Farona grunted as her grip weakened on the revolver, but when Sarah tried to shake it free from her hand, Farona slashed her face with the claws of her other hand, coming far too close to blinding her.
As she shied back, Farona rallied, tightening her grip on the revolver’s pearl handle. She brought it down to slam the butt into Sarah’s temple, then again as Sarah staggered. Her hold on Farona’s wrist loosened even further as Farona pushed her backwards.
Sarah kicked at Farona’s legs, trying to knock them from under her, but the other female was agile and easily dodged the move. She responded by turning her head to bury her sharp teeth into Sarah’s wrist.
Sarah screamed as blood poured from the wounds in her flesh. Farona shoved her away, bringing the gun back up to aim at her again.
She didn’t get a chance to pull the trigger before Sarah staggered onto the weakened boards covering the vertical shaft. Sarah screamed again as they shattered beneath her. Gravity that was so close to Earth’s gravity that she never noticed much difference took hold, dragging her down.
The sound of Farona’s huffing amusement followed, but was cut off just like Sarah’s scream when the fabric of Sarah’s wrap dress that had unwound during her struggle with Farona caught on the shards of wood that remained of the broken cover. She now dangled over a deadly drop by the delicate silk length of her wrap.
Farona stood over the shaft, staring down at Sarah. “Curse you for being so damned lucky, nixir!” She aimed the revolver. “But it looks as if your luck has finally run out.”
“Farona!” Jotahan’s voice sounded like the music of angels in Sarah’s ears. “Don’t do this. Put the weapon down.”
Farona’s expression twisted to one of desperation as her head turned to look in the direction where Jotahan voice had come from. “Ha-tah! This nixir murdered Ane-ata in cold blood! She must be punished! I had to defend myself against her attacks.”
“We were able to revive Kevos, Farona,” Jotahan said, his tone saddened. “He told us he saw you leaving Ane-ata’s home, right before he entered and discovered her still bleeding out on the floor. Please, my old friend, let us end this now. We can get you help. The priests can help you heal your broken spirit.”
Farona screamed with rage, swinging the revolver up to aim in Jotahan’s direction. Sarah shouted a warning, but it was too late as Farona pulled the trigger.
“If I cannot be with you, Ha-tah, then no one will,” Farona shrieked, stumbling a bit from the kickback of the gun.
Sarah heard the ominous thud of something heavy striking the board closest to the shard that kept her from falling. She saw Jotahan’s hand fall to hang motionless just over the edge.
“No!” she screamed, struggling to pull herself up the fabric. “Don’t you dare die on me, Jotahan!”
Light blazed in the shaft as her chanu zayul glowed even brighter with her emotions, and she felt a burst of inhuman strength that allowed her to pull her way up the fabric.
But it wasn’t enough. Farona had recovered from the shock of shooting Jotahan, and now turned her focus back on Sarah. “You made me do it,” she said in a shaking voice. “This was all your fault!” She cocked the revolver and her finger settled back on the trigger. “You made me kill my beloved!”
Jotahan’s hand suddenly grabbed Farona’s ankle. Sarah saw just the briefest glimpse of him as he struggled to pull his body up enough to put some weight into throwing Farona off-balance. She yelped in surprise and the gun went off, the bullet whizzing past Sarah’s head to lodge into the stone below her.
Then Farona cartwheeled her arms as Jotahan put the last of his strength into a hard shove that sent her falling over the edge.
Her body plummeted past Sarah, knocking into her with just enough force to send Sarah spinning. The back of her head and neck slammed hard into the uneven rock wall as Farona’s screams faded down the shaft, then cut off completely into dead silence. Sarah braced her feet against the stone to stop her dizzying spin. Agony filled her head, but her heart was in even more pain.
“Jotahan!” Sarah said, her voice quivering. “Please answer me! Please! Be okay.” Her head blazed with pain and her arms shook as she clutched the fabric. The darkness of unconsciousness began to close in over her vision.
His hand had fallen again, lying motionless now over the edge of the shaft. She stared at it as her vision faded to black, willing it to move. It didn’t so much as twitch, and he did not answer, no matter how loud and desperately she screamed his name.
40
When Sarah opened her eyes, she discovered that she was being consumed by fire. A fire that did not burn her.
“Wha?” She spun around, only then realizing that she hovered above an inferno, unable to feel the heat, nor the pain from the flames that licked past her feet and snapped around her legs like a pack of angry hounds.
“Where am I?”
“You are close to the Inferno, human.” The voice was feminine, but strong and resounding, seeming to emanate from all around her.
The flames licking at her toes grew larger and larger, curling into a sinuous shape as they rose in front of her. A dragon formed from the flames, wings stretching, long neck curving as it swung its sharp triangular face towards her. A massive crown of horns crested from its skull, fading into a thick ridge of spikes that trailed down its back.
“You-you’re Seta Zul!” Sarah recognized the shape of the horns, the slender build of the body in comparison to the heavier, more muscular male dragons depicted in the statues around the temple.
Smoke curled from the dragon’s nostrils. “This is a name I am called, though I was once known only as Rin Troka.”
“One Truth? That’s a beautiful name.” Sarah bowed her head, awed by the vision in front of her. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“I have been curious to meet you as well, human called Sarah.” The dragon’s form curled into an S shape, the massive wings gently flapping as she hovered in front of Sarah, who still hung above the blazing inferno that roiled and spun below her like the surface of the sun.
“Humans have always fascinated me. Your people possess the arrogance of the titans without their power. This appears to make your kind irrational. As a species, you seek to distill all meaning—the entire essence of truth—into succinct words and concepts that define your reality. This mental prison your people have forged for themselves means that humans will never learn to walk with the titans, because your minds are not free. You will end up destroying yourselves before you can unmake your shackles.”
“Are you talking about humans abandoning magic?”
Seta Zul chuckled, small flames slipping from between her sharp teeth. “Magic is what you humans have labeled those truths you cannot bring yourselves to accept. You try fruitlessly to explain chaos, so that you can put it into order. Like ignorant creatures, flailing in unfamiliar waters, humans search for meaning where there is none. You cannot accept when something simply ‘is’, you think it must always be explained.” She swung her head so that one large eye studied Sarah.
Sarah shook her head. “I… I don’t speak for all of humanity. I can’t answer for anyone but myself.”