Sleeping Dragons

by Phoebe Ravencraft

Learning to disarm a magically trapped box was not. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it. I could sort of perceive the enchantment’s energy, but I could not make the decharmer defeat it. I suspected that my magical immunity allowed me to notice eldritch power, but as soon as I tried to work with it, everything fell apart. It was like there was a blockage somewhere.

  Naturally, word of my failing spread throughout The Order. Scott wanted updates on my progress, and Ash was forced to tell them there was no progress to report. Scott became worried, Ephraim got even more indignant, and I was frustrated.

  And of course, the more frustrated I became, the harder it was to work the magic. The progress I’d made the first day on detecting the spell slipped away little by little. After three days of being unable to decharm the box, I could no longer even perceive the enchantment. I was so angry, so uncentered, I couldn’t do a damned thing right.

  Kai would have told me I was thinking too much. There were so many times while I was working towards my black belt that I would struggle to get a move right. Often, it was while learning a kata. Blasting someone in sparring class was easy. But trying to get the movements of “Tiger” or “Long Four” was agony. They were complicated and difficult. They weren’t fun until I had them mastered, and mastery did not come easily.

  You’re thinking again, Sassy, Kai would say. Your muscles know the kata. Let them do the work.

  And I’d get angry until I finally realized he was right. Then I’d stop thinking, and everything would fall into place.

  This was different somehow. When I centered myself and relaxed, I could feel the magical energy much easier. But it didn’t matter how chill I was; I could not sync the waves with that damned decharmer. There was some piece I was missing, something I was supposed to do that martial arts couldn’t teach me. I was lost. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the hell it was. I just knew I didn’t have it.

  Ephraim knew too. The longer I went without success, the more of a dick he became. He started lobbying Director Scott for a backup plan in case I couldn’t get it. He suggested I be removed from the mission altogether, that my immunity to magic was turning into a liability instead of an asset.

  And I couldn’t disagree with him. He was acting like a spoiled, little shit, but I couldn’t help but feel he was right. I was happier pretending to be a fantasy hero, slaying dragons in D&D, than in being a Nephilim who couldn’t figure out how to use a simple magic item. I felt stupid.

  So I was beginning to panic. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced I was gong to die. Mk’Rai would kill me in his fancy mansion with lots of rich assholes looking on. But first, he would laugh at me. And he’d tell Ephraim he should have brought someone better.

  What happened next was probably predictable.

  After another morning of total lack of success with the decharmer, I was sent down to work on the assassination with Erin. I was in a bad damned mood.

  “Okay, here we go,” Erin said, as she gave me her back.

  I launched myself at her before she finished speaking. She whirled, slapped the knife away, and punched me in the boob. I yelped and glared at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, not really sounding sincere. “I didn’t mean to hit you there.”

  It was a good thing I wasn’t sleeping with anyone at the moment. That punch was going to raise a bruise around my nipple that would be pretty hard to explain.

  “Okay, let’s go again,” Erin said.

  She turned away, and I reset. I took in two deep breaths to center my chi and drain away my frustration. Then I went after her again.

  Erin brought her left hand around, and slapped the knife away, exposing my centerline to her. Then she planted a sidekick into my solar plexus that drove all the air from my lungs and sent me sailing across the mat. One of the trainers they kept on in case of injuries, audibly winced.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I wanted to demonstrate to him just how much that had hurt. Instead I glared.

  “Damn it, Sassy,” Erin said. “You’re letting your anger cloud your thinking.”

  Now where had I heard that before?

  “There is no way I should be able to best you this easily,” she went on. “If you do this against Mk’Rai, he will slaughter you. You need to move with precision. It’s just like anything you’re training on here. D’Krisch Mk’Rai is a dragon. Fighting him will be much harder than fighting me. And right now, I’m kicking your ass.”

  The anger boiled through my brain. There was no point to this training. I couldn’t work the decharmer, so I wasn’t going to have the fancy dagger. We had one day left after today. Why the hell weren’t we coming up with some other plan? I was going to fail, and we were all going to die.

  “Now, try it again,” Erin said. “And this time, use your head.”

  My head? She wanted me to use my head? My head was screaming at me to walk away from this. It was telling me I needed to get as far away from The Order and their jacked-up plan to kill a dragon. The only outcome of this was me dying. And while I wasn’t exactly thrilled with how my life had turned out so far, I was damn-sure not ready to die.

  I gripped the knife softly in my right hand. She wanted to me to get it right. Watch this shit, lady.

  “Go,” Erin said.

  I pushed off with my left foot and brought the knife to bear across my chest. Erin whirled, put up her left arm in a block, and made to kick me in the stomach. I windmill-blocked with my left arm, hooked her wrist, and yanked it with all my strength, ignoring how my sprain screamed at me.

  With her lead leg in the air, Erin was pulled forward, off-balance. I drove the knife savagely into the side of her neck without letting go of her arm. She cried out. Then I yanked her hard past me and stabbed her between the shoulder blades.

  Her left shoulder audibly popped and dislocated.

  Erin screamed. I let go of her, and she tumbled to the mat.

