Excerpt from chapter 16 of Tiger Eyes and Dragon Teeth, my first epic fantasy novel
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After she had transformed shakily into rabbit form, I wrapped the makeshift bandage tightly around her wounded shoulder and under the opposite forelimb. When the blood kept coming, I realised the wound might not stop bleeding without proper care and bedrest.
Putting the bloodied surcoat aside I shifted into speckled rock rabbit form with painstaking effort. We moved slowly into the tunnel. Hearing the dogs bark louder than ever, I doubled back. One of the Zeikas had discovered our escape and was shouting about letting the hounds off.
I heard a woman’s voice clearly with my keen rabbit hearing.
‘You can’t!’ she said. ‘They will kill him. This has been a mess right from the beginning.’
I recognised it as somebody I’d heard but not seen. My blood went cold as I realised it was the woman who’d been there the day the Zeikas captured me near Tez. Arak and Jonaal had spoken of a princess when Rekala had made the other carthorses flee in the rain. The Princess Denliyan. It was the same voice as the one asking to see me then; shrill, pitiless and commanding. The possibilities whirled in my mind—too many to process all at once.
‘We can’t let him get away,’ the Zeika replied testily.
There was the sound of someone stamping their foot. The shrill female voice said obstinately, ‘Keep your cape on. He will come for me.’
I ran back into the dark hole, passing Sarlice who was ambling along very slowly. At the end I continued to shred the dirt away with my huge front claws. I tried to stay focused on digging, but when there was no sign of Sarlice behind me, I had to stop. My little heart raced with exertion and worry.
What if she couldn’t go any further? What if she’d dropped back into human form and caused the other end of the tunnel to collapse? She would be dead. The Zeikas must have thought we were not capable of this. Are we?
There was a sound in my head like thunder—the pulsing of my own blood. I wondered if I had been in rabbit form too long. Then I wondered why I was wondering. One minute I forgot why I was in this situation, the next, I remembered. Through it all, my instinct for escape remained.
I dug faster, working myself to the point of hysteria. What if the Zeikas had decided to let the hounds down into the hole? Escape! Were Rekala and Kestric still alive? My mind was so clouded, I couldn’t access the waves to check. Even Tiaro was silent, bobbing somewhere on the waves far away.
Within moments I forgot who Rekala and Kestric were. Then I remembered again. I raked at the tunnel until my paws stung, wondering where Sarlice was. I forgot who Sarlice was. I wondered who I was. I remembered for an instant only.
I sniffed the air for some sign—beyond the earth and waste smells was the sour tang of rabid canine. It didn’t smell right. Another rabbit came slowly down the tunnel, hurrying as best it could, its eyes wide with terror. I watched it go, thumping my back foot in warning.
I remembered the demon dogs—a flash of fang, the scent of old blood. I forgot again, but knew I was in danger. My flock is in danger! When the other rabbit reached the end of the tunnel, I ran my nose over its neck in comfort and caught the smell of rabbit mingled with human blood. I remembered Sarlice. In rabbit form, the wound was obscured by her fur. The thumping in my head decreased.
‘I am Talon!’ I shouted, suddenly regaining access to the waves.
My mind lurched with fear and the realisation I was losing myself. I suppressed compelling urges to regain my original form.
‘Trees be with us,’ Tiaro called. Although she was physically in the waves at that moment, she was still with me, sensing everything I sensed, a version of my own mind. But I was losing my sense of self.
‘Help me, Tiaro,’ I said. ‘I can’t hold on much longer.’
Her words of encouragement took on an echoing quality in the waves and faded into the background noises of the deep earth. Part of me realised that Tiaro was the only thing keeping me alive.
Tiaro surrounded my mind with light. She reminded me of things about myself that I hadn’t thought of for years, tender moments with my mother when I was very young, sacrifices I’d made for my grief-stricken father after her death, quiet times alone in the mountains.
There were flashes of Jaria’s Rada-kin, running to greet me and beg for scraps of their favourite foods. Then there was my own precious Rada-kin. Rekala! Thinking of her gave me another anchor to myself, and her voice found purchase in my thoughts.
‘Hurry, dear one,’ she called, fighting her own battle to escape the hounds. ‘Dig!’
I sniffed around me. There was Sarlice-rabbit. The smell of blood was strong. I fussed over Sarlice’s injury, but she pushed me away weakly to encourage me to keep digging. She even scratched at the earth with her good forefoot. The smell of the demon dogs increased as I dug and scraped.
My body trembled with fatigue. The tunnel shuddered and I heard scuffling in the distance. The dog smell became overpowering, so I drove my teeth into the dirt to help my splintered claws. A root barred my way. I scoured around it and chewed at it frantically. Sarlice did what she could to help, but her strength was fading fast. Panic engulfed me.
The tunnel echoed with roars. A beast scrabbled at the dirt behind me, larger than the tunnel I had dug. I bit down through the root until my jaw felt like it was breaking. The dog nipped at my tail. I drove my hind legs into its eyes, but the dog gave no reaction. I broke through the root in front and pushed Sarlice-rabbit into the light ahead. The dog’s claws struck my back.
Sarlice fell before me as part of the wall we had just dug through collapsed into an enormous dimly-lit rabbit warren. The central area of the warren was ablaze with hundreds of eyes; my nose told me they were not speckled rock rabbits, but another kind.
Sarlice-rabbit was nowhere to be seen and tunnels stretched away in every direction. The demon dog wrenched a tuft of hair from my tail as I dived into the rabbit haven.
