Tarmour staggered, clutching the hole in his neck. Black-white sand sprayed the air in a gruesome rain.

  He snarled (one ragged, inhuman roar) and raised his hand.

  The outflow froze mid-air. Every grain, every droplet, shard of him hung suspended, trembling.

  Then it reversed.

  The filth crawled backward through the air, sucked into the wound like film run in reverse. The hole sealed with a wet pop.

  Mereque felt his stomach flip. The wound didn’t just close. It smiled. A thin black-white seam that pulsed once, like a mouth tasting the air.

  The knight straightened, taller now, shoulders broader. Something inside the armor laughed without sound.

  Mereque didn’t wait to admire the trick, he marched ahead deeper into the surf.

  He marched because stopping meant thinking. Thinking meant feeling the holes in his side, the sword-shaped fire in his thigh, the weight of every dead name riding his shoulders.

  He marched because the alternative was letting this crazy world win. Because if he stopped, Tarmour would be on them again. Because Jenker was still breathing, and Mereque had decided (somewhere between the first flechette and the last) that this sailor wasn’t going to die on his watch.

  He marched because the only thing louder than pain was the promise he hadn’t said out loud.

  Not today. Not while I’m still breathing.

  “I don’t need as much air as you, I’m build differently. But you’ll need this.” he told Jenker, yanking the palm-sized rebreather from his belt.

  He thumbed the stud. The mask inflated with a hiss, no bigger than two fists.

  Waves slapped at his knees.

  Jenker was in up to his waist.

  He clipped the hose to his armor, locked the tether from his belt to Jenker’s waist, and dragged the sailor along.

  Waves slammed chest high.

  Jenker was treading beside him.

  Behind them, flechettes hissed into the water like angry hornets.

  A dozen knights lined the shore (black-white armor shifting, horns, spikes, lethal brambles). Different heights, same hunger.

  He met Jenker’s eyes.

  “Hold on.”

  Mereque took a series of massive breaths.

  He filled his lungs until they were practically ready to burst, chest swelling like a bellows.

  Jenker’s eyes went wide.

  Mereque shoved the rebreather tube at him.

  “Breathe when you need it. I can go hours. Move.”

  No time for questions.

  Mereque filled his lungs one final time. No words. Just a nod. Two heartbeats. Two men who’d known each other less than a day deciding the other was worth dying with.

  He tightened the tether. Jenker closed his eyes. Mereque pulled them both under.

  The ocean rushed in and the surface vanished (cold, black, honest).

  Mereque’s boots sank into silt, each step kicking up grey clouds. He walked like an anchor with legs.

  Above, shadows circled (black-white knights skimming the waves on supernatural wings, swords trailing like shark fins).

  They hated water. Of course they hated water. He’d seen it in the color-bleed that always stopped at the shoreline. Salt was poison to them.

  Good.

  Jenker tugged the tube, sucked air, eyes still wide.

  Mereque kept walking. The knights couldn’t follow. It was as he hoped.

  The seafloor sloped. Pressure pressed against his eardrums. His HUD painted the water in ghost-green, picking out rocks, kelp, the occasional startled fish.

  Jenker tapped his shoulder, pointed up. Mereque looked.

  The knights hovered at the edge of the waves, wings beating, swords raised. They didn’t enter. They just watched.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Waiting.

  Mereque’s leg throbbed where Tarmour’s sword had kissed it. He ignored it.

  Jenker tugged the tube again, harder. Mereque handed it over.

  The sailor sucked air from it like a drowning man.

  Mereque kept walking.

  The water grew colder, darker.

  Jenker’s grip tightened on his arm. Mereque glanced at him.

  Jenker’s eyes were wide, not with fear of drowning, but with something else.

  He pointed ahead.

  Through the murk, something moved. It was big. Too big.

  Mereque’s HUD flashed a warning: UNKNOWN BIOLOGICAL ENTITY. SIZE: LARGE.

  The shape resolved. He knew this one. Shark. It saw them and turned sharply, disappearing just as quickly back into the mirk. He would have to remember to update his HUD later.

  He looked back up at the moving silhouettes.

  They weren’t safe. Yet. But they weren’t dead.

  Jenker’s lungs screamed. Mereque just handed him the tube again, calm as stone.

  Above, the ocean exploded.

  Yellow-orange fire bloomed across the underside of the waves (silent, beautiful, wrong). Muffled thumps rolled through the water like distant artillery.

  The water roiled as liquid violently transformed into superheated steam.

  Something huge cut the surface (a hint of crimson, wings wide enough to blot out the sun).

  Dragon!

  Mereque’s stomach dropped. The monster was still hunting him.

  Mereque felt the old fear crawl up his spine (the same one from the beach when the sky first tore open and the red brute came for him). He’d run from it once. He’d bled from it. He thought he’d left it behind.

  Stupid.

  The dragon’s shadow rolled over them like an eclipse. He saw the underside of those wings (scales like rusted shields, veins glowing with furnace light). He could almost smell the smoke and old blood through the water.

  The shockwave hit.

