A Crown of Gold

The Scorch

The staff snapped again my ribs, making me cry out and fall to a knee. I stood, wildly swinging my own staff around in rage. My opponent easily blocked each advance, using his own weapon to sweep my feet out from underneath me before pressing a knee to my shoulder to keep me pinned.

"You'll have to be less predictable if you want to ever survive a fight," Nik said with a grin, releasing me from his pin and extending a hand down to help me up. I huffed, taking his hand.

"Remember your balance," he reminded me, getting back into a fighting stance. "Make your blow at the same time you make it in your head."

I nodded, panting from the exertion of the past few rounds Nik had literally knocked me on my ass. Ever since I became 'queen of the sky', Sephraim found it necessary for me to know how to defend myself. The only person I agreed to let teach me was Nik. For the past three weeks we'd trained in the courtyard at Liptomal. At the same time, I'd been learning Draconic from both Nik and Sephraim, finding myself to pick it up quite fast.

Nik stepped forward, jabbing his staff at me. I stepped out of the way, knocking the stick away with my own. "Good," Nik praised. "Again."

After behind whacked by a stick a few more times, I tapped out. "Nik, I can't do this for one more second."

He gave me a disapproving look, "Do you think an enemy on the battlefield will care about that?"

I rolled my eyes, "This isn't a battle. Plus, if I die of exhaustion now I won't ever see a battle anyway."

Nik scoffed, waving me off. I sighed in relief, dropping the staff on the dirt with a thud. I made my way to a fallen tree trunk, collapsing down on it. Nik sat down beside me, presenting a flask to me. I gladly accepted it, popping the cork off before guzzling the water held inside.

"You're improving," Nik offered, taking the flask from my hand and taking a sip.

"I'm terrible." I corrected, shooting an unconvinced look toward him.

He laughed through his nose, "You'll get there."

There was a beat of calm silence—the distant sound of the ocean filled the quiet space, trees rustling above in the coastal breeze. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath just before the memory came crashing down on me. The darkness, the fear. Him.

My eyes pulled open, my gaze shifting hesitantly to the seer seated beside me. "Nik?"

He hummed, taking another drink from the flask. I swallowed, "Have you had any notable visions lately?"

Nik paused, only for a moment, before placing the cork back into the mouth of the flask and setting it at his side. He turned toward me, blinking and raising his eyebrows in a failed attempt to pretend he had no idea what I was taking about. "Not really. Why do you ask?"

I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth, chewing on the skin for a moment until I was able to swallow the feeling of doom in my stomach. "I...I saw something. In a dream I had a few weeks ago. It was strange, and too vivid for my liking."

I watched Nik carefully as I continued. "It was dark—suffocatingly dark. Then a smoke surrounded me and just when I felt like it was going to completely take me over..."

Nik's eyes watched me intently. I sat up a little straighter, looking past him for a brief moment. "I saw you. Or your eyes. I'm not sure, I just know that you were there with me. We were both drowning in this inky smoke."

Nik wasn't looking at me anymore. His mismatched eyes were zeroed in on the spot between his boots, his jaw clenched into a tense stance. "This doesn't make any sense," I just barely heard him say, his voice hardly even a whisper.