[Watty's Shortlist & WATTPAD PICKS -- Up and Coming List 06.07.2018]
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His hands moved down to cradle her neck. "I only have one request if you're going to keep me in suspense all day long."
"What's that?" The movement of h...
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"Shit, shit, shit," Taly muttered between gasping breaths, her legs pumping frantically.
She could hear the wyvern behind her. Its claws scratched across the rocks that dotted the forested cliffside path overlooking Lake Reginea, and a feral yowl pierced the chill morning air. She spared a glance over her shoulder, and immediately regretted it.
The beast's body was a gangly, hulking mass, and the scales coating its skin looked like jewels—shards of ruby, agate, jasper, and emerald that glinted in the scant patches of light shining through the treetops. Great leathery wings protruded from its back, each one adorned with a long, bony hook that kept catching on the low-hanging tree branches as it barreled after her.
Taly veered off the overgrown hunting trail she had been following, sliding under a fallen tree and ripping the fabric of her trousers as she changed course. She could feel blood trickling down her leg, but she paid it no mind as she wove her way through the densely packed woods.
A series of snarls and growls trailed after her as the beast tried to press its way between the thickening tree cover. Twigs snapped and leaves crackled as they were shaken loose and thrown to the ground. The beast was frantic as it flung itself against the trees, splintering those plants whose trunks had yet to become gnarled and hardened with age. It had been slowed down, but so had she.
It was gaining.
Rays of morning sunlight peeked through the trees up ahead, and Taly was almost blinded when she finally emerged from the woods. The worn soles of her boots found little traction on the rocky outcrop, but she didn't slow down—not even when she approached the jagged edge of the cliff.
Saying a short prayer to the Shards, Taly jumped.
The sound of wind filled her ears as the world rushed by in a blur. Hugging her body, she braced herself for the cold shock of water as she dove feet-first into the placid waters of Lake Reginea almost 30 feet below.
Taly closed her eyes as she plunged deeper and deeper, and she jolted, biting her lip against the pain that rippled up her legs when her feet collided with the lake bottom. Golden tendrils of hair floated in front of her face as she peered up through the murky depths, and she hooked her foot beneath one of the various pieces of rusty scrap metal that littered the lakebed to keep from floating to the top. A dark, winged shadow passed overhead. It circled once, twice, its silhouette distorted by the rippling wall of water—like someone had swirled their fingers through a painting that wasn't quite dry.
Wyverns didn't usually venture this far south, so it had come as a complete surprise to Taly when she had accidentally stumbled upon a nest as she was walking through the woods that morning. Thank the Shards there had been a lake nearby. Wyverns hated water.
Her lungs began to burn, so Taly released her makeshift anchor and swam to the surface. Gasping for breath, she groped for a nearby piece of driftwood, her eyes scanning the trees. Although she could no longer see the wyvern, she could still hear a low growl coming from the forest's edge just beyond the scattered perimeter of junk and debris that decorated the shoreline.