  I stared at her, horrified. I dropped the stage knife and clapped my hands to my mouth as two trainers ran to Erin.

  Holy shit, what was the matter with me? I hadn’t meant to do that. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her.

  “Argh, God damn it, Sassy!” Erin wailed as the trainers tried to help her to feet.

  They got her up, and I continued to stare speechless. One of the men examined her.

  “Your shoulder is dislocated,” he said.

  “No shit!” Erin cried. “Fix it!”

  “Hang on,” the man replied. “This will hurt.”

  He nodded to his partner, who held Erin fast. Then the first guy jerked her arm back into place. Erin screamed again.

  Tears formed in my eyes. Aside from Ash, Erin was the only person who’d been nice to me here. What the hell was I doing?

  “I’ll get you some ice,” the trainer said.

  Erin nodded.

  “Get a healer too,” she ordered. “Or I’ll be sore for days.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the trainer said.

  Erin faced me.

  “God damn it, Sassy,” she said. “You are out of control. You could have really hurt me. And that kind of reckless bullshit will get you killed on the mission. You have got to get your mind in the game if you want to pull this off.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to tell her I wanted nothing to do with any of this. I wanted to shout at her that they could kill their damned dragon by themselves.

  But no words would come. I knew why this had happened. I was frustrated that I couldn’t get the decharmer to work. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to do my part on the mission.

  And I was scared.

  So no words came out of my mouth. I stood there for several seconds, fighting back tears.

  Then I ran. I blazed the hell out of there. This was over. I couldn’t do it.

  Nineteen

  I sat across the table from Felicia at Java Jive the next morning. I played with my muffin but couldn’t really find the wil
l to eat it. Even the coffee – usually so essential to waking up and facing the day – was going cold in my cup.

  I hadn’t been able to talk to anyone when I got home at night. I’d laid in bed, wishing The Guild of the Blade would make their attack on me and put me out of my misery. Eventually, I’d passed out, but I hadn’t slept well.

  “You dislocated her arm?” Felicia said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I feel terrible.”

  Fresh tears crowded my eyes. I tried to blink them away.

  “I can’t do this, Felicia. I’ve tried really hard. But I can’t make the decharmer work. I’m not a wizard.”

  “No, you’re a monk,” she said. “But just because you can’t cast spells like a wizard doesn’t mean you can’t use a magic item. There is no rule in the book that says you can’t.”

  “Felicia, this isn’t D&D.”

  “I know it isn’t, but maybe you need to think like it is. Look, remember when we were fighting Lord Drachnel, and he was wearing that special armor that repelled all non-magical attacks?”

  “Felicia . . .”

  “You used your ki powers to hit him and do damage. And you critted on the roll and then maxed out your damage. So Mark ruled that your strike was so powerful it caused the armor to disintegrate.”

  “I remember, Felicia, but—”

  “There was nothing in the rules that said that was what could happen. Mark decided it would be a cool effect because of your powers and the fact that you maxed out a crit-hit.”

  “Felicia, God damn it! I remember the incident, but it doesn’t have one damned thing to do with what’s happening now. D&D is a game. My character is a pretend person. This is real. I’m real. And I can’t do it.”

  “You’re not listening to what I’m saying,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “Sassy, I don’t know anything about real magic, but it seems to me if magic does anything it bends the laws of reality. Magic makes things possible that shouldn’t be. So this decharmer should be possible for you to use, even though you’re otherwise immune to magic. The decharmer breaks the rules. You have to think of it like that, so you can break them too.”

  I shook my head. Damn but Felicia was naïve. I mean, I knew she was trying to help, trying to encourage me. But she just didn’t get that there was zero correlation between a roleplaying game and real life.

  “It’s you who’s not listening,” I said. “To use the decharmer, I have to be able to manipulate the magical energy on the case. I can only perceive that energy half the time. And I can’t do a damned thing with it, even when I can feel it. Ash keeps trying to explain how to do it, and I can’t. He’s asking me to fly, but I don’t have any wings.”

  “But Sassy—”

  “No! I’m different, Felicia! Regular people can use this damned thing, but I can’t. The fact that I’m immune to magic cancels it out!”

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” said a familiar voice.

  I whipped my head around to see Ash standing behind me. He was wearing black jeans, a brightly patterned shirt, and a black leather jacket. He needed to stop looking so God-damned desirable. All this was hard enough without him distracting me with his naked, sexual charisma.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I snapped.

  “I came to pick you up,” he replied, still looking infuriatingly beautiful.

  I narrowed my eyes. What the hell was he up to?

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Two reasons,” he said. “First, I wasn’t sure you would come in today after yesterday’s . . . accident.”

  “Accident?” I said. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “Second, I have information I need to share with you privately.”

  Now, I cocked my head. This was getting interesting, even if it was still irritating.

  “What sort of information?” I asked.

  “Information that will not only impact your ability to use the decharmer but also that The Order probably doesn’t want you to know. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Please do,” Felicia said.

  I shot her a pissed-off look. She ignored me.

  Ash slid into the chair next to her, thanked her, and then leveled that panty-melting gaze of his at me. Fortunately, I was already frustrated enough this morning that it didn’t mess with my head or loins.

