I held it out for Morganna to see as she rounded the boulder. “He shifted so quickly, he tore his clothes in the process.”
“Is that usual?” asked Morganna raising her eyebrows.
“No. He always takes his clothes off before he shifts. He’s meticulous about it. I’ve never seen him leave his clothes in this state before.”
Panic filled me as I wondered why he had felt the need to go so against character. Peering around, I realized there must be some kind of threat or he wouldn’t have done it. I saw nothing but the valley and the tops of the trees that marked the border of the Triad Mountains so far below us. I looked around and up, but there was only the gray shale that covered the desolate landscape right up to the snowline of the mountain’s peak.
“Something happened. He wouldn’t just leave us,” I panted, running back up to the entrance of the Goblin city.
“Stop!” yelled Morganna, following me. “I agree, it does seem odd that he would just vanish, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the Goblins.”
I hesitated. “What makes you think that?” Who else could it have been?
“Goblins do not fight. Not the way Slayers do. They use cunning over brawn. It’s unlikely that they would have come out here to get involved in a fist fight. Even if they had weapons, they would have been no match for a dragon and they know that. They would have had to use magic.”
“They probably did use magic,” I argued.
“No. Magic leaves traces. Just like inside earlier when I could sense that magic was being used, I can tell you with absolute certainty that no magic has been used out here recently.”
I wavered, halfway between going through the doorway and outside. “Are you sure?” I trusted her, but I couldn’t see where else he could be.”
“I’m positive.”
My mind whirred, trying to come up with a possible scenario in which he would have disappeared. “What if he just decided to walk down the tunnel to find us?”
“What? As a dragon? That tunnel was built for Goblins. There is no way that a full-grown dragon would be able to squeeze through it. No. Something else happened, but I don’t know what. Perhaps we should head back and see if he went home.”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t have gone home. Not without me.” He’d flown up all this way to protect me. What would be the point of leaving the second I went inside? But what other option did I have?
Morganna began the slow descent down the mountain back to Frokontas. I hesitated, taking one last look around, and followed her. Something was wrong, but I could hardly stay up the mountain on my own.
“The flare!” I said, remembering I had it in my backpack. “We can set it off.”
“What good would that do?”
“Maybe Ash will see it and come to us. Maybe the people down in Frokontas will see it and fly up here.”
“I thought you didn’t want the dragons flying? Surely it’s safer that they stay in their human forms as long as possible?”
I sighed. If Ash was in his dragon form, then he was more likely to develop the illness. Why, oh why, did he shift?
“What’s that?” asked Morganna, peering down the hill.
Far below us, something was moving. I pulled out a pair of binoculars I’d packed and focused on whatever it was. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t believe it. I passed the binoculars over to Morganna. When she saw who was coming up the hill, she gasped.
“What the...? What are they doing here?”
Alpha and the rest of the Wolvren were charging up the hill. Even though they were so far below us, they were clearly rushing.
“Something’s happened in Frokontas,” theorized Morganna. “Maybe that’s why Ash left so suddenly?”
I took the binoculars back and trained them toward Frokontas, but I couldn’t see it from here. Ash wouldn’t have been able to either, not even with his amazing sight. The only way to find out the problem was to run down the hill to meet the Wolvren.
I thought it would be easier to go downhill than up, but with the small rocks, we had to take it slowly for fear of slipping. The Wolvren got bigger as we ran toward each other. When we were close enough to see their features, I wasn’t comforted by the look of alarm on their faces.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I huffed, trying to get my breath back as they approached.
“Didn’t you see it?” responded Alpha. “There was smoke on the mountaintop. We thought the Goblins had set fire to their home with you in it.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Morganna.
Alpha, in a rare show of affection, hugged her close. “I don’t know. I just saw the smoke and I panicked. I asked the dragons to carry us up the cliff face so we could come and check on you. They refused to carry us all the way in case they fell ill, so we ran from the cliff top.”
I looked behind me and up to the entrance of the goblin village. “There’s no smoke,” I said, pointing upward.
“You can’t see it from here, but around the side, you could see it from Frokontas. Not that it matters. Now that we know you are both safe, we can take you home.”
“No. Ash is up there.” Just because I couldn’t see any smoke didn’t mean there wasn’t any. If Ash was in trouble, I needed to get to him. I turned around and began to run back up the mountain, not even hesitating to see if the others were following me.
I heard it before I saw it. About a hundred feet above the entrance to the Goblin village, there came the sound of growling. There was an unmistakable smell of burning in the air, and as I rounded the mountain, I finally saw the smoke that the Wolvren had described.
This side of the mountain was much steeper than the side I was used to. I had to be much more careful as I hedged my way around the side of the peak. Snow crunched under my feet, snow that never melted no matter the time of year thanks to the cold temperatures this high on the mountain.
“Ash!” I called out his name, hoping the growling would stop, but it wasn’t just him making the noise. There were two distinctive growls and it sounded as though they were snapping at each other. “Ash!” I screamed again, sending a small avalanche of snow down the mountain just ahead of me. Once the snow had settled, I carefully walked further around the mountain until I saw him.
