Page 14 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

Orla and I stood at the ready with our weapons humming in our hands, but the Grimguard remained face down on the dirty cobblestones. This was the first time I’d seen him in semi-decent lighting, but I was sure his cloak had been less tattered and muddy the last time we’d met.

Orla’s blade sputtered out, and she pushed her goggles back with a knuckle.

“Is he dead?”

she whispered.

“How should I know?”

I kept my flail at the ready and tip-toed forward. I nudged the Grimguard’s shoulder with the toe of my shoe, which was still modeled off of Liam’s sneakers.

The Grimguard remained lifeless, and my flail dissipated with a crackle. I knelt down to roll him onto his back. His head lolled to the side, and his eyes stayed closed.

“Holy crap.”

I sat back to better survey his condition. Large portions of his leather armor and tunic had burnt away to reveal patches of burned torso. What wasn’t crusted over continued to ooze blood and pus. Wounds puckered with inflammation, and the tell-tale signs of infection turned white skin red.

Tiernan’s explosive the other night hadn’t completely done in the Grimguard, but it had come close.

“Check his pulse,”

Orla whispered overhead. I pressed a tentative hand against his neck. The faintest of heartbeats pressed back.

“Alive.”

Orla sighed and pulled her goggles back into place.

“Alright. Look away if you like. I’ll make it quick.”

Her green blade reignited, and my mouth dropped open.

“Make what quick?”

I positioned myself between her and the unconscious Grimguard. Her eyebrows drew together above her cracked goggles.

“He wants to kill Fana,”

she said.

“This is what we signed up for as Riftkeepers. To keep the Rift, which he wants to open! With child murder!”

“That doesn’t mean we murder a defenseless man!”

“He would kill us if the roles were reversed,”

Orla pointed out.

“That’s what makes him the villain and us the good guys!”

Orla pressed her lips together.

“My mother was killed by Grimguards.”

As terrible as the words were, she looked more defeated than angry.

“And if we leave him, he’ll die anyway. It’s kinder to put him out of his misery.”

It was a good point. The way his injuries looked, it was a wonder he was still alive. I peeled his cowl away from his face, as if that might help him breathe easier. His pale skin there was unmarred and smooth, though his lips were dry and cracked.

“Orla, he’s so young,”

I said, but it was hard to read Orla with her tinted goggles fixed over her eyes.

“I was brought to Skalterra to protect Fana. I won’t be a murderer.”

What if he had a family somewhere? What if they never found out what happened to him, like with Liam and his parents and cousin? If Skalterra was real, that meant this Grimguard was too, and even if he was evil, I would not let him become someone else’s Riley.

“You might not have signed up for this, but I did,”

Orla insisted.

“You signed up to kill a defenseless kid?”

Orla nodded, but her chin quivered. I set my jaw and rose to my feet.

“Fine,”

I said. “Do it.”

She gulped.

“I will.”

I stepped to the side, and Orla took my spot standing over the Grimguard, staring down at his unconscious body. Her knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on her shaking blade.

She raised it, holding it directly over the Grimguard’s head. For a second, I thought I might have misjudged her, but then the blade dissipated, and she staggered backwards, pushing her goggles up her forehead.

“Dammit, Wren.”

She hid her eyes behind her hand.

“Then what do we do?”

I looked back towards the busy street. We hadn’t come too far from the inn, and Orla was right when she’d said the Grimguard would die if we left him in the alley.

“Use your cloak to hide his injuries.”

I focused on the muscles in my arms, willing strength into my Nightmare form, and I managed to get the Grimguard half-way upright. Orla slipped her cloak over his head and adjusted its folds so that they hung over his festering burns.

“Great.”

She grunted as she slipped under his other arm to help carry him.

“Now what?”

“We go to your room.”

I adjusted my grip on my side of the Grimguard. His dark-haired head lolled between us, and I wrinkled my nose. He smelled like dirt and sweat.

“Excuse you?”

Orla leaned forward to glare at me around the Grimguard’s chest. “My room?”

“We’ll hide him there and treat his injuries as best we can.”

“And if he follows us after we leave Vanderfall?”

“I think you might be overestimating our First Aid abilities. He’s not following anyone anytime soon.”

The streets had thinned out with the late hour, though we still received plenty of side-eyes as we dragged the Grimguard between us.

“Too much to drink.”

I smiled apologetically at an older man in a duster like Galahad’s. He grunted and returned to his own drink at the street-side bar where he sat.

