Finally. Sindari stalked out of the trees, moving tenderly. I have not been thrown around so many times since I was a cub wrestling with my uncle.
“It’s hard to imagine such a regal and noble predator as a cub.” I’d met a cub from his kind before, and she had been a big goofball that ate my seatbelts. “I bet you were cute and goofy.”
I was regal, even as a cub.
“Even while you were being thrown through the air?” I released my magic, and roots slid back into the ground. The remains of the creature did not move, and its aura disappeared.
Yes.
I was about to run over to check on Zav—the cracking and roars of his battle promised it was still going on—but Sindari glanced at his side, drawing my eye to red blood.
“It cut you,” I blurted, rushing over and dropping to my knees beside him.
I rested a hand on his flank, Zav’s warning ringing in my mind. The creature’s talons had raked three deep gouges in Sindari’s side, splitting fur and flesh and revealing muscle. My senses told me there was something magical about the wounds, and there was a faint purple glow over them that reminded me uncomfortably of the box.
Yes, and it feels like icicles burrowing into my torso. Sindari twisted and started licking at the wounds.
“I’m sorry.” I needed to go help Zav but didn’t want to leave if the gouges could get worse quickly—what if they turned out to be fatal? “Will you be able to heal? Zav said…”
I am certain he warned you not to let an undead creature cut you, yes, Sindari finished for me. I will need a healer’s touch, and I am uncertain if those among my kind know how to handle this type of wound taint. Without an experienced healer, such wounds turn necrotic and can take over your body and either kill you or turn you into one of them.
“We won’t let that happen.” I hoped Zav was a good enough healer to keep that from happening. Fortunately, the noises and magic-flinging from his battle were fading—I sensed several of his foes flying away. “Dimitri wouldn’t pet an undead tiger. Too creepy.”
Then I most assuredly do not want to let that come to pass.
“Stay here. I’ll get Zav.”
I ran through the trees, having to vault over trunks that had been torn from their roots by the power flying around during the fight. Others had been slammed to the ground by massive boulders tumbling from the canyon wall.
Zav was on his feet amid a mess of bones and skulls scattered among rock rubble. Gray stone dust coated his black body and wings—the cave had collapsed behind him—and his enemies were vanquished. Relieved that he appeared more irritated than injured, I ran up and flung my arms around one of his forelegs.
Four got away, he informed me with disgust, though he lowered a wing and gently rested it around my back.
“Scared by your ferocity, I’m sure.”
Scared by me blasting away their defenses with my power and destroying them, he growled into my mind. They do not feel fear, as living creatures do, but they are not without thought. When they realized their victory was uncertain, they fled. They will report our presence to whoever created them.
“Your presence is hard not to notice. I imagine that their creator already knows you’re here.”
Perhaps.
“Sindari is hurt. Can you help him?”
Sindari hadn’t remained behind, instead trailing me through the trees, and he sat on his haunches, his flank dark with blood.
He allowed them to pierce his flesh. Zav gazed toward Sindari.
“Not on purpose. He was helping me. Since the creature was knocking over buildings, we had to fight it instead of hiding inside.”
Hm. Zav gazed at Sindari with consideration. I believe it will take a more skilled healer than I to repair his wound, but let me inspect it.
I stepped out of the way, and Sindari came closer. My heel clunked against one of the skulls, causing it to roll down a rubble pile and land next to a skeletal leg, the foot and talons still attached.
“Your eyes aren’t glowing now, punk.” I glared at it.
A few more bones dusted the rubble underneath me, smaller pieces that might have been shattered from a foot. Reminded of the finger bones from the artifacts room, I picked one up. All the bones I’d encountered in my life looked similar, so it wasn’t as if this had some proven link to the invisible wraith-beings that had attacked me, but the faint purple glow around Sindari’s gashes reminded me so much of that box that it was hard not to wonder if they were tied in somehow.
But what would undead creatures flying around on another world have to do with a box made by dragons? Could they all have been created with the same type of magic?
“Are those skeletal wyverns—or whatever they were—native to this world?” I asked, though Zav was gazing intently at Sindari, beaming healing magic at him.
Then I remembered Zav had said the creatures were an oddity and that the dragon ruling this world should have done something about them. That implied they weren’t natural occurrences. Maybe they’d come from that haunted world.
They are not, Zav replied without taking his focus from Sindari.
“So someone could have brought them here? After capturing them there? Or making them there?” I wondered what Zoltan’s response would be if I taped another bone with a note to his door. I’d left before learning if he’d discovered anything useful about the other one.
That is correct. Someone undead.
“Only undead people—er, beings—can make undead… minions?” I’d known that it took a vampire to make another vampire, but I knew less about zombies, and I’d never even encountered an ambulatory—or aerial—skeleton before.
Powerful beings. The presence of such a being here may account for the dwarves going into hiding.
“A whole planet’s worth of dwarves?”
Perhaps. It is not a hardship for them to remain underground—they have ways to farm, hunt, and fish down there—so it may be something akin to waiting out a storm for them. It is also possible that the being is particularly wide-ranging and heinous and has been preying on their people.
“Comforting.” I took some comfort in the fact that Zav, Sindari, and I had defeated the skeletal army, but if those had simply been minions, they’d been powerful ones. How strong did that mean the creator was?
Sindari shifted from sitting to lying on his belly, his head between his paws. That didn’t bode well.
“How’s the healing going?”
I have repaired the physical wounds, but the undead taint remains. It must be driven out by a more versatile healer than I, someone with experience with such injuries, or it will turn necrotic and damage his body from the inside.
“Can Zondia help? Or another dragon?” I could hardly believe I’d have to give up my sword quest less than an hour into arriving on this world, but Sindari was far more important.
I do not believe Zondia’qareshi has experience with the undead. She is young. The most experienced healer I know is a curmudgeon of a female dragon from the Silverclaw Clan. She is ancient and has peculiar habits.
“What constitutes peculiar habits for dragons?”
She preys upon dwarves, elves, humans, and the other sentient races, even though the meat is unpalatable.
“Uh.” This did not sound like the dragon I wanted healing Sindari—or anyone else. “Why would someone like that become a healer?”