A Dawn of Dragonfire - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,68

of shriveled skin on a hook! Would you hang me by your throne so I could still watch the court?"

She laughed so hard that she didn't realize she was crying, that her laughter was becoming a panicked pant. She jerked when Elethor touched her shoulder, sure for an instant that it was her, Nedath, the demon who had bitten her shoulder and spoken of sucking her bones. She found herself wrapped in Elethor's arms, like the cobwebs had wrapped her, and she wept against him.

"I won't let that happen," he said softly, stroking her hair.

She shivered, unable to stop her tears from falling. "I'm so scared, Elethor. I saw things in there, in the darkness she showed me. I saw… there was a black hill, and a black rose on it, and horror filled the air, as if fear were a physical thing. And… Elethor, I have to stop the bones from lining up! I have to count them, Elethor. I have to count the hairs that are growing sideways."

He shook his head, eyes narrowed. "What, Lyana? What do you mean? There are no bones. There's nothing to count."

She sobbed, body shaking. "I don't know! I don't know, Elethor. But…" She sniffed. "If my teeth fall from my gums, I…" She gritted those teeth and rubbed her eyes. "No! No. I can't think like them. I can't talk like them." She clung to his clothes with her good hand, staring into his eyes through her tears. "I won't turn into a Shrivel. Promise me that, Elethor. Promise you won't let me go."

He held her. "I promise you, Lyana. As King of Requiem, I will do whatever I can to cure you; I will summon healers from across the world, from Salvandos in the west to Leonis in the east. I won't let you turn into anything." He touched her hair. "Do you remember how, when we were children, we'd go to Lacrimosa Hill, eat walnuts from a pouch, and look at the stars? You and Mori would whisper, and Bayrin and Orin would laugh, and I'd try to tell you all about the stars, but you'd never listen." He smiled softly. "We'll do that again, Lyana. We'll go stargazing, and eat walnuts, and laugh…"

He fell silent. They stood holding each other, and Lyana tried to remember those days of her youth, the glow of the stars, the warmth of the breeze, the sound of her laughter, and she knew those days could never return. Orin was gone now. Mori was hurt, maybe too much to ever recover. As for herself… could she ever be the woman she had been? When fire rained, and darkness clutched her, was there still a path home?

"Let's keep going," she said and pulled back from his embrace. She raised her lamp, casting its light upon a dead, dark land. "Let's find this Starlit Demon and go home."

They walked across the grass of fingers, crushing them. They moved through darkness, lashing their swords at red eyes that blazed around them. Shadows swirled, taking the shapes of bloated dragons that burst, shedding bodies of smoke from their bellies. Ribs rose around them, framing the tunnels, columns of dead cathedrals. Bodies hung from the walls on meat hooks, their faces burnt. Some bodies looked almost like Orin, others like Lyana's parents, some like herself. Their bellies were split, revealing nests of transparent eggs, snakes moving inside the shells. Hatched snakes squirmed along the tunnel floor, bloated, screeching, laughing, mocking them.

"Walk deeper, weredragons!" spoke the bodies on the hooks. "Enter our darkness. You will hang here too! You will rot and burst and feed our hatchlings."

The bodies' faces twisted, mouths gasping. They screamed, begged for death, and wept tears of blood.

"Don't look at them," Elethor said, jaw clenched. "It's not real, Lyana. It's just a dream. It's just a nightmare they're showing us."

Lyana nodded, desperate to believe him. When bodies rubbed against her, she shoved them aside and stabbed them, shedding blood and pus and maggots. Their stench filled her nostrils. Their flesh against her felt hot, sticky, too real to be a vision. Yet she kept walking, forcing herself to stare forward, to ignore them.

"They're just a dream," she repeated through stiff lips. "Just a dream."

"Are we just a dream?" asked a hanging body, speaking through a gaping wound in its rotted face.

"You have been kissed by Nedath!" said another, the skinned body of a man with a bull's head.

A snake coiled toward her, spine peeking through rents