Millie cleared her throat to shut him up. “Control comes in time. First is to know what the wyvern wants. At any rate, rest now before we start out again. Stretching isn’t a bad idea.”
Thankfully Millie laid her hands on Wylan’s legs, and the pain melted away in a rush of soft green light. Then stretching was exactly what Wylan did. She liked stretching exercises before and she thought it would be a great way to ease her mind as well as her screaming muscles. She couldn’t be sure how long she stretched, but when she was done, she felt limber and ready to face the next trek. She settled back on the sand by Josef who had just cleaned the baby with water he’d brought to the surface of the sand and was trying to get her to take another bit of milk.
“Do you have children?” She asked.
Millie chuckled.
Josef rolled his eyes at her. “Sadly, no woman in my life to get child-like with.”
“Well, I think you’d make a good father.”
“Are you saying you wanna have my children?” Josef asked, mockingly hopeful.
“Oh, here we go…” Millie walked away from him.
“No…I mean…well I mean you’re not unattractive—”
“I think she likes me!” Josef winked at Wylan. “She says I’m pretty.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
Wylan blushed and turned away, a laugh bubbling from her lips.
Millie scoffed and returned. “What would Marcella say?”
“For the hundredth time, Marcella is not my girlfriend!”
“Who’s Marcella?” Wylan asked.
“A bitch,” Josef mumbled.
“And if she heard you calling her that?” Millie crossed her arms over her chest.
“What? It’s not exactly a surprise to her that she’s a bitch.”
Millie and Wylan laughed.
“All I’m saying is that Wylan is pretty and she thinks I’m pretty too!” Josef seemed rather proud of the fact.
“Oh come on, she’s half your age! She’s a child,” Millie said.
Wylan and Josef both argued with her then.
“She’s not half my age—”
“I’m not a child, I’m eighteen!”
“SEE,” Josef crowed triumphantly.
“You’re impossible,” Millie told him. “Wylan, be careful of that one, he goes through women like dragons go through towns.
“I’m just saying that she’s a pretty woman,” Josef said.
“You would chase after any woman who could walk and talk,” Millie said.
“Well, I wouldn’t really have to chase her if she couldn’t walk, right? And besides, there are many fine women who can’t walk.”
“Or talk,” Wylan pointed out.
“Exactly. See, she gets me,” Josef said. His eyebrows shot up. “It’s like we’re of one mind! This could be fate, you never know.”
Millie tossed her hands in the air. “Just finish feeding the baby so we can go.”
While Josef finished feeding the baby, Wylan argued with Millie about learning to control her magic.
“I’d rather you learn to commune with the wyvern soul every chance you get,” Millie said.
But Wylan knew something about Millie just talking to her. Millie wanted safety for the baby, that’s why she was so eager to get back to Darubai. It might not have been nice of her to do, but Wylan played on that.
“Well, if you teach me to use my magic, and Josef teaches me to use my sword, then we will have more protection if something happens. I’d be able to help protect the baby.”
Millie sighed and shook her head. “Fine. But you’re going to be tired and wish you’d taken the chance to rest.”
Already Wylan couldn’t wait for the next rest. She attacked the sandy dunes with more determination than she had before. She saw each shifting step as one step closer to facing the blue dragon and overcoming it. As they traveled, Millie put her through all kinds of mental exercises to the point that when they took breaks, Wylan found herself dozing off. More than once that day Millie had to wake her to continue their journey.
Millie figured a softer approach to the wyvern soul was to just feel it, as if Wylan were petting the wyvern with mental hands. Lissandra seemed to enjoy that often opening up more to her when she did. She could only imagine a napping dog rolling on to its side so she could scratch its stomach.
After that, the wyvern didn’t close up to her as much and she stopped feeling so negative about the beast that lived within her, refusing to help her. She told Millie of the progress.
“It’s because she feels you now,” Millie said. “She feels that you’re not using her, that you care about her.”
“Are all wyvern souls the same gender as their human?” Wylan asked.
