“It’s much more difficult to notice, Sir—Steve,” Muriel corrected herself, crouching low next to Stephan. Her finger hovered a hair’s breadth above a cracked slab of stone. “This fine gray patch is lichen.”
Stephan squinted, looking at it carefully. At first he saw nothing, just another dull stretch of dirt amongst countless others. Then he noticed the shade was slightly out of place.
“Someone, more likely than something,” Muriel kept talking quietly, “had passed here recently. None of the beasts native to the wastes should get some between their toes, assuming they have them.”
The lessons in the wasteland were mostly put on hold, with Muriel only taking the time to show the most notable or interesting tracks, which no sane man would ever notice, Stephan included. The lightly combed dirt marked a large scorpion’s recent passage. A slightly more cracked rock, with dust already collected inside, hinted at someone’s not so recent passage, and now a bit of lichen where it didn’t belong.
The thought of running across the desert to make it over faster never crossed Stephan’s mind. If that shortcut led anywhere, it was to the grave. No, they woke before sunrise, once the black skies turned a lighter gray, while the air still clung to the ghosts of the night’s coolness.
They navigated the dead terrain as color returned to the world, all the way until the sun was a palm’s width above the horizon and started scorching. Then, they sought shade, any scrap of it, to doze during the hottest hours of the day.
Stephan never knew the sun could be as hot as fire. He tested it once, when it reached its highest point, the scalding heat against his palm as he touched the rock was no less than grabbing a candle’s flame.
Then, once the sun went low in the west and shadows grew long, they started moving again, picking their paths while sticking to the cooler rocks and sand as much as they could.
For all her ability, Muriel refused to travel in the dark. They stopped an hour after the sun had set and any lingering light vanished. Night was the time when the top predators hunted, not when humans roved around, no matter how kindly the moon shone on them. Or so she claimed.
They were taking their first break on the third day, Muriel using the opportunity to show her skill while they munched on their meat. The duck was briefly smoked, less than ten hours, and while it would last longer than roast would, it would still spoil in a day or two.
Stephan huddled in the corner, leaning as much as he could against the uncomfortable but blessedly cool boulder, his desert garb offering little comfort.
“How big are those wasteland lions?” Stephan shut his eyes after finishing his greasy duck, amazed at how quickly he transitioned from sleeping on a feathered mattress to having his back stabbed by a moderately jagged rock.
“About as tall as wolves,” Muriel said, “but twice as long. They weigh two hundred pounds and have powerful jaws that can bite off your neck in a single snap. What makes them really scary is that you don’t see them coming. They just fall off a ledge and that’s it, you’re dead.”
A dusty breeze blew, carrying heat and sand, rustling Stephan’s clothes. And he was glad he had them; crossing would have been an even more uncomfortable affair without them.
“You’ve never seen one, though,” Stephan yawned. There was too much reverence and too little fear in Muriel’s voice for someone who had witnessed such a sight. Just thinking about men charging and fist-sized rocks bursting them like blood bubbles was enough to tell the difference between a person who had heard something in a lecture and someone who had experienced the horror.
“No,” she answered calmly, perhaps also drifting to half-sleep, “ I haven’t, and I’m glad for it. I’ve never seen a wyvern either, and I hope I never do.”
Yeah, when you say things like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if one dropped on us right now.
Stephan shut his eyes tighter, refusing to look at the heavens, lest he too summoned misfortune. When he next opened them, the sun was much lower in the sky, the shadows longer wherever he could see them. He pushed himself up, joints stiff, and stretched before glancing at his companion.
Muriel was awake, keeping watch from atop a shaded rock.
“You know, you could take a nap during the day and let me stand guard.” While he enjoyed his little breaks, Muriel had the right to them too.
“It’s fine, Steve,” she said smoothly, “I get enough sleep at night during your watch.”
It could have been the trick of the light, with the shadow her headgear cast deceiving his eyes, but Stephan was fairly sure he could see patches of darker skin beneath her eyes.
He shrugged. “We’ll be out of the wasteland soon enough. We’ll have more chances to rest then.”
Muriel nodded, a hint of doubt on her face.
“What?” he asked.
“There’s a forested plateau on the other side of the desert,” she nudged with her chin in its direction, “and while food and water won’t be a problem, there are few safe places we can stay. The teams heading this way for anything more than leveling and survival training often have eight or more members, with strict watch rotations.”
She glanced at her bow, even though she had dried it properly, she wasn’t happy with it. She traced the wood with her thumb, rubbing it gently.
“I’ll need to see a bowyer once we get back.” She’d already mentioned several times that the string didn’t feel right ever since their little swim.