  “I brought a car to drive you this morning, so we could talk on the way in,” he began. “When you weren’t at your apartment, I checked with your surveillance team. They told me you’d come here.”

  “My own private stalker,” I said to Felicia.

  “Sassy, this is serious,” she said.

  Ugh. Even my best friend was rejecting my use of sarcasm. This day was definitely headed in a shitty direction.

  “Sassy,” Ash said, hitting me with as serious an expression as I’d ever seen from him. “You’re not immune to magic.”

  “What?” Felicia said.

  I felt like he’d just stuck a sidekick into my solar plexus. All the air went out of my lungs. I struggled to get more in. My head went woozy.

  “The Order has been telling you you’re immune to magic, because its effects on you look like that to an uneducated eye. Someone uses a power on you, and it has no effect.

  “But that’s not actually what happens. The truth is, you absorb magical energy. You’re like, I don’t know, like a capacitor. You pull in power like a battery does with electricity when you put it on the charger.”

  I blinked three times and tried to process the information. My brain hurt.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “When that demon’s knife hit me, it shattered. It should have just gone into me or something if I absorb magic.”

  “But that’s what happened,” Ash countered. “The dagger doesn’t exist in a real way. It’s created via sorcery. The assassin transforms the tattoo on their body into a weapon in the real world.

  “When the dagger hit you, all the magic that was holding it together, that was making it possible for it to exist, was absorbed into your body. The corporeal parts of the knife shattered, because there was no magic to bind them.”

  I stared at him, flabbergasted. I’d wondered about how that had worked in the first place. Even if I’d been immune to magic, it seemed like the demon’s weapon should have been able to cut me.

  “That’s so cool!” Felicia said, her voice just above a whisper.

  “Please, Felicia,” I said. “I don’t need a fangirl just now.”

  “Oh, come on, Sassy,” she retorted. “You know it’s cool!”

  “I’m not sure that it’s cool,” Ash said, “but it’s definitely unique. It’s one of the reasons The Order thinks you’re the N’Chai Toroth. She’s prophesied to be a disruptor of magic, to change the way it is used. The Order believes your ability is described by that part of the prophecy.”

  “How do you know this?” Felicia said.

  I wasn’t sure why she was suddenly asking all the questions. This was my life, not hers. But I couldn’t piece together more than a few words. Each revelation kept knocking me over.

  “I kept thinking that Sassy shouldn’t be having so much trouble with the decharmer,” he said. Then he returned his gaze to me. “Even though you were allegedly immune to magic, you should have been able to use the tool. All of our mundane operatives can use one. Other Nephilim can work them. It just didn’t make sense to me that you couldn’t.

  “So I did some digging into the information The Order had on you.”

  “In other words, you did some hacking,” I said.

  “Right,” he admitted. “And it wasn’t easy. The files on you are seriously encrypted. We’re not talking just computer encrypted. There are tons of highly volatile spells protecting them too. I’ve been working for days on hacking into them, and I’ve only been able to unlock a few of them.

  “But I did manage to crack into a file on your powers, and that’s how I found out about your magical energy absorption.”

  “
How do they have a file on her powers if she’s just been discovered?” Felicia asked.

  That was a good question. It scared the hell out of me.

  “I don’t have the answer to that fully,” Ash said. “But I believe they’ve been tracking you for some time, Sassy. The Order watches anyone who displays any magical potential. There are all sorts of beings born to otherwise-mundane parents, whose powers manifest at puberty or early adulthood. There are usually signs in childhood that these abilities will eventually awaken. To protect The Veil, The Order keeps tabs on anyone who shows potential.

  “So my guess would be that at some point in your early life, you showed signs that put you on an Order watch list.”

  “Jesus, you people are worse than the government,” I said.

  “Now, we also know that your mother hid you from us,” Ash went on, ignoring my jibe. “And that tells me that it wasn’t The Order that was tracking you, or if they were, no one was able to realize you were Eli Silverman’s missing daughter. Regardless, someone high up in the magical world, possibly someone from The Arcane Council, has had their eye on you for a long time and has been compiling information. My bet is that, once they were convinced you were the N’Chai Toroth, they let The Order and Commander Silverman know about you.”

  I sat there, absorbing that information. These crazy-ass bastards had been watching me for how long? Since I was a baby? Since I was a teenager? What did I do that made them think I was special? Was it how fast I rose to black belt? Was it something else? Ash’s revelations were scaring me.

  “So why did they wait so long to contact Sassy?” Felicia asked.

  “Like I told you, The Prophecies suggest the N’Chai Toroth awakens to her powers by defeating a dragon. Suddenly, they have a dragon they need removed. And Sassy is walking around, her powers dormant and ignorant of the magical world. So now comes the big test. Let’s see if she is actually the Chosen One.”

  Anger burbled in my heart like a pot of water on the stovetop. These assholes had been spying on me, and now they wanted me to do something for them?

  “But how could they know about my ability to absorb magic?” I asked. “Until I fought that demon, it had never happened before. And he was hired to kill me because Mk’Rai found out I was being recruited to assassinate him. They had to have known before then.”