where they rested on top of her head.

“That’s so cool every time you do it, Galahad.”

I was sitting on a wooden bench, facing Orla. Tiernan sat next to her, but kept his eyes on Fana next to me. A darkening forest rushed past through the rattling window on my right, though it was hard to make out much thanks to the shifting white light that lit our small cabin. Steam hissed somewhere out of sight, and I realized I was on a train.

“We’ll get to Vanderfall by morning.”

Galahad stood at the doorway to our train cabin. On the other side of the frosted glass, Ferrin’s back pressed against the door. He must’ve been standing watch.

“Should be a quiet night, but stay alert. No one leaves this cabin without me knowing. And Wren Warrender?”

I gulped as he locked eyes with me. I would much rather be sabotaging Riley’s search efforts than be back in Skalterra under Galahad’s command.

“Yes?”

“No one is to know that you are a Nightmare.”

“Why?”

His bushy eyebrows furrowed.

“Lucid Nightmares aren’t legal, but before you get any ideas on using that to escape your employ here, you should know that they’ll punish you just as much as they’ll punish me. Save yourself the trouble, and if anyone asks, you’re a dish maid from Trawler’s Bay.”

He gave a tiny nod, and then stepped out to join Ferrin in the hall.

“Welcome back!”

Orla spread her arms wide, smacking Tiernan in the face.

“It’s okay if you feel overwhelmed by our advanced technology. Take your time getting oriented. This is a steamcart, like I was telling you about!”

“Right.”

I glanced around the cramped cabin, looking for the source of the shifting light. I found it in the glass pipes that ran along the ceiling from our cabin into the next. Their insides swirled with white, glowing mist.

“You have electricity?”

Orla and Tiernan followed my gaze to the ceiling.

“Electricity?”

Orla repeated.

“This is a Keldorian word.”

“No, it’s not.”

Tiernan grunted. His gold tunic and leather armor hid under a yellow cloak, and he wore the hood up. A couple of twisted hair locks hung in his eyes, which he kept resolutely trained on the wood paneling just above Fana’s head.

“She means lightning.”

“Is it storming?”

Orla looked out the window, but the night was clear. Two full moons washed the passing forest canopy in shifting shades of silver. I gave them a double-take. Skalterra was real. I knew that now, and somehow the idea was easier to swallow while sitting safe on a train instead of dodging magic blasts on a parapet or running through a forest.

Still, the double moons took me a moment to accept.

I had really thought for a moment that Galahad wasn’t going to summon me back. In the back of Sabrina’s car, I’d been stupid enough to think this was all over.

Crap.

Sabrina’s car. That’s where my body was, asleep and unable to wake up unless I died here or if Galahad released me. It wouldn’t be long before Sabrina and Liam would be trying to shake me awake.

Maybe, if I was lucky, Sabrina would let me sleep there, and they wouldn’t ask any questions.

“I actually meant your lights.”

I pulled myself back to the electricity conversation.

“Our lights!”

Orla stood to better point at the pipes that ran along the ceiling.

“These are steam-lamps! Diluted Skal is heated into steam and then pumped through the pipes to create light. Why did you think it was lightning?”

“I didn’t. Tiernan misunderstood what I meant.”

I took special delight in calling out Tiernan. My blue-haired Nightmare body didn’t have any of the bruises I’d sustained from the previous night, but I hadn’t forgotten how he’d blown me up.

“We have lights in Keldori too. We make them with electricity.”

The others stared back at me with varying degrees of confusion. Only Fana seemed to take what I’d said at face value, nodding solemnly and looking much too serious for a ten-year-old.

“You trap little storms in glass without magick?”

Tiernan raised a dubious eyebrow.

“Not exactly, no. We use things like batteries to create, um, little lightning. And then it runs through wires to power things like lightbulbs.”

“Lightbulbs,”

Orla repeated, relishing the word.

“And what’s a battery?”

“By the Three Magicians, Orla, don’t be so dense.”

Tiernan glared at her from under his hood.

“You can’t make little lightning, not without Magicians. It’s a lie.”

I stood up and motioned for Fana to swap seats with me so I could sit across from Tiernan. He leaned back against the wood paneling of the cabin in apprehension while I bent over to unlace the boots I’d woken up in, revealing wool socks.

“What are you doing?”

Tiernan asked. I pulled my feet free of the boots in response and placed them on the dusty, wooden floor.

