Skysworn (Cradle, #4)

by Will Wight

The Deepwalker Ape should have waited at the bottom, staring up at him in rage. Or its body should have lain there, broken after decades of isolation. Instead, the floor was spotlessly clean. No fur, no muck, no blood. Nothing. Only two characters scratched into the stone floor, so large that they were visible from the entrance so far above. Two words: “Nice try.”

Was this silence designed to make him uncomfortable? Or had it only been a few seconds, and his frantic mind was stretching each instant into an eternity?

People from various worlds often likened the Way to a tree, or a branching vine. Suriel had always thought of it more as a network of veins, stretching out in all directions from a central heart.

He looked like a clown. More weapons did not mean a more prepared warrior, and everyone present had to know that.

“A good fight is a short fight,” Orthos said. “A dragon uses his full strength, whether he's fighting a Sage or a mouse.”

“Desperate men cannot see beyond their own desperation,” Eithan said, with the air of a man quoting.

Even though people died all the time where they weren't meant to. Her master had died in Sacred Valley, maybe the safest place in the world. It wasn't the trap you saw that killed you.

The Sword Sage had always said the pursuit of perfection in the sacred arts was a lonely pursuit, and anything else was a distraction. She’d come to think that advancing alone wasn't just boring, it was painful.

For a massive, black reptile with a shell that smoldered with dragonfire, he didn't have much of a spine.

Speculation was useless. There was too much he didn't know.

Back in Sacred Valley, when things had been at their worst, this was all he had wanted. Someone to sit with him and remind him that they were with him, that everything would be okay. Sometimes his sister or his parents filled that role. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes, they were the problem.

“A dragon does not allow fear to make his decisions for him,” Orthos rumbled. “A dragon decides for himself.”

“When I stopped looking at all the problems, and I just asked myself what I wanted to do...I realized I wanted to come with you. So here I am.”

"Orthos," Lindon said, "can you veil yourself?" The turtle snorted out a puff of smoke. "Do you know how to open and close your eyes? I was veiling myself before your grandfather ever laid eyes on your grandmother. When the Skysworn were nothing more than a sect of servants, I was—" Lindon cut him off before he gained too much momentum. "I think it would help us both if you did."

"When a horse carries a man, which of them is the stronger party? It is only suitable that a dragon should carry lesser creatures."