Dragon Emperor

by Eric Vall

  This had better be important.

  Chapter 8

  Alyona was asleep by the time I had made it back to the infirmary after healing a child who had fallen off a column and had broken their leg. Apparently, there were children in Hatra after all.

  I leaned at the entrance to the infirmary and listened to the steady sound of her breathing as I stared up at the night sky. I didn’t know what had almost happened or what I felt for the priestess.

  Well, I knew what I felt for her. I felt a bunch of desire for her.

  “Fuck.” I rubbed my face.

  It had only been a few days since I’d met her and came to this world, but already she had found a place in my heart. I couldn’t help but be entranced by the priestess and the way she put her everything on the line for the people of Hatra. It wasn’t just her beauty, either. She was so brave and selfless and so wholly in love with life that I couldn’t help but be completely enchanted by her.

  There was a spark between us, but I didn’t know if that was all that there was or even if it was a good idea to pursue it. What if whatever was between us was only in that moment, and Alyona would never look at me like she had ever again?

  Moments like these I wished that there was someone I could turn to and ask for advice in this world. Aunt Emma wasn’t here to guide me with her snarky wit, and I didn’t know if I’d ever get back to my own world.

  Or if I even wanted to.

  “Aunt Emma would tell me to walk right back in there and kiss her.” I shook my head as I bit back a laugh. I was pretty sure that would get me slapped by anyone.

  I would have to make a life here, and I hoped the priestess would be part of it. I sighed and hid my hands in my sleeves.

  Even if I found a way back home tomorrow, it wasn’t as if I could leave with an easy conscience, not with Hatra under constant attack and the Asuras having been decimated. Things kept happening, and I had to do something to help. Leaving wasn’t an option for me because I wasn’t the type of person to sit back and relax while someone needed my help.

  Maybe that was why I had ended up in this world, because I was just the right person to step up to bat.

  The three moons cast a pale glow over the ruins of Hatra as I slid down to sit on the ground. They seemed so close that I could almost touch them if I reached my hand out.

  I knew that I needed to get some rest, but I was full of a listless energy. There was no way I would be able to sleep now with how wired up I was.

  “I wonder how high I can fly?” I wondered as I stared up at the three pale moons.

  With everything that had happened, I hadn’t even had the opportunity to figure out how to fly.

  How could I be a dragon and not fly?

  I walked away from the infirmary to the outer walls of the ruined city, and I could feel the adrenaline begin to pound inside of me. I had always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie and maybe being a dragon just made me even more of one. It wasn’t like there was much that would be able to hurt me now that I was a dragon. Even those stone giants hadn’t even bruised me.

  The familiar power I had gotten used to washed over me, and my body shifted from human to dragon in the merest of moments. I shook my head and stretched the muscles of my long neck as I experimentally stretched out my wings. It was the oddest sensation, moving my wings. I knew they were a part of me, but getting used to these new appendages wasn’t exactly easy.

  I took a deep breath and tried to lift my wings up and down. After a moment, they twitched but didn’t flap. I had to get them flapping in order to lift off the ground, even if it was only an inch. I tried moving my wings again, this time with a little more force, but I only succeeded in throwing myself off balance. My snout dove into sandy earth, and I hacked it up as I shook my head.

  “Okay, Evan,” I muttered to myself. “Come on, you got this.”

  I focused on moving only my wings and building up enough force to lift myself up off the ground. Dust swirled with each flap of my wings, and I could feel the way my body was slowly lifted upwards with each passing moment. I was getting there.

  Inch by precious inch, I flew upward until I could feel the tips of my claws barely drag on the ground.

  “Oh yeah!” I whooped as I looked down at myself. “I’m flying!”

  Well, hovering, but I’d take those five feet as a win.

  As quickly as my excitement had grown, though, it all came crashing down just as quickly, and quite literally too, when I flapped the wrong wing. I hadn’t been high enough for it to have been a giant crash, but it was enough for me to end up in another tangled heap. One bright side of all the tangled heaps I’d ended up in was that it was getting easier and easier to get out of them.

  I shook the dirt and dust off me and stretched out my wings once more. Crashing like that while I was in the sky would not be good at all, and I’d have to do my best to avoid that. I didn’t know how much damage I could take, but becoming a dragon pancake was not on my bucket list.

  “Come on, you can do this,” I growled to myself as I kneaded the earth beneath my claws. “It’s just like skydiving, except in reverse.”

  Visualization had been what had helped me get the hang of shifting between my dragon form and my human form, so maybe it would help me now. I closed my eyes and thought of the air underneath my wings and how they would glide over the wind currents to bring me closer to the three moons.

  My wings were another pair of arms, and the sky was just like the ocean. It was like swimming in a vast ocean, and all I had to do was dive in. I’d been born by the ocean and raised on its edges, so I told myself swimming and flying were the same thing.

  I just had to trust in myself and not be afraid of it.

  I started to flap again, and I could feel myself rise higher in the air with every movement of my wings. Air swirled around me, and I knew I was rising higher and higher. When I opened my eyes, Hatra lay beneath me as if it was a toy village, and it felt like the moons truly were within my reach.

