Xanum

Chapter Eleven

Fayne returned three weeks later, in the middle of the night. He quietly whisked us away from the city. We walked for hours under the cover of darkness, never stopping until we reached the edge of a small canyon. Fayne sat himself on the ledge and scratched his chin.

I immediately noticed that there was something different about him, it was in his eyes, the way he stared off into the distance at nothing with a haunted look in his eyes, and it was in the way he carried himself. Something had changed.

"Sit," he said. Tony and I seated ourselves on opposite sides of Fayne and waited for him to speak.

"What's all this about? And where did you go?" Tony asked.

"I have travelled through this country and spoken to its people, and I have travelled through the most ancient parts of the forest in which I've made my home," Fayne explained.

"Okay, and?" I asked. Fayne turned his empty gaze from the stars to me. His eyes seemed devoid of life.

"The king's efforts to prevent civil war have failed, and there is now a sizable party forming that is planning to challenge not only Amplov but also his right to rule," Fayne said. His voice was flat.

"Okay, that's really not good, but what's this about the forest?" Tony asked. Fayne's head rotated to face Tony as if it were an automated response.

"I have delved into the oldest regions of the forest, where the magic is foreign and unfamiliar, where the trees and plants are not just living but sentient, conscious of their surroundings. I have spoken to the oldest creature on this planet, and it has agreed to allow you to take from its body to forge your weapons," Fayne said.

"Uh, why can't we just use normal wood?" Tony asked.

"With the wood from the tree, your weapons would not break, they would not chip, they couldn't be damaged. They would become one with nature, a force of nature, just as you are both forces of magic," Fayne spoke softly, as if he were afraid someone would hear. I decided to bring this up.

"What else happened to you? You're not the same as when you left us in the palace," I said.

"I have seen the great beast," Fayne said. He stretched both his arms out to each of our foreheads, and through some unknown magic that Fayne used, I saw his memories.

I saw a gargantuan flying creature. It was laying waste to an entire town, blotting out the stars, and for a moment, in the light of the fire that spread through the town, I saw scales. The scales were massive, coating the beast's entire body. If I allowed myself to ignore the fact that the creature had just slaughtered an entire town, I would see that its color was beautiful. The scales reminded me of blue ice, pale and empty at the edges but vibrant blue toward their center. The creature seemed to be made of ice.

As the creature flew over the burning wreckage, I watched as a beautiful blast of ice shot from the its mouth, freezing the burning town and all its inhabitants. In the memory, I heard Fayne gasp, and he turned and ran. As he did, I heard the beast's great wings thundering against the air, and as Fayne huffed for air, the beating of its wings got closer, until I could feel the wind crashing into his body and I felt pain in my stomach as Fayne fell to the ground. He couldn't hold himself up against the force of the creature's wings. Gradually, the wings receded and the memory faded.

"That was a dragon," Tony said.

"A what?" Fayne asked.

"A dragon. They're no more than myth where we're from. They have huge wings, they breathe fire, all that crap," Tony explained. As the two of them continued to talk, I began to realize a few things. The dragon was the beast I had seen that night, its wings were the thunder, and its claws were what had torn those trees from the ground.