The Grimguard’s feet dragged behind us as we walked, the toes of his leather boots bumping over cobblestones. I wasn’t sure he would last long enough to make it to Orla’s room, but by the time we pulled him into the lobby of the inn, ragged breaths were still forcing their way up from the back of his throat.

I nodded for Orla to lead the way up the stairwell, and again focused on strengthening my muscles under my imitation Von Leer hoodie. I took the bulk of the Grimguard’s weight and hoisted him over my shoulder.

“I’ve got him,”

I grunted, and followed Orla up the stairs. Each step was a different height than the last, and I staggered up the stairwell with the Grimguard’s head pressed against mine. We were almost to our floor when Orla doubled back into the stairwell, nearly knocking both me and Grimguard back down the steps.

“Tiernan,”

she hissed.

“He’s still outside of Fana’s door!”

“So do something!”

I whispered back.

She bit her lip, then nodded.

“Alright, but be quick. I don’t know how long I can keep him distracted.”

Orla whisked back into the corridor and sprinted into the hall.

“Tiernan, the Grimguard! He’s climbing through Fana’s window!”

I waited for the sound of Fana’s door banging open before darting into the hall with the Grimguard. Tiernan’s shouts mingled with Orla’s frazzled warnings and Fana’s shrieks of surprise. The Grimguard’s boots had just passed the threshold of Orla’s door when Fana’s door slammed down the corridor.

“Are you trying to wake up the entire inn?”

Tiernan’s voice growled.

“No one was out there!”

“Before he left for the Baron’s mansion, Ferrin told me to test you.”

Orla injected her tone with a fake apology.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell him you did great. If there had been a Grimguard outside Fana’s window, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against that broom you threw.”

I dropped the Grimguard onto Orla’s bed, and it depressed under his weight.

“Is he dead yet?”

Orla shut the door behind her as she came in.

“It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

I stepped aside so as much light from the window would pour across the Grimguard’s chest.

“I think he bled on your cloak. I’m sorry.”

“It was already dirty.”

She sipped from one of her glowing Skal bottles before handing it off to me. With a snap of her fingers, the wick of the bedside candle flashed green and then settled into a gentle orange flame.

Meanwhile, I extricated the Grimguard from Orla’s cloak and held the bottle of Skal aloft so I could work by the light of its glow. My stomach turned at the sight of the oozing burns.

“How much medicine do you know?”

Orla asked in a low tone.

“Not enough.”

I went to work unbuckling what was left of the Grimguard’s armor. It resisted my pull, glued to his body by dried sweat and blood. I exhaled heavily to cover the sound of raw flesh unsticking from leather.

“I did Sports Med in high school, but mostly we just shoved tampons up bloody noses.”

“Right.”

Orla nodded importantly.

“Then we find a tampon. What is that?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think they’ll help much here. I need fresh water, a towel, bandages, and the strongest alcohol you can find.”

“I can get you water and alcohol, but my cloak will have to do for a towel and bandages. I’ll be right back.”

She whisked out of the room, leaving me to extricate strips of the Grimguard’s tunic from his wounds. With the leather and cloth pulled away, I could better see the festering wound that splashed across the Grimguard’s torso. The gentle rise and fall of his chest made me wince. Even the tiniest movement looked painful.

The tendrils of burns reached towards his neck, and I leaned in closer to try to see where the injury stopped along the line of his collar bone.

His hand shot up from his side, and fingers wrapped around my neck. I froze with my hands hovering over the Grimguard’s chest. His grip tightened as I raised my gaze from his collar bones to his face. He looked at me through his dark eyelashes. The whites of his eyes didn’t look as black as I remembered them to be, and his irises were more amber than orange and lacked their usual light.

“Are you going to kill me?”

His voice was hoarse and hardly louder than a whisper.

“Not if you don’t kill me,”

I choked out against his grip.

His fingers relaxed, and his arm fell back against the moth-eaten sheets of Orla’s mattress.

“You blew me up,”

he croaked.

“That was Tiernan. He blew me up too.”

“Good.”

He tried to sit, but I pushed him back against the mattress.

“Oh, no,”

I said.

“You can’t fight. Not like this. And if you go out into the hall, Tiernan will probably blow you up for good this time. Lucky for you, he doesn’t know you’re in here. So be good, lie back, and let me help you.”