  “This is fucking awesome!” I whooped into the night air.

  Flying felt like pure freedom, and I reveled in it. Not even my first time skydiving back on Earth had felt like this. It felt like I was truly alive for the first time, and each flap of my wings brought me closer to the glory of life. I had to have been extremely lucky or cashed in some serious karma points. I could have turned into any other creature in the world of Inati, but fate had smiled down on me and made me a dragon.

  A real dragon.

  Granted, I didn’t breathe fire, but I could heal people, which was pretty cool in my book. As long as I had enough energy that meant that I would be able to save as many people as possible. I just had to practice rationing myself so I wouldn’t burn myself out as I’d already done once or twice.

  Besides, even if I didn’t breathe fire, I had only become stronger and faster. Anyone who would try to fight a dragon would have to be some kind of fool.

  “What am I doing?” I shook my head. “I’m overthinking when I should just be having fun.”

  I grinned and flew a few wobbly loops in the air. This was better than anything I’d ever done before, and it slowly became more natural to me. Flying was almost like learning how to ride a bike all over again. The knowledge was there inside of me, and it was just waiting to be used.

  I was sure that it had to do with my dragon instincts.

  I flew over the ruined city of Hatra and glided over the ravaged palace. It really was only from the air that I could truly appreciate how massive the destruction of the city really was. From this height, it was obvious that the buildings had been taller than I originally thought.

  I even thought that I saw the remains of aqueducts extending from the city into the forest. I’d have to bring it up with the Elders in the morning and see what they knew about the remains of any plumbing system.

  My field of vision went on for hundreds of miles, and I could see a faint mountain range to the distant north. What caught my interest, though, wa
s the great desert that bordered Hatra on its western and southern borders.

  Endless dunes of golden sand shifted in the distance, and I could see the remains of forgotten structures carved out of yellow stone in the desert. There was no sign of human life in the desert, even though I could see a distant river emerging from a canyon.

  I soared over the desert and into its canyon when a thunderous roar cracked the silence. A blood red dragon, easily five times my own size, rose up out of the canyon and soared above me. Awe filled me at the sight of this other dragon because it was the first one of my kind that I had ever seen.

  The dragon was an imposing creature with crimson scales, and with my enhanced eyesight I could pick out amber eyes that glowed with the light of the three moons. I angled my body to fly toward the other dragon, and I opened my mouth to call out a greeting.

  Then the blood red dragon reared its head back and let out a torrent of flame.

  “Shit!” I dodged the blast of fire that scorched the canyon cliffs and flew low in a bid for speed.

  What the hell? Why was it attacking me?

  I pushed my wings to the limits as I flew over dunes and canyons, and my mind raced with what I was going to do.

  I couldn’t fly back around to Hatra and risk leading the crimson dragon there. I had to get rid of it here in the canyon somehow.

  The crimson dragon roared again, and I took that to be the cue to fly faster. The distance between us was the length of two football fields, maybe a little more.

  “I’m not your enemy!” I turned my head and roared out behind me. “I’m a dragon, too!”

  “And?” The crimson dragon’s growl was higher than I expected, and I realized with a jolt the dragon was a she. “Anyone who enters this canyon will be torn apart by my claws and fangs.”

  She opened her great jaw and snapped at me, and I snarled as I turned back around and flew even faster.

  There was no way I’d be able to fight her. All I could do was heal, but trying to get close enough to brawl with the crimson dragon was out of the cards. Her flames wouldn’t even let me get close, and I wasn’t good enough of a flyer yet to risk it.

  I flew furiously and cast my eyes about in order to find something, anything that I could use to get away from the dragon.

  My dragon senses prickled, and up ahead of me I saw a small cave entrance. The crimson dragon still flew above me, but if I timed it properly, maybe I would be able to hide in there.

  I focused one half of my mind on surrounding my body with my healing magic and focused the other half on transforming back into a human at the right moment.

  I hoped that what Laika had told me about all dragons being natural shapeshifters would be a lie.

  At the same moment that I dived for the cave, I changed back into my human body and curled myself into a ball. I had only one chance to get this right, and I hoped that I was able to do it. Otherwise, I’d get turned into a dragon pancake after all.

  Somehow, the stone ground seemed to be a softer landing than I realized it would be. It might have been thanks to my healing magic being gathered around me, but I hadn’t been sure that would work. I pushed that thought aside as I rolled to my feet and darted away into a dark corner behind some boulders. I hoped that the crimson dragon wouldn’t be able to follow me into the cave.

  Unfortunately, Laika had been telling the truth about how all dragons could shapeshift, and I felt the gathering of power that meant that the dragon had shifted into a human form as well and followed after me.

  I peeked out from behind the boulders, and I could see that the dragon was a beautiful woman with long and straight hair the same color as her scales. Her eyes were the same amber I had seen in her dragon form, and I felt rather than understood how dangerous talking to her would be. There was a wild fury in those half-lidded eyes that spelled death for anyone who crossed her path.

  Even though my heart was pounding away in my chest, my eyes continued to take in the crimson dragon. The features of her face were sharp and exotic, and a fang peeked out over her lips as she lifted a clawed hand to push back the hair that had slipped over her face.

