by Eric Vall
“Put that away, silly,” Trina chided as she let go of my arm and stepped forward. “Can’t you see this is just Evan? I’ll admit, though, he’s much more appealing in this form.”
“I agree,” Polina giggled as she and Marina came to stand beside me and drew their hands over my costume. “But you still have your scales! How marvelous.”
Marina had pushed up the sleeves of my robe and looked at the patches of black scales that covered my forearms. “They’re so smooth,” she gasped in delight.
“A little warning would have been nice,” Anton grumbled as his ears fell, and he let go of his sword.
“Sorry,” I apologized with a grin. “Last minute costume change.”
The Demi-Human looked at me strangely, but then shook his head and muttered something under his breath in a language I didn’t recognize.
While the three dryads continued to coo over my human form, I turned my attention to the mouth of the cave.
And my jaw dropped open in awe.
Crystalline skies of pure blue filled my gaze. Three moons were visible in the sky, and each one was a different size, though they were all a similar color. They glowed vividly with a silver hue that faded into the brilliant blue of the sky like the thinnest layer of silk.
I walked forward as if in a dream and glanced down. We were on a cliff as a forest of vivid green stretched out for miles before me, and the forest was an expansive canopy of vegetation that I didn’t recognize.
But I could smell it. I could see it. I could hear it.
I could feel it too, all the small creeks and streams that were within the forest, all the life that was teeming in the world before me. I could hear and smell it all.
Again, I felt that overwhelming sensation of home that overpowered every other instinct. I wanted to jump and soar through the air. I wanted to fly in those brilliant blue skies.
I felt as if I could fly up to the three moons that hung in the sky. There were no chains, nothing that would stop me from stretching out my hands and wings in order to reach the heavens. I felt like a kid standing in an open field. I just wanted to run as fast as I could, jump, and reach my arm up so that I could touch the endless blue sky.
But now I had wings, I could really touch the sky if I wanted.
In that moment, I wished my mother and Aunt Emma could have been here to see this. It was so beautiful, and the sensation of being here… it was just like when I had stepped through the mirror. It was home, although I knew that I hadn’t been born here or grew up here, or even knew anything about this world until now.
I was still lost and confused, but I knew one truth.
This was my home. This was where I was meant to be.
Everything felt right in my heart, as if I had been here all along. All the smells were familiar, all the sounds were ones I’d heard somewhere, in a dream from my childhood, perhaps. It felt so right, I thought my heart would burst from the happiness.
This was the missing puzzle piece to my life, one that I hadn’t even known was missing from me.
I breathed in the air, and it smelled of clove and spice, just like Aunt Emma’s favorite pipe mix.
I laughed and felt something drip on my cheek. When I brought my hand up and wiped gently at my face, a tear gleamed on my claws. My heart was so full and so happy that tears fell from my eyes without me knowing why or when.
“Welcome, Evan, to the nation of Rahma,” Laika declared as she leaned against the edge of the opening of the cave and smiled fondly. “This is our beautiful world, and now it’s yours as well.”
Chapter 3
Hatra was a city of ruins.
Shattered walls and broken towers filled the horizon as the adventurers and I stepped out of the forest. I could see what was once a domed palace loom behind the broken walls, but holes littered the dome. It was a wonder the palace was still standing, because in my dragon form, I could easily fit in each of those massive holes many times over. It looked like a city of the dead. There was nothing but ash and dust in the air, and I could smell death and decay on the wind.
As I looked over the expanse of the ruins, my eyes traced each building and wall, and I could almost imagine what Hatra would have looked like before it was destroyed. It would have been a brilliant city that gleamed in the morning light, with brightly colored crystal windows and highly decorated walls. I thought back to how Laika had said it was leveled so long ago.
How could anyone still live here?
“That is what remains of Hatra.” Laika stood next to me, and there was sorrow in her stormy eyes at the state of the once great city. “The village where most of the population lives is just after the inner wall.”
