Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) (58 page)

I nodded and quietly piled a few more logs on top of the fire, relishing the spread of the warmth which quickly swallowed a notable portion of the camp. “So if Orthonus completely wakes from his dormancy, he’ll be classified as a Corrupted king, yeah?”

Umber nodded on the spot. “A Corrupted king is a the last and often times longest life cycle of a dragon. Dragons detest growing old more than anything else and will do anything they can to prevent this from happening. As it turns out, the easiest way for a dragon to retain his youth is to consume gold.”

              “I remember this,” I interjected suddenly. “The reason why dragons make hoards of stolen gold is so that they can eat it after they’ve gone through a dormant period.” I smiled slightly before tilting my head on the spot and twitching my lips. “Why gold of all things?”

              “Gold never ages and gold never rusts. Over time dragons have adapted to be dependent on its ageless properties, living hundreds if not thousands of years as a result.”

              “So what’s the problem then?” I asked, stretching up into a more comfortable sitting position.
“Orthonus may already have some gold when he wakes up. He’ll simply eat that and be fine from then on.” Umber sighed deeply, clearly irritated by my ignorance.

              “Mortal, dragons are not simply content with having an empty stash. No, even if a dragon had eaten enough gold to last another hundred years, they would still want to bring in as much gold as possible during this time. They don’t risk finding other dragons to steal from due to the danger involved, however they will target the measly humans and their kingdoms.”
Umber
continued to talk
until his voice became the sound of water pattering
outside
my
window back at the camp.
I closed my eyes for what felt like a few moments before waking up as something heavy landed on my chest.

              My eyes shot open in alarm and instantly I was blinded by the sudden brightness of my surroundings. How long had I been asleep? It was nearly three seconds after my eyes has fluttered open that I realized Gregor had thrown my pack at me.
“Alright alright I'm getting up
,
” I grumbled
to no response
.
“
There
’
s no reason for
you
to behave like this.
”

Gregor fastened the straps on his shoulders and turned to face me. “Just shut up and walk,” he growled, storming back into the depths of the Charlie-horse wood.

Fortunately for me,
Gregor seemed to have a better
sense of direction throughout the morning,
giving a
triumphant smirk
whenever he felt he
was going the right way
.

Seeing as he was doing all the
orienteering,
I occupied my time by trying to count every
third step.
Now completely focused on my arbitrary task, I accidentally stumbled into Gregor who cursed and forcefully shoved me away.

“Have you ever tried not being a silly little toddler for a few minutes Jacob?”

              “What?
” I responded with equal annoyance
“W
ould you rather me lead?”
Gregor turned sharply on his heels
and as he did so I could hear the frost beneath his feet squelch in pain.

              “You wonder why I hurt you, yet you don’t seem to realize how much of an idiot you’re being by making remarks like that.” He advanced suddenly before painfully flicking my nose with his pointer finger.

              “And you think you’re any better?” I cried in angry retaliation. Umber desperately tried to shush me however the heat of the moment caused to keep speaking. “You’re just as much of an idiot for leading us into this forest and getting us lost!”

Gregor suddenly grabbed me by the neck and kneed me in the gut. I fell to the ground as my last precious breath of air flew out of my my lungs and escaped as a pitiful wail.

“Get up,” he ordered sternly. I stumbled to my feet and was just about to examine my chest when Gregor threw me to the ground a second time.

“Get up!” he roared, causing a nearby flock of birds to take flight.

I shook my head weakly.

Gregor’s eyes flashed green.

I screamed and felt my entire body contort as if every movement was just an instinctive cramp.

“Get up,” Gregor whispered.

To my dismay, my legs carefully lifted me up until I was in a formal stance with my both of my hands behind me. Gregor pinched the base of his cubed chin and appraised me with powerful eyes. He lifted up a single hand, and likewise, I involuntarily did the same. Gregor twitched his fingers, but before I could wonder what he was doing, I felt my hand jutt towards my face

              “Why are you slapping yourself?” Gregor asked, steady approaching. He twitched his fingers again and instantly the back of my hand was brought into the side of my jaw. Gregor’s face suddenly melted into an expression of mock concern. “It seems like you have a problem Jacob. Why are you slapping yourself?”

I coughed slightly and tried to hunch over, however my spine had been rendered immobile.

Gregor took another two steps forward and pinched me by the ear. “You can hear right? What strange sort of illness is causing you to hurt yourself like this Sunshine?”

I whimpered slightly and struggled to retain control of my tongue.

              “I don’t know,” I lied, knowing perfectly well what was causing all of this.

              “Me neither!” Gregor said, looking truly mystified. “However I think that this condition appears to be directly linked to stupidity. Don’t you think?” he asked, locking eyes with me and grinning maliciously.

I nodded quickly and much to my relief, felt the pressure of his kinetic anti-magic ease off of me. I fell to my knees and wretched as Gregor calmly turned away from me and continued to stride. Reluctantly forcing myself up, I clambered into a brisk walk, taking special care not to say anything else.

