‘Oh?’ The elder looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Was it not you who was just wishing that his humans would come visit him?’
‘Those thoughts were private,’ Gariath snarled, glowering.
‘Then you shouldn’t have thought them while I was standing right here.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ The younger dragonman turned his stare back up to the sky. ‘They’re dead.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Possibly?’
‘You didn’t die.’
‘I am Rhega. I am strong. They are weak and stupid.’
‘Bold words coming from a lizard hoping to starve to death so a snake will eat him.’
‘Can you think of a better way to die, given the circumstances?’
‘I can think of a better way to live.’
‘Live?’ Gariath’s snout split in an unpleasant grin. ‘I’ve tried living, Grandfather. I’ve tried living without my family, living without other Rhega and living without even humans.’ He sighed, chest trembling with the breath. ‘Living was fine for a time, but it was too full of death for my tastes. Maybe dying will be better.’
‘There is nothing worth living for, Wisest?’
‘There was. Now, I have nothing.’
‘You have me.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Gariath grunted. ‘One thing I never seem to lack is dead Rhega.’ He waved a clawed hand at the elder. ‘I do not need you, Grandfather.’
‘What do you need, then?’
‘It’s not obvious?’
‘Not to you.’
‘I need to die, Grandfather,’ Gariath sighed. ‘I need to rid myself of all’ – he waved a hand out to the sky and sea – ‘this. I don’t need it anymore.’
‘You’ve had plenty of opportunities to die.’
‘I haven’t found the right one yet.’
‘They all basically end the same way, don’t they?’
‘Not for a Rhega.’
‘Ah, I see.’ The elder scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘So, the right way is to lie down here and wait to die while contemplating the existence of weak, human gods?’
‘It’s a way.’
‘Not the way of the Rhega.’
‘There are no more Rhega,’ Gariath growled in response. ‘I am the last one. I get to decide what the right way to die is.’
‘And what is the right way to die, Wisest?’
Gariath had an answer for that.
It was an answer that he had often dreamed of, birthed at the fore of his mind when he held two barking pups that seemed so tiny in his arms. That answer had grown along with those pups, nurtured by their experiences. When they had learned to catch jumping fish, to chase down running horses, to spread their wings and glide on the winds, that answer had grown to something that swelled with his own heart.
He would have very much liked to have that heart stop beating when they held pups of their own and watched red silhouettes gliding across the sky. He would have very much liked for them to have their own answers for the question.
Instead, two hearts had stopped beating instead of one. And with them, so did his answer die.
The elder stared at him with intent concentration, seeing it unfurl inside him. He shuddered as he and the younger dragonman shared the final thought.
An angry, agonised wail, offered to a weeping sky as Gariath clutched two lifeless forms in his arms. The same wail offered to so many wide-eyed, terrified faces as Gariath threw himself at them time and again, hoping for and being denied a righteous death.
‘That would be a good way to die,’ the elder said, nodding. ‘I would have liked to have left my family in such a way.’
‘How did you die, Grandfather?’
‘I didn’t,’ the elder replied with an enigmatic smile.
‘You are most certainly dead, Grandfather.’
‘In body, perhaps.’
‘Oh, this.’
‘What?’ The elder furrowed his ridges.
‘I’ve heard this before. Some vague philosophy about the separation of body and spirit, and it always ends the same way.’ Gariath made a dismissive wave. ‘Some attempt to be inspirational by suggesting the two can be resurrected alongside each other, maybe a little aside about raising spirits and being true to oneself. Then we all hug and cry and I vomit.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Humans do it all the time.’
‘Humans have had their points, Wisest. The difference between body and spirit is one they adopted, but it is not one they thought of on their own.’
‘It’s all greasy, imbecilic vomit, no matter who spews it.’
‘Is it? You’ve seen me. You’ve seen Grahta. Can you still deny the difference, knowing what death means to the Rhega?’
