All day, all night and all day again the wyvern had screamed.
The kobels pretended not to hear it. They were marveling at their new skin. Smooth scales shimmered over their body. Short horns had sprung on their heads.
The tribe was in ecstasy.
So it didn't matter to them if a monster was suffering. To the contrary, it emboldened them. It pleased their senses. They felt even stronger from it.
All they had to do to reclaim their legacy was to eat the keep's meat, which was cooked tenderly. They could see the boars being taken there to be chopped, along with carriages holding large iron pieces from the blacksmiths.
The monstrous shrieks pierced all the way down the cliff.
The pond had stretched and deepened. The earlier jets had been joined by actual waterfalls. That roaring water dampened everything and still, because of his horns, Tunu could hear Uokror's torment all too well.
Etelet had told him it was for the good of the tribe. That the winged kobel would soon be free.
That he would not hurt him.
And so he trusted his friend, even though everything told him the opposite. At each scream he repeated to himself that the kobel was doing fine.
Tuorka had been captured.
For breaching into the tower and trying to free the wyvern, he had been captured.
And his own heart was indifferent to the screams. His own heart reveled in inflicting pain and only grew frustrated when being held back. That was, after all, the very nature of a monster, how a wyvern was meant to see the realm.
Tunu was holding his hand against his chest.
"You can hear me, can't you?"
It wasn't the first time he had isolated himself under the waterfalls. When he did, everyone knew to stay far away.
So he could talk to himself all he wanted.
"What do you want? What are you? Answer me!"
The answers he got were his own heartbeat. Indecipherable pulses that gave life to his limbs. It was maddening. To talk to himself and pretend something could hear him, to talk to his heart like an actual living being. To have to believe it.
To know it to be true.
It terrified him.
"Come out! Show yourself!" He foolishly demanded. "What do you want from me?! Why did you give me these wings!"
It had happened this morning.
He had headed for the savages' arena near the base of the hill. He had fought, as usual, taken down all those he wanted with ease.
So absorbed that he had nearly forgotten to kill one and feed.
As a result, those he had fought had become more and more worried, knowing that at least one was bound to fall today. It was their fear that reminded him of his duty. The kobel had pounced, torn one in pieces to a large crowd's cheers.
And once he got up, his maw still dripping, he had felt them.
A new bone had grown from his wrist, holding the thin membrane along his arm. He had sprouted short wings. Still too small to carry him but real nonetheless.
It hadn't been the only change. He knew his tail had grown as well, lengthier than any other kobel could imagine. It had to slither on the ground when he walked.
The screaming was unending.
"I fed you, I killed, what is it you want?!"
That was what the kobel could not even fathom. What he couldn't hear. What this foreign heart had been screaming at him from the moment they met.
Each pulse was flashing memories at him. But they were too short, shredded by time. All that had happened, all he had felt, all he had done, answering everything he was asking.
It was his heart.
His heart.
"Why would you help us? Why would you do anything for our tribe?"
That heart had a complete indifference for other kobels. It only beat for one.
He remembered when he had turned into a wyvern, how happy he was, how happy his heart was. And when they had killed the winged deer, how triumphant he had been, despite the exhaustion, how pleased Tunu had felt.
How furious his heart had beaten.
Because a wyvern could not regenerate, not so fast, not so easily. Because a wyvern could not stretch its tail so far so fast to hit anything.
A wyvern could not spread that tail in thousands of tendrils to hold its prey in place.
Nor could the wyvern keep it intact so as to give Tunu the pleasure of devouring it.
"You... are sad?"
He felt his heart's sadness. The low, heavy beat at those memories. The many times it could not give that kobel the thrill he sought.
Every time that heart had had to cheat to keep the dream going.
But no matter how much it was hammered against his chest the kobel could not realize it, that it was the only reason his heart beat. To keep his dream going.
Once, there had been a childish kobel that played on the road instead of carrying water. And his dream was so beautiful. So charming that it could just not end. If the realm had any justice, it would not let it end.
A wyvern had ended it with just one swing.
"Am I dead? Did you kill me? If I am dead, why am I still standing? What am I?!"
A childish kobel should have died that day, and its dream would have ended.
She could not let it happen.
And when the wyvern had died she saw he needed a heart. It was simple. It really was that simple. To see a childish kobel continue to play she was pulsing inside, moving his blood to keep the dream alive.
"Do you even... you don't need to feed. You never needed to feed. It was all a lie!"
A monster strong enough to kill a wyvern like nothing could not care less about a few preys. No, his heart never needed that flesh.
It was, instead, a fragile exercise of pushing his feeble body, his weak mind, as far as it could withstand to shape it into a wyvern.
Feeding was just what wyverns did.
But the heart protested, the heart was beating furiously. It had never lied! Not once, never. It had never been a lie because it could not be.
All of it, every part, was his own dream.
Those foreign feelings were his own, preserved, pristine, that beat was the one a childish kobel had had all along. And he could not lie to himself.
If anything he was the one lying, to pretend those feelings were foreign. Those had always been his. A blind desire to become more, to fulfill his kind's heritage.
"Nothing but lies." He seethed. "It was all you, toying with me. Stop feeling warm! Stop pretending... that you care for me!"
Tunu was truly talking to himself, to his past self that still wanted to believe, against all odds, that the realm would allow kobels to have a future.
He was breaking down. And the heart could not understand why.
A heart could not understand anything but a creature's true feelings.
"What do I even do now? What do I... with that thing in me. Did that happen to Uokror? Did that happen to Tusali?"
His claws left marks on his head.
"I've... never been good at thinking. But... I think I... I think I know what I have to do." And he tried to smile. "After all, if I think about it, you have done nothing but help me, all along."
He meant to say he would keep that heart.
But a heart could only understand one's deepest feelings. And his deepest feeling was one of profound distrust.
Above at the keep the screams had stopped.