Memory of Dragons

by Michael G. Munz

  Pain rent Austin in two. He rolled off Maeron, overcome and clutching his side against a hot rush that covered his hand. His head fell. His temple pressed to the cool cavern floor as above him, Boden fought against Corinna’s silver light.

  The dragon’s spirit writhed in impotent fury against the magic drawing him toward the glowing crystal in Corinna’s hand. Having fallen to her knees, she trembled, focused, as if struggling to carry the magic through its end with the last of her strength. Maeron got to his feet beside Austin, glaring at Corinna, still clutching the hunting knife covered in Austin’s blood.

  Now straining to hold in both his blood and his own loosened psyche, Austin tried to pull himself up to protect Corinna. His body refused to obey. He couldn’t draw breath for a warning. Maeron stepped closer to her, knife raised.

  Austin forced himself to his knees. He needed to leap at Maeron, to tackle him, to distract him, anything! A groan fell from his lips.

  Too weak . . .

  Austin saw Corinna’s eyes dart to Maeron; trapped in her own concentration, he knew she could only watch. Certain it would not be enough, Austin summoned all his strength and hurled himself at Maeron.

  Still loosened from the binding magic, Austin flew from his own body, a spirit only, thrown against Maeron, into Maeron. Riding a wave of shock and momentum, Austin’s psyche collided with the sorcerer’s will like a net about his arms and legs. Austin seized control as best he could, burning with the wild intensity of a single, combined purpose: Save Corinna. Save Rhyll. For everything Rhi would have wanted.

  Maeron hollered against him, realizing too late what was happening. Together they flailed like a madman toward the rift, teetered at its horizon, and, with one final triumphant scream, hurtled through it completely.

  THIRTY

  The twin cacophony of Boden’s fury and the binding’s culmination bombarded Corinna’s senses. Less working the magic than giving herself over to it, she became a conduit for the Draig Crystal and the original binding remnants that she was struggling to forge anew. She poured all her strength into the closing moments. It barely registered when Maeron toppled through the rift. With a final thrust of the crystal into the last free bit of the dragon’s spirit, she drew Boden in completely, locked the crystal’s restored wards around him, and collapsed.

  The cool cavern floor pressed against her forehead. Her entire body tingled as if returning from numbness. A shiver ran through her, soon chased by the heat of her body’s struggle to fill the void left by the departing magic. For a time, she could only find the presence to focus on her heartbeat: Weak. Steady. Recuperating. Each beat restored a brick in the foundation of her awareness until, at last, her intellect returned.

  Crikey, it was done!

  Corinna raised her head as soon as she could find the strength, suddenly fearing she had imagined Maeron’s fall. But the rift still shimmered in the middle of the air. Maeron was gone. She hadn’t imagined it.

  Elation trickled out of her tired body in tiny giggles. The dragon recaptured! Maeron stopped! Holy God, they had done it! She lay on the ground, grinning at the ceiling and breathing deeply. The magic had wrung her out like a wet towel. When it felt like she could handle moving without passing out, she left the crystal glowing on the cavern floor and went to tell Austin. Her head continued to spin. A crawl was all she could manage.

  She knew something was wrong before she got halfway to him.

  “Austin!” she tried. He lay on his stomach. One bloodied hand clutched his side above a dark stain pooling on the cavern floor around him. She rushed forward, almost passing out herself before reaching him.

  “This isn’t as bad as it looks, Austin, it’s not . . . Come on, we won! Don’t go running off on me again, you stupid Yank!”

  The magic had turned her muscles to mush. Straining, she rolled him to his back as carefully as she could manage and covered his hand over the wound with hers. Austin’s eyes were closed. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. His face had gone pale.

  He groaned and coughed awake.

  “Got out in time,” he muttered. “My first out-of-body experience . . .”

  Austin struggled to open his eyes, finally succeeding. Though he looked like death, she forced a smile as he looked up at her.

  “We won, Austin. We did it.”

  Austin managed a nod. “Good.” He coughed up blood and fought for a breath. His wound seeped past his fingers, onto hers. She increased the pressure there to try to stop it. He gasped in pain.

  “I’m going to get something to halt the bleeding. You’re going to be fine, Austin!”

  Maeron’s duffel lay beside the rift, not ten paces away. She only needed something to dress the wound, and — ? God, she didn’t know what else! How could Rhianon know so much and not know how to fix something like this?

  Against Austin’s protest, Corinna started for the duffel. “Keep pressure on it!” she ordered. Pressure was important; she had heard that somewhere. She found a spare shirt, neatly folded, and rushed back to push it against his wound. “You’re going to hold this here and I’m going to go for help — ”

  “I can’t get . . . back in. Slipping.”

