Skalterra By Nightmare: Chapter 1

A sneak peek at the first chapter of Skalterra By Nightmare

Chapter 1 - Intro to Siege Warfare

These were not my eyelashes.

Yes, I had bigger things to worry about, like the screams of falling soldiers, the quaking of the battlements, the fact that I was inexplicably on a battlement in the first place…

But these eyelashes! Long and lush and certainly not mine, yet there they were, fluttering at the edges of my vision, illuminated by the bright bursts of neon light that accompanied the blasts that shook the fort.

Right.

The fort.

At least, it seemed like a fort, with stone parapets strung between turrets to protect a mossy courtyard. It might’ve been peaceful if not for the soldiers swarming between its upright stones and gnarled, spindly trees.

An arcing ball of orange lit the sky from above, streaking against the inky black of night. A turret interrupted its path into the courtyard, and it burst in an explosion of light and rubble, rocking the stones beneath me.

I shrank back against the low wall of the battlement. Someone screamed something about a gate being breached, and heavy bootsteps clattered past, taking no notice of the girl huddled against her knees.

This was all wrong.

I screwed up my face, trying to remember how I’d gotten here, but only came up with snatches of foggy battles and muddied greaves. I was somewhere else before all that, though. Somewhere that definitely wasn’t a battlefield.

More explosions. More yelling. The weight of chainmail pressing down on my shoulders.

And eyelashes that were not mine.

“Focus, Wren.” My desperate whisper bounced against the metal of my helmet’s faceplate. This was not the time to get distracted, especially as I was now alone on a crumbling wall that the other soldiers had all had the sense to abandon.

The stones ahead of me turned orange in the light of another bombardment, and the shimmering blaze blasted through the stone to my right.

Sparks and bits of rubble rained against me, and I stumbled to my feet as the cobbled flooring gave way. The parapet rocked and swayed, making it impossible for my heavy boots to gain purchase, and I fell forward.

I scrabbled at the stone as my legs slipped into the chasm left by the crumbling fort. My chainmail, heavy before, was damn near a death sentence now, and I screamed through gritted teeth with the effort of trying to hoist myself back up.

It was useless. With my helmeted face pressed against stone and every muscle locked, I couldn’t see how far the drop was, but the clash of metal and yells of soldiers below were far enough away to tell me my prospects were less than great.

At least I’d die with fantastic eyelashes.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I could try to pull myself up again, but if my muscles gave out—

“Where is the Sovereign?” a voice growled above me. My helmet pulled at my hair, scraping against stone as it was pulled from my head. I opened my eyes to an orange glow bouncing off black boots inches from my face. My hair fell loose of the helmet, long, lush and blue.

Forget the eyelashes, whose hair was this?

Gloved hands yanked me to my feet and held me by the collar of my tunic and chainmail. Orange irises glowed bright at the center of dark pearlescent sclera, looking all the more black set against an alabaster face.

Sure, this stranger had saved me, but the way he glared over the dark cowl pulled up over his nose, I had enough sense to know that whoever he was, he was an enemy.

“The Sovereign.” He raised a knife that glowed the same color as his eyes—the same color as the blasts that had taken out chunks of the parapet—to my throat. “I won’t ask again, Blue.”

“I don’t know,” I choked. The ragged cloak that hung off his shoulders whirled as he spun me around to throw me to the stones. Maybe it was my relief at escaping the orange knife or my new distance from the lip of the edge, but I added, “and my name’s not Blue. That’s stupid.”

His scowl deepened, and the blade in his hand elongated into a scythe that had me regretting that last quip.

“Oh, no thanks.” I tried to scramble away, but a heavy boot blocked my path as the man drew back his weapon. I tucked my face into my shoulder, thankful that this would be cleaner than falling to my death.

The curved blade whistled through the air, but was cut by a crash and a garbled shout. I opened my eyes in time to see the whip of tattered cloaks disappearing over the open edge, and the darkness swallowed the orange glow of my assailant’s weapon as he hurtled to the courtyard ruins below.

