Forsaken by the one person who was supposed to love her unconditionally, Red must brave the magic and monsters of the Wylds to find her true place in the world.
*****
Plague...
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The bolt of lightning revealed a long, serpentine body armoured in sapphire scales; two sinuous hind legs, ending in obsidian claws; and a leathery wingspan that rivalled the Blood Moon Pack's Gathering Hall for size. Then the electricity struck Eddy's horn and rebounded up into the sky, catching the wyvern in the ribs.
It let loose a cataclysmic roar, muscles spasming as it dropped from the sky like a boulder. It plummeted right for us, unable to command its wings to beat, to slow the descent. I lunged for Eddy, rooted to the spot in terror, the whites of his eyes rolling. We collapsed in a tangled heap, even as the wyvern crashed into the barren earth behind us with a sickening crunch of bone.
Not bone, I realised in mute horror as I spun around, climbing to my feet. It had impaled itself on the jagged remains of the tree stump, the sticks of my lean-to embedded deep in its shoulder. I might as well have stabbed it myself.
"I'm sorry," I blurted out, when it lifted its triangular head with a pained groan, heaving itself up and off the wood. Blood slopped onto the ashes, though the majority of the stakes remained firmly lodged in its hide.
I shouldn't have spoken. The wyvern's triangular head whipped around to face me, those star-flecked eyes glassy with pain and fury. The wyvern opened its maw as if to speak, its gullet pulsing with an orange glow, flaring brighter and brighter with each passing second. Matching stripes of light started flaring along the back of its neck, a bright, poisonous orange.
That couldn't be good.
I slapped Eddy on the flank to kick him into gear and scrambled after his flying hooves, propelled by a tidal wave of fear that sent me crashing to my knees as often as it dragged me upright. Distance, I thought, blood roaring in my ears. I needed to put as much distance between myself and that light as possible -
Fire blasted from the wyvern's maw, more of a concentrated beam than a torrent, kicking up the ashes by my feet and searing a line through the ground. A scream rang in my ears and I yanked my legs up to my chest, narrowly escaping the fiery laser as it veered upward and to the side, singing the hair on my shins as it passed. Eddy whinnied and reared, summoning lightning again.
Crack. The bolt narrowly missed the wyvern's head, and the night was impossibly dark in its wake. I could scarcely see my hands in front of my face as I dragged myself along, away from the second blast of fire that was surely coming. Faint, orange light bathed the ashes, laughably mellow considering the violent end it forewarned. I was going to be incinerated to a crisp, every last speck of my being wiped off the earth. No-one would know how I'd died; no-one would care remember me when I was gone.
Not that anyone had really cared to know me while I lived.
A sob escaped my throat as the wyvern took a thundering step towards me. I could tell from its looming shadow that it was rearing to its full height, fanning its wings to intimidate us, to seem larger than it really was. And I realised, with a heart-wrenching look at Eddy, that it was working. The poor foal was utterly beside himself, prancing towards me and then skittering away, as if torn between staying and running for his life. Too distracted, or perhaps too spent, to wield that sky-splitting lightning again.
