Page 25 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

Mom’s video had over two hundred thousand views by the time I trudged to my room for an early bedtime. Against my better judgement, I continued to read the comments as they rolled in. Many of them remained firmly on Mom’s side, gleaning what they could from her angry rant, but there were still plenty of strangers online who didn’t hold back.

“Trashy writer, trashy woman”

was among the kindest of these responses. The rest had me grateful that Gams didn’t know how to look up the video and read the comments for herself.

Rather than wallow in guilt and shame, I crawled into bed while the sun was still setting, eager to fall asleep and wake up in a world where Riley’s memorial, my upcoming Von Leer phone interview, and Linsey Harper didn’t exist, even if it meant facing more rotsbane.

The others waited in a half-circle when I came to in Skalterra. We were back under tree cover, but these trees were unlike any I’d ever seen back home. Massive, grooved trunks reached high into the sky where their shallow canopies spread out like the underside side of mushroom caps so that I felt more like I was in the belly of a grand cathedral rather than another forest. Stars twinkled in the spaces between foliage, and I caught a glimpse of the twin moons.

“What happened?”

Galahad was the first to get in my face, and after a full day of reading nasty comments about my mother online, it took me a moment to remember the fight against Titus the night before.

“Oh.”

I ran my hand through my blue hair to pull it back into a ponytail.

“You mean Tamora’s dog?”

“Tiernan said he’s a lucid Nightmare.”

Ferrin frowned. His goggles were in place over his eyes, and he focused on the glowing green knives he was creating in his hands.

“Is he the one that ashed you? Is there any chance he followed us?”

“Ashed?”

I repeated.

“You mean killed?”

“Yes, girl!”

Galahad shook me by my shoulders.

“I felt you go halfway through the night! Did you or did you not at least manage to keep Titus off our tail?”

I flipped my blue ponytail over my shoulder and smirked.

“Don’t worry. I killed Titus. Or ashed him. Whatever the word is. There’s no way he followed you.”

“Then who killed you?”

Galahad demanded.

“A rotsbane.”

The color drained from Galahad’s face, leaving him pallid in the light of Ferrin’s knife.

“No.”

Orla stumbled forward to take my hands in hers, and she searched my face for signs of lingering injury.

“But then, you should be dead-dead! If it killed you—”

“It didn’t eat me.”

I made a stabbing motion at my stomach.

“It was its claws. And for what it’s worth, it died first.”

“Died?”

Tiernan’s eyebrows raised in something other than disgust for once.

“Yeah, I killed it.”

I took a special delight in their blank stares. They didn’t need to know Ciarán had tipped me off about a rotsbane’s mouth being its weak point.

“You…”

Ferrin’s mouth cocked in a disbelieving half-smile.

“You killed a rotsbane?”

“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

I pointed out.

“I’m supposed to be the perfect weapon.”

“Sure, but rotsbane are incredibly difficult to kill.”

Ferrin twirled one of his knives.

“And dangerous!”

Orla interjected.

“Obviously.”

I gestured at my abdomen again.

“I died. Anyway, where are we now?”

Moonlight cast lines of silver across the barren forest floor, and I craned my head back to look up at the patchwork of leaves and branches overhead. An owl hooted in the distance.

“We’re properly in the Wisting Wilds now.”

Ferrin stepped back and spread his arms wide to welcome me to the forest.

“Four hundred years ago, when every Magician was forced into Skalterra, this is where they appeared. Now, it’s all but abandoned and near impossible to navigate.”

“Near impossible,”

Galahad grunted. He turned his back to me and pointed deeper into the forest.

“You’re on point, Ferrin. Orla, with Tiernan and Fana. Miss Warrender, you’ll be with me tonight.”

“Really?”

Orla groaned.

“I thought it was my turn to be with Wren again.”

“With Tiernan and Fana, Orla,”

Galahad growled. Orla cast me a forlorn look and stretched her fingers out towards me in farewell.

“Tomorrow night, then,”

she promised.

“I want to hear more about the fight with the rotsbane.”

The trees were sparse, standing straight and stoic like lonely giants. Aside from a few ferns and the occasional glowing mushroom, the forest floor was free of undergrowth. Even split up, the others were clearly visible walking ahead of us.

Galahad limped alongside me with the aid of a silver walking stick made of Skal.

“How many lives left is that then?”

he asked between heavy breaths exhaled through his nose.

I unfurled my fingers in front of me to show off the gray lines of scar.

“Two,”

I admitted. He gave a grunting laugh, and I scowled.

“One of them was Tiernan’s fault.”

“Then you best hope Tiernan doesn’t blow you up anymore.”

