The enemy dragons landed with heavy thumps, their wings buffeting air towards them. Gibberish, incomprehensible words flitted across Nicole’s mind, no language Elena understood, but she did understand the emotion of defiance, of standing ground despite the threat faced.
“They’re communicating,” Garek hissed, aghast. Both he and Elena felt utterly useless. The dragons had made embarrassingly short work of the witches and the other two guards. The servants were safe, having stayed in the house, likely cowering in the basement. For all their magic, one blast of flame had been enough to finish them off. Just one blast, and everything had turned to ashes.
They’d never be able to stop these dragons. All of them would die, and Elena would never get to explore the pit of her own feelings concerning Garek, recover her memories, see her parents…
She scrabbled furiously at her cuff, unable to dig underneath, to get any purchase on the blasted thing at all.
Nicole stepped forward, her wings wide and shivering, her tail high, each pad of her paws purposeful. The two enemy dragons, for some inexplicable reason, were side by side, unmoving, though their teeth were bared in snarls.
“What’s going on?” She sent this to Nicole as well as asking Garek. Despite the fear, despite the horror of four people burning to death in front of her eyes, flipping her stomach and leaving acidic bile stuck in her throat, there was also tiny, morbid curiosity. Why the dragons had stopped. Why Nicole had stalked forward, and known to shelter them, and communicated in a language Elena was fairly certain none of them had bothered to teach her.
“I wonder,” Garek whispered, closing the gap between them so his hand clasped hers. His eyes were wide and curious, fixed on the enemy. “I know nothing about dragons. Nothing.”
“Same,” Elena said, closing more distance, so that her elbow locked around his. “We run?”
“Nowhere we can reach in time before they get us,” Garek said. Smoke wafted into the air from the burning bodies, and Elena couldn’t repress her shudder of revulsion. Combined with the confusing presence of Garek, her head spun, and the acidic taste grew stronger in her mouth and throat.
Nothing else to do than to watch their small, brave queen dragon face down two killers.
Nicole arched her wings higher, and they shook as trying to cast off water. Her tail slashed from side to side, rather like an angry cat’s, and more incomprehensible images passed between her and the two dragons. Accompanied by snarling, spitting and deep, rumbling growls.
One of the enemy dragons snapped and blasted flame at them so suddenly, all Garek and Elena were able to do was yelp, before Nicole’s wings flared out, protecting them once more from the brunt of the flames.
After Garek and Elena registered that they were still alive, Garek whispered, “Why aren’t the dragons attacking? Why are they delaying this?”
Elena agreed with his words. It didn’t make sense. The two dragons could easily smash down and kill Nicole, but if anything, they seemed reluctant to do so. Twice, they’d breathed fire at her, but fire didn’t hurt dragons. It hurt the humans around the dragon, but not Nicole.
“Maybe… maybe they don’t want to kill her,” Elena whispered back, nervous when Nicole’s wings rose up again. “Maybe it’s against their basic nature to harm a queen dragon. It’s be like a royalist being told to commit regicide. A presidential supporter being told to shoot their president. They probably don’t want to do that.”
The more Elena thought about it, the more it made sense. It was one thing to be told that they had to kill the queen, but another to see her in front of them, so beautiful, radiant and glittering with a vibrant gold sheen. Emanating power and some kind of scent that screamed of dominance.
In front of Elena’s eyes, the two, murderous dragons, big enough to sweep away little Nicole with one bat of their tails, bent themselves forward, clawed paws sinking across the ground in an unmistakable bow.
“You see this?” Garek said, though it was more rhetorical. Neither of them expected the murder-dragons to bow before Nicole.
What’s happening? Elena sent to Nicole, slightly nervous she might break the concentration of whatever Nicole was doing.
A new image flickered back. Nicole visualizing something in a surreal mirage of colors. Moonlight above them, and several silhouettes shaded under the light. A circle made of all the native, intelligent species of Albalon. Dragons, exiles. Humans, unicirim, werewolves. Plants blooming around them, and tranquility sedating them. They accept my vision, Nicole thought to them. They accept my name. Victory of the people.
The mood wrought into the vision brought tears to Elena’s eyes, and she felt horrified at the sudden emotion. The image itself didn’t affect her that profoundly, but Nicole’s mood, her belief, her determination stirred up hidden recesses of feeling. Elena hastily wiped away the stray tears that formed, and she noticed Garek doing the same.
How can you trust them? Elena thought, attaching anxiety to the question.
They are bound to the current queen, but they promise to be mine when she dies, Nicole thought back. They will leave us alone. They will say we escaped. Additional images attached themselves to emotions. Elena got the impression that neither of the two dragons were sorry that they’d killed humans, because it was ingrained to them to treat humans like cattle. However, they accepted Nicole as a strong queen, with a powerful vision, and that they perhaps were too compromised.
It… didn’t exactly feel encouraging to Elena, because it sounded as though the dragons were still their enemies, but Nicole’s confidence did prop them up.
