Sand ground between Kael's teeth when he woke, sharp and metallic, flecked with tiny crystalline shards that pricked his gums when he swallowed, nothing like the sterile hospital bed he'd expected. The grit clung to his tongue, mixed with the faint, coppery tang of blood from a split lip he hadn't noticed he'd gotten, and he spat a mouthful of red-tinged sand into the dirt, the splotch darkening the rust-colored earth for half a second before the dry air sucked it pale again.
The last thing he remembered was Brooklyn rain slicking his bike tires, the blare of a semi truck horn that had blotted out the sound of his own shout, a pain so bright it had wiped every other thought from his head. He'd been late to his shift at the vintage record store, a rare first pressing of *Rumours* tucked in his backpack that he'd planned to sell to cover his rent that month, his hood up against the downpour that had streaked his glasses so bad he could barely see the crosswalk. Now he was staring up at a bruised purple sky streaked with wispy tangerine, the last light of the setting sun bleeding over the jagged rock formations on the horizon, no skyscrapers, no sirens, just the distant, acrid stench of sulfur burning his nostrils so sharp it made his eyes water.
He pushed himself up on one elbow, his hoodie—faded, thrifted, the Millennium Falcon logo peeling at the edges where his ex had glued a sparkly unicorn sticker six months prior, a dumb joke he'd never had the heart to scrape off even after they'd split—catching on a jagged volcanic rock half-buried in the sand. His left arm stung, a shallow but long cut oozing blood down to his wrist, the fluid dark and thick in the odd, golden light of the wastes, and his right ankle throbbed like he'd twisted it falling off a three-story building, the joint swollen so bad he could already see the bump under the frayed cuff of his jeans. Next to him, half-buried in the red sand, lay a man in scuffed leather armor, face down, throat slit so deep the sand under his neck was caked black with dried blood, a rusted iron dagger stuck in the dirt next to his outstretched hand. Kael grabbed it, the hilt rough and pitted under his fingers, wrapped in frayed leather stained with years of old blood and grime, the edge dull enough that he knew it would barely cut butter, let alone whatever had killed the man at his side. He had no idea where he was, no idea how he'd gotten here, but the hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up, like something was watching him from the gnarled gray scrub that dotted the landscape for miles in every direction.
The howl hit first.
High, sharp, hungry, echoing off the low rock formations half a mile west, vibrating so deep in his molars that the loose sand around his boots shifted with the sound. Then a second, a third, a fourth, all layered, all getting closer, the pitch rising with every passing second until it felt like the sound was drilling into his skull. Kael's breath caught. He'd never heard a sound like that, not even in the worst gory horror movies he'd binged on rainy weekends when he couldn't afford to go out. It was too big, too cold, too eager, like the things making it knew exactly where he was, and exactly how long he had left to run.
He stumbled to his feet, his ankle screaming so loud he had to bite down on his lip to keep from crying out, and scanned the tree line of gnarled, gray scrub brush, its leaves stiff and sharp as shards of glass. He saw them a second later: four massive hounds, fur so black it looked like holes punched in the landscape, absorbing all the light around them, eyes glowing like smoldering embers, thick, viscous saliva dripping from their jagged jaws. The saliva hissed when it hit the sand, eating tiny craters into the red dirt, acrid smoke curling up from the spots where it landed. Some feral, unplaceable part of his brain supplied the facts before he could think about it, sharp and clear as a video game pop-up he'd never asked to see: shadow hounds, pack hunters, venom causes full-body paralysis in ten minutes, organ failure and death in twenty, hunt by heat signature and the scent of open blood. He didn't know how he knew that. He didn't have time to question it.
They were closing fast, long loping strides eating up the distance between them, their red eyes locked on him, unblinking. Kael tightened his grip on the rusted dagger, his palms sweating so bad the leather-wrapped hilt slipped a little in his hand. He'd been in a handful of bar fights back home, had taken a boxing class for three months before he'd quit because the instructor kept hitting on his roommate, but he knew he was dead before the first hound was even within 50 feet. Four hounds, one dull, rusted dagger, one twisted ankle that could barely hold his weight. The math didn't add up, no matter how he crunched it.
The first arrow flew past his ear so close it ruffled the hair at his temple, the raven-feather fletching smelling like pine resin and ash, and buried itself so deep in the lead hound's eye that the end of the wooden shaft stuck out an inch from the back of its skull. The beast yelped, a high, gurgling sound, skidded, and collapsed, kicking up a cloud of red sand, its black blood hissing as it pooled in the dirt. Two more arrows followed in quick succession, each hitting their mark dead center in the next two hounds' throats, the beasts going down without a sound, their bodies twitching once before going still.
"Down!"
