Dragon Frost (2 page)

"They will not harm you."

I'm not interested in trying my luck.

"They will not harm you. I cannot fight them alone,"
the kyrie insisted, and nudged Nafury with his muzzle.

Sial had never asked him for anything before. Nor had he ever spoken more than a few words. He ultimately couldn't say no as he owed the creature for saving his life on several occasions.

Nafury looked back as Xirel continued to run desperately towards them. He grabbed Sial's horn and pulled himself up onto his back. The kyrie wasted no time bursting into a run on an intercept course with the stag and Pack.

Sial was faster than any kyrie or chimera on Aster, and for a good reason. He was the kyrie that had protected the Caelestis' weapon for over three hundred years. Nothing alive could catch Sial, not even Nafury when he was possessed by the Awl demon, Daath. Now all he had left of his sister was her weapon that Sial carried as his horn. That and the gold fairy pendant on his neck that matched the one she took with her into death.

They caught up to the stag and Sial ducked as the stag chimera leaped over them. Before Nafury could so much as think of what to do next, he had his sword in hand. It found an immediate target across the chest of the phelan that had been directly behind the chimera.

Sial sprung back to his feet with an unnatural grace for his size, and spun around. The entire Pack stopped the chase to focus on them. Well, almost the entire Pack, as Feryl was still trying to heal the deep cut across his chest. It was a bitch to be wounded as an estus-creature these days. Yet it was fitting as the phelan were the first to lose the light of aeri energy from their souls after Sybl's death.

Nafury jumped down from Sial's back. He held his blood-covered long sword at the ready as the Pack circled him.

'Before I bite your useless head off, I'd like to know exactly what the hell you think you're doing?'
 Feryl unshifted into his human-like appearance in a fury of grey mist. He held the bleeding wound on his chest that mirrored the one he had suffered in his phelan form.

You're hunting Xirel like some stag, and I want to know why. Has Kenshe officially declared war against the whole world?

Feryl gave him the dumbest look Nafury had ever seen on his normally twisted face. The black-and-white-haired shifter looked at the stumbling stag. Xirel chose to stay beside Sial who shielded him from any straying teeth. Then he looked back at Nafury.
'That's not a chimera, you blatant idiot. Look at it! Is it speaking? Thinking past its survival? No. Xirel was strong enough to take out an Earth Sentry, and that deer over there is nothing close.'

Suddenly doubt began to fill Nafury as he looked at the supposed Xirel. The stag collapsed from blood loss against the snow. Still, Sial refused to let up his guard. "The Caelestis' kyrie believes he is Xirel, so that's exactly who he is."

Feryl's stupid look remained only a moment longer, before he burst out into laughter. The other four of the Pack followed suit. "The Caelestis is DEAD. Or did you forget you killed her already? So as far as I'm concerned, she has no Ancient anymore or any need for one."

Sial, say something to them!
Nafury shouted at the kyrie's psi. Sial responded by saying and thinking nothing to the Pack. It was as if he suddenly lost his psi and ability to speak as well, or just wasn't heard.

The former Prince was counting his heartbeats now as the Pack began to negotiate which of them would kill Sial and which would kill Xirel. Time was running out faster than he could think of a way to get out of this mess.

"Has your dead Goddess proclaimed that we are to stop eating meat?" Feryl asked him, and the Pack laughed again.

With the situation precariously in pause, Nafury took a moment to look where the stag lay on his side. He was dying and Nafury's limited aeri without a shift of his own would likely not be enough to save its life. He reached out his psi to Xirel then, and the chimera's mind connected with his first.

'Fay...must reach her before it's too late.'

Nafury stopped breathing, allowing only his mind to inhale all of Xirel's thoughts. He grasped for everything the stag had just said, ignoring the pain from the creature that he had also taken in.
Where is she?

'Here.'
Then Xirel closed his purple eyes and passed out.

Nafury lowered his sword, before remembering that he had to breathe again. He didn't get the chance to when a fist went for his face with enough force to drop him to the ground.

"Worthless sack of garbage you are," Feryl said as he spat a glob of blood next to Nafury's face. "If you didn't have so much sickening sentimental value to the Boss, you would already be dead."

Nafury watched as Feryl went to pick up his helmet from where it had fallen. "The gold on this should be enough to make up for the scar you gave me."

"Don't take that!" Nafury pleaded.

"Oh we're taking it, and your kyrie too." On Feryl's words, the Pack began to snap at Sial who continued to guard Xirel's body.

Sial lowered his horn defensively, refusing to give up.

Run you stupid beast! They will kill you!
Nafury shouted at the creature's mind.

Sial did no such thing. Nafury looked around them as the Animus Threads began to vibrate dangerously. But Sial wasn't an Awl, at least he wasn't from what Nafury knew. He was a chimera who had amassed his intelligence and strength entirely by himself. There was no foreign spirit within him. His strength would prove real, as the ground lifted from under the phelan. Gravity reversed and set them all afloat. Then it exploded outward with the concentrated force of a tornado.

THREE

Kenshe had started his day off interestingly enough. First, the attack on the Efereal Mountains which failed as they did not kill all the traitors. Next, his entire Pack being hurled near death, supposedly by a kyrie. Kas' former kyrie for that matter. Now, the leader of the traitor Awls awaited him as he pulled a stool over and sat down in front of Xirel. He had strung the Awl from the ceiling in the lower dungeons of the Atrum. It would only hold until the chimera regained his strength, assuming he survived that long.

There was no avoiding the worry he had that his Pack may have taken Xirel's treatment a bit too far. When they attacked the Efereal Mountains, their orders were to kill the stag Awl first. What no one expected was that the chimera leader had built a new Gate, and was on Earth at the time of the attack. By now, all of the Awl Tribes across the Continent would have heard of the attack. That, in turn, put the Atrum in the center of a whole lot of dangerous enemies.

