The Iron Seer

Chapter 17 - Winds of Fate

I turned, and my eyes found a figure half-shadowed by the thick trees: a giant winged creature with leathery white skin and claws the length of my arm. Its empty black eyes met mine from across the clearing.

My heart stopped.

I don't know who moved first.

All I know is that I reached for my glamour, and the ice wyrm leaped.

The ice bow and arrow formed, and I pulled back the string just as the wyrm landed in front of me, sending a wave of kicked-up snow flying in my direction. This knocked me off my feet, but I was able to scramble out of the way before the wyrm's claws raked through the snow where I had been moments before - a blow that would have shredded me into bloody ribbons if I had been even a second slower.

My arrow missed completely; the wyrm didn't howl in pain, as it would have if the arrow had reached anywhere near its intended destination, the ice wyrm's heart. Instead, it swung around to snap at me with its teeth. Throwing myself backwards, I cried out as its teeth grazed my leg. I managed to get an arrow through the wyrm's wing before it had me pinned down in the snow, my bow knocked from my hands.

There is a moment, mere seconds from death, when your mind searches desperately for a way to escape its clutches. I remembered that the ice wyrms were being supplied with iron by the Oni, and I screamed out the one thing I thought might save me. "Stop! I can get you more iron!"

The wyrm paused, tilting its head to the side to regard me in confusion, and that was all I needed. Its claws were still in my leg, it had me pinned down, and my bow was out of my reach yet again, but I had another weapon left. I threw my glamour out in an icy hail. The wyrm fell back, shrieking as the sharp and jagged shards pierced its skin.

I scrambled to me feet and was halfway to the mountain entrance, stumbling but moving as fast as I could on my wounded leg, when I saw its shadow above me reflecting on the snow and heardthe whoosh of its wings. It swooped down and picked me up in its talons, carrying me up into the sky.

***

Its long hind legs meant I was dangling below the rest of the beast as it flew, rather than tucked close enough to its body to strike a death blow. That would be suicide, anyway; we were so high above the ground that the trees looked tiny, black, and skeletal. The mountains rose up around us, the only things as close to the ceiling of the world as we were.

My leg was bleeding so badly that I had to keep both of my hands pressed to my thigh. I tried to lift my leg to my chest in an attempt to slow the bloodflow, but that hurt even worse. Head spinning, I could only squeeze the wound in my thigh as blood dripped down my leg, and hope that the ice wyrm wouldn't decide to let me fall to my death.

The flight was not exactly smooth. The thud of the wyrm's wings jarred me, and the talons clasped about my middle were not gentle, though they did not tighten and impale me, for which I was grateful, but not that grateful.

What would they do when they discovered I was missing? I knew they would look for me, but the longer ice wyrm flew, the farther we drew away from the Oni caves. I needed to figure out a way to escape, before I became a meal.

The wyrm's powerful wingbeats slowed and we dropped several hundred feet, veering toward the side of a mountain. Just when I thought we'd crash, it swooped and dived low into a gaping crevice on the mountain's side, hidden under a deep overhang. The creature released me from its grasp, all but flinging me onto the hard ice on the floor of the ledge as it alighted at the entrance.

I tucked my arms over my head and rolled across the ice, which was far from smooth, worn with deep grooves from wyrm claws. My leg hurt so much from the landing that all I could do for a few seconds was lay there with my eyes closed, stunned and in too much pain to force myself to get up, look around, defend myself.