A woman's voice, sharp, gravel-edged, urgent, like she was used to yelling orders over the sound of fighting. Kael dropped to the sand without thinking, the impact jarring his bad ankle so bad he saw stars, and rolled behind a small boulder half his height, peeking over the top to see where the voice had come from.
She was standing on a rock outcrop ten feet behind him, mid-twenties, ash-blonde hair tied back in a messy braid frayed at the ends, a tiny, faded blue jay feather woven into the plait, a thin silver scar slicing through her left eyebrow that looked like it had been made by a knife. She wore a frayed linen tunic stained with old blood and mud, leather greaves scuffed with the marks of a hundred fights, a shortbow drawn back in her hands, a chipped white sunburst emblem stitched to her sleeve, the same emblem he'd seen on the dead man's armor a few feet away. She loosed her fourth arrow, but the last hound dodged, twisting mid-leap so fast it was almost a blur, and barreled straight for her, claws extended.
She dropped the bow without hesitation, drew a serrated steel dagger from her belt, the edge sharp enough to glint even in the fading light, and met it halfway. She slashed at its chest, drawing a gush of black, stinking blood that splattered on her tunic and ate a tiny hole right through the linen next to the sunburst, but the hound twisted again, faster than any animal he'd ever seen, and its jaws clamped down hard on her left calf, the sharp teeth sinking through the leather of her greave like it was paper.
She grunted, no scream, just a sharp, angry huff of breath, like the bite was nothing more than an inconvenience, and drove her dagger straight into the top of the hound's skull, up to the hilt. The beast went limp instantly, its jaws still locked around her leg, the pressure so tight Kael could see the white of her bone through the tear in her greave. She kicked it off with her free foot, the hound's body flying a few feet before hitting the sand, and stumbled, collapsing against the rock behind her, her face tight with pain, sweat beading on her forehead even as the cool desert wind picked up.
Kael scrambled over to her, his ankle screaming with every step, stumbling twice over loose rocks and dead hound paws, the stench of the hounds' black blood so bad he gagged, biting his lip until he tasted blood to keep from throwing up. Her calf was a mess: two deep puncture wounds oozing thick, tar-black venom, the skin around it already swelling purple and hot to the touch, the discoloration creeping fast up towards her knee, leaving streaks of dark blue in its wake. The stench of the venom burned his nose, sharp and bitter, like burnt plastic and rot mixed with the sulfur of the wastes.
"Shit," she gritted out, sweat beading on her forehead, dripping down the side of her face and leaving clean tracks through the dust on her skin. She held her right hand over the wound, and a faint, warm white glow seeped from her palm, wrapping around the bite for two whole seconds, the purple swelling fading just a hair before the glow sputtered and died, the wound no better, the discoloration creeping faster now. She slammed her fist against the rock hard enough to split her knuckles, a tiny chip of granite breaking off under the force, blood dripping down her wrist onto the sand. "Fucking cap."
Kael blinked, pressing the sleeve of his hoodie against the wound to try to slow the oozing venom. The fabric hissed and smoked where it touched the black goop, eating holes straight through the cotton, the heat of the reaction burning his fingertips even through the layers of fabric, leaving a gaping hole right at the elbow of his hoodie that revealed the faint, pale scar on his forearm from when he'd broken it skateboarding when he was 12. "Cap? What cap? Can you try again?"
She laughed, bitter and breathless, a little delirious around the edges, her lips already tinged a faint, worrying blue. "Try again? My healing stat's capped at 3. Barely enough to fix a scraped knee, let alone shadow hound venom. Theron and his Covenant goons hoard all the blessing shards, leave the rest of us to rot with whatever birth cap the gods decided we deserve. That 400-year-old leech, leader of the Lumina Covenant, has been stealing shards for centuries to extend his own lifespan, doesn't care if the rest of us die from a paper cut because our healing caps are too low to fix it." She hissed as she tried to shift her leg, the purple discoloration now halfway up her thigh, the muscles under the skin twitching with the early signs of paralysis. "Fucking heretic label, fucking bounty, I should have stayed in the slums and let the Covenant's tax collectors beat me half to death instead of running out here chasing a stupid rumor about a shard cache."
Kael didn't know who Theron was, not really, not beyond the raw hatred in her voice when she said his name. Didn't know what a stat cap was, or a blessing shard, or why the Covenant had put a bounty on her, what heresy she could have possibly committed to earn a death mark. All he knew was that she'd just saved his life, and she was dying right in front of him, her pulse thready and fast when he pressed two fingers to the side of her neck. "I'm Kael, by the way."