Millie laughed. “Yes, they are. The wyvern soul can’t change your gender when you shift.”
“That would be awkward,” Josef said.
“Yours still talks to you?” Wylan asked Millie.
“Yes,” Millie told her. “She talks to me frequently. Sometimes I think I might be crazy because I have this other presence in my mind that I can communicate with and seek guidance.”
“Huh,” Wylan said. “At least I have that to look forward to. I was afraid that once it opened up to me that we would be kind of one mind.”
“Well, kind of. You might find that your disposition is a bit fierier than normal, but no, you will be two minds.” Millie looked at her. “Let’s try working with your fire. It’s not linked as heavily to the wyvern soul and it is a tool, so you can use it without placating it.”
“I don’t even know how to start with that,” Wylan said.
“Well, that’s where I come in. It’s surprisingly simple. You can still feel your wyvern soul, right?”
Wylan could feel the soul. It wasn’t as tight against her now. She hoped whatever they were going to try wouldn’t cause Lissandra to retreat behind her scaly mind. She nodded.
“Good, that’s all it takes. If you delve deeper, you can feel the fire it harbors. Try it.”
“Just plunge my mind into her?” Wylan asked.
“Yep,” Millie said. She tore a small swath of cloth from her trousers and sat it on the sand before Wylan. “You’re going to burn this.”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it, for now.”
While they had been traveling, Wylan had gotten used to reaching out to the beast without having to close her eyes or do any kind of mental exercises. She reached down with her mind, her eyes trained on the cloth, though not fully seeing it. She was seeing other things that existed deeper within her—darkness, scales, another pulse of thought and power.
She reached out to the wyvern soul, her intentions clear; it knew what she wanted, and it didn’t close up. If anything, Wylan felt the soul open more to her, spreading open its scaly arms and welcoming her in. She got the feeling that this was a test. The wyvern wanted to see how she would command the fire, how she would use it, and for what purposes. When the wyvern soul realized she was just training to use the fire, it seemed uninterested.
Lissandra existed in fire and anger. Wylan could feel the need to destroy within the flames, and it scared her even as it empowered her rage toward the blue dragon. She could feel the heat, she could almost see the flames that churned through its blood, fueled its mind. Heat surrounded her, and it wasn’t the heat of the day, it was fire forged in dragon power, in the wyvern’s soul.
“I—I think I have it,” Wylan said.
“Great!” Millie said. “Now, hold the fabric in your mind, direct the fire into it. The fire will build in your hands, and then it will jump to the fabric at your command.”
Wylan looked at her hands. “Will it hurt?”
“No.” Millie smiled.
Wylan held her hands before her, and willed fire to conjure there. The wyvern soul obeyed. Heat swarmed up her torso, around her breasts, and down her hands. Her fingers glowed, and moments later, flames wreathed her hands.
She gasped, afraid
that her amazement at calling the fire would extinguish the magic, but it didn’t. She willed more power into her hands, and more fire came until her hands were consumed in crackling flames that danced fitfully in the air. Wylan focused her attention on the cloth a few feet away, took aim, and—with her mind—pushed the fire toward it.
The fire flared around her hands, thousands of licking, biting tongues of fire. Her hands blackened, and she screamed out in pain. The fire raged higher and crept farther up her arms. It was consuming her, burning her.
Before she had time to react to the mounting pain, Josef doused her flaming hands with a caress of his water magic. Millie came to her, placing her hands over Wylan’s and willed green, healing magic from her own hands and into Wylan’s.
Wylan watched as the green energy surrounded her hands and then melded with her charred flesh. Her skin itched mercilessly as the healing swept through the fissures and cracks and bound it as a whole. The flesh lightened from charred black to gray and then finally to whole skin once more. It took a little longer for her screaming skin to ease and for the pain to abate.
“You focused too long on your hands,” Millie said. “Let the power build, but focus on the cloth, not your hands.”
“I got carried away with my power when I first used it too,” Josef assured her. “But my power is water, so about the only thing it did to me was give me really dry skin.”