“Stop wasting time, Nightmare!” A young woman pulled me to my feet, and she stared at the spot the cloaked figure had disappeared. At least, I was pretty sure that was where she was staring. It was hard to tell with the opaque, metal-rimmed goggles fixed over her eyes. The green fire that swathed the hand she held aloft cast shadows that carved valleys against her sharp cheekbones, making her appear older than her voice suggested.

“You killed him,” I said blankly. Better him than me, but still.

“I wish.” She twisted around, the movement made awkward by the leather armor strapped across her chest. “To the tower, pet! We need you with us down below!”

She spoke with an air of fake authority that I could tell she was forcing into her tone, but I wasn’t in any position to disobey. Glowing bottles hung off the woman’s belt, and they clinked against each other in time with her strides.

“Look, I don’t know how I got here,” I tried to explain. Green light from the fire in her hands danced ahead of us, illuminating the heavy, oaken door of a turret.

“Down the stairs, now. They’re waiting.” She threw the door open and watched over my shoulder as we disappeared inside.

The air inside the tower was dusty and stale, and the woman’s firelight cast the claustrophobic stone walls in shades of emerald. I staggered down the steps, trying to see past the shadows.

The sounds of a door being blasted off its hinges echoed behind us, prompting a gentle prod between my shoulders.

“Usually you Nightmares are faster than this,” the woman mused behind me. “I wonder if Galahad isn’t feeling well.”

“Please.” I tried to go down the steps faster, but the chainmail on my shoulders was cumbersome and awkward. “I don’t know what’s going on. My name is Wren Warrender, and I’m supposed to be at my grandmother’s.”

Yes, that was it. I had been at Gams’s, but this war-torn fort looked nothing like the coastal town where she made her living. And while the memory of moving into the guest room above her gift shop had finally resurfaced, it did little to explain how I’d found myself in the middle of a battle on a castle.

“Orla, what’s taking so long?” The dark head of a young man poked out of a trapdoor at the foot of the stairs. He shielded his goggled eyes as another tower-shaking blast shook dust loose overhead. I braced just in case the stone steps I’d just stumbled down came falling after me. “Ferrin and Caitria went ahead to clear a path, and if we’re late to follow—”

“Sorry, Tiernan. Ran into a Grimguard.” The woman, Orla, placed a hand on my shoulder to guide me to the trapdoor. “Careful, pet! It’s a bit of a drop.”

The young man ducked away as I stumbled through the trapdoor. The golden firelight in his hand caught the metal of the beads he wore at the end of short, twisted hair locks. While his goggles made his expression hard to read, I got the feeling he was glaring at me. He held a protective hand out to bar me from the cloaked girl who stood behind him.

“This one has blue hair!” Orla announced as she landed in the passageway. “Galahad, do you see this? Blue hair! You should do them all that way.”

The room had a low ceiling, and its walls stretched into shadow so that I couldn’t see where they ended. The little alcove where we stood was crowded, though there were only three people waiting for us here. The oldest of them pushed his way forward.

His white beard clashed with bronze skin, and, despite his age, he wore warrior’s armor similar to Orla’s under a knee-length leather duster that made him look like a steampunk motorcycle grandpa.

“Blue hair, you say?” He pushed metal-rimmed goggles up his forehead, revealing pale gray eyes that reflected the greens and golds of his companions’ fires. I flinched away when he took a clump of my hair in his gnarled hand and let the tresses slide between his fingers. “Well, that is certainly different.”

A shriek echoed from deep within the shadows ahead.

“Caitria!” The young man, Tiernan, looked towards the darkness. “That was Caitria!”

Muffled shouting ensued, and the others surged forward to leave me in the dark.

“Protect the Sovereign!” the old man bellowed back at me. I glanced around in the lengthening shadows and found the small girl who’d been hiding behind Tiernan. Her large brown eyes glittered in the fading light, and the carried fires of her comrades sent multi-colored shadows through her halo of dark hair.

“I don’t—” I sputtered, then pulled the girl after the others by her wrist. “Wait, I don’t have a light!”

“Make one!” the old man commanded without looking back. A crash overhead made me run faster still, and, to her credit, the girl kept up despite her thick robes and thin frame.

