Khione

CHAPTER 1

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

They came between the second and third quarter of the hour. Between a bowl of soup and the sound of my mothers voice on the front porch. Amari was sitting at our table and I was looking at him. I remember how the morning light painted his skin gold. His hand crept into the bread basket, and his smirk followed. Between one mouthful and the next the floor pitched forward. The silverware upturned. My fathers favorite mug hit the floor. The ground rushed up to smack our faces.

We heard screams first. Our quiet village in the Valley, overrun by screams. Nothing ever happened here, we used to bemoan it. Now the walls caved inwards and we were screaming too.

We ran.

We scrambled off the floor as the roof splintered above our heads. Windows shattered and the glass cut lines on our skin. I still have a scar from it. My mother I never saw again, my father I saw the last of when he turned to run for my other siblings. His eyes, I noticed, were afraid for the first time in my life.

I'll meet you- Just go, keep running! Khione, we need to go.

Scattered, one dimensional phrases. From him and from Amari- neither of which I could fully understand. Neither of which sent my reluctant feet running. But we did run. Of course we did. When faced between survival and certain death, there’s no choice.

Outside the sky was black with smoke. The forest was on fire. The village was on fire. Entire houses engulfed in flame. I saw my old school teacher in tatters on the street, limb to limb. Amari didn’t want me to look, but I did. Other small horrors greeted us. The corner where we once played as children painted red with blood. Oak trees torn from the roots and tossed haphazard like playthings. There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, but now they were here.

Nightmares don’t exist, my mother used to say.

But the monster in front of us was a nightmare come to life. Reptilian, eyes like the glow of hot coals. Claws, teeth, spikes, wings that shattered the sky with every beat. The heat wrapped around our throats like a closed fist. The air was scorching, it scraped our lungs like sandpaper. Oxygen was everywhere and nowhere. When the dragon opened its mouth, it breathed fire and turned the village to flame. I could no longer distinguish the street I grew up on. I could no longer see the tavern my father frequented with his friends. The river Amari and I used to swim in was on fire.

I don’t remember running.

I learned that day it only takes twenty eight minutes and thirteen seconds for a village to burn.

—

Ten years later, running is all we know how to do. Every morning at the crack of dawn we wake up and burrow our feet into boots. We learn to hide our grumbles beneath the stiff collars of our uniforms. We run five miles in the morning through harsh terrain. My seventeenth birthday passes without notice. Nobody celebrates birthdays. Here we’re all the same. Here we all run up the same mountain.

Far from the Valley.

The Valley is overrun now, they say. No man’s land. After Amari and I escaped when we were children, we ran through forests for eighteen miles before they found us. Half starved, delirious from heat stroke and grief. I lost my family, but he did too. We left as our village burned to the ground and could do nothing to stop it. Since then, Amari has talked less. I’ve talked more. He always says the truth, and he said it’s because I’m afraid of what I’ll think about if I’m silent.

My parents. The river.

The dragons.

We were relocated to the capital and grew up on table scraps and secondhand clothes. The Valley was only one of multiple areas attacked. We were the alleged sole survivors of our village, but others had more. We watched the numbers rise as attacks laid waste to the cities. Inexplicable, seemingly random attacks. But some people say dragons are predators. They destroy, they eat. It's what their biology tells them to do.

In the end, there were a thousand orphans with nowhere to go.

So what better to do than make an army of us? We’re the children of the slaughtered who have nothing left to lose.

We’re expendable.

It’s been one year since I started training. Two years for Amari. We do whatever the King says because he saved us all after the attack. So we’re one of his armies. An army of a thousand orphans.

For breakfast we eat our hopes and dreams and for lunch we swallow the last of our sanity. We run till we collapse and learn to wield swords and throw spears till our muscles cramp. We crawl into bed at night and feel our eyelids glueing shut. My fingers are callused from sword fighting and my frame is thin and wiry. Amari likes to say our United Army is worse than the dragons, and sometimes I wonder if he’s right.

Our purpose has been drilled into our heads through a series of chants and mottos. All about protection. About glory. One day the dragons came and nobody was prepared. Now we will be- now we can protect and honor if the time ever comes.

They also hope to see the Valley restored. Desert wasteland that it is. Once greenery flourished but now nothing ever grows. The ground is rife with with blackened fissures and dead trees. Bones. Amari and I haven’t been back since it was destroyed. I think we’d like to keep it that way, except for the one nagging thought that keeps me up at night.

Surely we can’t be the only survivors.