He glared at me but didn’t have the energy to argue. His labored breathing worked its way through his nose, and his eyes darted around the room. He was probably looking for an escape, but he wouldn’t have been able to fight Jonquil, let alone the Riftkeepers.

“Why?”

he finally growled.

“Why am I helping you?”

I sat back against the bedside table, taking care to avoid the candle.

“Because I’m not a murderer.”

“No, you just work for them.”

I gave him a cold smile.

“Daithi was a murderer too.”

I reminded him. The Grimguard turned his head to the side so that he didn’t have to look at me.

“Do you have a name? And maybe an emergency contact in case you don’t make it?”

The silence that passed between us was so prolonged, that I thought he might have fallen unconscious again, but then he spoke.

“Ciarán Grimguard, Servant of the Frozen God. And you, Blue?”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

“Wren Warrender, Prospective Von Leer Viking. Nice to meet you, Ciarán.”

Ciarán gave a weak grunt in response and rolled his head back to face me. His black hair hung in his face, clinging to his forehead with sweat, and his black and amber eyes were wide. His chapped lips parted, like he was going to say something, but then the door creaked open, and Orla hurried in.

“I got the things, but—”

She paused with her arms full of flasks.

“Oh, gross, he woke up.”

I took the bottles from her and gave the first one a tentative sniff. Alcohol burned my nostrils, and I gagged.

“You said to make sure it was strong.”

Orla shrugged.

“Please tell me that’s for drinking,”

Ciarán rasped.

“I really wish I could say it was.”

I braced myself over his chest.

“Try not to scream. If Tiernan hears—”

“I get it.”

I handed Orla the Skal bottle to hold aloft for me, and she nodded to signal she was ready.

“Bottoms up,”

I mumbled.

The wound was the most shallow near his abdomen, and I gently poured the alcohol over the gashes in the skin there. Ciarán gritted his teeth and arched his back in a futile effort to escape the pain.

“Hold him down,”

I commanded. Orla obeyed, pressing against the Grimguard’s shoulders, and I moved to the center of the wound at his chest, figuring it would be doing him a favor to get the most painful part over first.

Tears streamed down Ciarán’s face, and he moaned through his clenched jaw. Orla reached for her discarded cloak and held it over his face to stifle his cries.

After a moment, his back relaxed against the mattress, and his arms went limp.

“Did you suffocate him?” I hissed.

Orla lifted her cloak to inspect the Grimguard.

“No, I think he passed out from the pain.”

Good. It was probably better this way.

I alternated between water and alcohol, taking my time now that Ciarán was unconscious again. Orla cut her cloak into bandages, but I hesitated before applying them.

“He probably needs an antibiotic.”

“I don’t know this word.”

Orla frowned.

“Is it like a tampon?”

“Something to fight the infection.”

I hovered my finger over the lines of red that ran under his unburnt skin.

“Even if this heals, the infection could kill him.”

Orla shook her head.

“The best we could do is bloodletting, but—”

“Bloodletting?”

I repeated, finally tearing my eyes away from the Grimguard to gawk at Orla.

“You still do that here?”

“How else are we supposed to fight infection?”

“You guys have magick! Doesn’t the Skal do anything?”

I asked. She looked away with a tight frown on her face.

“I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. It’s not your fault Skalterra hasn’t invented penicillin.”

“You and your Keldorian words tonight,”

she sighed.

“Penicillin?”

I let out a dry laugh.

“It’s not that fancy. It’s basically mold.”

“I’m sure we could find some mold somewhere. Maybe the underside of the mattress? Or in the lavatory down the hall?”

I gave a low chuckle.

“While I’m sure the underside of this mattress is disgusting, it’s penicillium mold specifically. And even then, I have no idea how I’d purify it into something that would actually work.”

I leaned back against the table again, watching the rise and fall of Ciarán’s chest. Sports Medicine had prepared me for rolled ankles and bloody noses, not extensive flesh wounds and pioneering antibiotics in a parallel realm. I’d done all I could. If Ciarán died, I would know it wasn’t because I didn’t try.

“It’s funny. I actually did my final project on penicillin last year in my biology class.”

Orla nodded, but I knew the concepts of final projects and biology classes were probably as foreign to her as tampons.

“You’re very smart, Wren Warrender,”

Orla whispered. The dull light of the bottle in her hands cast gentle shadows up her face to accentuate her cheekbones.

“It’s very impressive that you are a physician at such a young age. Unless it’s just your Nightmare that appears young?”

