Ought to be Dead by Scott Warren

Author:Scott Warren [Warren, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

In the distance Specter saw the tents and traveling herds of a nomadic Bedden salt tribe. The Beddens hunkered for the worst of the storms and flooding. They pitched their tents on a raised bar of salt to keep them out of the flooded Three-finger Sea and fish for the creatures that swam the inland waters in summer. Their makeshift village, their horses, camels, and their herds sat directly in the path of the Ma’hal.

“Climb me!” Specter ordered and pulled with what strength he had left. The elf scrambled up, clinging to the scraps of his trousers, his belt, and finally got high enough to reach his other hatchet. She drew it and put it in Specter’s other hand. With the elf clinging to his back, Specter worked his way up the face of the Ma’hal as he had seen dwarven ice mountaineers do in pursuit of frozen ice thane constructs. Had that been this life? Surely not, the memory felt so far, so distant.

Eventually Specter reached the top of the Ma’hal, and its surface leveled out enough for Rathal Un to release her iron grip on his back and stand on her own. Blue lightning spread underneath both of them as they pushed further up with the wind at their backs. Specter risked a look back, but the angle was such that he saw neither the village nor his airborne apprentice.

With the howling winds too loud for speech, Rathal pulled him along, drawing out one of her coral cutlasses. As they ran along the top of the creature, Specter saw all the lightning beneath its flesh pulsing from a single location up ahead. More worrying, he saw arcs beginning to breach the surface. The storm within the Ma’hal continued to grow stronger.

One arc leapt up like a whip, striking Rathal Un across her exposed lower back and leg. She cried out, silent in the wind, and fell face-down. Her coral cutlass slipped from her grip, sliding down the front of the Ma’hal. Specter snatched it up and reached her a heartbeat later. The cracking lightning had scored a long red welt that traced across her calf and flank, but the elf was somehow still conscious. Up ahead, the source of the lightning beckoned.

Rathal Un struggled to her feet. She took the cutlass from Specter’s proffered hand and thrust it deep in the epicenter of the Ma’hal dir Tempas. A burst of white energy knocked her back several paces, and Specter shaded his eyes against the glare. Within, he felt a release of the creature’s natural magics. It washed over him, then fled leaving only a murmur of its former strength. The lightning beneath the skin of the Ma’hal stilled, and a gray pallor spread across its flesh. A moment later Specter noticed that its wings had stopped undulating, and he himself felt… lighter.

At first, he thought it was some artifact of the power Rathal Un had released, but once Specter reached the front of the creature with the elf captain, he saw that the creature was simply no longer flying.

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