A horrid dark pool bored a hole into the human man's mangled torso, seeping outward to stain the sand red. The pearly sheen of a broken bone poked up from somewhere within the mess. He'd died quickly, that was certain, but not without time to feel the tremendous pain etched into his frozen expression. Crimson prints trailed on beyond him, an easy path to the beast still rampaging on, eyes black and slitted, crazed with vengeance. Weapons carved of beasts' bones littered the sand. More would die. More were already dying. An awful numbness crept from Corvin's fingertips to the core of his ribcage, bleaching out his senses until a ringing awoke in his ears. The roughness of the sand against his skin felt very far away.

It struck him that he was gazing upon an old childhood dream that he'd had, one illustrated by another and filled in with more and more colour the older he became. It lost all its beauty when painted instead by the raw brush of reality.

Another voice, one closer by than the chaotic chatter of the men, snapped him from his cold reverie. One of the mages—the girl who'd been attacking Meag—now knelt by the dead man's side. Smoke curled in ribbons through her potent gaze. Something bright and muffled flashed within it, something dangerous. She stood with the slow stiffness of unfurling scales.

Realisation choked out a gasp. Dizziness forgotten, Corvin scrambled to get to his feet, but there was nothing he could do but watch the scene unfold.

Dust singed the air. He flinched at the sight and the sensation of it; it tasted like the rust it stole its colour from, and had a metallic shimmer as it clustered, flecks of it mirroring the black shades of midnight in blinks and flashes. Like an army in miniature, it surged forward. It only took the hazy form of a blade a moment before it pierced the beast's side.

The shape shattered on impact, dissolving into meaningless clouds and then nothing at all, but the damage was done. Blood welled from a wound like a crater, and the beast stumbled, his anger abruptly flattened, his thrashes stilled. As the remaining men limped into retreat, it fell.

Meag squealed. The desert rocking like a roughed ocean beneath his feet, Corvin turned. A luminous whip had lassoed her foreleg—the one this mage must have injured, given the way she stumbled on its support and cried out as the rope scraped through her matted fur. The other mage tugged on its end, reeling her closer.

Her face was all sharp angles and a split focus glare, its exact features wiped out of clarity. "Not kill!" she bit out—or something along those lines. The words were fuzzy and distant, difficult to translate. "You know that!"

A dark hue lingered in the eyes of the closer mage, the one who'd killed. Her fists were curled, her jaw set, coldly remorseless. "It killed first," she said with a voice like slate—flat and cutting. Corvin felt it scissor his throat. He couldn't breathe.

"Yeah," the second mage sighed. Her tone was somewhere between exasperation and sadness. "We have this one. We need to get back to the city while we still can."

"Wait." The first mage's cloak rippled as she moved, pale in the starlight. "There's a Feralite here."

It hit Corvin, numbly, that these humans couldn't see as well as he could in the darkness. Heart humming like a pair of swift wings, he stepped backward, then realised his mistake. The sand crunched beneath his feet. Predatory gleam alight in her narrowed gaze, the mage swung around to face him. A grim smile crawled to her lips.

"I see it," she said.

It. The choice of word was purposeful. His bones were rough under his skin, his limbs small, his scars loud and red and aching. He shrank into himself, a snarl rumbling behind his bared teeth.

The other mage's breathing had quickened. Corvin could hear it scrape in and out, tense with fear; his ear twitched. She yanked harder on the rope that bound Meag. "Nyla, run!" she snapped. A darkness seeped into her tone, drenching it like rain. "We've lost enough here already. Let's go!"

The first mage—Nyla—didn't move. In contrast, she made no sound at all. Moonlight glinted off the fine sprinkling of dust staining her fingers as if the particulates were jewels.

Tension held Corvin in a vice. He couldn't move either. Something needed to break.

Ever there when needed, Meag shattered the gripping silence. Her moan had a rolling echo to it, one that rippled over the sand and lassoed Corvin's focus. Meag. He couldn't lose Meag. Panic, so far delayed it came in a vicious, heart-rending tide, grappled him all at once.

Meag bucked, straining against her bind. The mage nearly tripped over her cloak's hem. "Help me!" she shouted.

Eyes trained on the bouncing rays of light the rope cast, Corvin broke into a sprint.

"Nyla!"

"Ana, watch out!"

"What?"

The mage's question dissolved into a yelp as Corvin pounced. She ducked the swing of his antlers but took the full brunt of the elbow he jabbed at her chest, staggering and wheezing. He wrestled the rope from her grasp and then dropped it, agony blazing through his veins. It burned. His vision went white, and when it faded back in, the rope was in her hands again. With a grunt, she brought a foot down on top of his, jolting further pain up through his ankle, then pulled on her blinding string of dust. It rushed towards his face. On instinct, he yanked himself down, curling into as tight a ball as possible to dodge it as he rolled underneath, narrowly avoiding another, more aggressive stomp.