  My eyes widened when I realized that the dragon was completely in the nude, and her pale skin was perfectly unblemished. Her perky breasts were delicately formed and begged to be touched, and she was lithe with toned muscles that rippled beneath her smooth skin as she moved.

  “I cannot wait to rip the life from you and keep your power, strange little dragon,” the crimson dragon’s voice echoed in the cave. “I will eat you and take all of you.”

  Keep my power? What on earth was she talking about?

  “You really don’t want to eat me,” I called out as I thought out a plan to get away from the crimson dragon. “I taste horrible, all bone and scales.”

  My voice echoed throughout the cave, and she lifted her nose to sniff at the air.

  I was thankful that my clothes were so dark. I blended in with the shadows and darkness of the cave easily.

  “You will not escape, strange little dragon,” the crimson dragon promised to me as she stalked forward into the cave. “You will tell me what you are, little black dragon, just before my claws tear you to shreds.”

  Inwardly, I winced at her words. She had to have been one of those nastier dragons that Laika and her comrades had run across.

  “Why do we have to fight? Can’t we just talk?” I moved further into the cave as my voice continued to echo and taunt the other dragon. “We’re both dragons, we can see eye to eye here.”

  “Talk?” she snarled, and the sound echoed harshly. “Talk is for the weak. And you, little dragon, you are so very weak. Perhaps that is why your scales are such a strange color, you’ve no power at all!”

  I could feel my irritation and anger begin to grow with her words, but I forced those emotions down. They would only cloud my mind, and I’d end up making a mistake.

  “You keep saying talk is for the weak, but that’s all you’re doing,” I snarked back as I felt a power rise up inside of me.

  Skill: Predation

  Activation: Stone

  Suddenly, the stone wall beneath my hands softened and felt like a wall of water. My fingers slipped in, and I could feel the current of an underground river tug at them. I didn’t know how my fingers had passed through the wall of the cave, but this was the opportunity I’d been looking for.

  Now I just needed to make her mad enough that she wouldn’t notice me slipping away.

  “In fact,” I continued as I leaned against the wall and prepared to throw myself through it, “you’re probably the weakest dragon here. You probably can’t even heal yourself.”

  “Weak?” Her voice trembled with rage, and the walls of the cave shook from the intensity of her anger. “I’ll show you weak, you mongrel!”

  I could feel killing intent roll off her in suffocating waves and felt an intense swell of power radiate from her.

  That had definitely angered her.

  “Oh yeah?” The hair on the back of my neck rose first, and then the temperature in the cave jumped quickly. Heat singed at my nose, and my eyes dried up. “Why don’t you stop talking and just do something?”

  “You will burn, black dragon,” she roared again into the darkness of the cave, “you will burn, and pay for your words, and I will dance on your ashes.”

  The crimson haired woman opened her mouth, and a great inferno spewed out that melted the stone boulders in front of me.

  Wait, she can breathe fire in her human form?

  I flinched when the flames kissed at my face, but they did nothing as my healing magic rose to the surface to combat it. Just as the wave of fire reached me, I let myself fall through the stone walls and into the depths of the raging river.

  The angry shrieks from the crimson dragon echoed through the stone wall that separated us as I swam up for air. There was enough space in the tunnel the river had carved away that I could raise my head and arms out of the water. An absolute darkness filled th
e tunnel, and even with my enhanced eyesight, I could barely make out the texture of the stone.

  “Shit!” I gasped as I allowed the water to carry me away. “Note to self, don’t approach other dragons.”

  I could smell fresh air in the same direction that the river flowed, and as my body relaxed, so did the current. A small hint of light teased at an opening, and I hoped it was far away from the entrance of the cave.

  I did not want to run into that red dragon again.

  I had hoped that I would have been able to strike up a sort of friendship with the dragon. I had been so excited to meet one that had been born in this world. I could have learned so much about how to be a dragon instead of listening to secondhand lore about them.

  There went that idea.

  I lifted my hand out of the water and brushed my hair out of my eyes. There was something weird about the stone around me. It felt like it was alive or something, like it sung out to me and hummed inside of my mind. Before I could explore this new sensation more, the current picked up speed as the ceiling of the tunnel sloped downward.

  This was it. After half an hour of floating, I was finally reaching the opening.

  My eyes narrowed as I drew in a deep breath and gathered my power inside of me. I would shapeshift back into my dragon form as soon as the water carried me out of the tunnel.

  A moment later, the water burst out of the tunnel and brought me out with it into the fresh air of the night. I twisted my body in the air as I felt my muscles expand and my bones shift. My wings stretched out so they caught the air, and then they lifted me before I could plummet into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall.

  As I rose into the air, I could see that the underground river and its waterfall had led back in the direction of Hatra in the form of a river. Most importantly, it was away from the canyon and the crimson dragon that lurked inside of it.

  “Thank god,” I sighed into the night air as the other dragon was nowhere in sight or in my range of smell. Leading that beast to Hatra was the last thing I wanted to do.

  I shook my head as I followed the length of the river to the ruined city.