  “No, you’re not! You’re lucid, you’re talking! Just hang on while I — !”

  “Please, don’t leave me.” He convulsed and then groaned through a gurgle of blood. “Please. The pain’s — not too bad. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not bloody okay!” She grit her teeth, forcing back tears, making herself stay.

  “I did what Rhi came to do. Didn’t screw it up.” Austin’s eyes pleaded with hers. He grimaced against a new wave of pain. “Not again.”

  “Shut it. You didn’t screw up before.”

  “Liar. But . . . I made it right.”

  Corinna slid her free hand under his head to cradle it and gave him a smile. “Aye.”

  Though she stayed, she racked her brain for something to do. She couldn’t heal him, she couldn’t leave him, and even if she could call for help, it would be too long in coming. She cursed Maeron for all he had done, for forcing Austin to get involved at all . . .

  “You’re so much . . . like Rhi,” Austin whispered. “And different.”

  “I’m Corinna.” She stroked his hair. “Made better.” Her mind still raced. Austin said he couldn’t get back in, he mentioned an out-of-body experience. She had needed to start Boden’s binding before fully separating them. Had it affected Austin? Was he dying? Was this something else? Blood soaked the shirt she held.

  “Frustrated.” Austin’s breath came in unsteady gulps. “You said — frustrated . . .”

  It took her a moment to realize he referred to what she had said at the hotel.

  “I meant it when I said it was amazing, too. And now, Maeron’s not trying to kill me anymore. We won, as much as I hate the cost.” She smiled through the grief. “I’m proud to have her.”

  “Not — saying that to make me feel better?” Austin’s own smile shook, as if he were fighting to maintain it as much as she did her own. Hers broke on a sob before she recovered to shake her head.

  “Promise. I swear.”

  Austin took another few unsteady breaths. “Maeron said . . . a meld can’t last. I heard.”

  “Then you heard what I told him. This sort hasn’t been done before. And Maeron was full of shite.”

  “Hope so.”

  She forced a chuckle through tears. “You’ll just have to stick around and find out, won’t you?”

  “I’m sorry.” His eyelids drooped. She held him closer.

  “Austin, I . . .” A torrent of confused emotion shuddered through her, blockading words. A jumble of two people drained by crisis, she couldn’t tell what she felt, let alone what she wanted to say. “Rhi loved you,” she whispered, swallowed. “She chose well.”

  Austin reached for her, or tried. His arm hovered until she took it and helped it find hers. He seemed to force his eyes open again. “Shouldn’t have left the hotel. Dumb. I was . . .
just afraid to — ”

  “I know.”

  “To lose — ”

  Corinna stopped him with a kiss, afraid to miss their last chance, afraid to let either of them speak. She stroked his hair as the kiss broke. For endless moments, neither spoke, their shared silence lit in purple-gold flickers.

  “Will the rift close?” he asked finally.

  “It’s already shrinking. Not long now.” The thought forced a shudder.

  “. . .What if Maeron . . .?”

  “Was right?”

  Austin grunted an affirmative.

  “Rhianon’s order’s called the Sentinels for a reason, Austin. If there’s even the slightest possibility, they’re looking into it. If they have to, they’ll find a solution, and one better than what a psycho and a dragon cult would give us.”

  To her relief, it muted the worry in his eyes. Then they shut. His skin felt as cold as the cavern floor. Corinna bit her lip, steeling herself and refusing to say anything for fear he wouldn’t answer.

  “Austin?” She asked finally. She felt so small.

  “That magic,” he whispered, so soft she needed to lean closer. “My spirit’s loose. Weird thing to say. Harder to hold on . . .” He swallowed. “I’m scared.”

  “I’m here.” It was all she could think of to say.

  “All Rhi forgot . . . I wish she’d . . . remembered.”

  She moved her hand from his wound to his heart. “She’s in there, Austin. You remembered for her.”

  “Her book. In my pack . . . Keep it. Remember her . . . when I knew her.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Austin groaned, once, and gave a tiny nod. His hand slipped from her arm.

  It broke the dam. The rest of her grief burst out to echo, raw, through the cavern. She let it. There was no longer anyone to hide it from. She would protect his body until the rift closed.

  Yet amid the tears, she thought she saw a faint shimmer slip from Austin’s body to float through the shrinking rift. Corinna lay there, quieting. Had she truly seen it, or had it been only a trick of the light?

  She wondered if Kitrina’s theory was correct, and if Austin’s dying memories might find their way to Rhyll to flow from the memory founts. Would anyone there ever know his sacrifice to save them? She prayed they would, and that, just maybe, the memories of the Rhi that Austin knew would mingle with his. Then, in some way, they would be together.