Once free of the rope's sizzling aura, he scrabbled to his feet, gasping. Meag's eyes were on him, hopeful. He had to try again. He surged forward and jerked to an immediate halt.

An arm ensnared his waist, too strong to charge through and squeezing tighter the more he squirmed. A silky smooth blade slid underneath his chin. "I've got it, miss."

It was strange to hear such a statement reported so readily, like a simple-minded beast eager to please, when it was a living thing and Corvin's life was what beat in hollow notes beneath the glacial press of the knife. Whatever his motivation, however, the man's grip was merciless. Corvin struggled to swallow, legs pedalling to no avail.

Meag's dark stare didn't leave him. Her whine deepened into a growl. She jerked her head, tugging on the rope until it juddered and flashed, but it wouldn't break. Nyla skidded up beside her fellow mage and, without a word, summoned another bind with a flick of her wrist, one thicker and deeper in colour than her companion's. It clamped around Meag's snout, but kept growing, winding over and over in loops that cut through her mane and squeezed her neck. The fight never left her eyes, but her struggles weakened.

"Kill it," Nyla ground out.

It took a beat for Corvin to work out that this was an order—a command aimed at the man with a knife to his throat. By the time realisation speared him, a cold sting pierced his neck. His vision flickered red. He forgot the pain; he saw the man's arm, the shallow, tender bulge of muscle beneath light fabric, and seized his wrist, twisting it so that the blade jabbed over his shoulder and the arm jerked close enough to clamp his teeth around it. Bitter, metallic liquid flooded his mouth along with the soft rubber of flesh. Someone screamed. He wrenched backward, the man's arm ripping between his teeth, and shoved free, gaze snapping to the mages.

Horror consumed the looks they cast him in return. Nyla's eyes were a shade of teal. Lit by the indigo glow the black sky above cast, they glimmered blue, round and glistening like pools. His thoughts dived sharply towards Raya, and he stopped.

His stomach lurched. He spat, but that didn't rid him of the clinging taste of blood.

He wanted to say something to them. He knew he could. Death permeated the air, sour and suffocating; he needed to say he was sorry. He needed to plead with them not to take Meag, his only friend, his last piece of the home he'd never really had. He could still taste blood. His tongue drowned in it, and he said nothing.

The silence rang, stiffly painful, and somewhere within it they ran. There must've been rippling magic in those ropes, for even hauling Meag behind them, they moved swiftly. Perhaps he would have caught them if he tried, but he couldn't move.

He could still taste blood.

Sand scattered in his periphery. The man was on his feet. Bloodied arm clutched to his chest, dyed a screaming scarlet that dripped onto his front and dipped like a moon cut into by shadow, he launched himself towards the knife he'd dropped. Not sure where he found the instinct, Corvin dived. The weapon's hilt was horribly smooth in his palm, but he snatched it up, glad the man skittered out of its path when he thrust it up. His head spun and his bitter-tasting mouth was drier than the bone he held. A wet, sickened sensation squeezed his stomach, three times as forceful as the first, scalding his throat.

When he dredged up his voice, it was a rasp. Even the graceful human language became calloused. "Run."

By the time he added a softer "please" that shattered on his tongue, the man had already obeyed, careening in the direction of the mages he accompanied and the rest of his group's survivors. The knife slipped limply from Corvin's hand. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, swaying back and forth, to his heels and his toes again and again, watching the fleeing figures grow smaller.

Humans fashioned their weapons from the beasts they killed and used them to slay more, creatures impaled by the corpses of their kin. Acrid smoke stained the horizon from across the desert when they burned the rest. A single bite of one was no crime at all when stacked up against all their kind had done to his, but still the shadows slithering beneath his skin were cold, sticky things, threading beads of guilt wherever they fled, steeping him in a pit of self-loathing.

What sense would possess one to crave the taste of blood? It was awful.

His outstretched fingers brushed the one beastly form—a dark grey blot, a whistling moan on the wind—that retreated from him and then fell away. "Meag," he called after her, soft and limp. He managed one single step and then felt his shoulders sag, the energy draining from him all at once.

Even if she could hear him, he couldn't set her free. The weight of the aches in his scars, new and old, dragged at his limbs. He could run, but he knew in his heart he wouldn't make it far, and the mages would slaughter him with glee given the chance.

He heaved in a slow breath, pushed it out, then straightened, renewing his resolve. "I'm not leaving you, girl," he promised the distant wind. His fingers curled into loose fists, though they lacked any real conviction. It wasn't anger or aggression or vengeance that hardened his promise. He'd already seen the damage they could do.

He looked around again, forcing himself to take in what the scuffle had left behind: the smattering of human corpses, the lifeless beast, the stench of death, the blood—the dream without colour. He would save Meag, but he had penance to do first.

First, he would bury the dead.

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