What was supposed to be a simple plan was now a complete mess. On top of it all, they did not expect that the Deathmare would show up. It effectively blew apart what ever might be salvageable of the situation. The Caelestis' kyrie had been a laughed-at fairy tale with the secret power it was rumoured to have. Kenshe wasn't laughing now.

The Awl had remained a dozen steps ahead of him, but this was where it would end. Xirel was still bleeding from a wound to his side, yet he refused to let any of their healers' aeri energy heal him. The griffin metal that held him prevented him from using his own energy.

"You pray for all the wrong things...Kenshe," Xirel said as he locked his purple eyes on the Atrum Lord.

"And I suppose she answers your prayers?" Kenshe replied.

"The Caelestis speaks to me all the time. Even now, I can feel the gentle breeze of her psi...reaching out in concern for me. She will return from the realm of death. If you harm me further, then that will be the end of the Atrum and all concerning it, including you," Xirel warned.

"If you hadn't left the Atrum's Order, then none of this would have happened to begin with," Kenshe replied.

"I do not answer to you. None of my chimera ever will trust your kind again. I had hoped that Sybl's memory might be enough to unite us, but you have forgotten her. Therefore, the peace between our kind has also been forgotten. "

"Your chimera Awls will not be a problem once you are dead. Though, I am curious to just what you were looking for on Earth to have left them so vulnerable?"

"You are a fool, Kenshe. Once you might have been a great leader, but you have become corrupt. The blood of Solar that runs in your veins from your dragon mother has betrayed you. Why I was on Earth is none of your concern, for I have nothing more to say to you." Xirel's eyes flared a bright purple for a moment before fading.

Kenshe got to his feet and started to leave. "Then die for all I care."

Xirel had drifted off for an unknown amount of time when a small voice woke him. Only after opening his eyes did he realized that the gentle voice had not come from his head, but from in front of him. "You should not be here--it is too dangerous."

"It's my fault that you're here," the small voice replied.

"You have not received any training with your powers. You need to get out of here before anyone sees you."

"And go where?" the girl asked as she pulled over the stool and stood on it to try her luck with the shackles that hung him up. "Where are the keys?"

Xirel only sighed and dropped his head as Ubi looked in the direction that the phelan shifter had left in.

"I'm not leaving here without you," the girl insisted and pulled her black hood back over her head. With a quick look back, she followed after the Atrum Lord.

Xirel pulled harder at his shackles, cursing the fact that they were made from griffin metal. He closed his eyes tight as he tried to think of how to save her, chorused by prayers to Sybl for a miracle.

FOUR

Nafury didn't know how long he had been out for when he opened his eyes. It could have only been a while, as he had been dragged into a cell. The cold, dark energy that surrounded him meant that he could only be in the Atrum's dungeon.

"Took you long enough to wake up." The voice registered familiar before the dark figure standing in front of his cell did.
 

"Here I was truly starting to believe that we were becoming friends," Nafury replied.

Kenshe grabbed one of the cell bars. "You took everything from me, yet I went on believing that there was a reason somewhere to keep you alive. It would seem that you are incurably cursed with how you always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm out of patience."

"Everything to you?" Nafury laughed at the idea of his sister holding a phelan shifter equally in such high regard. Let alone a kid as messed up as the current Atrum Lord.

"You know nothing," Kenshe said bitterly as his eyes glowed momentarily red.

Nafury lifted his hands in mock surrender to the argument. "Seeing as you haven't already killed me, I can only guess that I'm still important to you. No one has to know of the assassin squad you let loose on the Efereal Mountains. Besides, there are few who would hear any of my words at all."

"The chimeras and Awls were proving too complicated to reason with," Kenshe explained. He crouched down before Nafury's cell to get a better look at him. "I was going to keep you alive for the sake of Sybl's sacrifice, but you have gone out of your way this time to find that death you seek. Tomorrow, you and Xirel will be executed for treason."

Nafury rested his head against the back of his cell and laughed. "Treason? Don't I have to pledge allegiance to you first for that to happen? Come on, Kenshe. That is so unfair. We were supposed to die with a mortal grip on each other's throats as we fell straight into Hell. Now you're going to what? Behead me? How uncivilized. My sister is not going to be happy about any of it."

Kenshe stood up and didn't answer him.

"But if Sybl wants my soul next to hers now, then I'm not going to fight to live. You just really need to tell me what in all the Hells she ever saw in you."

"If she doesn't like who I've become to hold Kas' legacy together, she is welcome to take it up with me personally."

"How about I make this personal between us?" a voice said from down the hall.

Kenshe looked at the young teenage ayame. "What are you doing down here?"

"You hurt Xirel, and now I'm going to make you pay for it!"

Kenshe wasn't phased, and he didn't bother to reach for his blade.

Nafury got to his feet and looked from the other side of the bars to his little rescuer. There was something about her that she was using a great deal of her concentration to keep hidden.

"I have not called for you. Leave," Kenshe ordered.

"How dare you speak to me like I'm one of your dogs!" the voice hissed back and bright blue eyes replaced the red glow as the girl's hood lifted. Her eyes focused on Kenshe's wolf-like shift that stood just a little ways behind him in its spirit form.

Kenshe's right hand was on the Threads around him to form a defence now. The blue glow of her eyes was uncanny. But she didn't attack him directly. Instead, his own shift came straight at him from behind with a mouthful of teeth that caught his shoulder and arm in a vice grip. Unable to fight back as he was, his shift dashed down the hall, carrying him as if he were a mere corpse.