Vincent Cordell awoke with a gasp and found himself staring at the roof of a leather canopy. The morning mist clung to his scales like sweat, covering him with its moistness. Groaning, he forced himself to get up. He had been laying on his back, so with a little concentration, he used his wings to push himself upright on his cot so he could sit. His human brain was getting better at controlling the body he found himself in. Though when he stood up, he stumbled a bit.

  There was always a little bit of disorientation each morning. A lifetime of living as a human being could not be undone so easily. So even though he had been inhabiting a bipedal dragon body for weeks now, his mind was still adapting. It always needed a few seconds to calibrate when he awoke, especially after a nightmare like that. It needed to remember that there were wings and a tail. Both threw off his center of gravity.

  Still reeling from the imagery in his dreams, he waited there and listened. The camp was already stirring, he could hear voices murmuring. He saw a few winged shadows pass by the canopy. The ground squelched beneath his feet as he tried to stand up. Frowning, he looked down. The shelter should have shielded them from the brunt of last night’s rain. But rivulets made their way under the walls and wetted the ground, turning its dirt into mud. Sighing, he walked around until he found a dry spot, his feet “grabbing” at the soil as he walked. He wiped them off.

  There was a fire outside. He could hear the crackling and see its light flickering on the canopy walls. Though it wasn’t particularly cold out, the wetness of the morning made the flames inviting. He wanted warmth. After putting on his shoes, which had been designed for dragon feet, he stepped outside. A light fog blanketed the terrain. It tumbled and flowed as winged figures flitted in and out of it.

  The dreamlike quality of the morning reflected his state of mind. Ever since the confrontation in Crefield the week before, he felt adrift. His body moved, his legs carried him and when somebody asked him a question, he answered. But he did not feel present for any of these actions. He was distant and untouchable. Only the nightmares and their imagery made him feel alive. The adrenaline he felt after waking up was the only thing that made him feel truly present. When it wore off, he reverted to the disconnected, zombielike state.

  He headed toward the nearest fire, the one whose light he’d seen, vaguely noting that it was unusual for the expedition to be lounging. Normally they would be packing the canopy up. Something was wrong. As he drew closer, he saw Sperloc deep in conversation with Menik. Tuls, Madrian, Jeris and M’Kari were also there, warming themselves by the flames.

  “I would not trust what the man says,” Menik was saying, “He’s a wing-shitter.”

  Vincent’s ear twitched. Wing-shitter? he thought. He had no idea what that was or who they were discussing. He gathered that a “wing-shitter” was an insult of theirs. Tuls saw him coming and move aside so he could take a seat.

  “The guy does not know what he’s talking about,” Menik continued, “He thought he could join a roshenum team simply because he’s lithe and he has muscle. Guess what that got him? A broken rack and brain damage.”

  Vincent had heard the soldiers talk about roshenum a few days ago. It was a Falian sport. He wasn’t familiar with the rules, but from what he gathered, it involved gliding and air combat. Sperloc saw Vincent sit down and glared at him. However, the historian didn’t say anything. Ever since the revelations in Crefield, Sperloc had treated him with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. The others, however, welcomed him to the fire.

  “Another bad dream?” Tuls was looking at him, his orange irises glowing like the embers in the fire.

  “Yeah,” Vincent mumbled.

  Tuls was an empath. Loskia is what he called himself, but for all intents and purposes, he was the same as an empath. He could sense emotions. The others didn’t know he could do this. It was a secret he had shared with Vincent back in Crefield. Vincent had been fresh off of his nightmarish confrontation with the Puppeteer. And Tuls, out of some sense of comradery, shared this intimate secret. Vincent didn’t know what to think about this revelation.

  “I have had a few nightmares myself,” Tuls said.

  “Yeah...not surprising,” Vincent said.

  “Do you want to share?”

  Vincent sighed and looked at the flames. “I was back home. I mean back on Earth. But there was nobody there. Then these things, I think they were stormspawn, they burst out of the drywall and tried to get me.”

  “Dry wall?” Tuls asked.

  “What?” Vincent asked.

  “The wall was dry?”

  “Oh...no. It’s something we put on our walls to make them smooth.”

  “Ah...”

  “I was just in my home, and these fucked up things came out of the walls. Their faces were melting.”

  Tuls nodded and turned his snout back toward the flames.