I stopped in a shaft of moonlight that cut to the forest floor, but Galahad continued his forward shuffle.

“You can take it away, you know. I don’t need…”

I wrestled with my pride as it stood in the way of the words I was looking for.

“I don’t need the extra motivation. I don’t want Fana to die. Or any of you. I’ll help. Just, take it away, alright?”

I held my palm out for Galahad, and he staggered to a halt. He turned back to glare at the scars he’d left on my hand.

“No.”

He continued his forward march.

“No?”

I repeated and rushed to catch up to him.

“I’m telling you I want to help! You don’t have to put my life on the line to keep me here anymore. I’m here because I want to be.”

“You’re here because I brought you here, Wren Warrender.”

He kept his goggled eyes trained on Fana’s back up ahead.

“Right! So take away the limit on how many times I can die so you can keep bringing me here!”

“Don’t tell me you’ve grown attached to Skalterra. Is Keldori really so miserable that you’d rather have us, with our rotsbane, barons, and cruel old men?”

He turned his eyes on me, and even though it was impossible to see through the opaque glass of his goggles, I knew he was glaring.

“I don’t want to die,” I said.

“Then do your job.”

“That’s gotten me killed three times already!”

“So do your job better!”

He batted at my head with his walking stick. I smacked it away.

“I’m doing my best,”

I grumbled.

“Then may the Three Magicians save us all.”

I balled my hands into fists as he continued ahead of me. I glared at the back of his leather duster and wrestled with my pride. There was one more thing weighing on my shoulders, but of all the people in either of my lives, Galahad was near the bottom of the list of who I wanted to dissect it with. However, as sullen and cruel as Galahad could be, he was my anchor in Skalterra. It was his magick that formed this version of me every night.

“It’s not about Keldori or Skalterra,”

I admitted.

“Oh, Miss Warrender, I already know you aren’t here to be a hero. Every Nightmare is an idealized version of themselves. I imagine it’s addicting, getting to exist as something better than yourself. But this isn’t you.”

He paused and pushed his goggles up to stare at me with fierce gray eyes that caught the silver light of his staff.

“Skalterra isn’t your home. The Wren Warrender asleep in Keldori is who you are. You are here to help because I’ve called you here, and after we reach the Second Sentinel, you won’t be coming back.”

“This Wren kills rotsbane!”

I smacked my chest armor as I said it.

“This Wren doesn’t mess everything up.”

“Then you better not die anymore so you can enjoy your last two weeks of being ‘This Wren’.”

“Why not remove the curse?”

I held my hand at the wrist, as if to offer the scars up to Galahad. His bushy eyebrows softened.

“I’m not going to run anymore.”

“Maybe it would be a mercy for you to die in Skalterra rather than never return to this version of yourself. Perhaps I simply don’t like you much. Or, Wren Warrender, it isn’t a curse that can be reversed, and if I could I would, but I can’t.”

“You…”

I trailed off, letting the weight of Galahad’s words settle in my gut.

“You can’t.”

“Two weeks, Wren Warrender,”

he said again.

“It’s funny. If you hadn’t proven yourself so useful, I might’ve stopped calling you back before now.”

A low laugh in the back of my head made my cheeks burn. This was not a conversation I wanted Ciarán to overhear, but it was far too late for that.

I closed my fingers over the scars on my hand and bit my tongue. Whatever sharp words I wanted to throw at the Grimguard for eavesdropping would have to wait. If Galahad knew Ciarán was listening in, he’d be sure to expend my final two lives himself.

Ciarán didn’t give any more indication that he was lurking in my mind, and the night’s march brought us to smaller trees and heavier undergrowth. As the trees closed in around us, I took comfort in my friends around me. These woods weren’t nearly as dense as the birch forest from a few nights prior. I would be okay.

The terrain became steep and rocky to the point of having to climb in some areas. Clusters of tiny white flowers broke through cracks in the rocks. Their delicate petals emitted a soft light, and while I helped the others set up a humble camp before daybreak, Fana played with the glowing flowers and wove them into her curls.

After Galahad released me for the night, I woke up at home well-rested despite all the walking and climbing. Then I remembered that there would surely be more comments on Linsey’s video of Mom and my phone interview with Von Leer was in two days, and I wished I could be back in Skalterra.

Liam’s return to work only made me feel worse. He did his best to smile, but he looked absolutely miserable scooping ice-cream for the few families that trickled in throughout the day. I wondered vaguely if his aunt and her white lilies had won the battle over memorial flower arrangements but thought better than to ask.