‘I wonder if I do,’ Gariath muttered. ‘You know what Grahta told me.’ He stared up at the sky, frowning at its endless orange and white oblivion. ‘I can’t follow.’
‘I know,’ the elder said, nodding solemnly.
‘Do you, Grandfather?’ Gariath turned his hard stare upon the specter. ‘You know death, but you know peace. You will know your ancestors, eventually, as Grahta did. You will know rest. Me …’ He sat up suddenly, brimming with anger. ‘I can’t follow you. Grahta said as much. I can’t see my family, my ancestors …’
They shared a shuddering cringe as they both felt his heart turn to stone inside him and pull his chest low to the ground.
‘I can’t see my sons, Grandfather … I can never see them again. I can’t follow.’
‘It is the way it must be, Wisest.’
‘Why?’
He leapt to his feet, the sand erupting beneath him. The earth trembled as he stomped his feet, curled his hands into fists so tight that blood wept from his claws. He bared his teeth, narrowed his eyes and fanned his frills out beside his head.
‘Every time this happens,’ he snarled. ‘Every time someone dies, every time I don’t, that’s “the way it must be”. Everyone sighs and rolls their shoulders and goes back to living. I’ve done that and I’m done living. If this is how life must be, then I choose death!’
‘It is that way for a reason, Wisest. You have duties to your ancestors.’
‘More excuses! More stupidity! Duty and honour and responsibility!’ He howled and stomped his feet. ‘All just excuses for not getting things done, for trying to excuse away life and all its pain! I have served my duty, Grandfather! I have tried to live the way the Rhega are supposed to. I have tried to be a Rhega when there are no more. I have tried and … and …’
His fist came down with a howl, splintering a hole in the driftwood beside the elder. He jerked it out with a shriek, wooden shards lodged in his fist that wept blood as his eyes wept tears. He collapsed to his knees, pressed his brow against the wood and drew in a staggering, wet breath.
‘It’s too hard, Grandfather. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. I can’t follow.’ He punched the wood again. ‘I can’t kill myself.’ Another bloody-handed blow. ‘I just … can’t.’
It wasn’t often that Gariath flinched at a touch. All the steel and iron that had cursed his flesh in crimson words, all the scars and bruises they had left behind had never made him so much as tremble. But they had struck shoulders that were broad and proud, arms that were thick and fierce.
The hand that rested upon him now was upon shoulders that were broken and bowed, arms that hung limp and bloody at his side.
‘Wisest,’ the elder whispered. ‘We are Rhega. The rivers flow in both our blood and we feel the same agonies, as we have felt since we were born of the red rock. I don’t ask you to do this for you or for me …’ He tightened his grip on Gariath’s shoulder. ‘I tell you to do it for us. For the Rhega.’
‘What,’ Gariath asked, weak, ‘am I supposed to do?’
‘Live.’
‘It can’t be that easy.’
‘You know it isn’t.’ The elder rose up, walking toward the shore. ‘You’ve spent so much time bleeding, Wisest, so much time killing. You’ve forgotten what living is like.’
‘It’s hard.’
‘I will help you where I can, Wisest,’ the elder replied with a smile. ‘But there are better guides to life than the dead.’
‘Such as?’
After a moment of careful contemplation, the elder scratched his chin. ‘What of Lenk?’
‘Dead.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘Consider where you would be without him,’ the elder replied. ‘Still where you buried your sons? Or buried yourself, if whoever killed you had enough respect not to skin you alive and wear your face as a hat? How was it you managed to get away from there?’
‘By following Lenk.’
‘And how was it you managed to find Grahta? To end up here so that I might find you?’
‘Are you saying I need Lenk?’ Gariath growled, slightly repulsed by the idea. ‘He is decent enough to deserve a good death, but he’s still stupid and weak … still human. If he is even alive, how do I get him to lead me to where I need to go next? How can I even—?’
‘Many questions,’ the elder said with a sigh, ‘demand many answers. For now, limit yourself to simplicity. You are caught between lives. Choose one, then make another choice.’