  “How’s your tail?” Vincent asked. It was still wrapped in bandages after the incident in the Stillwater.

  “It itches,” Tuls said, “but it heals.”

  Vincent nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. Small talk drained him. It was like putting on an act, masking what he was truly feeling. It masked the blankness.

  “I knew a wing-shitter once,” M’kari said, interjecting himself into Sperloc and Menik’s conversation. He was the only other channeler in Vincent’s cabras, the soldiers assigned to protect him. M’kari usually didn’t speak much.

  “Everybody knows a wing-shitter,” Sperloc said.

  “No. Not jesting,” M’kari said, “He shit on his wings.”

  “Who?” Jeris asked. His tone was incredulous.

  “Shan Stenson. Went into the woods to shit. Heard him yell. Ran to him, found him holding a wing out in disgust. Shit on it. Used his wings to stabilize himself when he squat. One was folded underneath him too much. Made me swear not to tell anybody or he would gut me.”

  “So why are you telling us?” Jeris asked while Menik started to make a strange, hissing sound. He was cracking up.

  “Probably because Stenson is dead,” Sperloc said.

  “Because Stenson is dead,” M’Kari confirmed. His tail twitched.

  Vincent just listened. The voices of his inhuman companions anchored him against the emptiness. The revelations the Puppeteer imparted unsettled him. It had not been his kidnapper. It wasn’t the one responsible for taking him from Earth, ripping him apart and transforming him into the body he now inhabited. Though it corrupted flesh and had used its storms to spawn abominations, it did not create Vincent. Another was responsible for that crime: Girashnal The Hunter. It was a Black Herald, an entity that struck fear into his hosts.

  “We do not know what they were,” The La’ark, the leader of the expedition, had said, referring to the Black Heralds, “only that they were one of the worst things to ever happen to Admoran until Naikira Laneus gave her life to defeat them. So do not go repeating what you just said to anybody... if word gets out that a Black Herald brought you here, entire nations will put a target on your back. They will want you dead.”

  Vincent’s thoughts were like the fog that settled upon the camp this morning. He did not know what to think. In fact, he was almost afraid to let himself think. He recognized that he was traumatized, and that this disassociation and emptiness was a symptom, maybe even a coping mechanism.

  He had confronted the entity behind the storms himself, a presence that could sculpt flesh into nightmares. And he used a power to defeat it, a power he didn’t even know he had. His mind should have been racing with questions, but he was aloof to the mysteries. The questions lurked at the edge of his mind, but he didn’t care enough to ask them.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He was glad to have companions present. And so, he listened to the soldiers’ banter and took solace in their humor. Occasionally, he saw something in their eyes that he had not seen before. Was it...was it admiration? Awe? Or was he delusional to read these things? It had not been officially confirmed that he was responsible for defeating the Puppeteer. The La’ark wished to keep that a secret. But the soldiery knew. He heard whispers spreading around the camp, rumors that mentioned his name.

  The shandan looked his way and saw a mystery, a figure of lore. They did not see the emptiness inside, a vacancy that inhabited Vincent ever since he stepped out into Crefield the morning after, walking through rivers of blue blood and snowmelt.

  Tuls offered him a piece of feln loaf. Thanking him, he took the confused loaf of berries, nuts, and bread, and began to tear it into smaller chunks and ate them one by one. The feln loaf was nothing to write home about. But it seemed to have enough nutrients to keep the soldiers running.

  “I’m sick of this shit...” Vincent muttered.

  Menik’s ear twitched. “What was that?” he asked, “You are sick of what?”

  Vincent did not feel like answering at first. But then he held up the bread. “This stuff,” he said, “I don’t mean to whine, but it’s like I’m eating dirt.”

  “You have been with us since Meldohv Syredel and you just now noticed that?” Madrian asked incredulously.

  “Oh, I noticed it. But it’s getting unbearable. God, I miss bacon and eggs...”

  “Bacon and eggs?” Tuls repeated.

  “Bacon and eggs,” Vincent continued, “Maybe some hash browns, biscuits and gravy. Damn...I just want a home-cooked meal.” Earth food. It seemed so distant now, it may as well have been alien.

  Before Vincent could explain, Jeris interrupted. “Well stop whining and eat it. It’s good for you.”

  “Stop tearing it up. Just shove the whole thing in,” Menik said, “then you would not have to worry about the taste.”

