Regrets of The Fallen (Victis Honor Book 1) (45 page)

“Well you’ve been ‘assessing our situation’ for the last three days.”

“I think I liked you better when you only said two words at a time.”

“Stop whining.
There’s
your two words.”

“Ugh. If you weren’t so
hot I’d leave you behind.”

“Leave me behind? Bella, you couldn’t leave a snail behind if you tossed it in a vat of molasses before catching a train.”

“Putting aside for the moment that I have no idea what ‘catching a train’ means - apart from something you’re using to insult me - I am very offended that you’re making fun of my condition like that.”

“No you’re not.”

“Well, I
could
be.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

“You don’t know
everything
about me.”

“More than I want to.”

“Sigh. What happened to us? We used to be so happy…”

“We trudged through mud for three days straight. Also, you’re not actually supposed to
say
‘sigh’. You just sigh.”

“It was for dramatic effect.”

“You’re certainly very dramatic.”

“It’s the end, Haruka! We could die here!”

“That would be a very sad end.”

“We could keel over and sink into the mud and no one would ever find our bodies
.”

“You’ve now passed ‘dramatic’ and sailed straight into ‘morbid’. What, exactly, is causing us to ‘keel over’ in this nightmare scenario?”

“I don’t know. Some type of disease?”

“Probably caused by all the mud, I’m guessing.”

“Yes! The
mud
. This is
diseased mud
. It’s also completely ruined my boots, which were brand new when Ophelia gave them to me.”

“I can see how that’s as important as the disease.”

“It may be even
more
important.”

“And here we go
again
…”

“Imagine, if you will, that you’re a beautiful blue-tressed lass.”

“’Tressed’? ‘Lass’?”

“A BEAUTIFUL BLUE-TRESSED LASS.”

“’Beautiful’?”

“I will
end
you.”

“Sorry. Carry on.”

“Imagine you’re a beautiful blue-tressed lass – I saw that look – and you’re going along, silently carrying your burden-“

“’
Silently’
?!”

“-SILENTLY CARRYING YOUR BURDEN, when suddenly, oh no! Your boots are being ruined!”

“Oh no!”

“Now horrible disease-carrying mud is leaking in through them, infesting you with all sorts of illnesses!”

“You’re infested?”

“You try to push onward, ever the stalwart survivor, but your boots break apart and you fall, cutting your hand on a branch!”

“As you do.”

“Yes, as you do, and then – infection!”

“Just like that?”

“
Just like that
. And then, the next thing you know, you’re dead from Mud Disease.”

“How dreadful. And she was such a beautiful blue-tressed lass, too.”

“She was. Cut down in her prime by the twin terrors of plague-ridden mud and decaying footwear!”

“Well we can’t have that. Such a fate must be avoided!”

“But how? Can you truly escape the cruel hand of vicious, mud-wielding Fate?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Ack!”

Haruka suddenly swept Bella’s legs out from under her with one arm and caught her back with the other, lifting her up and proceeding to carry her. Isabella wrapped her arms around her neck, grinning. “This is better!”

“It’s not bad.”

“Why don’t you do this
all
the time?”

“It was fun to hear you complain.”

“You’re a sadist.”

“Yes.”

IXH

Isabella and Haruka lay on dry grass in the middle of the night, having made it out of the forest. Summer was here and the night was pleasantly warm, enough so that they had decided to not even put up the tent; instead they were outside and staring at the cloudless sky, studying the millions of stars visible on such a clear night away from any light source but the moon. For a moment they were free from thinking about their limited time, or death, or what they had to face, or the enemies pursuing them.

“I remember once,” Haruka started, “when a clear night sky like this became, to me, the most welcome sight imaginable.”

Isabella looked over at her. “Were you trapped somewhere?”

Haruka nodded. “Way underground.” She adjusted her arms beneath her head, shifting her back on the grass and bending one knee to get more comfortable. “I’m not claustrophobic, but it still wasn’t pleasant.”

“How did you end up there?”

“I was sent to kill a vampire. He was actually in a coven in this tunnel system beneath the mountains far northwest of here.”

“Were you sent alone?”

“We are – we
were
– normally sent in pairs, so I had a partner. We infiltrated well enough, but vampires are really hard to avoid being detected by. We made a mistake and, in the middle of the tunnels, it turned into a fight.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to fight a bunch of vampires in tunnels.”

“It didn’t go very well. My partner decided to step it up and created an explosion before I could stop him.”

“In an underground tunnel?!”

“He wasn’t very experienced; it wasn’t really his fault. Anyway, predictably, the whole place started coming down. We tried to get out of there but he was buried. I barely managed to avoid being crushed by falling rock, but ended up trapped with rubble on all sides.”

“I’m feeling claustrophobic just thinking about it. Did you use those exploding marks to get out?”

“No, those take a lot of energy. I’d had to run away from the entrance we took, so I had no idea how far from an exit I was. I couldn’t waste that much energy, especially since I had to use it to slow my breathing and extend my air supply.”

“Sometimes I forget how much control you have over your body. So how did you get out?”

“I started digging.”

“What, with your
hands
?”

“Yep.”

“You dug your way through rock with your hands?”

“Like I said, it wasn’t pleasant. And it was pretty painful. It also took
hours
, but I couldn’t rest very much. When I finally made it out it was the middle of the night, and we’d entered that morning to take advantage of standard vampiric sleep schedules. I remember the exact feeling of the cool air and the appearance of the sky, which looked very much like it does right now.”

