Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(15)

By the time I worked my way back down, the trail had already grown perilously slick. The town, dark and lifeless, still smelled of cinders and burned flesh. No one would be here to greet me when I returned. My throat tightened and my eyes stung. All I had ever wanted was for people to care about me, and to one day join the community here. My chance for that was gone.

Icy wind whipped through the valley as I followed the trade road, and it sounded like my father’s voice saying, Don’t go, don’t go. But I had to. Peaks loomed on either side, blotting out the stars. If I didn’t catch up to Ina by moonset, it would be impossible to see a thing in the inky darkness.

I increased my pace as if I could outrun my grief. If I told Ina that I had written this into being, she wouldn’t dirty her hands with the blood of the bandits. She’d know it was my fault. She might hate me for what I’d done, but at least she wouldn’t have to live with the kind of guilt I did.

The deep ruts left by the bandits’ heavily burdened wagons were easy to track. I followed them doggedly, knowing they couldn’t have gone far before camping for the night. Where I found the bandits, I would find Ina. She had to have taken her human form at some point; she would want to conserve her strength if she planned on attacking them as a dragon. I just hoped I could catch up with her before she did.

As I rounded the far side of the mountain, a row of torches finally glowed in the distance. I could barely make out the camp except to see that the bandits had settled in a blind canyon surrounded by high cliffs. It would be easy to defend from any attackers coming from the road. Unfortunately, it was also the perfect trap in which to be cornered by a dragon.

I reached for the magic around me, extending my Sight. I didn’t call out to Ina lest the bandits had sentries around their camp. My Sight revealed a bright, silvery presence glimmering in the woods, luminous with magic, moving through the trees like a ghost.

It had to be Ina.

I ran toward her. Before I caught up, she emerged from the trees, already taking the shape of the dragon.

“Ina!” I shouted, throwing caution away.

Again, her transformation was slow and uncertain, but the determined way she moved made it clear that it didn’t matter to her if she died doing this.

The first scream came as the sky lit up with dragon fire.

“No!” I was too late. I hastily sketched my father’s symbol in the air for protection and guidance.

Ina moved through the air beautiful as the moonlight and deadly as the wrath of a god. Flame burst from her jaws as she ignited wagons like kindling. Animals tore free of their tethers and people poured out of tents to scatter in every direction, but the canyon had them trapped. Trees crackled with flame, showering sparks over the bandits’ camp. The few who had escaped the blaze raced for the road, but Ina picked them off from above as though it was a game.

She swooped down and cracked open a man’s head with her jaws like a walnut. His blood painted the dirty snow. Another she picked up in her talons and dropped from high above the treetops, his body crumpling into an unnatural shape on the road. She threw a woman against a tree, and a short, broken branch low on the trunk skewered her through the stomach. Some tried to escape by taking their manifests, but Ina caught them with ease. She shook a manifested goat the way a dog might snap the neck of a squirrel and snatched up a goose as though he were no more than a fly.

They all died screaming.

Eventually the chaos ceased, and Ina glided down to the road and folded her wings. She tipped her silvery nose to the wind, smelling for anyone she might have missed. Tree branches still crackled with flames and whispered to the wind, but now they spoke only of death.

I stood frozen with horror. How much of Ina was still the girl I loved, and how much was the creature she’d taken as her manifest?

I had done this. I was responsible.

I crept through the woods with my heart in my throat until I got close enough to see the rise and fall of Ina’s sides heaving. Though the dragon’s gaze was keen as ever, she hung her head in exhaustion, her white scales streaked with blood. My chest constricted. In spite of all those Ina had killed, it still wounded me to see her hurting.

Assured that none of the bandits remained alive, she folded in on herself until she was once more a girl, and then set about the practical business of raiding the less damaged bodies for useful things. The dragon must have changed her. This ruthless, efficient person was not the same one I loved. Fires cast deep, flickering shadows all across the road, the heat of them palpable even from a distance. With the bloody corpses all around, it was exactly like what I imagined one of the Six Hells must be like.

“Ina!” I said, barely able to find my voice.

Her head snapped up. “Don’t come any closer.” In the flickering light of the burning trees, her eyes deepened to sapphire as she fixed me with the cold stare of the dragon.

“Please listen. It’s my fault this happened. My power—” I started.

“You’d take the blame for the sky being blue and the tendency of snow to come in the winter if you thought that it might make someone feel better about it,” she said. Her expression finally softened a tiny bit. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“But it is,” I said. “I have to explain—”

She doubled over, breathing heavily, then retched into the slush along the side of the road. To my horror, the vomit glistened red in the firelight as it melted through the snow. She must have swallowed enough blood to make her sick.