Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [28]
He looked around him. An obsidian elemental was carrying him out of the destroyed cavern, holding him in its rocky arms as if he were a child. The elemental was one of Rakka’s, but there was no sign of her nearby. She could have let him die under the rubble—why the favor? The elemental set him down on the rough volcanic gravel, turned, and walked off. Its task complete, it found a stream of bubbling lava, and stepped into it, melting away its identity once more.
Kresh and his warriors had either died or moved on as well. The hellkite Malactoth lied dead beneath the shattered volcanic remains of its lair. In its place was an enormous column of pure, crystalline sangrite exposed to the sky after what must have been centuries buried in the rock. That was the source of mana. The obelisk wasn’t just emanating mana, but focusing it—for what purpose Sarkhan couldn’t determine.
He looked up into the sky. High above, dragons circled, drawn in by the obelisk’s power. Rakka was never interested in hunting Malactoth, he surmised. She used Kresh—and Sarkhan himself—to distract the hellkite while she freed the sangrite from its ancient prison.
If she had gone to such trouble, why wasn’t she taking advantage of its power?
NAYA
The blood was irrelevant. It wasn’t on Ajani’s mind at the time, so it got all over his white fur—but he didn’t care. His consciousness was consumed with the shape of Jazal’s body, the pose the undead creatures had left him in after killing him with his own axe. Jazal had stopped breathing before Ajani found him, and the blood coming from his wounds pooled in places to make the floor slippery. Still, Ajani hugged his brother close, trying to bury his forehead in Jazal’s sticky chest.
Ajani rocked back and forth, but stopped when Jazal spoke.
“It’s going to be all right, Ajani,” said his brother, petting the white nacatl’s fur.
Ajani didn’t look up. If he looked, Jazal’s voice wouldn’t be real, and death would triumph. Please let this be real, he thought. “Oh, thank the spirits, I’m glad you’re … alive,” said Ajani.
“Yes. Don’t worry. You’re not hallucinating.”
“But all the blood,” he said. He couldn’t help dwelling on it. “I’m too late, aren’t I, brother? You’re—”
“Let’s not think about it. Listen, I need you to go and tell the rest of the pride that I’m fine, all right? And we’ll go right back to the way things were.”
“Because … you’re fine.”
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be? What, would someone send something to kill me? Right here in my own chambers? Why would someone do something like that? It’s ridiculous.” Jazal’s arms squeezed him reassuringly.
Ajani chuckled weakly. “Yes, ridiculous. Nobody would ever hurt you, Jazal. Everybody loves you. And it’d be chaos if you were gone—I swear, what would the pride do?”
Jazal laughed. “What would you do? But we don’t have to think about that. I’m here, and I’ll take care of everything. So go now, Ajani. Tell them. Tell them I’m perfectly fine. You just made a mistake, thinking I was dead. Nothing’s going to change, Ajani. I’m perfectly fine.”
Ajani tasted copper on his tongue. His mind clenched with dread.
“I can’t.” His voice was muffled by the fur on Jazal’s chest. “I can’t tell them.”
Jazal’s voice was soft, just a whisper in his mind. “You have to. It’s time now. You have to tell them I’m—”
“No!”
Ajani pushed his brother roughly, petulantly. The body slid off the bed and toppled onto the stone floor with a messy thump. Ajani gasped in horror. Jazal’s leg was jutting up at a strange angle against the bed, and the axe handle had been shoved deeper into Jazal’s chest. A sob tried to escape Ajani’s lips, but he choked it back inside. He rushed over and pulled on his brother’s body, to get him back onto the bed.
Ajani cursed sharply, repeatedly, using words he rarely used. As he pulled on Jazal’s arm and leg, he felt a wave of something, a feeling growing inside him that he knew was