Page 6 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

The Grimguard’s steel-toed boot stood so close that I could smell the dirt and loam that clung to its tread. I craned my head away from the tree root to better see the Grimguard towering over me. The light from my discarded weapon cast deep shadows up his body and face, but he looked just as he had the night before, all dark clothes and glowing orange irises. Pale Skal-light from the bottles at his belt peeked out from beneath a tattered cloak that hung down his frame.

Orange light sparked to life in his hands, and I abandoned my flail in the roots, rolling away to avoid the spear that skewered the space I’d just been lying.

I backpedaled away, scooting through dirt and dust, keeping my eyes on the Grimguard as he yanked the spear out of the root.

“Were you there?”

His voice was an icy growl.

“Did you help them kill Daithi?”

I scrambled to my feet. The spear sizzled as it flew through the air, and I ducked in time to hear the dull thunk of it embedding itself in the tree trunk.

“I’m not with them.”

I put my hands up. I still wasn’t convinced this was real, but if it were? Galahad and his pals were the ones who’d dragged me into this nightmare. I wasn’t prepared to take a spear to the skull for them.

“No?”

The Grimguard stepped off the tangled roots, looking all the more sinister with the silver light of my flail at his back.

“I thought you were a Nightmare last night. You reek of dirt and used-up Skal. But you’re back. Nightmares don’t come back.”

“Maybe I’m not a Nightmare.”

I puffed my chest out, trying to look tougher than I felt. The hiss that sounded from beneath the man’s cowl resembled something like a laugh.

“That’s Galahad’s Skalmagick, Blue. I don’t know how you’re lucid, but since you are, maybe you can tell me, which of those cowards killed Daithi?”

Another spear formed in his hands, and he held the point just beneath my chin. The weapon’s orange glow bounced off the black sclera of his eyes. I wondered if that’s what Orla and the others’ eyes would look like if they didn’t wear their goggles.

Orla.

I searched for her green beacon through the trees to my left, but the only lights were my silver and the Grimguard’s orange.

The Grimguard tensed, as if preparing to lunge forward and drive the point of his spear through my neck, and I grabbed the staff of the weapon with both hands before he could make his move.

White-hot pain seared across both my palms, but I kept my grip and swung the spear. The Grimguard stumbled to the side, and I released the staff, unable to bear the burning in my hands any longer. I curled burnt fingers over my welted palms and cradled them against my chest.

The spear sizzled against air resistance, and I managed to avoid the attack, but the Grimguard already had a new weapon in hand. He brought a massive orange broadsword down swinging over my head.

Some ancient instinct took over, maybe something Galahad had programmed into my Nightmare body, and I pulled a new weapon from the air.

Sword! I need a sword! I told myself, trying to imagine the weight of a sword in my hand.

Nope. Another flail.

Damn. It.

I rolled out of the way of the broadsword attack, swinging my flail feebly in response. The Grimguard stepped back, and though half his face was covered by his cowl, something about the look in his eyes and the set of jaw told me he was smirking.

“If you kill me,”

I panted.

“how will I tell you who killed Daithi?”

“I’ll just have to ask you again tomorrow night when Galahad drags you back to fight his fights for him.”

He swung again, but I was proving adept at dodging. He buried the edge of the sword in the side of a tree, and pulled on the handle. When it didn’t budge, I saw my opportunity and brought my flail arcing downwards.

He abandoned the sword to dodge my attack, and when he tried to form a new weapon, the orange light sputtered and died in his hands.

“Ha!”

I yelled. He was out of Skalmagick. For the first time since I’d gotten Linsey Harper expelled from Von Leer, I had the upper hand in something.

A muscle in my back spasmed with the effort of swinging my flail as hard as I could. The spiked ball hurtled towards the Grimguard’s head, crackling with silver fire and energy.

I had him. I had him.

He stepped back, out of my range, and the flail ripped itself from my grip, sending the weapon careening between the trees.

We both paused to watch its light get farther and farther, until a gentle thud told us it had found a resting place in the dirt.

The Grimguard’s hands shot to the bottles of Skal that hung from his belt, but I already had a new flail in hand. It wasn’t quite the throwing knife I’d been trying to form, but it would do.

His spear had burnt my hands. I was certain any weapon of mine would do the same to him.

I hurled the flail at the Grimguard, making no effort to keep a hold of it this time. He danced away, but I was ready with a new weapon to rain flail after flail down on the Grimguard.

Because it didn’t matter that I didn’t want to fight him. If he managed to get to the bottles of Skal at his belt, he’d make sure I died, and, yeah, I was mostly sure Galahad and the scar he’d left on my hand weren’t real, but I wasn’t keen to prove it with another dream that ended with me skewered.

Each flail I threw was heavier than the last, and the Grimguard saw an opening in my attacks as they slowed. He tackled me around the middle, pulling us both to the forest floor. He pinned my arms to my side under his legs, and leaned in towards my face as he panted for air.

“Your methods are…”

He paused for breath.

“Inspired?”

I quipped. I arched my neck, trying to wiggle free, and he placed a leather-clad hand over my sternum to keep me still in the dirt.

“I was going to say questionable.”

