Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 266

Chapter 266: Take it and go
To say Ford was terrified would be an understatement. Trace’s powers seemed now beyond compare, although Denholm was clearly ready to match his brute force with attacks of perception.

If Trace ended this conversation still believing that Ford was Denholm’s accomplice, the younger man’s life could be snuffed out in an instant.

“What do you mean, you take and leave?” Trace blinked in momentary confusion.

The wight’s mouth pulled slightly down at the corners, and its snowy pupils constricted. The magic fist gripping Denholm dissipated, as did the strange sensations Ford had been battling since he came into the cave. Even the heat seemed more bearable.

It was… oddly peaceful, if disconcerting.

Seth, finally shaking free from his state of shock, rushed forward and spun Mia towards him, looking her over head to toe. Ford stepped back warily, drawing a brief but intense glare that made Ford consider taking his chances with the dragons.

“Are you all right?” Seth demanded quietly. “Did he hurt you?”

“Ford? He kept me alive,” Mia said, “He protected me from–”

Seth crushed his daughter in a hug that cut off her words, a sob wracking his tall frame.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

Ford could barely hear the whisper, and it made guilt flood through him for his part in endangering Mia.

If he’d never come to the farm, never mentioned Martin, Mia’s memories would have remained buried. She could have lived a happier, oblivious life.

“You. Him.” The wight explained, emphasizing each word with stilted pronunciation.

Ford watched as the creature pointed first at Trace, and then at Denholm.

“We are not the same,” Trace’s tone was explanatory, patient, but with clear, strong feelings towards Denholm.

Ford wondered at the true depths of their history. Clearly they knew each other well enough to hate each other on sight… but honestly, most people would probably hate Denholm on sight that knew him at all, from what Ford had experienced of the man’s true personality.

“Come,” The wight sighed heavily and turned towards the dragons. It walked calmly, slowly, and the other two followed.

Ford marveled at their steps, which were so smooth that the creatures seemed to glide rather than walk across the cavern floor. Like ghosts.

His eyes widened. There had been rumors of ghosts in the mines when he’d left. And the abnormally warm temperatures that had kept him from dying of hypothermia… and the roaring, was it not the collapsing of tunnels after all?

He remembered Martin’s face. His determination, and insistence on burning the map… was it so terribly far fetched to suppose that creatures like this had been underground in Foundrel as well as here?

Ford felt some measure of panic. One instance of these things was shocking enough, but… no, there had been no news from the border in the time since he’d left about such things.

Then again, miners occasionally disappearing down in the deep shafts was not unheard of. Perhaps things like this were brushed off.

After all, the most superstitious of the miners insisted that if you saw a ghost, you should pretend you didn’t. Leave the rocks behind, whatever they are, and don’t go back to that particular spot.

Ford had laughed at the old men and their silly stories. But now, he stared at three ghostlike, though curiously nonviolent, wights as they climbed atop the dragons’ backs.

“Come,” The wight repeated, leaning its head forward and speaking with more intensity than before.

“What? Me? Us?” Trace asked incredulously. “Thank you for the invitation, but I will be staying here with my family, thank you.”

“Come,” The wight said once more, and uttered a sort of guttural noise that echoed through the lower reaches of the cavern.

The six dragons spread their wings and opened their jaws. Ford shrank back, afraid that the creatures might want to eliminate all witnesses to whatever bizarre events had taken place here. Honestly, if someone asked Ford anything about it, he wouldn’t even know what to say, let alone relate a coherent narrative with the motivations of all the players.

He was rather gobsmacked at all of it, if he stopped to think about it.

With a mighty flapping of wings, four of the dragons rose into the air as one, grunting with the effort of the exertion, but not hesitating to obey the wight’s apparent command.

They took places around the four cardinal directions of the tree, and with their great claws, took hold of the most central, strongest branches and began to pull upwards.

A cacophony of screeching metal split the air, and the humans covered their ears. The ground shook as the dragons strained against the weight of the tree and the section of cave it stubbornly clung to.

Ford could swear the tree was stretching, trying to dig its roots deeper in defiance of the attempted removal. Its jewels, glowing softly in the large room, flickered and groaned in protest of the treatment.

One or two fell to the ground and shattered.

“NO!” Denholm screamed in anger. “STOP!”

Slowly, the golden trunk began to rise. The crack in the floor widened, and the earth began to shift, some rising with the tree and the rest staying behind down below.

“You can’t take it!” Denholm cried again, throwing himself at the trunk and wrapping himself firmly around it.

Ford grimaced at the older man’s desperation. It was undignified, even to a miner like him. Embarrassing, even. Had the man no sense of self whatsoever that he would so childishly cling to the plant?

The tree shook, and another jewel was dislodged from its branches. It fell, striking Ford’s shoulder as he tried to dodge out of the way. It shattered against him, and he winced.

“Come,” The wight atop one of the remaining two dragons said a third time, and the winged reptile stretched its shoulders and struck the air with its long wings. Evenly, and more smoothly than Ford would have thought possible, it rose into the air, a little at a time.

At least they looked like they would leave without harming any of the humans… except perhaps Denholm, but didn’t he deserve it?

The dragons were now at a height just above all the humans’ heads with a great chunk of earth clutched by the tree’s roots, when the leader’s dragon slipped elegantly forward through the air…

And snatched Trace in its talons.