  Vincent looked at the bread in his hand and sighed. “I thought I explained this to you guys. My brain’s not used to that yet. It still thinks it’s in a human body. It thinks my mouth is smaller than it is. If I just shove it into my mouth like you guys do, I start gagging and choking.”

  Menik shrugged and continued to talk to Sperloc about roshenum.

  “So...what’s going on?” Vincent asked when he was finished with the feln loaf. “Usually, you all are breaking things down by the time I wake up.”

  “Breaking things ‘down’?” Sperloc repeated.

  “Taking the tents apart, packing things,” Vincent clarified. Apparently ‘breaking things down’ was an Earthly idiom they were unfamiliar with.

  “The Stillwater is still flooded,” Menik said.

  The Stillwater was an expansive marsh whose ponds were bottomless pits. If something touched their waters, they could not escape. If a finger broke the surface, it could not be pulled back out. Because of this, it was incredibly dangerous to cross even under normal conditions. But when the expedition left Crefield to head back across the marsh, they found that it had become flooded. The Stillwater had turned into one big, motionless lake, waiting to devour anything that stepped into their depths.

  And so, they had been traveling for a week at least, trying to circumvent it. Vincent had been fine with that. As a thalassophobe, he did not want to go anywhere near that place ever again. Just seeing the Stillwater for a second time, now one expansive, bottomless vista of water, nearly sent him into a panic attack.

  “I thought we were headed toward one of its dryer parts so we could get around it,” he said.

  “The Shallows,” Menik said, “The zerok say they are flooded now too. This has never happened before in our known history, right, Sper?”

  Sperloc grumbled a confirmation.

  “And so now we’ve come to a stop. The La’ark is talking to the zerok of Gullreach. We may need to be rescued.”

  “There’s no way around it?” Vincent asked.

  Madrian, still holding a loaf of feln bread in his hands, extended a wing to the ground to draw in the mud.

  “This is Crefield,” he said, drawing a dot, “and it is in the center of what we call the Aindo Ring.” He drew a ring around Crefield. “The Stillwater forms a part of it, the bottom half.” As he explained this, he began to dot the bottom half of the circle he drew. “And the rest of the circle is mountains.” He scribbled a bunch of triangles to represent the mountains.

  “All paths are effectively cut off,” Sperloc said, “We’re trapped. We would starve to death if we tried to travel through the mountains without a cleft strider.”

  Vincent nodded. During the fight with the Puppeteer, several wagons filled with rations caught fire. Food distribution, while the stores were not yet dwindling, had to be handled with care. There was some wildlife to hunt nearby, but not much, not enough to feed the entire expedition. The forests were unnaturally quiet. A silence fell among them like a pall. Being so close to Crefield when the Puppeteer appeared, it was surmised that the creatures in the surrounding lands were its first victims. There were plenty of empty nests and vacant burrows. And so, there were less animals to hunt.

  “So, what now?” Vincent asked, “We sit here and wait?”

  “If you have any better ideas,” a gravelly voice rasped from behind, “The La’ark would be honored to hear them.”

  Vincent turned to find himself looking upward at Akhil, who was accompanied by his twin brother, Oris. Being two of the best fighters in the expedition, they were hulking beasts who were almost pure muscle. Akhil took a seat by the fire. Several had to move aside to account for his bulk. Oris joined them as well.

  “Let loose your jowls, Akhil,” Sperloc demanded. It was an expression Vincent had not heard before. “What is the news?”

  “Gullreach is sending aid. The zerok are gathering food from the nearest villages and bringing it here.”

  “And then they will carry us out of here?” Menik asked. It sounded like he was joking. A few laughed at this suggestion, though Vincent wasn’t sure why. It sounded like a good idea.

  “Not exactly, no. Not immediately.” It was Oris who answered. “The La’ark will stay behind with the rest of the expedition. In the meantime, Gullreach is sending a flock of Shaydos.”

  Vincent felt his ear flick. It was a new word.

  “They will escort Vincent Cordell and the rest of us to Gullreach while the rest of the army stays behind.”

  “The Shaydos?” There was surprise in Menik’s voice. Jeris and Madrian exchanged looks. M’kari raised a brow. Sperloc was the only one who didn’t seem surprised by the news. He simply scribbled notes down on a scroll and tucked it away.

  “What are ‘Shaydos’?” Vincent asked.