It was a relief when the day finally ended, and I could crawl back to my room after an early dinner with Gams in the kitchen. I breathed a sigh as my bedroom ceiling morphed into a darkening sky over the Wisting Wilds.

The terrain was steep and rocky enough to force us to stay together, and more than once we had to set up a system of ropes to ascend cliff faces. I paused on one of these ascensions, tethered between Ferrin and Orla, to look out over the forest we’d traveled through the night before. I could see the Umberdust Plains beyond the trees, and more forests and rivers beyond that.

“You should see it during the day.”

Ferrin caught me staring out at the landscape. He clung to the rocks with one hand and used the other to push sweat-soaked hair away from his forehead.

“You should bring me by sometime,”

I laughed.

“I thought you said you have a life back in Keldori.”

Ferrin grunted as he hoisted himself farther up the cliff.

“Only most days.”

I scaled the next few feet. Climbing was easy for me in my Nightmare form, and I had to be careful not to move too quickly for Ferrin and Orla.

“If I can convince my grandma to let me sleep all day, I’m yours.”

“Tomorrow?”

Orla asked hopefully.

“Or maybe the next?”

“Not the next.”

A bit of loose rock crumbled under my hand and fell away. Tiernan yelled something up at me, but I ignored him.

“I have a big phone call that day.”

“Phone call?”

Orla asked through a curious smile. She was handling the climb much better than Ferrin with her long limbs.

“It’s like a meeting,”

I explained.

“This one is very important. And it’s in the morning, so Galahad better not keep me too long tomorrow night.”

“We’ll be safe in Tulyr by then,”

Ferrin said through gritted teeth. The bottles at his belt, which were mostly empty now, grated against the cliff face as he used his legs to propel himself up another two feet.

“I’m sure Galahad will agree to let you go a little early, especially since we haven’t seen the Grimguard since we left him in Orla’s bed.”

Ciarán, who had stayed silent until now, gave a low chuckle in my mind, and I pressed my forehead against the rock face.

“Maybe he decided not to hunt us anymore,”

Orla suggested.

“Since we helped him.”

“Perhaps.”

Ferrin’s eyes met mine under his lifted arm, and I looked away before he could somehow see that the Grimguard was hiding in my head.

The rest of the night passed with more climbing, one run-in with a mountain lion that Tiernan was able to lead away, and setting up camp in a shallow cave that overlooked the Skalterran landscape. The rising sun had just started to dye the distant hills a dusty orange when Galahad sent me home.

However, when Gams greeted me downstairs with a reminder that my phone interview with Von Leer admissions was the next morning, I wished I was sitting in the Skalterran cave with my friends, even if it meant Ciarán was listening to everything I said.

Liam tried to run through practice questions with me at lunch, but we were both distracted with our own worries, and ended up staring out at the water in silence more than anything. Still, the company was nice, and he was polite enough to not make me talk about my feelings.

Gams mentioned an early bedtime to prepare for my interview in the morning, and I happily took her up on the suggestion. The sooner I could be in Skalterra, the better.

I got comfortable under my covers while Jonquil took her spot on the foot of the bed, and then I waited until my bedroom twisted and fell, leaving me standing atop the bluffs we’d climbed the night before.

“We’ll reach Tulyr in a few hours if we hurry,”

Galahad was explaining to Ferrin nearby.

“The plateau is safe. It might be a good place to stay an extra day and let everybody rest up.”

“Either you’re growing soft or you’re tired too,”

Ferrin laughed back.

“Just-Wren!”

Orla appeared at my side, laden with her and Fana’s packs.

“Are you ready to see Tulyr? Not many people ever get to visit. I’ll bet you’re the first Keldorian since it fell fifty years ago, though most Skalterrans don’t get to see it either since it’s a dead city.”

“A dead city?”

a voice called out. We whipped around to look up at a young woman standing on a ledge fifteen feet overhead. Her long silver hair caught on the wind, and she glared down at us through icy gray eyes set against smooth tanned skin. Her silver-plated armor made it hard to notice that one of her legs wasn’t a leg at all, but a prosthesis built of glowing silver Skal.

“Is that what Galahad told you?”

Tiernan loosed a golden javelin at the woman, but she raised a hand, and the weapon shattered in a burst of light when it met her palm. Tiernan staggered backwards in shock.

“Don’t waste your magick. She’s a Skalbreaker,”

Galahad growled. He hobbled forward to stand between us and the woman.

“I wondered when you’d be out to meet us, Iseult. It’s been a while. Your mother’s armor fits you well.”

“Don’t flatter me, Grandfather. You know it won’t gain you entry to Tulyr. Turn back now, and I won’t kill you where you stand.”