Out of Time - A Darklina Fanfic

Chapter 13

I didn't know what had taken me, just that one second I was on the ground and the next my feet touched nothing and the forest was growing rapidly smaller beneath me. I kicked, squirmed, and the claws dug in deeper, rending the wool of my kefta and cutting into my back with bright stabs of pain.

"Let me go!" I yelled, my voice already hoarse from screaming. I couldn't get my arms up to use the Cut, but up here that would have been fatal to both of us. I called light to my hands anyway so that I could be seen from the ground through the raging storm. There were Squallers in our retinue. If I fell or this thing dropped me they might be able to catch me on the air.

I tried to get a look at the creature, but it was hard with the rain plastering my hair to my face, the wind whipping so furiously that my hat blew off my head. At first I thought it might be an oversized eagle, hence the claws. Then I caught a glimpse of a sleek underbelly armored in iridescent scales, black one moment, then illuminated green, gold in a flash of lightning that was too close for comfort.

"Impossible," I said to myself. Improbable, chimed a voice in my head. No one had ever seen a Sun Summoner before you came along, either.

But that didn't mean dragons were real, too.

I squirmed again, thrashed, kicked, hoping the dragon would get the message. "Put me down!"

"Stop struggling if you don't want to be dropped on your head," the dragon snapped with an irritated snort. It had a woman's voice, oddly familiar.

I stopped moving out of shock. There was a rolling boom of thunder. Once it faded, I squeaked, "You can talk?"

At that moment, a black blur shot by me and went straight for the dragon's face. She veered up and shot a spurt of flame from her mouth to try to deter whatever it was that had attacked her. I thought she had cleared it, but then another blur went for her left wing, and she let out a furious roar, twisting this way and that in the air to try to get the creature off. The claws loosened.

"No," I said, trying to reach up for one of her rain-slick talons. "No no no—"

Then I was free, and I was falling, tumbling through the air, my screams swallowed up by the howling of the wind.

I barely had time to realize what was happening — that this, of all the ways, would be how I died — before something caught hold of one of my arms, nearly wrenching it from its socket. Something else seized my other arm. Not the dragon. I couldn't make sense of which way was up, since I had turned over and over again and the sky and ground looked equally grey from here, but I saw her briefly, fighting off what seemed to be two beings made entirely of shadow.

When I looked at my arms, I saw that I was being tightly gripped by two shadow claws on each side. Then I looked at the things holding me and almost screamed again. They were shifting, shadowy silhouettes of men, featureless, with black wings pouring from their backs like smoke. They were less like volcra and more like my monster friend in the cellar, but even that had a human face, human features. These were blank slates, created only to serve.

The nichevo'ya, the nothings. The Darkling's creations I had read about, born of merzost. I felt the wrongness roiling from them like oil coating my skin. They shouldn't be here. They shouldn't exist. I wanted to wrench away from them, but doing so meant almost certain death. I tamped down on my revulsion and let them carry me to the ground.

They left me on the road near where the cars had stopped and flew off to join the battle. Our makeshift caravan was in organized chaos. The Squallers stood on the tops of the cars, hands outstretched, trying to take some control of the storm. The oprichniki were running back and forth, setting up contraptions on the ground that looked like cannons, hidden behind the hoods of the cars. The Corporalki stood at the rear, waiting, expectant.