“You don’t seem like a very good Nightmare,” she whispered between labored breaths. I chased after the yellow and green fires of the others, not wanting to get left behind in the dark, still struggling to remember how I’d somehow gotten from Gams’s apartment to a fort under siege.

The corridor bent and widened into a room, and I careened into Orla where she and the men had stopped to stare at the grisly scene ahead of us.

A man slumped against the far wall, and blood flecked the stones above his head. A woman lay in the center of the room at the feet of a man shrouded in dark cloaks. He looked up from the woman with eyes that glowed orange, just like those of the assailant Orla had blasted off the roof.

“Caitria!” Tiernan lunged forward, reaching for the woman on the floor, but Galahad grabbed him by the back of his cloaks and pulled him back. “If he hurt Caitria, I’ll kill him!”

“Daithi, Grimguard of the Frozen God,” the old man growled. “You’re a bit far from home.”

“Galahad.” His voice was raspy and low, not unlike that of his friend on the parapet. “I’m here for the Sovereign.”

“Send the Nightmare,” Galahad said, and several hands shoved me forward to stand between them and Daithi. I staggered backwards under his orange gaze, but someone pushed me forward again.

“Oh, no,” I said. “This isn’t— I don’t do this.”

“This is what I made you for!” Galahad boomed. “Now defend the Sovereign!”

“I don’t know what that means!” I hated the panicked whine in my voice, but none of this made sense. I had been at Gams’s.

“It means fight!”

I stared at Daithi, and while he remained poised for an attack, he waited for me to make the first move.

He would be waiting a long time, I decided.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, or what’s happening, but—” I started to say to him, but then glanced down at the woman at his feet.

My stomach dropped. From here, in the center of the room, I could see that she wore goggles like the others, but one side had shattered out. Behind the frame of broken shards, her brown eye stared up at the ceiling, blank and unseeing.

“She’s—she’s dead?” I backpedaled from the man.

A cry went up behind me.

“No!” Tiernan tore away from Galahad to meet me in the middle of the cavern, staring down at the woman. He took in her parted lips, gray face, and the blood already drying in her dark hair. A broken gasp worked its way from deep in his throat. “You killed…you killed Caitria.”

And then he threw himself at Daithi.

The gold fire in his hands lengthened into a sword, but Daithi deflected the attack with a blade of orange. I tripped over my leather boots in my haste to escape, and then Tiernan tripped backwards over me.

The yellow glow of Tiernan’s sword sputtered out, and the weapon dissipated. Daithi stood over us and drew back to strike. Someone shrieked a too-late warning, but just as Tiernan was about to meet a quick end on the point of an orange blade, still tangled in my limbs, green light burst in Daithi’s chest.

He staggered backwards, staring blankly ahead as blood trickled from his nose and mouth, and then he tripped over the dead woman at his feet to join her in the dust.

A tentative silence fell over the cavern, and I stared at the dead man and woman on the floor just feet away from me.

“I want…” I whispered through a shaky breath, “I want to go home now.”

“Your Nightmare seems defective, Galahad.” The previously unconscious man at the far wall was upright now, and he leaned against the stone, bleeding from the head with one eye swollen shut over a neatly trimmed beard. Green flames danced at his fingertips. “You’re lucky I’ve got a good aim.”

“Uncle Ferrin!” Orla broke free of the group to rush to the side of the injured man. “What happened? Is Caitria really—”

“He was waiting for us.” Ferrin glared at the dead Grimguard. Tiernan shoved me aside so he could crawl to the woman on the ground and extricate her out from under Daithi. “Tiernan, I’m sorry. I tried, but—”

He cut off to shake his head. Tiernan brushed the hair from the dead woman’s face. She was older than Tiernan, older than me, but looked as if she’d still had so much life left to live.

“Caitria always told you that you’re too hotheaded, Tiernan.” Galahad hobbled forward and bent down to gently remove Caitria’s broken goggles from her face. “She may be gone, but that doesn’t mean you need to rush to join her.”

None of this was right, and bile worked its way up my throat. I needed to find my way back to Gams. If people were being attacked here, wherever here was, I needed to make sure she was safe.

