Sound of Nothing – Prologue

Kota

The blast exploded close enough that it stirred the walls of my tent. My eyes snapped open. Outside, Ryn already stood alert, tension rippling through her body. I scrambled onto my hands and knees, reaching for the leather armor I’d stashed in the corner the night before.

Shouts rose throughout the camp, followed by the low drone of a horn. A call to battle. Another boom rolled through the camp like thunder, then another. What was that? I had never heard anything like it before.

Still lacing the left side of my armor, I shoved past the tent flap into the crisp morning air. A rush of wind accompanied a drakon shooting by overhead. I squinted against the glint of the rising sun but couldn’t catch the rider’s colors.

Took you long enough, Ryn growled inside my head. The drakon lashed her tail, the bone spikes dangerously close to slashing a hole in my tent. Ignoring her impatience, I threw the leather saddle over her back, but she kept shifting while I tried to cinch it tight.

“Hold still,” I snapped at my keeper. I knew she was itching for battle. We both were.

When I finally secured the saddle, I swung onto Ryn’s back and grasped the loop at the front of the saddle. My other hand drew my sword from its sheath, the weight of the weapon comfortable and familiar. My father’s sword. Even before I became a warrior, I had known the feel of this sword’s hilt against my palm.

Ryn leaped forward without hesitation, her wings unfurling. In moments, we were airborne, the camp shrinking beneath us as she climbed higher. By then, the battle raged at its height. Drakons swarmed the sky, some riders wearing Valere colors and some matching my blue and red painted leather armor.

Below, ruined tents burned throughout the camp, their pale animal hide shredded into tatters. Smoldering strips littered the ground, some pieces still drifting through the air.

“They finally came for us,” I murmured.

We had known this moment would come. They had hit four other clans already, including the third drakon clan. Join or die, their chief had declared.

Another blast decimated a tent in the center of the camp. Ryn beat her wings, hovering in place while I watched burning scraps flutter toward the ground. They must have been searching for Chief Rajik’s tent. Though his tent looked like all the others, they knew it would be in the middle somewhere.

“The stories are true. It’s magic!” someone shouted nearby. “The gods have brought their wrath down on us!”

It’s not magic, I thought. And it certainly wasn’t the gods, either. Whatever caused the explosion, it sure as Atu’s furry backside wasn’t some mystical force.

“Kota, at your peak!”

I looked up on instinct in time to see something small plummeting toward my head. My stomach flipped as Ryn rolled to avoid it. The object whistled past—a sack of some kind? Fire erupted when it collided with the ground, the heatwave knocking Ryn off balance. For one horrible second, I thought she might lose control. My grip tightened on the saddle strap to keep myself seated until she leveled out into a glide.

The clang of clashing swords overhead wrenched my attention upward. Varrin’s brown drakon fled from an unfamiliar black-scaled beast whose rider wore white and purple. Her pale hair streamed out behind her, the braid peppered with colorful beads.

The two drakons engaged in a deadly dance, swooping above and around each other while their riders traded blows. Varrin’s cry cut through the chaos as the enemy’s blade plunged through his shoulder. His own sword slipped from his grip and went spinning toward the ground.

Varrin tried to bank away, but the black drakon sank its claws into his keeper. The drakon swooped and released them, sending Varrin and his drakon hurtling toward the earth.

I didn’t see them crash. Two drakons shot by, close enough that their flight-stream disrupted Ryn’s glide. A gray drakon with purple feathers and white streaks painted along its sides pursued another I recognized as Nikat’s keeper. The gray drakon’s rider clutched a bow instead of a sword, remaining seated with his legs alone. It was a feat both impressive and reckless.

Nikat’s drakon dodged and twisted, throwing every evasive maneuver they had into shaking the Valere warrior off their tail. But their pursuer was relentless. All he needed was one clear shot.

I leaned low against Ryn’s neck and directed her after them. With a few powerful strokes of her red-feathered wings, she gathered speed. When we were within range, Ryn swooped upward before folding her wings into a dive.

She timed it perfectly.

The enemy never saw us coming. I clung to the saddle as we slammed into them and lashed out with my sword. Screams of pain ripped through the air, from both drakon and rider.

Dive, I commanded. Ryn rolled to the side, her wings still tucked, and we dropped like one of those exploding sacks. The wind whipped my braid in my face and stung my eyes. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I resisted the urge to squeeze my eyes shut.

Seconds away from crashing, Ryn snapped out her wings. We skimmed over the ground, close enough that her claws brushed the tall grass.