I could sense the hostility and fear of the other rabbits. The bravest of the crowd sniffed at me warily and hissed in admonishment—I was a foreigner to the burrow and therefore not welcome. My body was out of control, hair standing on end as I took on an offensive stance. Behind me the demon dog’s nose poked through the gap, causing the other rabbits to freeze in silent fright.
As the mongrel scented its prey, it rapidly began widening the hole with its forefeet. The rabbits broke into hysteria, rushing into numerous tunnels. I was forgotten by all but the hound.
‘Fight back!’ This thought came from Rekala. ‘You are not prey!’
With enough space now, my body shifted and stretched into the form of a fox. I snapped at the monster’s paws and sunk my teeth into its snout as it tried to squeeze through the collapsed part of the wall, but it seemed oblivious to pain. The mongrel had almost made enough room to squeeze its entire head through. Once its powerful shoulders were behind the loosened dirt it could easily push through.
I spun, scented something delectable and chose a tunnel. It came to an end almost straight away. Inside was a huddle of terrified young rabbits, at the mercy of my fangs.
I paused. My body screamed, ‘Hunt, kill!’. My mind hesitated. A steady beat had started up again, distracting me from my purpose, which a small voice told me was to, ‘Flee, escape!’. Animal hunger competed with blind fear. Something else was in the tunnels.
Unable to decide what to do I yapped and chased the young rabbits out into the main chamber. The demon dog drove through the wall, roared hungrily and lunged for the rabbits. It forgot about me temporarily in its lust for food. I slunk down through another tunnel using my powerful fox sense of smell to navigate towards open air.
The tunnels opened out quickly into a set of larger catacombs, pierced with light from the occasional rift above. I pressed my nose to the ground, picking up the smell of blood, the blood of a plump, juicy rabbit. The blood trail mingled with the tang of mongrel and human, leading me through tunnel after tunnel until I finally came to a large cave. I traced the human-blood smell down across the moist rocks of the cave floor. Hunger drove me. I am the predator.
Something smoky sweet like burning flesh filled my nostrils before I saw the demon dogs. They must have overtaken me while in the catacombs, intent on the blood smell like I was. They were closing on a fallen creature, the bearer of the blood trail.
‘My prey!’ I roared a challenge to the dogs. The creature they were haranguing looked up weakly.
‘Talon?’
I cocked my head. There was something about that sound.
The monsters turned simultaneously, red eyes boring into me. They licked their lips and showed their teeth. My instinct now screamed at me to, ‘Fight, win!’
My red-gold fur stood on end and I braced myself for attack. The pair circled me, grimacing triumphantly. Something unnatural flickered in their eyes.
‘Defend!’ came a small voice. ‘Talon!’ It was Tiaro shouting through the waves, struggling to reach my clouded mind. ‘Come out of it. You’ve let instinct take control! Wake up!’
I stood for a moment, mouth agape. The hounds loomed before me. A human threw a shower of rocks at them. A human woman?
‘Talon! Taeon!’ she shouted.
This name called to something deep within me. The fox form I had taken melted away, revealing my proper body crouched on the cave floor. I barely managed to haul my clothing and effects out of the waves in time. With the demon dogs snarling and barking right before my eyes, I breathed out and unleashed my energy.
The waves became visible to me, endless torrents of water spinning and swirling through empty space. Demons also surrounded me, red, black and green. Horns of all sizes and shapes dripped with blood and gore. One demon seemed to be a sprout of nothing but tentacles, its oily black skin riddled with iridescent green veins. Another was covered with rows of orange spikes. I gasped in revulsion and lifted hands to my head. The demons closed in on me as flashes of horror erupted in my mind.
‘Fight, Anzaii,’ Tiaro commanded. I withdrew my knife. ‘Not with that,’ she instructed. She wanted me to use my bare hands against those hideous things?
‘Through your hands, let the sapphire waters flow,’ she said.
‘So be it.’
In the natural world I lunged into the slavering mass and gripped a leg here, a tail there. Teeth closed on my weak, human flesh, biting…
‘Release these creatures,’ I commanded the demons.
One of the death hound’s claws raked my bare chest. The demons I could see in the waves were attached to the living creatures, but far more numerous. They swarmed me and I writhed my wave-limbs out of synch with my real body. It was strange to be in command of two separate versions of myself.
‘Focus on the waves,’ Tiaro suggested. ‘With me.’
In the waves Tiaro seemed to be more than just an earring. Her energy flowed out of me, coalescing into a blue glowing leopard. I was able to let go of the demon dogs in the waves while simulantaneously holding their legs in the physical world.
Once I had split my focus I ran with Tiaro and attacked the demons. She bit and scratched them while I punched and kicked. Tentacle-blob recoiled when it was struck. Tiaro’s teeth sunk into one limb, severing it. Shrieks of rage and terror roared in my ‘ears’.
A black slavering maw filled my vision. I sent an upper cut into the monster’s chin. Gore spattered my face in the waves. My wave body was very much like my real body, but ethereal and blue, like Tiaro’s leopard form.
I struggled with creature after creature. Body parts I couldn’t recognise came at me, along with teeth and horns and stingers. The injuries I sustained in the waves were painful, but I didn’t think it was causing me physical harm.
‘You’re all right,’ Tiaro affirmed. ‘Master your fear.’
Grabbing hold of all the demons I could reach, I roared, ‘Get out!’ I blasted them with psionic energy, hearing a deep pulse of noise. Stars streaked in my vision and there were sounds like trees crashing down. The blue light around me dissipated.
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