But I couldn’t move. I stared at the two dead bodies in front of me. The orange light in the Grimguard’s eyes had died when he had, and he stared unseeing at the cavern ceiling.

“Now what?” the girl in the golden robes asked in a tiny voice. She clung to Galahad’s leather duster, hiding behind him.

“We need to keep moving.” Galahad straightened up. “The other Grimguard is behind us, and when he finds his friend, he’ll be out for blood as well as the Sovereign.”

Tiernan wrapped his arms around the dead woman and glanced around, as if expecting someone to help him lift her. No one did.

“Tiernan,” Ferrin murmured.

“We’ll come back for her, right?” Tiernan said. Galahad shook his head.

“Cape Fireld has fallen. There is no coming back, but this is her home. It’s a better resting place than any.”

“But this is my home too.” The young girl knelt next to Tiernan. Her thin fingers brushed hair from the dead woman’s ashen face. “Where will I go?”

“The Second Sentinel,” Ferrin asserted.

“Who’s the Second Sentinel?” I asked.

Ferrin looked at me with a brow knit in confusion.

“It’s a where, not a who. Galahad, your Nightmare, she—”

“The Second Sentinel is out of the question,” the old man cut him off.

“It’s the safest place.” Ferrin leaned on Orla, but the steel in his one open eye said he’d been expecting this fight.

“It’s too close to the Frozen God,” the old man said. “You may as well deliver the Sovereign to his doorstep.”

“The Second Sentinel is protected! And the Grimguards don’t know it’s there! What does proximity matter when they’ve come this far south, anyway?”

“It’s clear across the continent.” Galahad remained resolute.

“Then where?” Ferrin asked. “Tulyr?”

Galahad’s wrinkled face darkened.

“You’ve made your point. But if the Second Sentinel goes the way of Tulyr by the end of this, it’ll be your doing.”

“And the Nightmare?” Ferrin asked, his face glowing green in the light of Orla’s flame. “She’s defective, but now she knows where we’re going.”

“Feed her to a rotsbane,” Tiernan spat from where he still knelt with Caitria’s body. I recoiled away, stumbling to my feet. I didn’t know what a rotsbane was, but I was sure I didn’t want to be eaten by one.

Every face in the room turned towards me.

“Oh,” I said, my voice too high. “No, actually, if someone could just point me in the direction of Keel Watch Harbor. I’m supposed to be at my Gams’s house, but—”

“Orla, where did you say you picked this one up, again?” Galahad strode forward, studying me, and I backpedaled until I found the edge of the room.

“She was on the parapet,” Orla chirped. “The other Grimguard was about to ash her, but I thought it’d be handy to have a Nightmare with us.”

Galahad cocked his head at me, and I stepped back, bumping up against the cavern wall.

“Girl, do you have a name?”

“Wren.” Finally, we were getting somewhere. Someone was going to help me. “Wren Warrender.”

A stunned silence buzzed around the room.

“She knows her name,” Ferrin hissed.

“She’s lucid.” Galahad’s face turned stony, as if every wrinkle had been carved there on purpose. “I know.”

“But Nightmares aren’t supposed—”

“I know.” He pulled a vial of glowing liquid from his belt and downed the contents in a single gulp. He slipped his goggles down over his eyes with one hand as silver firelight sparked in the other. “Tiernan, cover Fana’s eyes.”

“Oh, Galahad.” Disgust laced Ferrin’s tone. “Not here.”

The firelight at Galahad’s fingers lengthened into a blade. I pressed against the cold, ungiving stones at my back.

“She’s a liability, Ferrin,” Galahad growled. “She’s lucid, and she’s heard too much. Tiernan’s right. She’ll only slow us down, but if the other Grimguard finds her and interrogates her—”

“No!” I threw my hands up in surrender. “I promise, I’m very dumb! I have no idea what you’ve all been saying! I’d be horrible in an interrogation.”

“Galahad,” Ferrin warned. The old man looked at him and shrugged.

“She’s my Nightmare, Ferrin,” he said. “And she’s mine to dispose of as I see fit. Tiernan, Fana’s eyes are closed, yes?”

And the silver blade dug into my chest.