I twisted in the saddle, searching for the enemy rider. What I saw startled me so badly I almost dropped my sword—the other drakon was a tail-length behind us, the tip of the Valere warrior’s arrow pointed straight at me.

Spin! I ordered.

Ryn’s reluctance pulsed through our bond. Are you sure?

Yes! Now.

She relented nearly too late. We tilted to the side as Ryn tucked one wing to spin us in a circle. The arrow’s fletching brushed my ear as it zipped by my head instead of through it.

The maneuver also slowed us down, bringing the enemy in range of Ryn’s whipping tail. With my vision spinning, I couldn’t see what happened, but Ryn’s tail hit something. Bone spikes sank into flesh, then were wrenched free as we spiraled away.

We had practiced the move for countless hours but had never employed it before. It had been a favorite of my father’s, one that most warriors rarely tried—and almost never saw coming. Watching it always reminded me of falling maple seeds, their blades sending them in a spiral to slow their descent. Of course, it didn’t feel slowed when you were the one getting spun around. I desperately clutched the saddle as the world twisted around me.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough altitude for such maneuvers. Ryn couldn’t recover fast enough, so we spiraled straight into the ground.

My keeper took the worst of the impact, but the crash launched me from the saddle. I tumbled across the ground before skidding to a stop several paces away. Pain flared through my body, but a quick assessment told me none of my injuries were life-threatening.

“Ryn?” I called.

I’m okay. Her response came weakly, her breathing labored. Returning to the battle was out of the question.

“Kota,” someone gasped. Varrin. He was sprawled on the grass nearby, chest heaving. He had survived the fall. His drakon, on the other hand…

Pity stabbed at me like a sword through my heart. Varrin probably wished he had died alongside his keeper. Pain lanced through my ankle when I got to my feet, causing me to stumble back to my knees. Unable to walk, I crawled the rest of the way over.

As soon as I reached Varrin, he shoved a knife into my hand.

“Please,” he whispered. “For Atu’s sake, please.”

I stared at the blade I held, feeling numb aside from the throbbing in my ankle. I knew I should do it, and soon, because soulstealers flocked to battlefields. He didn’t have much time.

My brief hesitation was too long. I saw the moment his soul left his body, the moment his eyes went dark. Not literally, but whatever gave someone’s eyes their light, their life… It was gone.

Varrin—or the thing that had once been Varrin—threw himself at me with a feral snarl. He grabbed at the knife he had given me while I desperately tried to keep it out of his reach.

“Varrin!” I shouted, as if that would stop him. Varrin was gone. A demon had his soul because I had failed in my duty to free him from his body once his keeper was dead. He wouldn’t make it to the next life. He was just… gone.

A wave of nausea washed over me, so strong I almost vomited all over the soulless man on top of me. My arms trembled as I parried his attacks, struggling to angle the blade for a strike.

Panic clawed at me when his fingers closed around my wrist. He started to pry the knife away with inhuman strength, but then a flash of white streaked toward his head. Bone spikes sank into his skull. I flinched as hot blood splattered my face.

Ryn wrenched her tail spikes out of his head, and his crushing weight left me as his body toppled over.

I stared at the body in shock. Nausea rolled through me again, lodging itself in my throat. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen death before. I had killed. I had watched my fellow clan members die. But I had never killed one of my own before.

A series of sharp notes from a horn snapped me back to the battlefield. It wasn’t the low, full note of my clan’s battle horns, but something higher pitched, almost a whistle. I tilted my chin to look at the sky and was surprised to find the enemy drakons retreating.

“Why would they retreat?” I murmured. They had been winning.

They don’t want us dead.

I blinked at Ryn, who watched me steadily with her deep bronze eyes. As the Valere warriors disappeared into the distance, I realized she was right. They wanted us to join them. They would kill us if we refused, but they would much rather our warriors join their army instead. This had been a show of strength, nothing more.

Bracing myself against Ryn’s sturdy body, I hauled myself to my feet and clambered onto her back. I would have been ashamed of the awkward scramble if anyone were paying attention.

All around us, drakons landed among the remnants of our camp. Medics rushed from the cover of the trees to tend to the wounded. One approached me, but I waved him off and directed Ryn to carry me back to my tent. I prepared myself for the worst, expecting to find it blasted to scraps. By some stroke of luck, it remained standing. The tents on either side of it… not so much.

Three quick notes from a deep horn signaled a warrior meeting. As I made my way through the ruined camp, others bustled around me. They tended to the aftermath the way the medics tended to the wounded. Their keepers helped in any way they could, carrying debris away or pouring water on any flames that still burned.