“Give me your cloak,”

I said. Tiernan recoiled, but Fana rushed to pull hers off over her head and offer it to me. I threw the thick material to the floor.

With a grin, I rubbed the soles of my feet back and forth on the cloak.

The others watched in quiet anticipation, and Tiernan’s shoulders relaxed with a roll of his eyes.

“You’re getting the Divine Sovereign’s cloak dirty. This is stupid,”

he said, and I reached a hand towards him to offer my pointer finger.

“Touch it,” I goaded.

“No.”

His nose wrinkled in disgust.

“Coward.”

He scowled and crossed his arms.

“I’m not being—”

I leaned forward to tap his nose.

An electric zap tickled the tip of my finger, and Tiernan swatted my hand away. Orla laughed at his scandalized face, and Fana allowed herself a timid giggle that made her black curls bounce.

“Electricity.”

I smirked.

“Or ‘little lightning’.”

“It’s magick,”

Tiernan insisted.

“It’s physics.”

“Do it again!”

Fana extended her head forward as if to offer me her nose.

Tiernan stood to rip the cloak from the floorboards, and he pressed Fana back in her seat with a protective hand.

“The Sovereign needs food and rest,”

Tiernan growled.

“Orla, take the Nightmare to the dining cart to find us something to eat.”

“Galahad said to—”

“Galahad is an old windbag who can’t even scrounge up a decent Nightmare anymore, and as the only guard of a living Sovereign, I outrank all of you.”

Tiernan glared at me as he said it. He fell back into his seat and tapped his boot against my leather greaves. “Now go.”

“I can go get food,”

Orla conceded with a frown.

“but Wren should stay with you. She’s here to protect—”

“I don’t need its help,”

Tiernan grunted.

“Oh?”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“That surprises me. You found ‘it’ plenty useful last night.”

Orla paused at the door.

“How did you stop the Grimguard last night?”

Orla asked. Tiernan kicked his boots up onto Orla’s abandoned seat by the window. He stared out at the passing forest instead of answering.

“He blew me up,” I said.

“You did not!”

Orla swatted at Tiernan’s head. He ducked ruefully, but otherwise took the punishment.

“Just-Wren is our friend. We don’t blow up our friends.”

“It’s a Nightmare, Orla, no different than the ones that fight and die for us any other night. Don’t get attached.”

Orla pressed her lips together, but whirled away from Tiernan. She grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me to my feet and out the hall.

“My shoes—”

I tried to say, but when I scanned the floor for my boots, they’d been replaced by a small pile of ash. Orla marched me into the rattling corridor that smelled of dust and iron before I could better investigate what had become of my footwear.

Windows and wood panels made up the wall to our left, and doors of frosted glass lined our right. Beneath my wool socks, the carpet was worn and faded. It was remarkably similar to the trains I’d been on at home, even if it did feel a bit dated.

Galahad stood at the cart exit, and he raised a threatening, bushy eyebrow at us.

“The Sovereign is back the way you came.”

“Tiernan’s mood will keep the Grimguard away,”

Orla sniffed.

“Also, he told us to go to the dining cart and that he outranks you.”

Galahad’s eye twitched, but Tiernan’s assertion of rank must’ve held some merit because he didn’t protest.

“Be kind to Tiernan,”

he said through clenched teeth.

“He’s mourning Caitria.”

“Then what was his excuse before she died? Did you know he blew up Just-Wren last night?”

Galahad locked eyes with me, and I clenched my left hand, curling my fingers in over the scars he’d left there. He knew I was down to three lives. His eyes flickered over my wool socks, and his eyebrows furrowed.

“If Tiernan decided the best course of action to fight the Grimguard was to blow up the Nightmare, then so be it. That’s what she’s here for,”

he said simply, and my stomach knotted.

He really would let me die and feel no remorse over it.

“Then at least let her enjoy some pastries while she’s stuck here getting blown up.”

Orla wrapped her arm around my elbow and pulled me to her side in a show of solidarity.

“She’s getting blown up for her own world too, don’t forget.”

It felt like a reminder to me rather than Orla.

“And she isn’t your pet. You shouldn’t waste your money on pastries for a person that isn’t real.”

“Then let me waste my money.”

A firm hand landed on my shoulder as Ferrin appeared behind us.

“We have a long road ahead. Let them enjoy the dining cart.”