He removed a bottle from his belt, deftly uncorking it before pulling his cowl down. He was clean-shaven, and his pale skin glowed white in the light of my many discarded flails. The neat line of his nose matched the sharp cut of his jaw, and I was struck by how young he appeared.

“You’re bleeding yourself dry of Skal. You’ll be nothing but dust if you keep this up.”

He shook loose hair back from his face and downed the bottle of Skal in a single gulp. Light sparked in his hands.

I doubled my efforts to escape, trying to buck the Grimguard off me, but he leaned in closer, so that his forearm was a heavy weight across my chest as an orange sword formed in his free hand.

“Now. Back to my question. Did you help them kill Daithi?”

The sword tip seared beneath my chin.

“No,” I spat.

“Then who did it?”

I remembered Galahad turning me into a tree, and I remembered forcing my trunk to break into two legs. This was my dream. I had control.

I ignored the Grimguard’s sword and instead focused on my arms slowly going numb under the weight of the Grimguard’s legs. I imagined what it might feel like to grow boney spikes, and sharp agony erupted across both my forearms.

My cry of pain mingled with that of the Grimguard, and I finally bucked him away. I staggered to my feet, staring at the four serrated spikes of bone that stuck out from each of my arms like knives. Dark blood dripped off their points, and my eyes darted to the Grimguard, who hurried to use his cloaks to hide the gauge marks my improvised anatomy had left in his thighs.

“It wasn’t the old man.”

His voice was haggard with pain, and he pulled a second sword from the air.

“He can make Nightmares, sure, but he’s otherwise useless, as much as he pretends he isn’t.”

He launched at me, his swords melting into twin blurs as he twirled them ahead of himself. I threw my forearms up in defense, but he cut through the bone spikes like they were nothing.

The pain was blinding, and the Grimguard pressed me against the gnarled trunk of a tree, pinning my hands up over my head and holding me there with the weight of his body. His chest heaved against mine as we both fought for air.

His orange irises glinted and shined brighter while his eyebrows drew together.

“Was it the Quillguard maybe? What’s his name again? Ferrin?”

he whispered.

“Or perhaps Caitria?”

“Caitria is dead.”

The venom in my voice surprised even me. The face of the dead woman with blood matting her hair haunted me. Even if she’d never existed, the memory of her corpse felt real.

I tried to procure a sword, knife, flail, anything in my pinned hands, but drew only silver smoke that flickered feebly between my fingers. Whatever Skal Galahad had used to create me must have been running low.

The Grimguard smiled. It was a shame lips as pretty as his had to share a face with such horrifying eyes.

“Caitria? Dead? Well, that’s wonderful news. Then it must’ve been Ferrin. I hear he and Caitria were…”

he paused and licked his lips as he searched for the next word, “…close.”

I glared back at him, which he must’ve taken as confirmation that it had indeed been Ferrin who’d killed the other Grimguard because his smile darkened.

“Fine. Kill me,”

I spat. He had the information he wanted. I might as well get the gory bit over with so I could wake up and escape this nightmare.

“You aren’t real anyway.”

The Grimguard twirled one of my dismembered bone spikes in his free hand and leaned in to plant a tiny, soft kiss on the tip of my nose.

“If you say so.”

His wrist flicked, and the silver lights of my many flails were swallowed by the dark of the forest as pain erupted below my chin.

Wood flooring pressed against my cheek, and I opened my eyes to the space beneath my bed. Jonquil lurked in its depths, her blue eyes glinting in the dark. She looked very much like she was trying to be menacing, but her fluffy coat and pushed-in face made her look more like an angry slipper.

“Crap.”

I groaned, pushing myself up off the floor of my bedroom. Night had fallen outside, and the light from my digital clock spilled across the floor. My head pounded where I must’ve hit it when I fell asleep, and the cut of the Grimguard’s killing blow still stung beneath my chin, but both maladies paled in comparison to the cutting pain that suddenly seared across my palm. “Crap!”

I grabbed my wrist and forced my fingers to unfurl. The T-shaped scar of my left palm caught the edges of green light from my digital clock, but a new, angry line cut its way across the trunk of the T. It was shorter than the line that ran perpendicular to the trunk, and I thought it glowed a faint silver for just a moment, but it must’ve been a trick of the moonlight streaming in from my window.

I stared at my palm, my heart thundering in my ears. Then red droplets fell on the pale skin of my arm, sticky and thick.

I swallowed and raised a shaking hand to my neck where the Grimguard had cut me. My fingers came away wet with my own blood.

No. No.

No, no, no, no, no.

This was worse than Linsey. This was worse than being waitlisted.

Because I knew what the new line was. It was a notch. It was a countdown. It was a confirmation of something I hadn’t wanted to consider.

Skalterra wasn’t a dream, and neither was the limit Galahad had placed on how many times I could die while I was there.

I’d lost one life, represented by the new mark on my scarred hand. I only had four more.

The gravity of the mess I was in had only just started to dawn on me when Galahad’s voice echoed at the back of my head.

“I hope you didn’t think dying while the evening was still young would give you the rest of the night off. We aren’t finished with you yet.”

Jonquil meowed at me as I slumped forward yet again.