To my surprise, the other set of growls was not a mountain lion or bear as I’d thought, but another dragon. A yellow-scaled dragon, slightly smaller than Ash, but with dagger-like teeth and bright green eyes. They were on a ledge high above and hadn’t noticed me yet.
I was just about to call out for the third time when the earth began to shudder. The Wolvren and Morganna had followed, thundering around the mountain, and had set the snow off again. My feet slipped out from under me, sending me sliding down the mountainside alongside the snow.
Everything in my vision turned white as I began to topple, over and over in the snow. The snow covered me as I tumbled, my hands scrambling and finding nothing but cold wetness, and I fell to my certain death. Either I was going to go over a precipice and die of the fall, or I would be buried in the snow. I wanted to scream, but the snow muffled any sound I made.
A sharp pain seared my side and I found myself falling upward. In my disorientation, I didn’t even question my change of direction, just put it down to dizziness, but as my vision cleared and the snow fell away beneath me, I saw that I wasn’t falling at all, but being lifted.
The pain I’d felt was, in fact, Ash’s talons in my side as he pulled me from the snow. Fire escaped his lips, directed toward the yellow dragon, which had decided to give chase. The yellow dragon breathed fire right back at Ash, narrowly missing me hanging below him. Ash didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t have felt it thanks to his thick dragon hide, but he turned and headed back toward the mountain, dipping in low and dropping me in a pile of snow near Morganna and the Wolvren.
“Are you ok?” Morganna asked, rushing towards me. Her and Alpha pulled me out of the snow and stood me back upright on the path.
“
I’m fine, I think. Just a couple of bruises.” I brushed myself off as I watched Ash continue his flight with the yellow dragon hot on his tail. They both headed back around the mountain to the entrance of the Goblin village.
“Who was that chasing Ash?” Alpha asked.
“That is the big question,” I replied. “I honestly have no idea.”
I took the path back to the safer side of the mountain extremely slowly, cautioning the others to do the same. I whispered to them to keep their voices down as we didn’t want to start another avalanche. If we made it to below the snow line, we’d be much safer.
I could hear the snarling again. It seemed the yellow dragon had caught up with Ash. I’d seen plenty of yellow dragons in Frokontas, but I’d never seen one so bright as this one. I tried to picture who it was but came up with nothing. It had to be one of the newly-escaped dragons from my father’s sword, but why would he have come up the mountain and what reason did he have for attacking Ash?
I finally made it back to the relative safety of the side of the mountain I was used to and saw Ash again. His giant claw was on the back of the yellow dragon, holding it flat on the ground. It seemed that Ash had won this particular fight, although he wasn’t unscathed. Both dragons were covered in scratches and bite marks from the fight.
Chapter Sixteen
The yellow dragon tried breathing fire at Ash by twisting its neck and aiming for him, but this time, only a puff of smoke emerged. It was apparent that this dragon was weak. As I got closer, I could see the tiredness in its eyes. Chasing Ash through the sky had zapped it of its strength. Still, I didn’t want to go too close just in case he found a new burst of energy to barbecue me. I stayed a good distance away, watching to see what would happen next. At first, I thought it was shrinking, but quickly realized it was shifting. As the body turned from a dragon form to that of a human, Ash took a step back. Once it wasn’t a dragon anymore, the rest of us could watch it, allowing Ash to shift back, too.
“I need some clothes,” I said, turning to the Wolvren pack. “Extra coats, tunics, anything you have on.”
It was cold up on the mountain and most of the Wolvren had a lot of layers on. Alpha took off his own coat and handed it to me, followed by a few of the others, removing just one item of clothing each. Between them, we managed to get two full outfits together, one for Ash and one for the yellow dragon. I dropped the clothes for Ash by his feet. He chose to go back behind the boulder we’d left him at originally. The other dragon changed where he was, too weak to do otherwise or unconcerned about being seen in the nude.
As soon as he turned back, it became apparent he wasn’t a he at all, but a young woman. Her yellow scales translated into a mane of long, luscious blonde hair, and her sparkling green eyes followed her from one form to the other. I threw the Wolvren clothes at her and waited until she dressed before attempting to speak to her.
She dressed slowly, keeping an eye on all of us. Now that she was in her human form, she looked nothing like the terrifying beast she had been as a dragon. She looked like a young woman, younger than me even, and the fear in her eyes was unmistakable. This was no monster. She was a young girl who was afraid. As I moved toward her, she stepped back.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, pulling a first aid kit from my bag and holding it out to show her. “I just want to help you.”
She turned and ran, but unfortunately for her, she ran right into Ash, who had just appeared from behind the boulder. She tried to escape, but it was no use; she was too weak. He carried her over and set her down on the ground. I opened the first aid kit and began to work on her cuts and scrapes.
“You’ll feel better once I’ve bandaged you up,” I assured her, taking in her wide eyes and look of terror. She didn’t say a word as I cleaned her up and bandaged the worst of her scratches.
