Page 41 of Season of Naga: Volume 2
I nod, moving away from the cave entrance to minimize our exposure to both heat and ash. "I am unsure about how long the storm will last, but we should rest while we can." I unsling the pack, extracting waterskins and rations. "The crossing will tax us both."
Serin accepts the food and water gratefully, settling against the cave wall with her knees drawn up to her chest. The positionmakes her seem smaller, more vulnerable, though I have seen enough of her spirit to know appearances deceive. She eats slowly, her gaze drifting repeatedly to the wasteland beyond our shelter.
"What was it like?" she asks suddenly. "Before the burning?"
The question catches me off guard. I could refuse to answer, maintain the wall between us that centuries of hatred have built. Instead, I find myself speaking of things I have shared with no human.
"The northern territories were our summer grounds," I say, my voice dropping as memory overtakes me. "When the mountain snows grew too deep, we would migrate to these lowlands. There were forests so dense that sunlight reached the ground only in dappled patterns. Lakes filled with fish that seemed to dance beneath the surface, their scales catching the light in colors no human tongue has names for."
I coil my tail beneath me, the familiar weight of my own body anchoring me against the tide of remembrance. "Young nagas would race through meadows of grass taller than your head, playing games of stealth and ambush. The flowers that bloomed there had petals soft as clouds, and when you crushed them between your fingers, they released scents that would linger on your scales for days."
Serin listens with an intensity that draws more words from me than I intended. Her eyes reflect something deeper than mere curiosity. A genuine grief for something she never knew but can somehow still mourn.
"And now it's all gone," she whispers, her gaze returning to the wasteland.
"Gone," I agree, "but not forgotten. The memory lives in the blood of every naga. It feeds our hatred as surely as ash feeds the wind."
She meets my gaze directly, her expression troubled. "And yet here we are. Naga and human, planning to cross that hatred together."
Her words settle around me. Naga and human… together. The thought grates like broken glass.This is how it begins,a voice inside me warns. Softness. Forgetting. The first step toward the ruin that the Threadborn Prophecy promises.
I remember the day Varok chose to bond with the human, Leira. The fury that burned through me. The conviction that corruption wore a human face.
And yet… Leira released me from my cage. Then Serin treated my wounds, fed me, and dragged my broken body through the tunnels toward home. My jaw flexes. The memories refuse to sit cleanly beside one another.
I was taught what humans are. What they do when fear takes them. I have seen it. Lived it. My claws press into the stone, grounding myself. Blood does not forget.
But even as I think it, my gaze betrays me, drifting to the fading marks on her skin. Proof not of what humans have done to me… but of what my own kind did to her.
I exhale slowly, fighting the shift inside me, that dangerous softening I should not trust.One human does not change an entire race,I silently preach to myself.
Yet another truth presses just as hard.
She saved my life. Walks beside me. Trusts me.
And for the first time in my life, I find myself caught between what I was raised to believe… and what I am beginning, against my will, to feel.
I do not reply. Instead, I turn my attention to practical matters, checking our supplies and plotting our course through the wasteland that was once paradise.
"Rest," I tell her, my voice gentler than I intended. "You will need your strength for what lies ahead."
The wind moans at the cave entrance like a creature in pain. Beyond it stretches the price of war, the cost of hatred, the consequence of weapons that should never have been forged. And somewhere across that dead expanse, Vessan-Kar awaits and is possibly already doomed by the worms who burrow through its foundations.
Two days at most until time is up. To cross the uncrossable, to reach those we left behind, to make sure the destruction has been thwarted from claiming what remains of my world that is now hers.
We retreat deeper into the cave, away from the ash-laden wind that carries the scent of death and memory. The temperature drops with each yard we put between ourselves and the scorched world outside, blessed coolness replacing the suffocating heat of the Ashlands.
I unbuckle the battle-sling from around my waist, wincing as the leather catches on a raw scale, then place my sword beside me, but close enough to grasp in a single motion if needed. My coils arrange themselves against the curved wall, a position that conserves heat while maintaining readiness. Old instincts die hard, even in temporary safety.
Serin lowers herself to the stone floor opposite me, her movements growing noticeably less coordinated. The full cost of our escape becomes evident in her body, and the adrenaline that carried her through captivity and flight drains away like water through cupped fingers, leaving only exhaustion in its wake.
"Are you well?" I ask, though the answer is written plainly across her features.
"Fine," she lies, the word undermined by the slight tremor in her voice. "Just tired.”
A shiver runs through her, subtle at first, just a slight trembling of her shoulders that might be dismissed as a reactionto the cave's coolness. But it builds, growing in intensity until her entire body shakes with violent tremors that rattle her teeth.
My body moves before my mind decides, crossing the space between us in a single fluid motion. I coil around her trembling form, tail sliding beneath to lift her from the cold stone, arms drawing her against my chest, scales curving to create a living shelter of warmth and protection.
