“Come on, you’re ignoring me,” Reina said.
“I don’t have anything to say.”
Their boots crunched on a path littered with dead matter, all brittle undergrowth and dust, loud in the silence between the two women. Reina rubbed her shoulders again as a strange chill percolated through her.
“Listen, Maior—”
And Maior snapped. “Why are you trying so hard to get my attention now? All this time you’ve treated me like a bother, so I’m doing what you want. Just going where you tell me to go. Your prisoner.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I’m the unfair one?”
Without the right rebuttal, Reina worried her lower lip and focused on the hike ahead. The slim pathway hugged the rocky mountain, with sparse tress growing from the lower elevations and serving as make-believe fences, saving their nerves from the possibility of the sharp cliff drops. It was a blessing that there was no wind, for a wrong step or the pushback of a gust could send them over the cliff’s side, plummeting to a sure death.
“You’re not a prisoner,” Reina said and was met with silence.
Maior glanced behind them. Reina mimicked the motion, shooting a look at the sloping trail, the rocks and shrubs in shapes that a wild imagination could easily confuse for people.
Maior shuddered visibly, the tha-thumps in her veins loud to Reina’s ears. The human hugged herself, and that was when it hit Reina. She wasn’t imagining the contours. It wasn’t only her body noticing the strange drop in temperature, which shouldn’t happen in these llanos. Reina’s jaw tightened as she tried to keep her composure, to not incite unnecessary alarm.
The path flattened out, kissing a vertical drop as tall as the Pentimiento cathedral in Sadul Fuerte. In the far distance was the glow of La Cochinilla, burning against the night like the final embers of a dying hearth.
A dead twig snapped in half. The sound was so real and so close that they whipped around to look. Reina didn’t hesitate in summoning enhancing bismuto. Her spell flared everything about the night. Her own cold-slicked palms. The frantic beats of Maior’s heart. The dry dust in the air scraping Reina’s nostrils. And most importantly, the two bipedal beasts of solid shadow, with the hind legs of a horse and the slitted eyes of a black goat, stalking them and ready to pounce.
She hadn’t been wrong. They were being hunted.
The tinieblas lunged.
They went for Maior first, who stood closest to them and was the meeker prey. Time slowed to a crawl as Reina watched their eagle-like claws swiping for Maior. Reina yanked Maior by the back of the clothes, tossing her to the other side with more force than she intended. The dehydrated tree Maior toppled against couldn’t withstand her weight. A loud crack whipped through the night, Maior’s wet scream echoing. Reina’s panic doused her like a bucket of icy water, but she couldn’t spare a look.
She sucked in a sharp breath as the second tiniebla struck her side. She swiveled out of reach, barely, the claw shredding her shirt and slicing a line on her belly. Blood burst from the tender flesh, burning her like acid. She chewed the insides of her cheeks and swung her machete at the aggressor. It struck the tiniebla’s coiled horn, its armor. The reactive force reverberated down her arm, shaking her elbow and creaking her shoulder. Reina bit down the pain and swung again, this time cleaving the creature from the shoulder down to the opposite armpit.
Maior screamed Reina’s name, the fear in her voice a high-pitched lance spearing Reina right through the chest. She whipped around to look, and her stomach plummeted to the nether regions of the Void.
Maior was hanging from the cliffside, her fingernails lifting with blood and her palms clinging to the crumbly earth the only things stopping her inevitable fall.
The second tiniebla snarled—a deadly reminder. Reina withdrew a split second before its mandibles chomped on her arm.
Panic rent her in two. To save Maior, and risk getting bitten and contaminated by the tiniebla’s darkness, or to leave Maior to her own devices.
Her instincts chose for her. The fear of withstanding another ravaging.
Reina leapt behind the tiniebla. A grunt surged out of her as she swung again, decapitating the shadow in one clean motion. Its head bounced into the air before disintegrating with the rest of its body.
Another scream, more urgent than the last.
Reina hurled herself to the path’s edge as Maior’s last hand surrendered to the pull of her weight. Reina threw her torso and arm over the ledge, grappling for Maior’s upper arm. She caught her, and a heave and groan later, Maior safely collapsed into Reina’s arms.
Their breaths came desperate and broken. Reina’s heart drilled against her ribs. Fear continued blooming in her mouth, sour like bile, but this time Maior was safe.
It might have been an eternity before they let go.
In miraculous unison, Maior said “thank you” as Reina uttered an “I’m sorry.”
Maior’s glossy brown eyes widened. The apology was open-ended, and Reina let it be so, for there were many things she regretted. This human had received the brunt of her indifference and petulance. Reina had treated her like an afterthought to her goals, a bridge to be crossed for where she needed to go, and not as the person she was, with her overly nosey and caring nature. This Reina deeply regretted. She knew she didn’t deserve for Maior’s walls to come down if she didn’t apologize first. Yet she lacked the proper words and the courage.
Maior threw herself on her for another shuddery embrace, still reeling. And Reina allowed her that. She didn’t even push away when she felt the wetness of Maior’s tears on her clothes. The poor woman had almost died.
“Were those tinieblas? I couldn’t see anything,” Maior said after they had parted and calmed, as the stars continued to move in the sky, taking them closer to the dawn. “I just felt like something was there.”
“They’re not visible to the human eye. You need bismuto to see them.”
Maior gave her an idolizing look. “Can nozariels see them?”
“Only valcos. I also use bismuto.”
As they got back up to resume the hike, Reina’s body complained from exhaustion, and understandably so. They had walked for hours without rest—ascended most of the Plume in the span of the night. Her muscles ached, and she hissed as the slightest movement brought back the acidic bite of the cut on her abs.
Maior noticed. She cast a galio spell that stitched Reina’s skin shut. Then Reina had to remind her to also mend her own rent fingernails.
Reina couldn’t help the brightness in her own eyes—the surprise that Maior would prioritize Reina’s comfort over her own. Maybe it was the leftover adrenaline, or maybe Maior inspired the truth of how Reina felt to spill out of her. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. For everything I said.”
Maior paused, astonished.
“You didn’t deserve that,” Reina said. “You were trying to help me, and I couldn’t even see it. I’m sorry this is the way things are.”
Their gazes met, and Maior’s softened after a moment. Reina thought she saw a comfort there. The acceptance of their odd allyship.
“I guess… I forgive you,” Maior said gently.
Reina turned to the star-blotched sky ahead. The stars were shying away, dimmed by a grand light awakening from slumber as dawn prepared to meet them. She didn’t stop the smile creeping onto her lips.