She snorted, wincing as another spasm of pain shot through her leg, her fingers twitching where they rested on the sand. "Elara. Don't get sentimental. I only saved you because the Covenant pays 5 copper for live waste wanderers, not dead ones. Was gonna drag you back to the inn and turn you in for beer money, and maybe a loaf of bread for my kid sister back in the slums." She smirked a little as she said it, the expression so out of place on her pain-wracked face that Kael knew she was lying, at least about the beer part, maybe about the bounty too.
Her fingers twitched, and she tried to summon that white glow again, her jaw tight with effort, the veins in her forearm standing out so hard they looked like they might burst. It flickered once, so faint he almost missed it, like the last glow of a dying candle, then died entirely, and she had to gasp for air, like she'd just sprinted a mile uphill. She cursed under her breath, her head falling back against the rock, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second. "Venom's messing with my magic. Useless. All of it."
"How far is the nearest town?" Kael asked, pressing harder on the wound, his fingers already sticky with her blood and the black venom, the heat of the infected skin seeping through the remains of his hoodie sleeve. He could feel his own ankle throbbing in time with his heartbeat, the joint swollen so bad he could barely move his foot, but he ignored it, doing quick, frantic math in his head. Three miles, even if he ran as fast as he could, would take him at least 20 minutes, and Elara had said the venom killed in 20 total. They didn't have 20 minutes. They barely had 10.
"Three miles west. The Rusty Tankard inn. Healer there's got a cap of 7, can purge the venom if we get there in time." She laughed again, hollow, the sound cracking halfway through, the purple discoloration now inching up past her hip, her left foot already completely limp where it rested on the sand. "But I can't walk. You can't carry me, not with that twisted ankle of yours, you'd collapse before you made it 100 feet. Even if you could, the venom will kill me in ten minutes. Less, if there's more hounds."
As if on cue, another howl rang out. Closer this time. Not one. Half a dozen, at least, maybe seven, the howls overlapping so much they sounded like a single, roar, vibrating through the rock under their hands.
Kael looked over his shoulder, his blood running cold, the hair on his arms standing straight up. Through the scrub brush, he could see the glow of more red eyes, bobbing through the brush like floating embers, a whole pack of them, moving fast towards the scent of blood, the bushes shaking so hard he could see loose branches falling to the sand. The dead hounds at their feet were a meal bell, and every hungry thing in the wastes was coming running, drawn by the smell of easy prey.
He tightened his grip on the rusted dagger, his knuckles white, the dull edge digging into the palm of his hand hard enough to draw blood. He'd already died once today, hit by a semi truck in the middle of a Brooklyn rainstorm, the last thing he'd seen the terrified face of the truck driver slamming on his brakes, and he'd woken up here for a reason, he was sure of it. He didn't know what that reason was, didn't know how he'd ended up in a world with magic hounds and stat caps and a 400-year-old priest hoarding power, but he wasn't going to die here, bleeding out in the sand, not after getting a second chance. And he wasn't going to let Elara die here either, not after she'd saved his life for a handful of copper and a loaf of bread for her sister.
Elara's eyes fluttered shut for a second, her breathing getting shallower, the purple discoloration now reaching her ribcage, her pulse so faint Kael could barely feel it under his fingers. "Just go," she mumbled, her voice slurring a little, like her tongue was too heavy for her mouth. "Leave me. You can make it to the inn if you run. Don't be an idiot. My sister… if you make it to the Rusty Tankard, tell Mia I'm sorry I couldn't bring the bread. Tell her to stay away from the Covenant guards, okay?"
Kael didn't move. He could hear the hounds getting closer, their snarls now loud enough to make the rock under them vibrate a little, the sound of their paws hitting the sand a steady, thunderous beat. He looked down at the bite on Elara's leg, at the faint, failed glow of her healing magic, at the way her face was going paler by the second, the dark circles under her eyes standing out sharp against her skin. Some strange, warm tingle was building in his chest, like a spark catching on dry tinder, something he'd never felt before in his life. It itched, like it wanted to get out, like it could fix this, like it was made for moments exactly like this, when all other options had run out.
He didn't know what it was. But he was going to find out.
The first shadow hound broke through the scrub line ten feet away, bigger than the others, its fur matted with old blood and sand, a scar slashing across its snout, one ear torn clean off, the alpha, he knew, the same way he'd known what shadow hounds were the second he saw them. Its jaws slavered, venom dripping onto the sand and hissing, its red eyes locked on Elara's neck, like it could tell she was the weaker prey. Kael stood, his ankle screaming so bad he almost blacked out for a second, and hefted the rusted dagger, the tingle in his chest burning hotter now, spreading down to his fingertips, making the dull blade feel sharp, almost alive in his hand, a faint, almost invisible blue glow seeping into the metal that vanished so fast he thought he'd imagined it.
He'd died once already. He wasn't planning on making it a habit.
The hound lunged.