Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 4 of 16

The howls were gone, but the quiet was worse. Krayzor knelt by the kitsune and watched her breathing hitch. Her ribs were knitting wrong. She could not walk. He had scouts to meet two ridges over, leaders waiting on word, and a banner that would not raise itself. If he left, she died in the dark. If he stayed, the alliance bled days he could not spare. He laid her on a bed of moss pulled from his pack, the ivy soft under her cheek, her many tails curled around her like a faded sunset. She watched him with calm violet eyes. She did not beg. That was somehow worse. Near the cave's narrow mouth he wedged the maul upright and ringed the stone with cut stalks of purple death bloom, petals open like small mouths. Any beast that nosed past would breathe wrong and turn back. It was a wall he did not have to stand behind every minute. He sat between her and the falling water and rolled something between his fingers — a single golden dragon scale, the last thing he carried from before. Stay, and the tribes drifted apart another week. Go, and one more life he could have saved would stop. He had built his whole work on not making that second choice again. "Go," she rasped. "I am not your tribe." Krayzor closed his fist on the scale. "You are now," he said. "That is the whole point." He pressed the scale into her palm and folded her fingers shut. "Hold this until I come back. Three days. The flowers guard the door. The moss keeps you warm. Drink when you wake." He stepped through the curtain of water at dusk, maul on his shoulder, pack lighter without the scale. The scouts would get their word. The leaders would get their meeting. And somewhere behind a wall of poison blooms, a wounded fox held the last piece of who he used to be, and he had just promised to come back for it.