Champion of Fire & Ice - Megan Derr Page 0,20

gave the series of whistles that ordered her to return home. An answering cry, and then she was swiftly lost to the sky.

"That's that," Cimar said. Lee held out his bow, but Cimar shook his head and first reached up to remove the white collar around his throat. He always felt strange without it, but there might not be time enough to remove it later. Everything else he wore, armor included, would give way to the shift, but the specially made leather collar risked choking him if it wasn't removed ahead of time.

Stowing the collar, he took back his bow. "Hang back a few paces, Lee. Keep our rear covered but be prepared to run the moment I tell you. Let's work our way around the castle, see if we can get in through a side passage, find some high ground. Our only advantage right now is that lindworms are large; it won't be able to just slither through most of the hallways around here."

"Could slither up a column though," Lee muttered, but fell into step a few paces behind him as directed, keeping his bow at the ready, though arrows would be useless unless they struck its softer underbelly or right in one of its eyes.

They found entry by way of the kitchens, though Lee puked again at the pile of remains scattered there, bits and pieces of people and livestock in various stages of decay.

"I always thought I had a strong stomach," Lee said miserably.

"This is infinitely worse than anything you'd see on a battlefield or even a plague-felled city. No one should ever have to bear witness to this level of… gleeful, ravening violence. Now be silent, unless the matter is urgent. Lindworms aren't known for their hearing, but they aren't deaf either. Worse, they have an acute sense of smell."

Lee nodded and nocked an arrow.

They pressed on, the stench growing worse with every step. Never in his life had Cimar wanted so badly to be anywhere else in the world.

When he found a set of stairs, he swiftly climbed them, Lee behind him. They traveled the hallways slowly, frequently gagging. Bodies were everywhere—lords, servants, livestock, pets. It was clear a great many of them had been injured, either by the lindworm or in an ensuing panic, and died of their injuries up here where they couldn't be eaten. A blessing of sorts, but still a cruel and miserable way to die.

If they managed to survive this, the rest of the challenge would be laughably easy, though frankly he thought defeating a lindworm should qualify for an automatic win.

They'd be fully within their rights to retreat and come back with a greater force, but he also wouldn't put it past His Majesty to still use the retreat as an excuse to call the challenge a loss and see he was awarded no points. Cimar would be damned before he let that happen.

He just wished his quest had been a little bit easier than this.

As they turned a corner, he could see the rafters and tapestries of the great hall. So this was the mezzanine. Signaling to Lee, he crept up to the balustrade—and barely choked back a scream.

"Oh, god," Lee said on a sob, sinking to his knees and clinging to the balusters, head pressed against them as he bit back the rest of his sounds.

Cimar had to wipe his own eyes on the sleeves of his tunic before he could take a second, more thorough look at the devastating nightmare below.

Nothing remained of the great hall but ruins—and corpses. So many corpses. Livestock. Knights. Women. He had to turn away for a moment after spying children. It was like the lindworm had lost its mind, fallen into a frenzy, and been more interested in the killing than the eating. Or maybe it was an outlier and preferred carrion to fresh meat. Whatever the reason, the results would haunt Cimar's sleep for the rest of his life.

In the middle of the hall, curled up in a nest made of fabric and destroyed furniture, was the monster itself. Its scales looked like they'd been carved from moonlight and opals, and Cimar could just see the crown of spikes on its head that was the main difference in skull between dragons and lindworms.

The damn thing was also vastly more enormous than he'd anticipated. It slept like the dead, only the barest rise and fall of its coiled body to indicate it was, in fact, alive. Cimar did not want