Erin Evans - The God Catcher

She remembered how her breath stirred the thiefs hair, how the girl had ducked suddenly, twisting beneath Nestrix and scrambling to her feet behind her. She ran for the exit-the exit Nestrix was careful to cover and hide from intruders-the one that led out into the Calim Desert. Nestrix pursued.

… gold is the torque and the hair of the thief; red is the blood pounding in her veins; blue is the fire that tears into the night, the desert, the world beneath their feet.

As they ran into the desert, as she caught up to the thief, the Spellplague ripped through Toril.

She remembered the feeling like molten glass in her veins, and then the heat vanishing, the glass suddenly going cold and stiff. And over again, hot and cold cycling through her veins until they split open. She remembered the girl, the thief, her eyes wide and then wider, her skin splitting and bubbling as the strange Blue Fire ripped through them both. The thief seemed to explode-she grew so quickly-and Clytemorrenestrix collapsed into herself at the same rate. Her scales felt as if they themselves were on fire-her first introduction to the nerves and softness of a human's skin. She roared, but the sound was thin and tore her throat. When the thief screamed alongside Nestrix, it was the voice of a dragon, not an anguished girl.

… blue is the fire and the end of the world, the end of the wings on her back, the end of the scales on her arms, the claws on her fingers, the end of long nights while the moon reflects on the dunes

… blue is the death of the goddess…

And for a moment she'd forgotten and pushed aside for a hundred years, she knew the thiefs thoughts, her life, her secrets as intimately as if they'd been her own. Her name had been Lyra. She had kissed her first boy at twelve and killed her first man at nineteen. She found the cave of Clytemorrenestrix after caravan guards spoke of the treasure the blue dragon had stolen from them tendays earlier. She wanted the treasure for the same simple reason Clytemorrenestrix did-it was beautiful and it was tricky to get.

Her thoughts and memories intertwined with Nestrix's, as tenacious as ivy. She watched the thiefs intrusion into her cave from Lyra's eyes, felt the sudden terror as she turned and saw the great and terrible head of the blue dragon looming over her.

Nestrix remembered the Blue Fire going on a very long time. She remembered the emptiness it created in its wake.

She remembered waking up in more pain than she'd ever imagined, in the valley of a bronze dragon's coiled body. She remembered looking down at the horror of her fleshy hands, her feet, those useless breasts. In the moonlight of that night, Nestrix felt the loss of her blue scales as keenly as she felt the absence of the Weave. Nothing, she was certain-although later she would convince herself otherwise-would ever be the same.

The bronze was dead, strangled by the torque it had worn as the thief, the same torque she had stolen from the hoard. Nestrix set a shaking, muddy-colored hand on the gore-smeared cabochon, now the size of her whole palm. The horror of the sight drove her heart like a wind whips a sandstorm out of a clear night. Her chest tightened around her breath.

Then she remembered her clutch.

She scrambled up the side of the bronze, struggling to get her back legs-they were suddenly so long-underneath her. The scales cut her bare feet. She kept slipping in the blood. Her tail was gone-without it she had no idea how to keep her balance. Tripping, running half upright, half on her hands and knees, Nestrix came to the cave entrance.

Instead of the cave, instead of the bluff that held her lair, Clytemorrenestrix found a pile of rubble lanced by a spire of glass. As if the Blue Fire had melted the sand and pulled it up through the roof of the cavern.

Streaks of gold, blisters of rubies and sapphires, grit and rock embedded in the spire. And halfway up-twice Nestrix's shriveled height-the charred remains of blue eggs.

A scream built in her throat, but it couldn't find its way out. She fell to her knees, eyes locked on her clutch, and gasped for air. They were gone. They were gone. Nothing could bring them back.

She threw back her head and noiselessly sobbed at the Blue Fire still dancing over her head.

Then the rubble stirred and something crawled out. She looked down. The scream exploded from her throat as the monster hauled itself out of the remnants of her home.

Of all the things she would refuse to forgive the Spellplague for, what it did to her third egg would be the last she let go of.

What crawled from the rubble was coated in a slime of yolk, and bits of the shattered shell clung to its hide. It hadn't been ready. It hadn't been time for the hatching. The wyrmling crawled toward her on stubby, half-formed legs, its blind eyes still dark patches. Its hungry maw was augmented by that shattered magic, rimmed by toothed tentacles that waved toward her. Curled inside its shell, it had been small enough to fit in the hollow of her claw before the Spellplague had started; what stalked her now was half again as big as she'd become.

It did not know her. And as it clambered toward her, she did not know it.

Nestrix scrambled away, through the rubble. She threw rocks and shards of glass, learning quickly how to work her new, flexible hands. The thing howled and squealed, but didn't slow. Its tentacle-teeth lashed the air, catching her soft ankle. Nestrix grabbed hold of one and yanked. The creature squealed again and shuffled back a few steps, clearing enough of the rubble for Nestrix to see the edge of her hoard. And the handle of an axe.

She'd never held an axe as a weapon before-the thief in her thoughts seemed to take hold of it for her, recognizing a weapon and not a bauble-and she swung wildly, still unsteady on two legs. It bit into the creature's still-unhardened flesh again and again, without aim. The thing screeched and thrashed, and managed to wrap a pair of tentacles around her waist, pulling her toward its mouth.

She pulled the axe up. And swung down into the creature's skull. Over and over.

It twitched, and the tentacles went slack.

Nestrix collapsed. She remembered sitting there on the ground, blood thudding in her ears, every muscle shaking. She remembered looking up at the creature, remembered seeing the eggshells and the yolk shining in the moonlight. Remembered the realization flooding her like a second wave of the Blue Fire.

She'd killed the last of her eggs.

She remembered the scream, and the night that stretched on forever…

A sharp pain in her ankle brought her back to the present, and she was standing again on the box in the tailor's shop in the middle of a city she should never have been in.

"Sorry, dear," the seamstress said, coming to her feet. "That last pin missed. Is that a good length?"

Nestrix's head pounded, and she finally recognized the thoughts of someone else swirled and coiled in her mind. Suddenly she wanted nothing so much as to run, out through the rain, away from the city, as far and as fast as she could. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was clutching the pouch that held a fragment of her last egg's shell. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

She wiped them before she realized what a strange thought that was-her eyes. She looked at the reflection again, wrapped in its blue cape, and felt… what? Sorrow. Pity. Anger.

Recognition.

She shivered. The city was doing terrible things to her. Tennora was doing terrible things to her. It was a test, a trial-at the end of it she would have her wings back and the thief out of her thoughts. She had to. For her lost eggs. For Tantlevgithus.

But then a little voice inside her wondered, in the dark of the night will I miss this soft skin or the taste of summer ale or the feel of boots on my feet?