  Austin let go of his body, no longer able to do otherwise. The pain of his wound vanished. Caught up in the expectation of dying and the sense of his body failing, his first thought was he had been wrong about death; that death wasn’t the end. Then it hit him.

  He wasn’t dying.

  In hindsight, it seemed foolish to have thought he had been. After all, the magic had loosened his mind from his body. He had slid from it, entered Maeron, and then escaped back to his own body in the moments before the man fell through the rift. Austin’s body had simply no longer been in any shape to receive him. He had only distantly felt the pain, only managed a loose grip on himself that crumbled away while in Corinna’s arms.

  So maybe this was dying, but not entirely.

  He floated above himself between Corinna and the shrinking rift. Something of Rhyll tugged at him, coaxing him through in more than a physical sense. The rift’s borders spiraled inward as it shrank. It would close in moments. Somehow, through either instinct or from mingling with Boden and Maeron, he knew his disembodied psyche couldn’t last long on this side. To survive, he needed the magic.

  Corinna lay cradling his body and shaking with tiny sobs that broke his heart. Without knowing if it was even possible, he reached a part of himself out to her and strained for some way to speak.

  He couldn’t form words. Stretched between Corinna and the rift, weakened from his body dying around him, he didn’t have the strength. Yet he could touch her mind, feel her grief. He wrapped her in assurance that he was not dead, in his excitement at going to see Rhyll, and in the hope that he might find there a way to return.

  His last sight before he floated through the rift was of her smile rekindling, and, he thought, of Rhi’s blue eyes shining through Corinna’s green.

  EPILOGUE

  Austin’s first sight of Rhyll was a sunset sky of pinks and golds. He floated before the closing rift, perhaps one hundred feet in mid-air above a forest painted with the full palette of autumn’s glow. The scent of leaves and wildflowers wafted through his senses. Directly below, surrounded in flickering torchlight, hunched a ruined stone structure. The torchlight illuminated Maeron’s broken, unmoving body on the structure’s roof.

  Satisfied, Austin let himself drift away as the stars came out. An ocean — somehow impossibly blue — plunged into the southern horizon. Mountains lay behind him, their snow-topped peaks reflecting the twilight. Already the weakness and fear he had felt floating in the cavern was beginning to fade, as if Rhyll’s essence were a salve.

  This world had given him Rhi, and together they had saved it.

  Austin wondered at the sacrifice Rhi had made in coming to Earth. It had meant leaving both her home and the magic in this place; even he could feel it here. He thought of Corinna, with her wonder in knowing how to use that magic, now unable to do so again without weakening Boden’s wards.

  Fefferman had told him something upon their first meeting: “They’ll come. The magic’ll come.” Could thiesms see the future? If so, had he meant Maeron, Corinna, and the rest? Or did some greater magic lurk in Earth’s fate? He hoped, for Corinna’s sake, the latter might be true.

  Along the coast in the distance lay a city speckled in light, the source of which he could not discern. A lone tower reached to the sky at the city’s edge, its heights aglow with azure and jade.

  Austin made it his goal.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  An award-winning writer of speculative fiction, Michael G. Munz was born in Pennsylvania but moved to Washington State at the age of three. Unable to escape the state's gravity, he has spent most of his life there and studied writing at the University of Washington.

  Michael developed his creative bug in college, writing and filming four exceedingly amateur films before setting his sights on becoming a novelist. Driving this goal is the desire to tell stories that give others the same pleasure as other writers have given to him. He enjoys writing tales that mix our reality with the futuristic or fantastic.

  Michael has traveled to three continents and has an interest in Celtic and Classical mythology (and in taking creative liberties with same). Michael also possesses what some people might deem too much familiarity with a range of geek culture, though he prefers the term geek-bard: a jack of all geek-trades, but master of mostly none.

  Michael dwells in Seattle, where he continues his quest to write the most entertaining novel known to humankind and find time to play all the video games.

  Connect with Michael G. Munz online:

  Website: https://www.michaelgmunz.com

  Twitter: @TheWriteMunz

  Facebook: Facebook.com/MichaelGMunz

  Sign up for the email list on Michael’s website and get a free copy of the short story collection Four Fantastical Ways to Lose Your Fingers! List subscribers also get exclusive sneak peaks and news about Michael’s future books.

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  If you enjoyed Memory of Dragons, please consider leaving a review online.

  Thank you!

  OTHER FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS BY MICHAEL G. MUNZ

  Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure

  Zeus Is Undead: This One Has Zombies

  The New Aeneid Cycle

  A Shadow in the Flames

  A Memory in the Black

  A Dragon at the Gate

  Mythed Connections: A Short Story Collection of Classical Myth in the Modern World

  Four Fantastical Ways to Lose Your Fingers

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