“No one has ever tried to rebuild it?” I asked with a frown.
The beautiful swordswoman shook her head. “It’s impossible. Hatra has already been abandoned by Rahma. It is just a casualty in this unending war against the demons.”
I stared at the ruins and realized it had to have been a city of tens of thousands. It was hard to imagine the city in its prime now, though.
“You said it was destroyed by demons,” I said as I turned back to Laika. “Does anyone know why they targeted Hatra?”
The Demi-Human shook her head. “If anyone once knew, it’s been long forgotten. There has been too much death in this place for any memories to remain.”
The dryads, with their ever present glee and delight, ran ahead of us. They ducked through the holes in the wall closest to us, and my eyes followed them. There was something odd, though, something that lingered on the very edges of my senses, so I looked around and then glanced upward in search of the strange presence.
On the top of a ruined tower stood a barefoot young woman in a short dress of dark purple, and long, wide sleeves trailed along the floor of the tower. Even with the distance between us, my heightened eyesight took in every detail of the strange woman. Her eyes drew me in first. They were scorching and powerful amethysts that glittered with an unseen flame. Full, dark brows arched over her brilliant eyes, and they drew the breath from my lungs. Then the wind shifted the veil that covered the lower half of her face, and I could see full lips and high cheekbones.
Her raven hair fluttered in the wind, and I realized with a jolt that she wore a familiar hairpin in her hair. It was the same one that Aunt Emma had shown me before I’d ended up in this world. I gaped at the sight, and the flower dangled in the wind as it mocked me with its presence.
“Laika, who is that?” I asked as I motioned up to the woman on top of the broken tower.
The Demi-Human frowned and followed my line of sight, but then delight spread across her beautiful face as she saw the other woman. “The priestess!”
This was the priestess? I had thought she would have been a decrepit old woman, but she wasn’t. Even at a distance, she seemed somehow more alive and vivid than anything I had seen in the short time I’d been in this new world.
Besides me, the two wolves picked up their pace, and by the time we had crossed the short distance to the broken tower, the priestess waited for us at its steps with her hands hidden inside her long sleeves.
Classification: Unknown.
Status: Fatigued.
The words flashed before my eyes again, and all my senses prickled in her presence. She was like a white fire that illuminated the darkness of the night, but it was noon, and there was no darkness near us but the ghosts of the dead that lingered in Hatra. I didn’t know if I was seeing things or if my senses had betrayed me. I didn’t know what she was or if she was even human. I looked over to the adventurers, but they were nonplussed by the priestess’s appearance.
“Is it me or is she glowing?” I whispered to Trina.
The dryad glanced at the priestess and shook her head.
“It’s just you.” Trina wrinkled her nose and went to lean on one of her sisters.
“Welcome back,” the priestess intoned as she nodded to the swordswoman beside me. “We have food ready for you, Dame Laika.” H
er voice was rich like wine and with a lilting sweetness that I couldn’t place. It was an entrancing voice, full of hints of pleasure that trailed down my spine. Just the sound of her voice promised endless nights on a silken bed.
“Thank you, my Lady.” Laika’s eyes softened as she stood before the priestess, and the proud swordswoman seemed almost shy.
I wondered what the relationship between the two of them was. There seemed to be a great deal of respect shared between the two of them.
“How fared your journey into the cave?” The priestess rose one thick eyebrow in amusement before the shining eyes found my own, and they glimmered like the amethyst gems I had compared them to earlier. “And is this the dragon you found so deep in the cave?”
I drew in a sharp breath of air as I stepped forward and bowed before the priestess. “My name is Evan, my Lady. How did you know that I’m a dragon?”
From beneath her thin veil, she smiled sweetly. “I am a priestess, Sir Evan. My eyes see more than most can see. It is both a curse and a blessing.”
“I am not a sir,” I protested as the priestess stepped around me in a circle. “I’m just Evan.”