  Water turned to a wall of force. Mereque slammed Jenker against the rock shelf, arm locked around the sailor’s chest. Coral scraped armor. The current tried to rip them into the open sea.

  He held on.

  The dragon passed overhead (shadow blacking out the light, tail carving a trench in the water).

  Then it was gone.

  They stayed pressed against the rock, two men hiding under a world that wanted them dead.

  Jenker’s eyes asked the question. Mereque answered with a single, grim nod.

  They weren’t safe. They were just waiting for the next monster to find them.

  It was going to be a long night.

  ? ? ?

  Grace sat rigid in the steel chair, fingers white on the armrests.

  The gods (she still thought of them as gods, no matter how often they denied it) had buckled her in with three cold clasps and told her to hold tight.

  The Machine God’s voice echoed through the compartment like a smooth lullaby wrapped in velvet. Serene. Reassuring.

  The dragon’s voice had been fire and gravel.

  She tried not to think about that one.

  Metal groaned. The world lurched. They shot upward, clouds tearing past the viewports like slippery silk.

  She pressed her face to the glass.

  Far below, the bleeding island shrank to a bruise on the sea.

  Mereque was down there somewhere.

  She didn’t know why it mattered so much. It just did.

  Her people had rules about humans. Old rules. Sad rules.

  Take one across the veil and watch him smile until the smile cracked. Watch wonder turn to terror turn to silence. Watch the light go out behind eyes that were never meant to see forever.

  They had stopped, mostly. Humans had learned to fear the Fay, and the Fay had learned guilt.

  But Mereque wasn’t like the stories. He hadn’t looked at her with hunger or worship.

  He had looked at her like she was the only real thing in a world that had gone insane. He had looked at her like she was a friend.

  And she had sent him into it anyway.

  The Machine God’s voice filled the cabin again, gentle as snowfall.

  “Bzzz… He will not die today, little one.”

  Grace closed her eyes. She wanted to believe it, she really did.

  Grace pressed her face to the transparent steel.

  Below, the western peninsula crawled with Blanched Knights. She had never seen so many in one place. They stormed the beach like ants whose hill had been kicked, wings beating, swords carving empty air, flashes of a tainted magic.

  She felt sick.

  Hexabulous banked hard, crimson scales catching the dying sun. His roar rattled the hull.

  “His scent is down there,” the dragon’s voice thundered through the cabin. “But it is… tangled.”

  They had been searching for hours. The dragon cursed every time the trail vanished into the Wyrm’s rot that clung to these lands.

  Now the beach churned with whatever madness the Blanched had unleashed.

  Grace’s fingers whitened on the armrest.

  Hexabulous snatched a long, metallic lance from the hull of the Machine God (flames licking its length the instant it left its cradle). He folded his wings and dropped.

  The fall was impossible.

  A creature the size of a mountain turned into a crimson meteor. Air ignited around him. The lance became a second sun.

  He hit the beach like the wrath of forgotten gods.

  Sand flash-boiled to glass. Knights scattered like dolls.

  The impact was a second sunrise.

  A ring of fire rolled outward, flash-boiling everything in a perfect circle a hundred meters wide. Knights caught in the blast didn’t burn. They unmade.

  Armor peeled away in strips of white-hot metal. Whatever was beneath turned to black sand mid-scream and blew away on super-heated wind. Swords melted into silver tears that hissed when they hit the ground.

  The dragon landed in the crater he’d carved, wings spread, lance buried to the haft in the earth. Steam and smoke curled off his scales like incense.

  He inhaled once. The air itself ignited.

  Knights still standing staggered, blind helms turning toward the sudden furnace. Some tried to raise wings. They never got the chance.

  Hexabulous exhaled. A river of white fire swept the beach clean.

  Grace couldn’t breathe.

  Earlier, when they had first invited her aboard, she had asked (voice small):

  “Great Ones… has the man wronged you?”

  The dragon had snarled, flames licking his fangs. “I do not answer to insects, Fay-child. Know your place.”

  His naked irritation left her with tear-filled eyes. Despite her overwhelming fear of the beast, she managed to fight the feeling away. At least she wasn’t a crying pool huddled in a corner.

  She was shaken but held her composure. She stood on the ramp, one foot inside the Machine God, one still out.

  The dragon’s voice still echoed in her ears. Heat shimmered off his fangs. She could feel the promise of teeth.

  One step back and she could vanish into the forest. Live another thousand years hiding from humans and dragons alike.

  One step forward and she might never see the Fairlands again.

  She thought of Mereque. He had trusted her with his name. She had trusted him with her magic.

  Grace closed her eyes.

  She thought of humans who had smiled at her once and then broken.

  She thought of Mereque’s tired, yet stubborn bright eyes.

  With one foot in front of the other she stepped inside.

  The ramp sealed behind her with a sound like a coffin closing.

  There was no assurance that she wouldn’t be eater, or worse.

  Yet to help her new friend, what other choice did she have?

  He was a stranger here. Lost. If the Gods could help him, she needed to let him know.