“Here!” he shouted at the thing. “Come to me!”
The genoth whirled around at the sound of his voice, seeing another culinary treat with its glowing, multifaceted eyes. It paused for a moment, calculating the better of the two morsels to devour first. It was just what Reza had been praying for.
The sling circled faster and faster, the stone within gaining more and more energy. Reza’s heart pumped in time with the weapon’s rhythm as the enemy glared at him with its baleful eyes, perfect targets even in the darkest pitch of night. And suddenly, as if ordered by the Empress Herself, the wind was stilled for just one precious moment, and the tiny missile took flight, propelled with greater force than Reza had ever before mustered behind it.
As with the ancient tale of David and Goliath, the stone hit home. The round projectile blasted the genoth’s left eye into pulp, exploding it like an overripe fruit that cascaded down the beast’s face. But unlike David’s foe, the genoth was not to die under such an attack.
The beast reared up, a shattering shriek of pain echoing down the canyon, humbling even the thunder above. It clawed at its face, at its obliterated eye, roaring in agony and rage.
Esah-Zhurah rushed forward with her pike, her own blood burning with the Bloodsong that was sustenance to her people as surely as the meat they ate each day. She buried it in the genoth’s side, the weapon’s point piercing the flesh just behind the middle right leg where thinner scales covered the creature’s belly. Pausing only to ram it home with all her strength, she retreated, leaving it jammed into the dragon, with half of the pike’s shaft buried deep in its flesh.
“Run!” Reza shouted, “Get back!” She needed no prompting from him. She ran as fast as she could, but it was not fast enough. The genoth’s good eye caught sight of her, and the beast turned with astonishing speed to trail after its tormentor. Its slow, confident pace had all but vanished.
Its talons lashed out, and Esah-Zhurah was pitched into the air, flying head over heels. She hit the ground with a sickening thud, her metal breast armor screeching along the rocks that studded the canyon floor. Then she lay still.
“No!” Reza cried, running after the monster, now clutching his ax in his right hand. He realized with a sinking certainty that he could not reach her in time. The creature, grunting in its own pain and anger, was nearly on top of her, its jaws widening to crush her body into pulp.
Not realizing the strength that now lay within him, he was still trying to think and react as he always had, quickly, but not fast enough to avert the fate of his lover as the beast’s open jaws descended on her.
But he discovered that the Bloodsong was more than a mere voice. It was a portal to things that would have taken Reza many more years – years that he did not have – to understand. His eyes narrowing in concentration, he focused his mind on the ax and projected an image of it buried in the left side of the creature’s head. For a split second he felt his body and mind merge in a perfect union, as he were being guided by an unseen hand, and the ax flew with precision and power that he never would have thought possible.
The genoth’s scales channeled the razor sharp edge of the heavy weapon as it struck the monster where its head and sinewy neck came together. Blood erupted in a spray as the weapon sliced its way deep into the genoth’s flesh, the blade now buried up to the handle.
The creature stumbled forward, stunned, cracking its front teeth on the stone inches from Esah-Zhurah’s head.
Reza’s fierce battle cry was lost in the genoth’s trumpeting of pain. He dashed forward, drawing his sword as the beast whirled about, thrashing with its forelegs in a futile attempt to dislodge the ax whose cutting edge was creeping ever closer to the animal’s spinal cord. All thoughts of the prey on which it had been about to feast were forgotten as it fought against a new source of misery.
The genoth’s tail whipped to and fro, beating the sand and dirt from the canyon floor in its blind search for a target. Reza paid it no heed, heading straight for the beast’s exposed belly as it stood on its hindmost legs, the other four clawing uselessly at the air.
The Kreelan armorers would have been proud of the quality of their workmanship had they seen Reza’s sword cleanly cut the left middle claw from its parent leg as he ducked under the genoth’s belly. The beast mewled in pain and brought its head down to snap at him, but he whirled away, carried on the rising tide of power that flowed through him, slicing the genoth’s belly open in a wide arc. He danced clear of the creature’s remaining claws as its bowels spilled out onto the ground in a steaming deluge of viscera and blood.
The genoth whirled, its insides trailing after it like meaty chum from an ancient fishing vessel, and fixed Reza with its remaining eye. Its legs tensed to leap upon the tiny thing that had done it so much injury, and Reza knew that he could not escape. But he felt no fear, and readied his sword in a last act of defiance.
But it was not to be. In a starburst of flesh, the creature’s remaining eye exploded as Esah-Zhurah’s shrekka struck, sawing its way through the thinnest portion of the beast’s skull to embed itself in the genoth’s brain.
Relieved of its guidance mechanism, the body fell to the ground with a great thud, shuddering for a moment before its lungs exhaled a final, mortal sigh.
The genoth was dead.
Reza was not sure how much time passed between that moment and when he realized Esah-Zhurah was standing next to him, holding him by the shoulders and repeating his name.
“Reza,” she said again, “answer me.”
His eyes struggled to focus on her, and it dawned on him that he had been lost to the strange melody that flowed through him, something terribly alien, yet wondrous in its undiluted strength.
“Esah-Zhurah,” he rasped, finally lowering the sword. “Are… are you all right?”
Her armor was dented and scored from where she had been tossed by the genoth, and there was a thin trickle of blood down the right side of her face where one of its talons had nicked her. It had been that close.
“Yes,” she answered, steadying him now as he began to tremble violently. She took his sword before it dropped from his hand. “My tresh,” she said, her eyes full of wonder, “it is within you. Your blood sings.”
Numbly, Reza nodded his head. The thundering in his body had abated to a basso thrum. He fell down to his knees, his system reeling. “I have a soul,” he whispered, his eyes lost in hers. “I have a soul.”
Esah-Zhurah kissed him long and hard, then held him tightly as her own soul rejoiced at what they now knew, at the melody that had suddenly burst forth from her lover. Every soul ever born of Her blood that had not fallen from Her grace had its own voice, but Reza’s was different from all of the others in a way that she could not define, but that she accepted as Her blessing in their final hour.
But joy was not the only emotion to be found in the falling rain.
With Esah-Zhurah’s supporting arm around his waist, Reza made his way to the formless heap of flesh that was all that was left of his beloved friend.
“Goliath,” he breathed as he knelt next to the stricken animal. Taking off his gauntlets, he ran his hands over the fur of the old beast.
“I am sorry, Reza,” Esah-Zhurah said softly. “He was a noble creature. I grieve with you for his loss.”
Goliath had been much more than a simple beast of burden or a pet. He had been his friend. Reza had often spent long hours talking to him when he was lonely, in the days when even Esah-Zhurah treated him as an animal, in the days when he had no one. No one except Goliath, who had always been there, who would listen to his troubles without complaint, contentedly munching on the plants Reza gave him as a treat. The quiet tears Reza shed for his fallen friend mingled with the rain, watering the earth with his sorrow.