When the enemy dragons lifted their wings and took off flying with a great sweep of wind in their direction, Garek and Elena stood frozen and numb for a moment afterwards.
One thing was clear.
Their dragon was far, far more intelligent than they’d previously suspected.
8
Garek
Unbelievable. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any crazier in his non-conventional and uprooted lifestyle, this happened. Dragon attack in the middle of nowhere, not so long after making things much more enjoyable between him and Elena… and the queen dragon – no – Nicole, had somehow done something to those two dragons.
She was intelligent enough to communicate in a language neither he or Elena could understand. Powerful enough, even with her tiny queen body in comparison to the monsters dwarfing her, that she was able to subdue them, and…send them away, no more violence involved.
He huddled up with Elena now, leaning against Nicole, who was sleeping, content to have her humans next to her.
These same dragons that killed four humans without even blinking their fierce orange eyes, had just sedately left after some posturing and snarling from the queen, and that overwhelming, shining image of the future she’d shaped in her mind. All races working together. All races communicating.
Which honestly sounded like a nice dream, but Garek didn’t think it’d work in reality. No one person shared the same vision. Everyone had different ideas of an ideal world. Some wanted people to live in harmony, others thought harmony occurred once they’d converted everyone to their religion or wiped out all members of a race they hated.
Whatever Nicole was, clearly, any of his vaguely formed expectations of leaving the dragon alone, trying to pick up some sliver of his former life was impossible. Something bound the three of them together. He didn’t know if it related to the blotted-out memory in his mind, or if that was just a coincidence.
Damnation, though. He didn’t want to be responsible for some grand future. He was barely responsible over his own pursestrings and where he chose to invest his money in. He also hated the circumstances all this had started in.
Though, admittedly, he didn’t hate Nicole, or Elena.
With Nicole finally asleep, it left him and Elena all alone with two hysterical servants, waiting for the next drop in visit from Tara or Janus and Yvonne, and for them to clean up what remained of the bodies. A daunting, m
orbid task that none of them particularly relished. They’d ended up burying the guards in the corner of the garden, where the ground was softest, and not frozen over by permafrost.
It was emptier without the guards, and Garek dreaded when they received their next visit from Bastion. If the visitors might think Garek and Elena were responsible for those four deaths. If the servants might consider lying.
After the burying, and washing themselves down with heated water inside, followed by a bland meal cooked by their subdued servants, Garek and Elena had wordlessly collapsed into bed together, neither even thinking about spending the time alone. Garek tried to sleep, feeling all lust and enthusiasm drained out of him from the confusing events of before, of recalling the faint, cooked meat smell from the bodies.
“I can’t sleep,” Elena confessed in a raspy voice, tucked in his arms. His back ached, and the cold seeped into them, even though they were draped in two extra blankets.
“Me, either,” Garek said. “I’m a light sleeper, anyway, but…”
“Yeah,” Elena said. He didn’t need to finish the obvious. “It seems our, uh, baby is slightly smarter than we gave her credit for. And scarier.”
“I don’t get how she could have learned all of this in just over a month,” Garek admitted, nervously chewing on his bottom lip. He dragged his mind away from personal worries to focus instead on Elena, breathing softly against him, pressing warmth into his arms and chest. A small glimmer of attraction lingered at the back of his mind as well, but mostly it got drowned out by the tight knot in his stomach, and the very real concern that neither of them exactly knew what Nicole was. He’d taken it lightly, really, the whole idea of a queen dragon, being forced to babysit her. But now it suddenly hit home that this wasn’t just some universal joke. Something big was going on here. Big enough that people wanted to murder this dragon, and big enough that at the tender age of one month and a little, her brainpower seemed far more developed than anything else he’d known.
They say dragons are creatures of magic. Maybe that’s all it’s about. Maybe she’s just… magically obtaining her knowledge. His clients, the shadowy dragons talking behind their exile servants, had shown nothing but disdain for the humans, but still employed help anyway, because they recognized they needed humans to infiltrate humans. And who better than the morally unscrupulous, those who only sought extra gold lining in their pockets?
“That’s the least of our concerns right now,” Elena said, shifting against him, now in a firm sideway embrace. “We knew she was learning fast. But I don’t think we’re safe here at all. How can we be? Four people – four people burned in front of us, Garek. We couldn’t do a damn thing. We just watched it.”
“Ssh, it’s okay,” Garek said, though he felt just as useless and frustrated. He thought briefly about kissing her, seeing if she’d roll with it, and they could both distract themselves from everything else.
Instead, Elena took a deep, sad breath, and said, “We’re not going to be able to leave, are we? Even if we get the chance… it’s just not going to happen. Not like this.”
“No,” Garek agreed. He placed his mouth next to her ear, tickling the hairs around it with his breath. “There’s something I want to tell you, though.”
“What?” Elena shivered under his hot breath and he took the opportunity to press his lips feather light on the lobe.
“That question you asked before… about if I’d harm you or Nicole to escape – my answer right now is no.” Very gently, he sucked her earlobe into his lips, and dabbed the tip with his tongue, before releasing it. “I wouldn’t harm either of you.”