“You have a lot of determination. I don’t think you’d have made it through what you have without that.”

Haruka looked over at her. “I’m not the only one who went through things. What about you? You’ve mentioned killing a dragon, which is hard to even imagine, but I haven’t heard that story yet.”

Isabella smiled. “Oh, so it’s my turn for
story time again?”

“Yep. Dragon, go.”

Bella let out a thoughtful sigh, looking back up and running through her memories. “I didn’t feel a lot of things during that long span of time, so the points when I did still stick out. That was one of them; I haven’t experienced fear very often because I was either too shut off to feel it, or guilt prevented me from fearing the loss of my own life. That time, though, I felt it.”

“So what happened? How did you end up fighting one of those monsters? And what kind was it?”

“He was a red,” Isabella answered. “His name was Ak’novar Ril’kujara, which means ‘Embodiment of the Blood Red Sun’ in Draconic. Most referred to him as ‘Akril’ or ‘Red Sun’. And I fought him because he challenged me.”

“You answered a dragon’s challenge.”

“Yes.” She glanced at Haruka. “Remember, I didn’t put a lot of value in my life. Faust supported my decision because he knew that if I could win, my reputation would increase even more, and others would join him without even needing to be conquered first. Anyway, I met Akril in his chosen spot, a low area between mountains that held old ruins, long since overgrown with vines and other plant life. I don’t know if you’ve ever approached a dragon, but you’ve probably heard that they never stop growing – the older one is, the bigger it is. I can say Akril was apparently pretty old.”

“How big was he?”

“I’ve heard tales of dragons the size of towns or even cities, and fortunately he wasn’t
that
size. He was… about the size of Freya’s ship, I think.”

Haruka whistled. “I’m not sure how to start to fight that.”

“Well, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t plan. As we spoke, I just chose to transform into my Demonic State.”

“Demonic? Why not the one with the shield?”

“My Demonic State has some resistance to fire, but more importantly, trust me – if you were looking at something that big that you had to kill, you, too, would want the biggest weapon you could get in your hands.”

“Makes sense. You said you spoke; what did you talk about? I’ve never met
anyone who’s spoken to a dragon.”

“Well… There’s a reason I haven’t told this story before. This is going to sound really weird, but… we kind of talked about you.”

Haruka blinked. “What?” She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked over at her. “How is that possible?”

“Dragons don’t really follow
all
the rules of reality. Sometimes they know things they shouldn’t. Your
name
was never mentioned, but it’s obvious now that it was definitely about you.”

“So what did he say? You can’t just not tell me now.”

“He said… I had given up too fast. He told me that I should start fighting with conviction because I had something to fight for. At the time I thought he was screwing with my head, but he said that he was going to kill me, and if I wanted to meet the person who would bring back
meaning
to my life, I would have to
fight
for my life.”

“Why would he say that…?”

Isabella shrugged. “Dragons are odd things. It’s like we all have a veil that prevents us from seeing anything beyond our own present and memories, but for them, sometimes it’s not there, or more likely they catch glimpses of things through it. Anyway… That’s why I kept this.” She removed the pommel of her sword and slid the dragon fang tip out of the hilt, holding it up. “At the time I didn’t
really
believe he was telling the truth, but I thought… Maybe he’d lead me to whatever he was talking about.”

Haruka took it and turned it in her fingers. “I guess he did.”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

Haruka remained silent for a long moment before tossing it back to Bella with a smile. “You haven’t gotten to the fight, though. What was it like?”

“Intense,” Isabella answered as she replaced the fang in her sword. “Chaotic. Wild. The first thing he did was ignite all the greenery around me. From that point on there was fire
everywhere.
To escape it, I rushed him. I fended off his jaws and claws for a minute, but I wasn’t getting anywhere and the fire was spreading. So, I jumped on his back, and that’s when he took off.”

“
That
sounds crazy.”

“He went so
fast
. I haven’t experienced anything
close
to that speed since. The wind was so loud I could barely hear his roars, and in seconds the ground was far, far below. I could see my city, I could see other cities and towns I’d visited. I could see
everything
. Eventually we ended up in the clouds and his flying grew so chaotic I couldn’t even remember which way was down, and I couldn’t see it. My memory of that part is all a blur of white and red. I remember that he managed to dislodge me from his back and it was the weirdest sensation – I felt like I was just floating there for a moment, and then suddenly gravity came back and yanked me down. He rushed back at me with jaws open, I jammed my sword into one jaw and used the momentum to get up on his head. Then it got even crazier.”

“This sounds completely insane.”

“I probably would’ve thought the same thing at the time, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied. We fought in the air for a long time and I eventually damaged one of his wings. He folded both in and dived, and I held on as everything shot past me too fast to comprehend. As we neared the ground he opened his wings and managed to slow before crashing into the side of a mountain. I broke several bones in the impact, as even
he
did; I later learned that the people in my city were actually able to see that impact despite the distance. We both got up and, after that, it was more like a fight between animals. We used no tactics, no plans, no deception; we just went at each other with ferocity. I suffered burns, gouges, and a lot of the scars you’ve gotten to know pretty well; he suffered cuts and stabs. His power was overwhelming; imagine a battle where every hit you block knocks you a dozen yards and compacts your skeleton as if a boulder just landed on your shoulders.”