  “They are the ‘silent minds’,” Sperloc said, “They have willingly cut themselves off from the voices of their flock. They are deaf to other zerok.”

  “They can’t hear the ‘mind speak’?”

  The zerok were the other sentient race in Falius. They were large, winged quadrupeds who resembled griffins in their body structure, except their heads were a cross between something avian and crustacean. They had two eyes above a horizontal, pincer-like beak. And one large eye in their gullet, which they used to communicate telepathically.

  “Mind speak...” Sperloc repeated, as if the phrase was offensive to his lips, “No, they cannot hear the voices of their people.”

  “Why, though?” Vincent asked.

  It was Tuls who answered. “All creatures of reason have inherited the stain from The Severance, including zerok,” he said, “The Shaydos believe they are devout in following the Naikiran Way, that in order to grow closer to the Weaver, they have to cut themselves off from outside influence, even if it means having no flock.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following,” Vincent said.

  “The silence, they believe,” Tuls continued, “allows them to grow closer to the creator. It’s a tremendous, irreversible sacrifice. I am amazed! I have heard of the Shaydos before, but I never thought I would get to see one. Why would they be sent?”

  “The La’ark and Gullreach have their reasons,” Akhil said.

  “Wait,” Vincent said, “why don’t we just have the zerok who are already with us fly us out of here?”

  In fact, if they can do that, he wondered, why didn’t the zerok just fly the expedition to Crefield?

  At these words, Vincent noticed the soldiers winced a little bit.

  “Spoken like an outsider,” Sperloc chuffed, “Did I not regale you will tales of the conflicts between us groundwalkers and the zerok?”

  “I don’t think so. When did you do this?”

  “On the way to Crefield!” Sperloc barked. Vincent didn’t know why he was irritated so sudden. But then again, ever since Sperloc found out Vincent was “herald work”, his whole disposition changed. It became hostile and suspicious.

  “Was I lucid when you did this?”

  Sperloc went silent for a moment. Vincent’s schizophrenia still made them all uncomfortable. The condition was deadly to their people, a curse many believed was inherited from The Severance. They didn’t call it schizophrenia though, they called it the Bane. The fact that Vincent was able to live with it was an anomaly. These people were not familiar with the catatonic states that sometimes accompanied psychosis. He was not always present, not mentally, anyway. He must have been in a fuguelike state when Sperloc told him about the zerok.

  “Then let me condense it for you. Five-hundred years ago, we enslaved zerok,” Sperloc said, “We snuck into their nests and dens, killed the mothers and took the young ones. We raised them to be our servants, our beasts of labor. Wars between fliers and groundwalkers broke out. Blood blanketed the lands. The zerok are not a prolific people. They do not reproduce as fast as we do. What we lacked in size, we made up in number. But the skirmishes decimated both of our populations. Time has mended most of the wounds, but the zerok remember. And when I say ‘remember’, I mean remember.”

  Sperloc’s beady black eyes seemed to pierce Vincent. “They don’t tell stories to their offspring. They give memories. If you ask a zerok to fly you into town as a favor, it will relive its ancestor’s memory. It will remember the time it was enslaved to do its master’s bidding, when it was asked to fly its master into town and paraded around as a status symbol.”

  Jeez... Vincent thought. So, the zerok inherit centuries-old trauma.

  “But they accompanied us to Crefield,” he said.

  “Yes,” Oris said, “but few zerok will fly a groundwalker anywhere. Few of us have earned that respect. It is denigrating to them. Only urgent circumstances would compel them to do such a thing.”

  Well, the expedition’s situation seemed reasonably urgent. Couldn’t they all be evacuated? It didn’t make any rational sense. The zerok and the expedition worked together to tackle the stormspawn problem. Surely that was proof enough that they were allies? But Sperloc was right. He was an outsider. This wasn’t his world. And so, he refrained from commenting on it.

  “But the Shaydos are willing to fly us?” Tuls asked.

  “Yes,” Akhil said, “the circumstances are...urgent.”

  It wasn’t often that Vincent heard hesitance in Akhil’s voice. He was often direct and to the point, unlike his twin, who was more amicable and outgoing. “It will be explained why after we have already left.”

  The rest of them grunted. They didn’t ask any questions.

  “It will take them three days to reach us,” Oris said, “Until then, relax. Train. Keep your minds sharp.”