Galahad narrowed his eyes, but he stepped aside, letting us pass into the open air between passenger carts. The rumbling of the train and the howling of the dark wind that rushed passed were louder out here. My cloak and blue hair whipped around me in a flurry of fabric.

“Believe we’re real yet, Just-Wren?”

Ferrin grinned at me as Orla opened the door into the next passenger cart.

“Unfortunately.”

I had to yell over the wind to hear myself, but Ferrin’s grin widened beneath his fluttering cockatoo hair.

“Excellent. Then do try not to stare.”

With his hand on my shoulder, he steered me through the open door into the bright light of the passenger cart, and I immediately found myself disobeying his directive.

Some of the passengers’ cloaks looked like those of Tiernan and Fana, ranging from brown and torn to ornate and embroidered. Others dressed more like Ferrin, Galahad, and Orla, with vests, leather, and unnecessarily complex belts and garters. Long tailcoats and longer skirts dominated the scene, though plenty of women wore leather pants and tunics. A couple sat together in traditional kimonos. Everyone had goggles pushed up into their hair.

One old woman wore her goggles over her eyes as she heated a metal mug of steaming liquid with a fistful of magenta skalflames. A ticket-taker in a red uniform and leather baldric reminded her this was a Skalflame-Free cart, and she let her fire flicker out as she mumbled about the good old days when she could light a flame wherever she liked.

“You’re staring.”

Ferrin leaned in to murmur in my ear.

“Remember, lucid Nightmares aren’t exactly legal, so try to look less like you just woke up in an alternate reality.”

I blushed and snapped my eyes to the back of Orla’s pixie cut. She turned around to give me a smile.

“Told you,”

she whispered.

“Steamcarts! Very cool, right?”

“Orla,”

Ferrin warned in a low voice, and she spun back around.

“It is very cool,”

I assured her, and Ferrin patted my shoulder with a heavy hand.

“Don’t worry,”

Ferrin continued as we entered the next cart. The lights were dimmer in this one, and most of the passengers slumped in their seats, trying to sleep.

“You’ll have plenty of time to stare and meet our people once we reach the Second Sentinel. For now, let’s focus on pastries.”

The dining cart was easy to identify by its smell alone when we arrived, and I relished the scent of freshly baked dough and something savory that I couldn’t name. Orla led the way through the door to reveal a cart lined with wooden tables that overlooked the windows. Pipes of steamed Skal ran across the ceiling and spilled shifting, dull light over the booths and the far counter where a man stood in a vest like Ferrin’s.

“What sort of sweet pastries do you have available?”

Orla pressed against the counter, and the man stared past us with an unfocused look.

“Sweet cream, peach, cinnamon apple—”

“Oh, peach!”

Orla cut off his droning voice.

“We’ll have a half-dozen of peach!”

“And a pint of whatever is strongest,”

Ferrin added. He pushed forward to place a few large coins on the counter.

“I can pay for myself,”

Orla said, but Ferrin shook his head.

“Your mother would haunt me from this life into the next if I let you do that.”

The man took the money without looking at Ferrin, and an uncomfortable prickle worked its way down my spine.

“He’s a Nightmare,”

I realized out loud.

“I thought we just fought your battles.”

Ferrin put a finger to his lips and cast an anxious glance at a nearby table of cloaked men.

“And serving pastries to travelers is worse than fighting on a battlefield?”

He motioned to a nearby wooden table. I took a reluctant seat across from Ferrin while Orla waited at the counter for her pastries.

“No,”

I admitted, watching the Nightmare disappear through a sliding door behind the counter.

“But it’s wrong. We don’t have a say. We don’t get paid. It’s free labor.”

Ferrin sighed and looked out the window. I followed his gaze, but the lights of the dining cart made it impossible to see outside. Instead, our reflections were thrown back at us, and I startled at the sight of the young woman sitting across from Ferrin in the window.

A sleek jawline accentuated her delicate chin and slender neck. Her cheeks were smooth, though that might’ve been courtesy of the dark night behind the window washing out her reflection. And her hair…

I ran a hand through the blue tresses, half-convinced my reflection wouldn’t follow suit because the woman in the window couldn’t be me. But her hand tracked mine, and her eyes widened in surprise just as I felt mine do the same.

They’d told me Nightmares took on their own idealized versions of themselves, but I hadn’t realized until now that it had affected me beyond my hair and eyelashes.

