38 Harvest, 385 - Unknown Location, Midlands, Charan

The Texans scattered as the brown wyvern tucked its massive wings against its body and dove toward them again. Salidda fired another wooden arrow that skipped along the beast’s scaled hide and fell uselessly to the ground before she turned and ran. Nothing they had done had even put a real scratch in the wyvern’s hide. A well made bow with something better than sharpened sticks as arrows would have been a different story, but her cobbled together bow wasn’t working.

With a cracking sound, the wyvern snapped its wings open, talons stretching down, claws spread. Those viciously sharp points dug deeply into Kat’s shoulders, despite her attempt to roll out of the way. The black woman screamed, the sound ripping across the grasslands and echoing against the distant hills. Jet’s scream was almost as loud as Kat’s, anguished. Despite their planning, he turned back for his wife, covering the impossible distance at a breakneck pace.

It seemed like their plan dissolved as soon as Kat began screaming. Cora and Sophie turned back, none of them would be able to cover the distance in time. There was no doubt in Salidda’s mind that she was watching the last agonized moments of Kat’s life.

She felt something rising deep inside herself, a bubbling of fury that washed thought from her mind. Salidda threw herself into the fury with relief, abandoning the thoughts and other emotions that tore at her. She was helpless. They were all helpless. The world was a cruel and hostile place and there was nothing any of them could do about it.

It burned through her like a fever, scorching the dark corners of her spirit with its brilliance. It was like grabbing onto a live thing, a writhing flame that charred her even as it claimed her.

Everyone was focused on the wyvern as it took Kat to the ground with it, talons digging into her shoulders. It threw back its head and unleashed a screeching roar that filled the plains with its victory. Almost as soon as she was down, the wyvern crouched over her, dull brown eyes scanning the humans closing in on it. Wings spread for balance, it paused for a handful of heartbeats.

Jet was closest, but still much too far to help. Between one pounding step and the next, he whipped the pack off his back. Planting his leading foot he spun in place and launched the pack toward the wyvern. He was running again as soon as the pack left his hands.

Dark hair streaming behind her, Sophie never stopped running, even as she dropped her own pack. Unfettered by its weight she suddenly seemed to fly through the whipping stalks of the tall grasses.

Cora ran past Salidda, the wind of her passage unable to pierce through the strange euphoria that had enveloped the plainswoman. She had one hand on the hilt of a hunting knife she wore at her waist.

The wyvern’s huge wings gave a downbeat, kicking up dust in a wide circle. The second downbeat lifted its massive body in a bounce, landing heavily on Kat again. Her screams grew impossibly louder.

Everything was moving so quickly around Salidda and yet seemed to have slowed to a crawl. The wyvern’s beating wings would soon lift it, and Kat with it, out of reach. There was nothing anyone could do, no way for any of them to reach Kat in time. They couldn’t hurt the wyvern anyway. Despair. Futility.

Unknown Location

Desolation was nothing new to the barren landscape. Rocky red stone ridges were blown clear by a scouring wind. A wind that kicked up the sandy red soil and carried clouds of it along, depositing it on dry scrub brush and brittle grasses. Despite all the activity, it was a quiet place save the cry of an ever circling hawk. The small animals and insects moved almost soundlessly over the harsh landscape.

It was a quiet place, suddenly broken by a sound like wet paper tearing.

38 Harvest, 385 - Unknown Location, Midlands, Charan

Brown wings, flaring out and catching the air, pushing down against it. The wyvern was lifting again.

Kat’s agonized screaming seemed to tear through all of them.

The world trembled, teetering on the edge of some unknown chasm.

So much focus, so many conscious minds zeroed in on a single thought. A single impossible thought.

All of the air seemed to flee. Salidda couldn’t get a breath. Her chest was tight, her body trembling. That strange brush of spider webs tickled at her skin, rising gooseflesh all along her arms.

The very sky above them drew in a great breath, as though preparing to unleash a wind unlike anything seen before.

The gentle brush of web changed between one beat of her heart and the next. No longer gentle, it was as though millions of snakes writhed against her bare skin, whipping one way and another with no consideration for gravity. She tried to scream, but the sound was caught in her throat.

Everyone still in motion was moving through air as thick as syrup now, even the wyvern’s wings couldn’t force it to obey. Jet’s pack was still in the air, sailing toward the wyvern’s slablike side. The focus was drawing into a point, a tiny speck of focus that had called all the world’s attention to the wyvern. Salidda’s burning blood seemed to boil over in that moment, her vision faded to red, for an indeterminate time, she could see the wyvern through the haze of red and then everything went black.

Unknown Location

The dusty red wind blasted away from a central point, moving faster than ever before. There was a sound, like the frantic spraying of an unattended firehose, an angry hiss. Then the world was broken by an explosion, the physical force of which cracked the very stones. Shattered red rocks flew like shrapnel, tearing through the brush and grasses. Animals scrambled for cover and those who didn’t make it in time, added their own smears of red to the landscape.

A second of silence seemed to draw out into eternity in the wake of the explosion, but into that silence came the broken echo of a scream.

38 Harvest, 385 - Unknown Location, Midlands, Charan

The dull brown wyvern circled the empty grasslands, bloodsoaked talons tucked up next to its stomach. Huge wings caught the thermals and pushed it higher, long tail trailing behind.

Unknown Location

“Fuck.” It was like a mantra. “Fuck.” Oft repeated, until it seemed to lose all sense of meaning. “Fuck.” Someone elbowed him out of the way.

“Where’s her pack?” A familiar voice asked from somewhere to his left.

It was all he could do to hold pressure to the pulsing wound on Kat’s shoulder.

“Goddamn it, where is her pack?” Another voice, this one to the right.

“Someone check on Salidda.” The first voice again.

“On it.” Second voice, quivering slightly.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck’s sake, Jet. Shove over.” The first voice, Sophie. She had something in her hand that she pressed to Kat’s other shoulder. “Hand here.” She guided him until he was holding both bleeding shoulders. “I have to find her pack.” Her pale eyes searched his face.

Kat was still screaming. He held tightly to her wounds, trying to stem the flow of blood. “Fuck.”

Cora made sure Salidda was still breathing, checked for obvious wounds, and then joined Sophie in the search for the pack. “Do we have potions anywhere else?” She asked once they were a bit away from Jet and his wife.

Sophie only shook her head, glancing over at Jet. “We’re down to only having two anyway.” Her shoulders slumped and she ran the fingers of one hand through her dark hair. “I’m not sure two will be enough.”

Cora was silent for a long moment, her eyes skipping over the injured woman as she looked around. Tillie crowded against her leg. “Fuck.” She murmured quietly, burying her right hand in Tillie’s soft fur. “What do we do?”

“Find the pack, hope to god the potions are enough, and get the fuck out of here, try to find civilization.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?”

Sophie snorted. “Not since we left Texas. Listen, help me find the pack. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Jet had finally stopped cursing and was instead murmuring a constant stream of conversation to his wife as he huddled over her.