I’d almost finished when she finally spoke. “Where am I?” she asked in a small voice.
“This is the Triad Mountains,” I answered. “Don’t you know? How did you get here?”
She gazed around her as if trying to remember something. “I was here,” she began. “It was a long time ago, I think. I don’t remember exactly when. I was hunting for food when...when someone attacked me with a sword. He was a huge man with a shaggy beard. Then, a few days ago, I came back. I feel like I’ve been gone a long time, but I don’t remember anything since then.”
No prizes for guessing who the man with the shaggy beard was. My father. That’s why she’d appeared up here and didn’t know why. My father must have attacked her at some time in the past and taken her soul. When I let the dragons go, her soul would have come back to her body. I just couldn’t understand why her body hadn’t been taken down to the Slayer village like all the others. I also didn’t understand how he’d managed to climb all the way up here. It was incredibly difficult to get so high up the mountain without the help of a dragon.
“Did my father...Did this man attack you up here?”
She shook her head. “He attacked me farther down the mountain, but after he stabbed me, I managed to escape. I flew up here and then everything went black. I felt a whooshing sensation as though I was being pulled from my body.”
“That would have been your soul,” I replied, moving from her to Ash, who had also suffered from scratches and bites in the fight.
“What?” she asked, confused.
“My father’s sword didn’t kill; it trapped dragon souls. He tried to get you, but he didn’t push the sword in far enough. It meant that it was only later when your soul escaped and, as you say, ‘whooshed’ down the mountain to his sword. I let all the dragons free from his sword a week ago. That’s when you came back up the mountain to your body.”
She gazed at me uncomprehending as I turned to Ash, to bandage up his scratches.
“Why did you attack me?” he asked her.
“Is that what happened?” asked Morganna. “She attacked you?”
“Yeah. I was just sitting here waiting for you to come back when she flew out of the sky and attacked.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, bursting into tears. “I was scared. I didn’t know what had happened to me and then I saw you and thought you might hurt me.”
“Well, you did a good job of hurting me!” He held out his arm so I could clean the dried blood from it.
“Do you know each other?” I asked.
“No,” they chorused.
“She’s not from Frokontas.”
“I’m not from around here at all,” she admitted. “I ran away from home. I can’t even remember how far I traveled looking for food before flying up this mountain. I thought I might find a mountain goat to eat, but instead, I found the man that hurt me. He was your father, you say?”
“It’s a long story, one for another day,” I said, finishing up with Ash. “Do you know how to get home?”
She shook her head sadly. “My brain feels fuzzy, like I’ve been asleep for a very long time. I can’t even remember which direction my home is. I wish I’d never left.”
I turned to Ash. “Do you know of any other dragon colonies near here?”
“No,” he answered, standing up and checking the bandages I’d put on him.
“I’ve heard of other colonies in this mountain range,” remembered Morganna. “I wanted to go and find them in my youth. I wanted to be the one who slayed all the dragons.”
The girl flinched at this admission.
“Don’t worry, I don’t do that anymore,” she assured the girl. “But I do know of other colonies to the south. It’s possible she came from there.”
“Do you remember your name?” I asked her. I couldn’t keep thinking of her as ‘the girl.’
“Avery.”
“Well, Avery, we can’t leave you here. You can come down the mountain with us. You’ll be looked after in Frokontas. It’s a dragon village.”
Ash pulled my arm and took me to one side. “Do you think that’s wise? She might get sick like the others.”
/> I looked back at her. Her face was pale, her lips chapped and she looked so tired with black circles under her eyes. “She was trapped in my father’s sword like the others. There’s a good chance she’s already sick.”
He nodded. “I guess you’re right. If she is sick already, we’ll need to keep her in her human form so she doesn’t get worse.”
The journey down the mountain was arduous. The muscles at the back of my legs burned with the exertion. Ash offered to fly me down the mountain, but I refused, knowing it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else, not least to Avery who looked as worn out as I felt. The original plan had been to walk down to the cliff top and set off the flare so that someone could come and fly us down the cliff into the village. However, because of our slow going, it was already dark by the time we reached the cliff edge.
The lights of Frokontas twinkled down below, but the huge fire in the fire pit was extinguished for the day. Nevertheless, I pulled out the flare and set it off. It lit up the whole sky, then fizzled out. I found a rock to sit on and waited. After five minutes it became apparent that no one was going to come for us.
“Ash, you’re going to have to fly down there and let them know we need help.”
He nodded, pulling his clothes off quickly, disappearing behind a bush. “You can come down with me and find Spear,” he commanded. “I’ll fly back up and bring some more down. Between the two of us, we can get everyone down to the ground in only a few journeys.”
“I can fly some people down,” said Avery, gazing down into the valley.
“No!” we all shouted making her jump.
“Stay in your human form,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that the dragons who were trapped in my father’s sword were getting sick. She was afraid enough as it was.
“You look tired,” I improvised. “And you don’t know exactly where to drop us.”
She nodded, accepting my reasons.
Ash’s voice came from behind the bush. “Julianna, can you come back here, please?”
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