Amari and I grew up together, almost died together. Spent years protecting each other. The first time someone picked on him for his thick curls I threw them to the dirt. The first time someone grabbed one of my braids he called them something foul and before that he had the mouth of an angel. It doesn’t matter that we aren’t blood, we’re family.

I would trade a hundred other survivors for his life. In a heartbeat. I know he’d do the same for me. But it doesn’t mean I don’t wonder. Who’s out there? Did our families somehow escape?

These thoughts are always short lived- they taste a little like burnt sugar. Sometimes like spoiled milk. He and I both know all we have is each other. Everyone else in our camp has younger or older siblings or even a neighbor from their original village. Occasionally a parent, if they’re lucky. But we have no neighbor, no village.

But the dragons took something from everybody.

One day we’re supposed to fight them.

Amari isn’t afraid, but I am. I put on a brave face like I’m not soft beneath my armor. I know one day I will have fight. I will have to fight tooth and nail and if he’s alongside me, I’ll go down with him.

It's meant to be the two of us, and I always think we survived for a reason. There's no other way to make it worthwhile.

But maybe it wouldn't always be the two of us.

It was the sort of night that felt like sticky tar and bad dreams. I couldn't sleep and if anyone listened closely they could hear howls from miles away. Rain pitter pattered on the roof of our tents. The girl I shared with was writing a letter and her quill scratched across her page. The light in her lantern flickered out out suddenly and in vain she lit match after match. They slipped and clattered to the floor, sputtered out on the damp earth.

I tried not to pay attention. That night Amari's unit was coming back from a mission. One near the Valley. I thought about a conversation he and I had the days before he left, about leaving the army together. Deserting would be the word, really. He said enough was enough- we gave them what we owed. We needed to make our own way. No army, no fighting. No potential war, no looming danger of dragons.

He said we deserved peace.

"You don't want to fight anyway, Khione," were his parting words to me.

I am not a girl often scorned by violence. Since the village burned I've learned to have a heart of stone. Impenetrable except to him, except to memory. Amari was always different- impulsive, emotional. Now he curses colorfully and takes brazen risks. He is considered the troublemaker of what is considered a typically peaceful camp. He hates the army, and so do I. But not as much. I am more easygoing than he is.

He still says he hopes they force him to train an extra year- especially if it means staying behind with me.

So I wait for another hour. After our separate missions we always come and see one another. Exchange stories, pray to a few different gods and thank them that we're safe another day. But tonight I'm greeted with rain.

Another hour passes. Then two. Then three.

I leave the tent. The rain hits my shoulders but I don't care. I see his unit has returned. They're standing beneath an awning in hushed conversation with their shoulders bent in defeat. Some of the girls glance at me nervously, but their lieutenant is nowhere to be seen. Amari is nowhere to be seen. A feeling in my gut tells me somethings happened. I trust my gut. Even if I don't want to right now.

When I barge into an officers tent, I forget all my training.

"Where is he?" I demand.

Surprise flashes across their faces. Then anger. Then uncertainty. The type of look they give someone right before they give them the bad news. Already, I'm transported back to a small room when they told us they didn't find any survivors back home. Just burnt remains. I refuse to think about it.

This time, when they do speak, I barely hear them. The room is underwater and I am drowning. The walls look murky and unclear.

"Amari didn't come back with us. There was a minor attack.. we're sorry, by the time we gathered again he was missing. We didn't see where..."

The rest of it fades away. Didn't come back with us. Missing near the Valley. A minor attack. All these words seem incomprehensible. A joke. A jilted line from a story that can't possibly make sense. I hear myself saying something, and they repeat exactly what they said the first time.

When I look at them, their eyes are full of pity and I'm suddenly furious. I find myself sitting down on a chair because my legs are liquid and boneless. Someone tries to offer me a cup of tea and I strike it away. It hits the floor, shatters.

There's no reason to treat me like I've lost someone. Because Amari isn't dead.

They said he's not dead. They don't know what happened. Where he is.

I just need to find him.

They see my intentions in my eyes before I say it. They say my name repeatedly until I break away from the tent. I ignore them, the three syllables that echo like anything could call me back now. I've made up my mind. I'm going after him. I don't care that the storm is only worsening. After everything life has taken from me, I won't let it take him too.

I hope it won't take him too.

I hear shouts. My feet pound on the pavement until the smooth edges turn to grass and roots. Until I am blind in the dark of the forest.

I do the only thing I know how to do.

I run.

I am running still.