A roar from a nearby mountain blasted across the village of Torma. Dropping their wares, the inhabitants of the village pulled their cloaks tighter from the booming screech, but a young shepherd walked along as if on a mission, his head held high.
The noise ceased at the same time the sheep tender approached Mayor Lun.
My lasso sped toward the last bull in the devil’s herd. Its cursed hooves struck sparks as it thundered across the sky.
While my ghost rope started to drop over the brute’s head, I let myself hope that this time I’d catch him, though I’d always failed before. Would’ve held my breath, if I had any.
Zoot pulled the brim of his pilfered bucket hat down to hide his scaled skin and amphibious features. The overcoat he’d procured hid his olive-green flight suit. Thankfully, the black tentacles running down the back of his head imitated the hair of the native creatures, but his disguise was hardly complete.
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“I’ve got it!” Marc waved off the left fielder and pursued the fly ball.
But his synthetic body, like his physical one in years past, had its weaknesses. As the baseball’s path took it past the sun, Marc’s eyelids closed to keep his vision sensors from burning out, and he lost track of it.
It were Beathan who first laid eyes upon the bones lodged between the rocks along the salt sea, looking like so much driftwood whitened by the sun. Tangled all around with long strands of golden hair, they were, as if bound in a most precious net. It were mournful to see.
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Salamanders are slow. This was something I hadn’t considered before beginning my search for the witch responsible for transforming me into the creature. See, while I’d been stuck as a salamander for the past six months, I hadn’t strayed from the fountain outside my father’s castle. Until recently, my brother
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My name is Gaspard Jerome Masson, and I have one regret.
The last word smudged beneath the old man’s trembling hand. He drew a breath, then continued writing.
Her name was Marie.
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June 6, 1944
Rennes, France
“Gaspard! They’re coming!”
Gaspard shot up from his seat. Marie burst through the door of his small apartment
“Mister, um…” Brushing a stray brunette lock from my eyes, I squint at the top section of the form on my clipboard. “I hope I’m pronouncing this right. Is it Uberloorde?”
Bare scalp glistening under the fluorescents of my cramped office, he adjusts
I peered down the prison ward’s empty hallway—shiny and sterilized like everything else in the Domand Empire. “All right, I’m here.” My whisper echoed off the metal walls. “Which cell is Colton’s?”
Alexander’s tinny voice crackled in my earpiece. “B-5.”
Today, the war ends for me. That’s what I tell myself, as I enter the royal suite. One last mission and I’ll satisfy the debt binding me to the Great Lord.
Darkness envelops me like a friend. My hand closes around the hilt tucked into my servant’s dress as I step over the snoring maidservant at the foot of the royal bed.
“Grow, and live,” I whispered to the glass butterfly in my hand. I kissed it and placed it into the dirt hole in front of me.
“Now cover it,” my mother said. “Everything must die and return to the earth before it can grow.”
Under my hand, salt breaks away from the gate in thick, crystalized flakes. Reus giggles. He reaches out his chubby baby fingers, but I yank him back, pressing his face to my cloak when his laugh turns to a startled wail.
“Shh…” I hold him closer, my heart pounding as I look over my shoulder.
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