Dnara opened her mouth to answer, but found she had no words that could reach past the pain in her heart. Instead, she tightened her hug on Ren’s cold body and choked on a bitter sob. In truth, she had no clear answer for what had happened, only that it had happened, and that she once again lay at the center of someone else’s misfortune.
“Ren?” Nate was first to make some sense of the scene and broke from formation to run for the center. He slid on plated knees in the mud and came to a stop beside them, his confused eyes searching for an explanation. In return, Dnara could only offer him tears.
“What have you done, mage?” Liam came next, not with confusion but with anger and a blade deftly wielded. “What have you done to her?!”
“Step away, Liam.” Commander Aldric’s stoic order did not match the concern in his eyes, but he remained for his squad a symbol of stability even in a time of madness.
“But, sir,” Liam argued, his sword openly brandished to where Dnara lay on her elbows and knees in the mud. “She’s killed Ren!”
“We don’t know for certain what happened,” Aldric replied calmly.
“Brodan’s balls we don’t!” Liam shook with rage. “Look there, on Ren’s shoulder! This witch has done branded Ren with her foul magic!”
Dnara looked to where Liam’s sword tip pointed. A blistered circle of flesh marked Ren with the same rune engraved on Dnara’s palm. A pitiful, hiccupping sob escaped her throat. Liam was right. The beast had come for her and had taken Ren instead. “I’m so sorry.”
“See?!” Liam seethed. “She admits as much!”
“She may have saved Ren for all we know!” Nate shouted from his place next to Ren.
“Or, she-” Liam sputtered to a halt and turned sharply to Nate. “Saved? She... Ren lives?”
“Barely,” Nate said, his fingers pressed to Ren’s neck. “But yes, so put your sword down before you do something stupid.”
“Sweet Faedra’s mercy,” Liam muttered and sank to his knees, sword tip now planted into the earth for support. “I thought...”
“She’s alive?” Dnara asked to hear Nate say it again, too shocked to allow hope to take hold. “But the beast took her and... I saw her die!”
“Beast?” Aldric questioned then held up his hand before Dnara could answer. He called to three of his men. “Jarrel, ride to town and ready their healer. Teigen, Fox, ready a litter to carry her and follow behind on foot. It could be a concussion, so I won’t risk putting her on a horse.”
“Yes, sir!” the three men saluted.
“I’m going, too,” Nate said, to which Aldric nodded.
“I’ll go-” Liam started but Nate cut him off.
“You’ll stay here and make sure nothing happens to Dnara, or Ren will kick your sorry arse when she wakes up.”
That settled, Jarrel left in a swift run to find a horse while the other two men came forward to help set Ren onto Nate’s back. The female soldier’s eyes were closed and she made no sound as they moved her. After a lingering look in Dnara’s direction, Nate took carefully placed, steady steps to the tree line. Aldric and the remaining men tightened their circle.
“What beast?” Aldric asked.
Dnara pushed herself up and sat on her heals. “You didn’t see-? No, of course you didn’t see it. Ren couldn’t see it either. It looked like this giant...shadow, but I think it was actually a dragon.”
“A dragon?” Liam shook his head in disbelief. “There hasn’t been a confirmed dragon sighting in all of Ellium for over eight hundred years!”
“I could be mistaken,” Dnara admitted. “But, it felt like a dragon.”
“Felt?” Aldric cocked his head to the side as he tried to understand her strange choice of words. “And how does a dragon feel?”
“Like fire,” she responded, a haze filling her eyes as she remembered the desperate creature she had seen trapped beneath the shadows. “Only, this one’s fire had been extinguished a long time ago, I think. It seemed ready to... No, it wanted to die.”
“Then why’d it attack you and Ren?” Liam asked a perfectly reasonable question, even as his hand splayed across the three large gouges left in the earth by the beast’s talons. “Why not just land itself on our spears?”
Dnara looked at her mud covered arms, at the scars upon them and the mark in her palm as she attempted to offer an answer she could barely see for herself. “I don’t think it was the dragon that attacked us. It was the shadow.” Raising her eyes, she could understand the doubt and confusion within Liam’s gaze. “A shadow, some dark thing, has taken control of the dragon and is using it to hunt.”
Liam withdrew his hand from the claw marks and eyed the gash on Dnara’s neck where a rivulet of blood trailed downward and disappeared beneath her cotton underdress. Swallowing, he cast his gaze aside and stood. Sheathing his sword, he retrieved one of the towels and wrapped it around her shaking shoulders. They shared a silent moment in which his eyes showed worry for her distress and shame for his accusations.
“And what is it hunting, this shadow beast?” Aldric asked, his thick black eyebrow raised.
Dnara looked away from Liam and back to her recently acquired markings. “Most likely, me.”
Aldric knelt before her, one steel plated knee in the mud and big hand resting on the gilded hilt of his sword. “You don’t sound as shocked by this idea as one would expect. Have you knowingly put my squadron at risk without telling me?”
The wind whipped around the clearing and tugged at the red plume topping Commander Aldric’s helmet, his tone caring a clear warning that she should choose her next words wisely. He ignored the wind and Dnara silently wished for the spirit to calm.