As I continued to keep pace with Gregor, my legs seared with the irritating desire to stop working. I hated how weak I was compared to the person in front of me. I found myself stumbling over my own two feet while my counterpart practically tore the hills apart with his forceful strides. I noticed in my exhausted state the strange way in which t
he weariness overcame me in stages
. The exhaustion began as a numbness in the heel of the boots, before spreading upward to the ankle as if I was slowly sinking into a bath of ice.

              I tried to focus on a
breathing pattern
, however
within minutes I had to
obliterate it in an attempt to keep up with the trainee effortlessly jogging through the terrain. As I Inhaled with no steady pace, I found that the only thing that kept me from stopping was the thought of Gregor intervening with more anti-magic. We suddenly ceased our advance, however before anyone had time to stop me, I had fallen to the forest floor to rest. Gregor said nothing and instead took a handful of frost speckled soil before turning it over in his hands and smelling deeply. “We're getting close,” he said excitedly.

              “He can’t possibly know that,” I whispered skeptically to Umber. “Honestly, just look at him.” I glanced up once more and silently watched Gregor plucking a piece of bark from a nearby tree and nodding in deep concentration. I snorted slightly and frowned in dismay. “Who does he think he is?”

Somehow satisfied with his observation, Gregor jutted his chin forward and began to walk in a completely different direction while I followed uncertainly.
The lack of clean water didn't seem to bother
Gregor, who had repeatedly stated it was only another couple of minutes before we found fresh snow. Hours passed and just as it seemed a drink was impossible, it began to snow. Gregor loudly applauded his own efforts
and
started
to set up camp
. Unfortunately for us, the snow did not not stop.
Billions of tiny
particles
fell from the sky in flurrie
s, stacking on top of each other quicker than any other storm I had ever seen. It was apparent we had a problem when the snowfall ended up totaling an eighth of our height in a little less than one hour.

Gregor’s eyes suddenly widened as he realized what was happening. He frantically disassembled the tent and threw it into his pack before literally sprinting off into the distance. “Hurry up!” he screamed over the whirl of the wind. “We maybe have another hour or two to find shelter, else we’re going to be stuck in this blizzard!”

I wearily stumbled forward, too tired to care about the consequences of our actions and too cold to feel any sort of sympathy for my leader. Hunger restricted my movements, yet the only thing that Gregor would allow me to eat was the severity of the moment. My muzzle had turned to rock and was completely numb except for my viciously purple plum nose which stung like an insect bite for every time I tried to move it.

              Realizing I may have been contracting frostbite, I tore a strip off of my bushy fur coat and tied it loosely around my neck and nose. Normally, my face would have been engulfed in warmth within seconds, however every breath I expelled was just as icy as the snow falling before us. Gregor stopped and looked off into the distance, before yelling in triumph. I looked ahead, and much to my amazement found that the trees has suddenly thinned out. After a few more steps it appeared that we had stepped out of the Charlie-horse wood.

“That can’t be possible.” I said limply. “We were ages off from the southern exit.” At the sound of my voice, Umber weakly flickered into view like a dying candle. Like me, he looked sleepy eyed and in need of a great nap. “It should have been at least another day before we left these woods,” I said, looking up to him for confirmation.

“Do you see anything to say that we’re still in the forest?” Umber asked at half his normal volume.

My unfocused eyes fastened on the horizon and I frowned slightly at the sight of more forest. “Why, we’re surrounded by a ring of trees,” I stated after a few moments of silence. The diameter of the area however was gargantuan. It must have stretched on for two more miles at least. “This clearing must be manmade--look:” I brought my attention down to the ground and pointed limply. Hundreds of tree stumps poked out through the thick snow which were so completely submerged, it was as if they were meant to be stepping stones on a path.

Gregor suddenly wailed in dismay. I could only assume that he had come to the same conclusion as I had. Just as he was about to retreat back into the Charlie-horse woods, I stopped him.
In the distance
, t
he faint outline of a small hut waved uncertainly through the falling snow. Gregor turned
at the sound of my voice
and squinted at the shape f
or a full minute in solid disbelief. He blinked twice and began to charge at it like a rampaging bull. As the two of us hustled forward, a feeling of perfect euphoria passed over me. The shack wasn’t an illusion, but did in all honesty look like it was falling apart. Despite that, it was still a shelter and that’s all that was important.

The both of us launched ourselves at the doorway which was nearly a quarter of the way buried under thick snow. We charged at it while clawing and screaming, drunk with the lust for survival. After five consecutive tackles, the hinges on the doors snapped allowing us passage into the dark warm hut. We had hardly taken our first step inside when I heard a head a loud thump from my right. I glanced over and watched in shock as Gregor fell to the floor, completely comatose. Thick fingers wrapped around the small of my neck before something threw me into a nearby wall.
The sudden light that emitted from an oil lamp
signed
the back of my eyes
and prevented me from properly seeing the face of my captor.

              “What
are you doing here?
” He roared
, rattling my chest for good measure.

              “What am I doing here?” I
repeated
, hopeful that
was all he wanted
to know.