She came to a stop in front of me, and her head barely came to my shoulders. My eyes followed the way her dress clung to the beautiful curves of her body, and I swallowed thickly. The fabric of her dress hummed lightly in the air as she moved, and I could hear the slow and steady beat of her heart.
“You are a strange dragon. Were you all that was in that cave?” She tilted her head in curiosity, and her gemlike eyes gleamed again.
“Uhhh, nooooo,” I said, and the words felt like honey in my mouth. The desire to dress her in nothing but dripping jewels that matched her eyes rose in my mind. I bit the inside of my cheek to chase the urge away.
“There were five stone giants down there,” Laika cut in. “We would have died if it weren’t for him. He fought the giants and healed us of our wounds.” The swordswoman patted me on my back, and if it had been before I’d become a dragon, the strength of it would have knocked me to the ground. Even so, her touch had grounded me from the erotic visions my mind had conjured of the priestess.
“You’re going to give me a big head,” I chuckled modestly. “The five of you took down three.” I smirked at the wolf beside me, and she snorted in response, but her ears twitched and betrayed her amusement.
The priestess, however, did not look so amused.
“Giants?” she questioned. “Here? But there haven’t been any sighted in the area for more than three decades.” Her sweet smile faded, and a smell that reminded me of thunderstorms and lightning filled the air. But just as quickly as it had happened, it went away, and the priestess smiled again. “I am forgetting my manners. Please, Sir Evan, forgive me. I am no lady as Dame Laika continually insists. I am a traveling priestess who bears the name Alyona.”
She curtsied with such smooth grace that any grand princess or prima ballerina would be considered clumsy next to her.
I returned the deep curtsey with a bow of my own. “You haven’t been rude. I was an unexpected guest after all.”
“Unexpected does not need to mean unpleasing.” The gemstone eyes of the priestess measured me, and she tapped a finger against her veiled check. “Dame Laika, you said he healed you?”
“That he did, my Lady,” the Demi-Human replied. “Instead of breathing fire upon us, he healed us. He had no duty to us, but he fought for us and swore to come and help Hatra.” The swordswoman stood ramrod straight at my side as she vouched for me.
The priestess’s pretty eyes went wide, and she grasped onto my hand. “You can heal?”
“Well, I uh--” I started to say before she cut me off.
“Follow me, quickly!” she exclaimed, and then she spun on her heel and began to march away with me in tow.
I was surprised, first by the spark of fire that her touch lit inside of me, and second by the strength that the small priestess possessed to be able to drag me away. From how big I had been in my dragon form, I had to weigh as much as an elephant did, maybe even more. I didn’t think it meant that my human form weighed the same, but I could feel that I still had the same dragon strength. Even Laika, who waved a great sword around as if it were a feather, could barely budge me.
How was this priestess able to?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as we broke into a hurried jog. I easily kept pace with Alyona, because even though the priestess moved quickly, she was short, and my legs were longer.
Laika followed us while the other wolf, Anton, left as he called after us something about searching for food.
The jade flower that dangled from Alyona’s hairpin danced as she increased the speed of her strides. “To the infirmary. There are many there that need help. I have to warn you, however, it isn’t a pretty sight nor a tolerable smell.”
My jaw tightened as I remembered the car accidents I had worked and all the trauma victims I had struggled to stabilize. “Don’t worry, I’m used to the sight and scent of sickness.”
“Not to this, you are not.” Alyona glanced at me over her shoulders, and her dark eyes were impassive. “This is death and decay.”
The smell reached my nose long before we entered the ancient hall that had been turned into an infirmary of sorts. Alyona had been right to call it death and decay. I could smell a sickly sweetness that reminded me of long rotted fruits and the rank putridness of meat left out in the sun. It wasn’t a smell anyone could forget, the sweetest smell imaginable coupled with the rankest of meats. I remembered this from my classes.
It really was the smell of death.