‘What kind of choices?’
‘In time, many.’ The elder turned and walked toward Gariath, counting out each pace beneath him. ‘The choice to seek out my elder stone is one, but that is far away in time and distance. The hardest choice’ – he paused and drew a line in the earth with his toe – ‘is to recognise that you will never be as alone as you hope to be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That’s the point of cryptic musing, pup,’ the elder muttered. ‘But we don’t have time to discuss it. The much more immediate choice must happen within your next fifty breaths.’
‘What?’ Gariath creased his ridges together. ‘What choice?’
‘Whether to move or not. Forty-five breaths.’
‘What, like … move on? More philosophical gibberish?’
‘More immediate. Forty-two breaths.’
‘Why forty-two?’
‘The tide comes in at twenty, it’s taking me another fifteen to tell you all of this, and the Akaneed, which has been known to hurl itself upon a beach to get at its prey at distances up to twenty-six paces, has been waiting for the aforementioned tide for about five breaths, leaving you …’ The elder glanced over his shoulder. ‘Two breaths.’
It only took one for the water to rise up in a great blue wall, the Akaneed’s eye scorching a golden hole through it. Its jaws were parted as it erupted onto the shore, bursting through the liquid barrier with a roar that sent great gouts of salty mist peeling from between rows of needle-like teeth.
It took Gariath another to leap backwards as those great teeth snapped shut in a wall of glistening white. A low keen burbled out of the Akaneed’s gullet, cursing the dragonman as it might curse any man who broke a fair deal. Snarling, it writhed upon the sand, trying to shift its massive pillar of a body back into the surf.
‘Huh.’ The elder observed the younger dragonman’s wide-eyed shock with a raised eye ridge. ‘You jumped away. Nerves, perhaps. If you still want to die, I’m sure he won’t think it a hassle to come back for a second time.’
Gariath regarded the spectre through narrowed eyes. Impassive, the elder stared at him without flinching. He folded his wings behind his back, raised his one-horned head up to meet Gariath’s eyes with his own gaze that shone hard as rocks.
‘Make your choice, Wisest.’
And, with the sound of a snort and claws sinking into wood, Gariath did.
His muscles trembled, then burst to life in his arms, great beasts awakening from hibernation. The driftwood log was long and proud, clinging to the earth. But it tore free, resigning itself to its fate.
His roar matched the Akaneed’s, matched the sound of air rent apart as the wood howled. Both were rendered silent by a massive jaw cracking, teeth flying out to lie upon the earth like unsown seeds, and a keening shriek that followed the Akaneed back into the ocean. Blood leaking from its maw, it disappeared beneath the waves, sparing only a moment to level a cyclopean scowl upon the dragonman before vanishing into the endless blue.
The breath that came out of Gariath, rising in his massive chest, was not one he had felt in days. His hands trembled about the shattered piece of wood he still held, as though they had never known the life that coursed through them. When he did finally drop it, that life sent his arms tensing, his tail twitching …
His body thirsting for more.
This is what it means? He stared down at his hands. To be a Rhega? More death? More violence? This is what it is to be alive?
‘Not the answer you’re looking for, Wisest,’ the elder chimed, his voice distant and fading. ‘But good enough for now.’
When Gariath turned about, nothing but sand and wind greeted him. No footprints remained in the disturbed earth, nothing to even suggest that the elder had ever been there. And yet, with each breath that Gariath took, the scent of rivers and rocks continued to permeate his senses.
Perhaps he should be concerned that he felt alive again only when he was grievously wounding something. Perhaps he should take it as a sign that his road in life was destined to run alongside a river of blood. Or perhaps he should just take pride in having knocked the teeth out of a giant snake that had now failed to kill him twice.
Philosophy is for idiots, anyway.
His concerns left him immediately as he plucked the serpent’s shattered fangs up from the earth and felt their warm sharpness scrape against his palm. He would keep these, he decided, as a reminder of what it meant, for the moment, to be a Rhega.