Dragon: A Histories of Purga Novel

Chapter Five

"Keiara," Asher pleaded. "I didn't mean we had to investigate it."

"I thought you were listening," Keiara replied, throwing him a smile. "Sometimes, you have to follow your curiosity."

Asher stifled his anger and followed after his sister.

Keiara honed in on the glint with single-minded stubbornness. She disregarded Asher's warning. She disregarded the fact that whatever it was, it might be dangerous. The only thing she cared about was a new adventure.

They got to the foot of a large sand dune and stopped. Whatever the moonlight was glinting off of, it was half-buried at its top.

Keiara never hesitated. She climbed up there as fast as she could, a rushing excitement filling her. She left Asher behind, whose adventure quota for the day was met as soon as his foot hit the desert.

Instead, he watched her climb up there. She was lithe and graceful, but the sand was treacherous. Her feet kept slipping and at one point, he thought she was going to tumble. She never did, though. She kept her balance and kept right on climbing.

Pretty soon she was digging in the sand.

After only a couple seconds, she fell back with a little scream. Her hand was over her mouth and her eyes were wide.

Without so much as a thought, Asher ran up that sand dune as fast as he could, trying to get to Keiara before whatever was buried in the sand could attack her. What he found when he got there surprised him so much that he nearly fell on top of her.

It was a boy that looked like he was roughly the same age as his sister.

Keiara had him nearly uncovered. There was some sand still covering his stomach and chest but his head, arms, and legs were free.

"Who is that?" Asher asked. "Is he still alive?"

"I don't know," Keiara replied, her voice wavering with nervousness. She bent forward and was about to touch two fingers to his throat.

"Stop," Asher hissed, stepping back as if the body had a deadly virus.

Keiara ignored him though.

"We need to know if he's still alive," she whispered back. She resumed what she was doing and laid two fingers to his throat, feeling for a pulse. She was so nervous that she missed his carotid artery altogether and had to try again. This time there was no mistaking the strong, steady pulse throbbing in his neck. She breathed a small sigh of relief before she looked at the boy's broken body and tried to assess his injuries.

"Keiara, stop," Asher said again, this time with even more force. He was backing away from her, trying to be quiet. His voice was deadly serious as he gazed at her. His eyes jerked to one of the boy's arms. "Look! He's a Rook. Leave him."

Keiara followed his gaze and immediately found what her brother was talking about. There was no mistaking the silver mechpak shining on the boy's forearm.

"We can't leave him. He's hurt," Keiara tried to explain.

Asher just shook his head. He had to make her see reason.

"He'll just kill us. You know that," he said as he adjusted his bow and quiver of arrows on his shoulders. It was a gesture he made whenever he was scared.

"We don't know that and I am going to help him. Get out of my way, Asher." She pushed past him.

Keiara's face tightened and her brows furrowed together as she looked over the Rook. She pressed her hands onto his body and felt around, even opening his shirt and looking for any obvious wounds. She looked down at his left leg and gasped slightly. The cloth there was a singed and ruined mess. She lifted it up, tugging here and there where it had fused onto the skin. When she was finished, she revealed a leg that was a burned wreck. The flesh was cracked and blackened and blood oozed out of the wounds.