Laika remained outside of the infirmary with her eyes downcast and nose wrinkled because of the strong smell.
I didn’t blame her. I half wanted to stay away from the sheer reek of the hall as well.
But the great hall wasn’t full of corpses on the verge of decay, it was filled to the brim with the dying. Even with all the blood and death I had seen while working as an EMT, this was enough to shock me.
On makeshifts beds that lined the length of the hall were at least a dozen villagers, each of them in various stages of the miasma induced illness that had taken hold of them. Their veins bulged out of their skin, and they were a dark and angry purple. Some of the patients were racked with horrible coughs, others puked blood.
I could see that their lips were chapped and cracked, and their fingernails were just as cracked as their lips. My eyes picked out the telltale signs of anemia and dehydration. I didn’t know how the miasma affected the body, but I would learn quickly.
As if on cue, those mysterious words flashed before my eyes again.
Classification: Six fox Demi-Humans, two cat Demi-Humans, five humans.
Priority: Immediate healing required.
Status: Terminally ill.
This was much worse than I thought.
“The miasma did this?” I asked quietly. Next to me, I could barely make out the grim look on Alyona’s pretty face from underneath her veil.
“They fall ill faster than I can heal them, and then the miasma rolls in again when I think they’re safe. Every other night it comes, and the corruption takes root deeper and deeper each time they inhale the miasma. It’s a never-ending war.” The priestess shook her head as she stared out into the hall. “They are rotting away from the inside, and more fall to the miasma every time.”
“How have you been healing them?” I asked as my eyes studied the way the infirmary had been set up. For having so many ill in one space, it was remarkably clean and well organized. I wondered if Alyona had any help in maintaining the infirmary. At the very end of the hall was a space blocked off by hanging tapestries, and I could smell herbs and candle wax waft from that area.
“I … can purify the energy inside of them, by separating the miasma that’s seeped into their bodies and pulling it out,” Alyona answered, but she suddenly seemed even smaller than before. “But I am alone in taking care of them. I forbid the other vill
agers from entering for fear that they may catch the illness, too. It’s happened before.”
I turned sharply to look at her. “How haven’t you fallen sick from the miasma if it’s happened to others?”
“The miasma cannot harm priestesses such as I,” she replied simply.
I focused on the priestess that stood next to me. There was something strange to her words, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I tried to call up those strange but informative words again, and after a moment of deep concentration, it worked.
Classification: Unknown.
Status: Fatigued.
Well, that wasn’t as helpful as I hoped.
Inwardly, I frowned. There had to be more I could find out. Surely there was something more than fatigued that could give me a clue as to how much the priestess had pushed herself.
I concentrated again, and this time, another line of text appeared.
Classification: Unknown.
Priority: Sufficient rest will help recovery.
Status: Fatigued due to continued overuse of power.
I sighed. At least that was something.
“How long have you been in Hatra?” I asked as I focused on Alyona’s violet eyes again. “Taking care of them, I mean.”
“A month, give or take two days I think.” She frowned prettily. “And before that, another almost a full month.”
I suddenly remembered a study on rats that had been deprived of sleep. Some had died by the fourteenth day, and the rest had all been dead by the thirty-second day. There’d been a man, in China, who had died after staying awake for eleven days straight.
I rubbed my face, careful to keep my claws away. I hoped that the priestess would be fine.
“Okay, right, you’re going to go sit down before you faint,” I instructed as I pointed at one of the empty chairs next to us.
“I beg your pardon?” Alyona blinked at me in surprise, and even underneath her thin veil, I could see that her lips had formed a pretty pout.
“You’re no help to anyone if you’re too drained to function,” I argued. “I get that you want to save everyone in here, but if you end up hurt in the process, well, that’s counterproductive.” I clasped my hands behind my back as I fell back into EMT mode. “I might not know your limits, but you surely do. You don’t have to push yourself. I’m here to help now. Let me shoulder part of the burden.”