The cave monster was shifting. Silver wanted to turn and run, but she knew the burrow entrance was near. Her mind filled with the scent of fresh air and desert sand, just beyond the monster. They had to get past the spidery beast.
Rattle.
The creature was coming closer, its unnaturally glowing teeth looming bigger. The beast moved slowly, and the waiting felt somehow worse than being attacked.
For the first time on her journey, Silver reached for the knife at her belt. The metal made a scliiick sound as she pulled it from the leather holder. She touched the point. Was it sharp enough to cut into bone? Blood pounded in her ears. She licked her lips.
“Run past,” Brajon said. “I’ll fight.”
“Against that thing?” Silver whispered. “You don’t have a chance. We need to stay as far away as we can. Maybe it just had a full meal and doesn’t want to attack us.”
But as soon as Silver took a few steps forward, her hopeful words were immediately proven false. The creature opened its massive jaw and let loose a spine-tingling screech.
“Geeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyaaaaaaa!”
Then it started running for her.
“Hiyyan,” Silver yelled. She crouched and flung her blade in front of her.
Hiyyan met the creature’s screech with his own roar. He lashed his tail out just as the beast reached them. A red welt appeared in its bone-white skin and the cave monster stumbled, crashing jaw-first to the ground.
Hiyyan roared again. Silver had never heard anything like it from him. Deep, angry, and challenging. The Aquinder whipped a wing at the fallen creature, but the creature snapped its teeth and tore a small hole in the edge of the wing.
Hiyyan cried out and buckled. His pain shuddered through Silver. The beast snapped its jaws and began lumbering toward the young dragon.
“No,” Silver screamed. She rushed forward, jumped on a rock, and flung herself off it, into the air, knife raised high. She brought the weapon down on one of the creature’s arms. Instead of bouncing off, as she worried it would, the sharp metal dug into the monster’s flesh and ripped through it. A bioluminescent greenish slime oozed out.
The creature screeched again. It flicked one of its legs at Silver, which slammed against her chest and knocked her to the ground. The creature’s face loomed over her. It would only take one chomp to snap her in half.
“We did not get this far … to be eaten … by you!” Silver yelled, and raised her knife again.
With another roar, Hiyyan barreled into the side of the creature with his whole body, both of them crashing against the cave wall with a loud crunch.
Silver scrambled to her feet. Brajon stood there, staring at the fallen creature, his face almost as white as the monster’s. Hiyyan was slower to get to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear away the impact of hitting the wall.
“Brajon, go,” Silver yelled to him. “Get past! Find the burrow opening!”
Brajon lunged to get around the creature, but it got up, whip-fast, and shot out a spidery leg. Brajon tripped and landed on his chest in the mud. The creature rattled over to Silver’s fallen cousin, teeth bared.
“Leave him alone!” Silver hurtled toward the creature, knife raised.
The creature screeched and whipped its head toward her. From the corner of her eye, Silver saw Brajon scramble to his feet and run past them. She stabbed the knife at the creature’s face right as it opened its monstrous jaws. The metal lodged between two teeth. The beast reared its head in pain, ripping the knife from Silver’s hand. Her weapon was gone.
She could have darted past the creature, but she wouldn’t leave Hiyyan, who had finally shaken off his confusion, to fend for himself. Without waiting for the water dragon to crouch down, she jumped onto his back, grabbing big handfuls of his mane, and hauled herself up.
“Let’s do this together!” she cried.
Her shoulders burned. Sweat poured down the sides of her face. A kind of electricity zapped through her body and straight into Hiyyan. They were stronger together. Their renewed energy was something magical, something brought on by the power of their bond.
Silver clung tightly as Hiyyan reared on his hind legs and kicked his heavy feet against the creature’s side. The monster flew across the cave and landed against the wall. Silver and Hiyyan followed him. The white monster lashed out with its three remaining good arms. One of its claws scraped against Hiyyan, yanking off a scale, and Silver yelped in shared pain.
The water dragon was bleeding, but he hardly seemed to notice. He snapped his own sharp teeth onto one of the creature’s arms and ripped it off. He spit it onto the ground and lunged again.
When they were close enough, Silver reached for her knife, still wedged into the monster’s slobbering mouth. She pulled it free while it was distracted, the metal glinting in the light.
Wait … light?
Silver turned to see light streaming into the cave behind the monster. Brajon had found the burrow opening.
“Hiyyan,” Silver yelled, brandishing her knife high. “Finish this!”
Hiyyan reared high again and bore down on the spidery creature. Their combined roars and screeches echoed through the cave until Silver’s head was filled with nothing else.
“Arrrghhh!” she yelled along with them, one with her Aquinder. She leaned forward to jam her knife into the center of the creature’s head. The tip slid in smoothly, and the creature fell to the ground. It shuddered, letting out a final rattle.
Then, all was silent.
TWENTY-ONE
Hiyyan sat back on his haunches, breathing heavily. He was wounded. Silver was, too. But the white monster rattled no more. Silver slid off her water dragon’s back. She pressed her face to his, waiting for her heart to slow its beating.
“Soon. We’ll have rest very soon. I promise.”
She went to the beast’s head, waiting a moment to make completely sure it was dead. There were bits of fox fur between its teeth. Silver frowned. When the cave monster didn’t move, she pulled her knife out of its head. The blade came out as easily as it had gone in. But it was covered with slick green goo. And her hand, where it had brushed against the monster’s flesh, was striped with a substance that shimmered like white gold.
“Ew.” Silver wrinkled her nose. She wiped her hand on her tunic, and dragged the knife through the mud. A pathetic cleaning, but it would have to do for now. Then she remembered the light and looked up. Brajon was already through the burrow opening, but he called back to her.
“Silver! Tell me you’re alive!”
“I’m here,” she called back. “And I’m alive. We both are.”
Silver and Hiyyan limped slowly toward the light. The brightness hurt her head. She squinted and waited for her eyes to adjust. The opening was tight, too tight for Hiyyan to get through, but she felt the water dragon urging her to go on. Earth clung to her body, but after a few minutes of climbing, a hand reached down and hauled her the rest of the way up. She was struck by how close they had been to the surface all along.
Silver flung herself to the ground on her belly and breathed in the dry warmth of the outside world. Silent sobs racked her chest. Her cheek on the rocky, shrubby sand felt so good.
“Look,” Brajon said.
Silver raised her head. Like a mirage rising from the desert, a wonderland of stone and metal grew out of the landscape.
They’d reached Calidia.
“We made it,” Silver breathed. She squinted at the city, but Brajon was staring at her clothes.
“Is this…?” He touched a spot where Silver had wiped the cave monster’s … whatever it was …