She inhaled sharply, and her hands gripped tightly onto his biceps. “I wasn’t expecting that. Sure it’s not a lie?”
“How would you know?” He closed his eyes, finally deciding he’d prefer to sleep. After a moment, her grip relaxed, though he felt her pounding heart still.
She didn’t respond, and he began to lightly drift. He thought he heard, somewhere in the background, a voice murmuring, I hope it’s the truth, but it swirled in the flickering abyss of thoughts, where other words and images prevailed.
* * *
Although Elena was just delightful, Garek didn’t think it was anything serious. Flings happened. They were alone, connected, and it was convenient. Sure, she smelled good, tasted divine. Had a nice laugh, a roguish sense of humor behind some awkwardness… and both of them were stuck in the same tricky situation.
It was normal, really, they’d gravitate to one another. He watched her stroking Nicole’s snout in the snow-covered grounds, not saying anything. How her hair glinted in the sunlight reflected from the snow and streaming from above. That she was wrapped in so many clothes, she resembled more of a spherical shape than a human shape.
We can’t stay here, Garek thought. It was clear this place wasn’t a safe haven anymore. But additionally, he knew they couldn’t leave without informing the royals in Bastion their plans, because not knowing the location of their queen dragon might pose a slight issue in future endeavors.
He knew now as well that Nicole feasted on the magical energies trapped under his and Elena’s skins, perhaps exacerbated by whatever thing Elena’s mother had done to suppress their memories. Tasting that raw energy had persuaded Nicole to burst out of her egg, and seal them in a strange bond where they could share thoughts and images, emotions and heartbeats.
Closer than anything he’d ever experienced before. Closer than nights with the boys, a fight to the death in some rugged alleyway, or a night in a bed with a beautiful woman.
It was… odd, really. He’d never be in this situation of his own free will.
“Are you gonna keep staring at me like a pervert or are you gonna come over here and play with the baby?”
“First off, I’m not staring. Besides, I’ve seen all of you anyway. Second – she’s not a baby. She towers above other living creatures and has a mind far beyond her age. I don’t think we can compare by human terms.” He approached anyway, wearing a smirk, hands in his pockets to give off a casual vibe as his breath frosted in the air.
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I was just thinking… about what you said before. That you wouldn’t have harmed us.”
He paused, hoping she wasn’t about to get all heavy and emotional. “What about it?”
“Do I take it to mean that you’re planning on sticking around for Nicole? Or do you still want to escape?”
Well, that was a loaded question. “Honestly,” he said, with an apologetic thought sent Nicole’s way, “I never intended to stick around. It was just a situation I happened to be in, and I hoped I’d be bailed out one way or another. I still want to escape… but I also think I’d be crazy to do so. Some interesting events happen around this dragon.”
“You could say that,” Elena muttered, wiping at her nose. “God, I just want to get out of this place.”
We will, shortly, Nicole beamed to them, and Garek examined the dragon in interest.
“Oh?”
One of the exiles is sending a message to me. He’s carrying people on his back, and two of the royals are with him. I’m telling him about the attack.
The external communication worried Garek, simply because he hated potential liabilities. No way to know for certain what had transpired.
“That’s just great,” Elena said. “Please try to tell them that we didn’t kill anyone, especially if Yvonne’s there.”
Nicole didn’t answer that, so Garek and Elena absently gave her scratches all over her scales, which caused a deep, vibrating rumble in her chest, not unlike a cat’s.
Finally, Garek thought, when their new visitors flew into the retreat. They landed by the house, and when transformed back into human forms, the five of them huddled close together in conference, while Garek and Elena watched cautiously, in case something went wrong. It always felt like they were on high alert nowadays, since despite Nicole’s reassurances that the dragons who left would not reveal their location, he didn’t
entirely trust the proclamation. Maybe Nicole felt sure. But maybe she was too trusting, too.
Elena’s hand reached for his and gripped it tightly. He squeezed back in a reassuring manner, again feeling the sting of vulnerability for his suppressed magic. Janus, Tara, Yvonne, a dumpy woman he didn’t recognize, and the exile he also didn’t recognize seemed agitated.
“My mother,” Elena whispered, pointing at the dumpy woman. “They brought my mother here.”
“Her?” Garek hissed, feeling an irrational surge of anger. Aimed toward a woman who had done something to his past without permission. Someone he didn’t remember. “Why would they have your mother here?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t look this surprised,” Elena retorted back, though there was a slight tremble in her hand. Either from nerves, or the faint nausea running through their systems at their close contact.
Easy enough to overcome when engaging in certain horizontal activities, but right now…
“She doesn’t look like a prisoner,” Garek remarked, unable to see any cuffs on the older shadow witch.
Elena chewed her bottom lip, worry expanding over her face. “My mother would have wanted to rescue me. But I don’t see her going willingly with these people. She hates being a puppet of other people.”
“Like mother, like daughter, hmm?” Garek grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes in return.
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