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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I stared in wonder at the woman left in the wake of that monstrous wyvern. She seemed so small in contrast, but as I stepped closer, I realised that couldn't be further from the truth. She was at least a head taller than me, those long arms and legs packed with compact muscle, filling out the scaled leather armour that covered all her vital organs. Smooth, bronze skin was left exposed in strategic places to ensure mobility, and her dark blue hair was bound back by a leather headband, keeping the wispy strands out of her face.
I reached out to touch the hand clutching her mangled shoulder, but hesitated at the last second. There was still blood leaking through her fingers, and I was loathe to jostle the girl after what we'd already put her through.
"I should have known," I mused, "that wyverns were shifters too." It made sense that lycans weren't the only humans in the Wylds, though Brollo had certainly never made mention of any in his stories. I wondered if anyone at the village knew the creatures they feared and resented were just like them.
The Wraith of the Wylds whined, nosing the back of my shoulder. When I turned to him, he looked pointedly at the Grey Fist Mountains, though his ears were pricked back in the direction we'd come from.
"What is it, boy?" I asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. I'd only recently hazarded a guess that he was male, given that he was almost the same size as Hunter in wolf form. Though I had to admit the Wraith was leaner, with a whip-chord strength that attested to years of eking out a living in the unforgiving Wylds.
The Wraith merely nudged me again, this time with enough force to push me forward a step. Away from whatever danger he sensed behind us, but also away from the girl sprawled in the mud.
"I can't just leave her there," I complained, offended that he'd think that of me. "If the stories are true, her people reside in the mountains, along with the Kirin I'm trying to find on Eddy's behalf. She'll likely need their help if she's going to survive."
I got the sense he would have tried to argue, if he had a mouth to argue with. But when I crouched down to haul the girl over my shoulder, he simply hunched over his forelegs, looking pointedly at his back.
I almost wept from relief at the offer of help, but knew that capitalising on it would rely on my strength first. I felt a flicker of trepidation as I crouched down, trying to assess the easiest way to lift the dead weight the girl had become. I'd never really trusted in my body; trusted that it would support my own weight, let alone someone else's. There was a time, not too long ago, when lifting a simple soup cauldron had almost brought me to my knees.
But my body had carried me this far, and my heart was a stubborn thing, that continued to beat no matter what the world threw at it. Setting aside my doubts, I grabbed the girl's arm and used it to haul her over my shoulder, the way Hunter had picked me up when I collapsed in his arms. It took a couple of tries to distribute her weight correctly, to prevent her from sliding off and tumbling to the ground, but eventually I managed to stand under both of our combined weights.