I laughed absently, still watching the rise and fall of the Grimguard’s mottled chest.

“I’m not a physician. Far from it,”

I said.

“But yeah, I’m about as old as I look. I turned eighteen a few months ago.”

Orla’s face brightened in the Skal-light.

“The same as me! And you may not be a physician, but you sound like you know more than our experts, with your penicillin.”

“It would be more useful if I could actually get him some.”

My eyelids itched, but I resisted the urge to pull at my eyelashes. Even if they’d grow back the next night when Galahad remade me, I didn’t want Orla seeing me pluck.

I pulled the sleeves of my Von Leer hoodie down over my hands to help keep my fingers at bay, but then I pushed them back up, all the way to my elbows, so I could stare at my palms and forearms.

I didn’t know the chemical composition of steel, but I’d still fashioned my fingernail into a metal siphon strong enough to puncture copper. My anatomy knowledge was rusty at best, but I’d still been able to grow shards of bone from my arms.

Maybe I didn’t need to know how to make penicillin. Maybe wanting it would be enough.

With the exception of the scar on my palm, my skin was blemish-free.

“I have an idea,”

I whispered. The Skal I’d drank in the alley swirled inside me, warm and buzzing. I focused on it, still staring at my arms.

The first ring of mold rose from my skin near the inside of my elbow. It had a faint purple hue in the flickering candlelight, and its edges crept outwards until it brushed against the rounded edge of a second mold ring.

“Your arms!”

Orla cried, stumbling away.

“Are you doing that?”

A smile forced its way across my face.

“Penicillium,”

I breathed. The mold crawled down my arms, past my wrists and across my palms, itching as it went.

“I need it to be potent and transferable.”

I said it out loud as if to speak it into existence. I was in control. If I decided antibiotic mold sprouted from my skin, then it would, and it would work. Normal penicillium mold needed to be purified to create a usable antibiotic, but I wasn’t making normal penicillium. I was making something better.

The mold reached my fingertips, and my veins buzzed with burning Skal. I turned my palms towards Ciarán and took a steadying breath. When I’d taken my boots off on the steamcart, they’d turned to dust on the floor. This was different. This was something living.

“It will be transferable,”

I said again, and pressed my hands against the raw, burnt mess of Ciarán’s chest.

His wound was sticky and hot, but I ignored the lurch in my stomach to focus on the itching mold in my hands. It would work.

“Is anything happening?”

Orla asked. I shook my head.

“I don’t know. I might not be able to get it to—”

A spot of mold bloomed on an unmarred strip of Ciarán’s skin.

“There!”

Orla held the Skal bottle closer to the ring, the pale blue light highlighting its edges.

“Antibiotics.”

I grinned.

“And you’re sure your mold is better than bloodletting?”

Orla asked.

“Definitely, but bloodletting isn’t off the table if he comes after us again.”

Mottled, ringed patterns of purple spread between the wounds carved across Ciarán’s chest. Normal penicillium mold would probably make him more sick, but I’d built this with the intention to heal, and I had to trust that it would.

“Bandages,”

I whispered, and Orla reached for the strips of her cloak she had prepared. I tried to ignore how clammy Ciarán’s skin felt as I rolled him onto his side while Orla pulled the makeshift bandages tight around his back.

When we’d finally finished and double checked that Ciarán was still alive, we leaned against the window to survey our work. Orla sipped at a flask of leftover water while I rubbed at my arms. The mold had receded now that I didn’t need it, but the body alterations had left me feeling dizzy and drained.

“Do you think he’ll stop hunting us now that we’ve helped him?”

Orla asked into her water flask.

“You know more about Grimguards than I do.”

I was glad Ciarán had stayed unconscious, though he was in for a real treat when he eventually woke up covered in mold.

“Thank you, Orla. For not killing him. And for helping me, even after what his people did to your mom.”

Her shoulder shifted against mine as she sighed.

“It’s what she would’ve done too, to be honest.”

The candlelight caught the swoop of her nose and sent orange light dancing up her forehead. She smiled at the mention of her mother.

“What the hell is going on here?”

We both jerked our heads up at the voice, and Orla’s water flask shattered against the wooden planks of the floor as she dropped it in surprise.

It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been Galahad or Tiernan. They would’ve killed the Grimguard without asking questions, but that didn’t mean I was thrilled to see Ferrin standing in the open doorway.