Stephan had nothing to say. He had told her she could go home, or that they could even return together, but she said the bow would hold for a while. And while the discussion was over, she never stopped complaining.
“Have you visited the outlaw settlements?” he changed the subject.
“No. All our missions here are about finding and slaying powerful monsters that could cross the desert and the river, mostly wyverns.”
“Mostly?” Stephan asked as he prepared himself to step into the remnants wrought by the scorching sunlight.
“Sometimes the wastes give birth to strange creatures, a monster between a giant scorpion and a wasteland lion, as well as undead forms of those same creatures.”
“A warlock?” Stephan frowned.
“We don’t know. If it is one, he’s been around for at least a hundred years.”
Stephan shrugged. “There could be more. Were these creatures contained to a certain area?”
“No, we found them all over the wastes, and some even flew to our side of the river.”
Yet another mystery for me to keep an eye out for.
It wasn’t high on Stephan’s list of priorities, but he still made a mental note to check on it, assuming a chance presented itself.
***
The sun was about to set, the edge of the desert a handful of miles away. The dark vertical band marking the highlands was visible on the horizon above the scattered rocks from the low hill Stephan and Muriel had climbed. As was a massive flying creature circling above a rock formation.
While Stephan gazed at its mighty form, Muriel dropped to the ground and pulled on his hand. He followed, much slower, but still lay flat against the ground.
“Is that a wyvern?”
“It is, and it’s cornered its prey into those rocks. We should circle around—”
The monster dove, less than five hundred yards away. Its legs crashed into the rocks, toppling some, the rumble loud enough for Stephan and Muriel to hear. The small rockslide was followed by a woman’s scream, and Stephan stood without thinking.
“Get down,” Muriel hissed, and pulled him to the ground. She had as much luck as a child shaking a tree. “We need a whole team of archers to bring that thing down, and you don’t even have a bow.”
“Can a level twenty Knight deal with a wyvern?”
“I don’t know,” Muriel said. “That thing has a venomous tail that can punch through armor.”
Stephan dropped his belongings to the ground, jerked his arm out of her grip, and ran towards the giant flying lizard with a beat-up dagger in his hands.
Muriel cursed behind him, just as the wyvern noticed them and flew straight for him.
It’s bigger than I thought. And the monster kept growing as it approached. It dwarfed Stephan, and no matter what Muriel said, it seemed much larger than the river dragons as it dove towards him.
“Shield of Fate.”
The tail coiled. Its sword-like stinger with a single red, viscous drop at its end aimed to stab him while the monster’s taloned feet opened wide to grab and carry him away.
Breath left Stephan as the monumental stupidity of his actions registered in his mind, but there was no going back. He was the Paladin, sworn to protect the weak from dragons, and the salivating thing in front of him looked as damn close to a dragon as a lizard could get.
The tail whipped towards him; the claws closed. Stephan ducked low. The wind of the lunge passed like a hurricane above him as he dodged at the last possible moment. His free hand shot out and grabbed the tail just behind the blade-like stinger. Then, he was up in the air.
The world lurched as the wyvern jerked, thrown off balance. Stephan’s feet found the ground once more, then the giant creature flapped its massive wings. Gale-force winds blew, and Stephan flew. He plunged his crippled dagger into the tail, which proved less fortified than the river dragon’s hide.
The blade sank into the wyvern’s flesh to the hilt, and the monster unleashed a scream between a roar and a hiss. The tail spasmed as it jerked to shake him off, but with Stephan clinging tight, all the wyvern achieved was to destabilize its own flight.
The talons swished above Stephan, trying to cut him. They found naught but air, the outstretched tail dangled nearly ten feet beyond their reach.
Stephan clenched the tail with his other hand, careful of the stinger dripping venom inches away from his face. He freed his dagger from the wyvern’s flesh before stabbing and hacking at the tail.
The creature shrieked again, shaking and struggling, then Stephan saw the rock formation heading straight for him.
The wyvern dipped, Stephan along with it as the shield of Fate shattered. Instead of smashing into the rocks face-first, Stephan’s head found a hollow in the rocks, the rest of him slamming against stone. Bones cracked and snapped, but an instant later, another crash followed. Despite the damage he had taken, Stephan still stubbornly clung onto the wyvern’s tail, and the beast had paid the price of its gambit.
He healed his hands and arms first, maintaining his grip, then he focused on the rest of his body, spending nearly a quarter of his spirit, enough to heal six wounded men, until nothing hurt. The wyvern’s thrashing told him the beast was gravely injured.
And very much alive.