“It’s not really labor,”

Ferrin said, bringing me back to our conversation about the Nightmare behind the counter.

“Not for normal Nightmares, anyway. The Skal and the will of the nocturmancer in charge of it do most of the work. The sleeping consciousnesses inside are just unwitting pilots.”

“It’s still wrong.”

I tore my gaze away from the window.

“Maybe.”

Ferrin shrugged, then looked away from the window to smile at me.

“Help us get Fana to safety, and perhaps we can bring you back to campaign for Nightmares’ rights across the Seven Provinces.”

“Seven Provinces?”

I repeated. Ferrin settled back on his bench with a coy smile and dragged his finger in a circle on the table between us. A thin stream of green flame danced in his finger’s wake until he’d drawn out the rough outline of a continent.

“There’s Skalterra.”

He drew criss-crossing lines through his picture.

“You’ve got the New Kingdom, where we currently are, the Grand Barony, which is where we’ll be by morning, then the Breachriver Prefecture, the Wisting Wilds, the Royal Shogunate, the Skalterran Highlands, and finally, the Frozen God Saergrim’s domain in the north.”

I studied the map as it flickered and burned in front of me.

“And where is the Second Sentinel?” I asked.

Ferrin drew a zig-zagging mountain range across the north end of the continent.

“In the Skalterran Highlands, hiding in the highest peak.”

“Mountains?”

I leaned over the drawing now, holding my blue hair away from the flames.

“What kind?”

Ferrin laughed.

“The tall kind?”

“I mean are they volcanic?”

I couldn’t help it. I wondered if the magma and lava here would be as magical as the water my new comrades kept in flasks at their hips.

“The First and Third Sentinel have been known to kick ash into the sky, but not within my lifetime. Why do you ask?”

“Geology is cool.”

I shrugged.

Ferrin made room for Orla on his bench. She slid in next to him with a platter of flakey pastries, each decorated in white drizzle and peach slices. Ferrin’s map of green dissipated, leaving behind an untarnished tabletop.

“So!”

Orla beamed at me.

“Steamcarts! Amazing, right?”

I laughed and felt my cheeks warm.

“They are, but I meant to tell you, we have these in Keldori.”

Orla’s face fell.

“Why didn’t you say so last night?”

“I tried to,”

I admitted.

“We don’t call them steamcarts. In Keldori, we say ‘trains’.”

I frowned as a new question clouded my thoughts. I looked to Ferrin.

“Yes?”

He smiled as if he knew the question I was about to ask.

“If I’m from a different reality, why do we speak the same language? Even if some of our names for things, like steamcarts, are different?”

“A very astute observation, Just-Wren.”

“It’s—”

“Wren. Just Wren. We know.”

His smile quirked.

“I’m afraid Just-Wren has stuck. But your question, it’s a good one. Do you have any theories?”

I felt like I was back in class, being asked to find the answer before being handed it. It was a familiar feeling, and I suddenly wanted very much to impress Ferrin. As much as Galahad seemed to enjoy pretending his age made him the group leader, and even if Tiernan claimed his guard-status over Fana meant he outranked everyone, I could tell Ferrin held an authority that neither Galahad nor Tiernan could compete with.

“We were all one world at one point,”

I said slowly.

“Our language bases would still be the same, but that doesn’t explain how easily we communicate after centuries apart.”

Something clicked in my brain.

“And?”

Ferrin prompted, folding his hands together neatly in front of him.

“And we haven’t actually been apart, have we? Not if Skalterra has been pulling sleeping Keldorians in every night for hundreds of years. So our language developed alongside each other, rather than separate of each other.”

Ferrin nodded approvingly, but a man ordering at the nearby counter interrupted us before he could reply.

“Is that how the kids are doing their hair these days?”

he grumbled. “Blue?”

Skalterra and Keldori were still very much alike in more than what languages we spoke.

I took a pastry at Orla’s urging and picked at the peach slices.

“You said there have been other lucid Nightmares?”

I spoke low enough that the judgmental man at the counter wouldn’t hear me.

Ferrin’s smile faded.

“Yes, but it’s been a while.”

His words were slow and careful.

“Then why does it happen? Why am I different?”

“We have theories. The Rift wasn’t a perfect split between our worlds. Families that had both Magicians and normal humans were torn between Skalterra and Keldori. It’s possible your family line goes back to those few who were left behind.”