Rajik stood beside the wreckage of his tent, his face taut, rage simmering beneath a mask of restraint. I had learned to keep my distance from that look. His drakon was sniffing through the remnants of the chief’s tent. He had a long scratch down his side, but the wound had stopped bleeding already, dried blood crusted on his black scales. The other warriors and drakons bore the marks of battle. One man cradled what looked like a broken arm. A drakon’s tail spike had snapped off, leaving behind a jagged stump. Another keeper had a deep gash over its eye.

I was suddenly thankful for my measly throbbing ankle. Aside from some scrapes and bruises, Ryn was unharmed.

Since attending the meeting mounted while Rajik stood grounded would be disrespectful, I slid from Ryn’s back. My ankle twinged when my toes touched the ground, so I shifted my weight to my other foot.

“Our enemy made a bold move today,” Rajik said once all who were coming had arrived. We were missing four warriors, because they were dead or too injured to walk. I thought of Varrin’s body, a spike-hole in his head, his keeper dead nearby. The way he had attacked me like a rabid animal. My stomach churned at the memory of his soulless eyes.

“The Valere chief is greedy,” Rajik went on. “Arrogant.”

“He’s powerful,” Tam said. He leaned against his drakon, the one with the broken tail spike. “He has magic on his side. How are we supposed to fight that?”

“The gods themselves have sided with him,” said the warrior with the broken arm. “We should stop fighting their will.”

“The gods don’t take sides,” Nikat scoffed. As a warrior with even more experience than Rajik, her braid was decorated with nearly a dozen tokens. Mostly red, yellow, and purple beads, but other colors as well. “All must face Zera’s fury. The chief might have a mage fighting for him, but he’s still just a man.”

“Whatever the reason, we can’t beat him,” Tam said. “Today proved that.”

Nikat nodded. “This I must agree with. We have two choices, sir: we leave or we die.” She didn’t even offer surrendering as an option.

Rajik looked skyward, as if expecting to see more drakons dive out of the clouds. “Then we leave,” he said softly. “If the North can no longer be our home, we will find a new one to claim.”

“Leave?” I said before I could think better of it. Eyes turned to me. I was the youngest warrior among them and had no right to speak here. I forged on anyway. “We are warriors. We don’t run with our tails down like Zera-forsaken cowards.” Eilzar would never have allowed it.

But Eilzar wasn’t chief anymore.

Rajik’s eyes narrowed. “I understand your objection, but you are young. Inexperienced. Sometimes a warrior must recognize when they are beaten. There is no sense in dying in an unwinnable battle.”

There is honor in not giving up, I thought, seething inside. I didn’t care if we were hopelessly outmatched. Running away made us cowards.

But this time I held my tongue. My opinion held no weight here, not yet. They must have all thought I had gone dizzy, speaking out like that.

When I didn’t speak again, Rajik moved on, issuing orders for our departure. As far as I knew, no clan had ever left the Home Range. Who knew how far we would have to travel to find a new home?

He’s going to destroy us, I told Ryn. The red feathers on her ears quivered. She could sense my agitation, though I doubted she fully understood what had me so furious.

The meeting drew to a close, but before we could disperse, Nikat stepped forward. “We have one more matter to address,” she announced.

Rajik looked annoyed, but even he couldn’t dismiss the elder warrior without drawing dishonor on himself. He had already done enough, in my opinion, to lose one of his tokens today.

Nikat gestured me toward her. My injured ankle made it difficult to walk with dignity, but I used Ryn’s support as little as possible as I approached.

“Kota fought well today,” Nikat said. “She risked her life to save my own. I would not be standing here before you if it were not for her bravery.”

Something stirred inside me, a flicker of hope I tried to smother in case I was wrong. But then Nikat reached into a pouch attached to her keeper’s saddle and pulled out a red bead.

“Kota Ryn, today I reward you with a token of courage,” she continued. “May the gods bear witness and recognize your strength as a warrior.”

I accepted the offered token with trembling fingers. The other warriors stared, probably as shocked as when I had spoken out of place.

I didn’t thank her, and she didn’t expect me to. Tokens were earned, not gifted.

The meeting broke up after that. I turned toward my tent, though not before I caught the disdainful look Rajik gave me. Apparently, I had inherited his hatred for my dead father. I didn’t care. Rajik was my chief, which meant he had my loyalty, but he didn’t deserve my respect. With his decision to leave the North, he would never earn it back, no matter how many tokens adorned his hair.

The next day, we said goodbye to the northern mountains and the only life I had ever known.