If that were the case, I’d reach a dead end fast. Gams had been adopted. She knew nothing of her birth family, and she refused to speak about Mom’s biological father. As for my own biological father, Maxwell Brenton, PhD, was as much a stranger to me as anyone.

“Okay, and what are your other theories?”

I pressed.

“Skal leaks from Keldori to Skalterra. It’s possible you have spent an unusual amount of time near one of those schisms. Your proximity to Skal and to Skalterra could make you more connected to our world than others.”

I thought back to the suburban neighborhood I’d grown up in. Linsey had only lived a few streets away. Hopefully I didn’t come across her in Skalterra. I pushed away the thought. I’d rather face the Grimguard again than some Nightmare version of Linsey.

“It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?”

Orla smiled through a mouthful of pastry.

“You’re here now!”

“I have a life back on Keldori. Even after we get Fana to the Second Sentinel, I have things at home to worry about. I don’t want to keep coming back to Skalterra.”

However, I stared at the spot on the table where Ferrin’s map had burned out. I hadn’t seen much of Skalterra outside of dark forests and the train we now rode, but that map, along with the eclectic outfits of the other passengers, held a promise of an entire world to explore and discover.

“Uncle?”

Orla said, suddenly serious. I turned my attention to Ferrin where he stared at the window, fighting to see past our reflections and into the passing forest outside.

“I thought I saw something,”

he murmured.

“It’s too bright in here.”

He stood and pushed his way behind the counter.

“Sir—”

the Nightmare worker protested. Ferrin held a hand up, and the Nightmare didn’t have the wherewithal to argue. He stood back and continued to survey the dining cart with a faraway look as Ferrin forced his way through the sliding door and into the kitchen.

I tripped in my haste to follow Orla after Ferrin. Two cooks stood over a stove that burned with red skalflames. They regarded us with the same blank stare the counter-worker had donned, and I faltered as I realized they were also Nightmares.

Ferrin threw open the far door, and rushing wind ripped through the kitchen cart. The cooks swayed in the torrent, but otherwise stayed put as Orla and I followed Ferrin out into an open air cart. A tangle of pipes ran along either side of us, presumably transporting Skal to the rest of the steamcart from the massive, black engine that whistled and hissed ahead. Steam that glowed a soft ruby color billowed from the head of the engine, staining the star-streaked sky.

Wind ripped at my blue hair, and I steadied myself against a low railing.

The twin moons glittered in an ocean of foreign stars, washing the trees in the valley below us in silver. Beyond the forest, a massive lake reflected the moons back up at the sky, and the distant silhouette of a mountain range cut jagged shapes into the night. Three peaks stood taller than the rest, and I wondered if those were the First, Second, and Third Sentinels.

“There!”

Ferrin leaned over the railing to point through the tangle of pipes.

“Did you see that?”

The wind snatched at his voice, and I struggled to hear him over the whistling of the engine. Orla peered out into the forest, but we were moving so quickly, I doubted she’d be able to see anything.

But then I saw it too.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the double moons, casting dual shadows through the woods. However, the shadow twisted, nimble and lithe, through the nearest trees, and seemed to exist in spite of the moonlight rather than because of it.

Orla yelped in surprise and pulled her goggles down over her eyes. She lit green fire that danced between her fingertips, ready to draw forth whatever weapon she deemed best fit to fight the dark shape.

“Orla, no!”

Ferrin howled.

“It’s a rotsbane!”

Ferrin lunged for Orla, trying to extinguish the green fire, but the dark shape seemed to have taken notice.

It shifted across its moonlit path, keeping pace with the steamcart, before leaping into the air, extending hooked claws of shadow that were easily the length of my forearm.

“Move!”

Ferrin pushed us back towards the kitchen, and the cart lurched as the monster clawed up and over the pipes to land on our walkway.

It towered over us, shadows rolling over its hunched, colossal form. The metal beneath its animal-like feet bent under its weight, despite that the beast seemed to be built of nothing more than bones, shadow, and claws. Four hands that floated on the ends of shadow-wisp arms dug their talons into the engine pipes. Glowing steam screamed as it escaped before being sucked into the blackhole that sat where the monster’s mouth should have been.

Then the kitchen lights faded with a hiss, leaving us in total darkness with the monster.