Wylan stared in shock at her hands. She didn’t want to try her magic again, but not using the magic meant that she was taking steps away from killing the blue dragon. “I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.”
“It normally doesn’t. You got a little carried away,” Millie said.
Wylan shook her head, as if she didn’t believe her. While the pain was gone, it still lived in her mind, her nerves screamed as she thought about the crackling flame. She didn’t want to live through that pain again.
“Again,” Millie said.
“I…I don’t know if I want to,” Wylan confessed.
“Mistakes happen,” Josef assured her. “And if you go up in some towering inferno, always know I'm here to drench you in water, and Millie can heal all that charred skin.” He winked at her.
“That…doesn't really help,” Wylan said, trying to hide the blush that flushed her cheeks. She scolded her churning stomach, and from the depths of her mind a rumbling laughter answered her unease.
:Glad you’re finding this funny,: she scolded Lissandra.
“Just try,” Millie said. “Focus on the fire, and focus on the cloth. You can let the energy build, but you have to be aware that you’re giving it a direction other than your body or it will start to work on your hands. If it knows there’s another destination you’re going to let it consume, then it will not harm you, it will wait to destroy once you’ve given it lease to.”
Had that been what her mother had felt? The flames crackling over her skin, eating at her flesh, spilling her fluids onto the couch? She shook her head. Why did her power have to be fire, when so much of her life had ended in fire?
She opened her mouth to protest, but Millie covered her hands with her own. “I know it’s hard, but you have to learn to control this power. It could save lives. Your power won’t be used to destroy, but to protect.”
Wylan nodded and plunged into the wyvern soul once more. The fire came easier this time, and it wreathed her hands, orange and flickering. Wylan wasn’t sure how to give it direction, so she focused her eyes on the cloth, letting the brown cotton fill her mind as she pushed more fire into her hands. When she thought it was enough, she mentally cut off the flow of energy. All of the fire left her hand in a stream of flame, licking the cloth and searing it to ashes.
Wylan hooted in joy and this time the flame did vanish. It was the first time she’d felt proud of herself since her family died, and no amount of dragons flying around above them could vanquish that joy. It was puzzling to her that the very power that had destroyed her mother and her home could be the same thing that offered her a way to destroy the blue dragon.
“That’s amazing!” Wylan shouted, a thrill of excitement filling her chest.
Millie nodded, smiling. “Pain is a good motivator. Now, let’s try something else. See that boulder over there?” Millie pointed toward a boulder not far away. “This will take a bit more power, but I think you have the hang of it.”
“What am I doing to the boulder?” Wylan asked.
“Pushing it away,” Millie told her.
“With fire?”
Millie nodded. “The fire can blast as well as kindle. With enough force, you can push things, but most things will catch fire before they ever move.”
This time she didn’t have to think hard about the fire at all. She touched the wyvern soul and called for the fire, and it wreathed her hands. Once more Wylan focused on the boulder with the intent in her mind. The fire was sluggish in coming, like it knew she wanted to push the boulder away, and so it required more strength than merely kindling cloth.
When Wylan was certain she’d let the fire build enough, she cut off the flow of energy.
The fire flared, converged between her hands, and sped toward the boulder. It smashed into the rock with enough force to tumble it a few feet away. It rolled to a stop, charred and blackened from the dragon fire.
“What?!” Wylan shrieked. “How?” She laughed then, a smile spreading across her face. It was nearly impossible for her to believe that she had actually done that, controlled her power, used the fire of the wyvern soul. She was more tired than she thought was possible. It truly felt as if she’d pushed the rock physically, and that exertion drained her. Still, she was too overjoyed to let the tiredness overcome her.
“Yea, that was all you,” Millie said. Her smile widened and it was one of the prettiest smiles she’d ever seen.
“Why is it so easy to use the magic, but not merge with the soul and shift?”
“You call that easy?” Josef laughed. “You threw a freaking rock! You have to feel tired after that.”
“Well, yea,” Wylan said. “But I mean why is it so easy to call the power?”
“Because the wyvern knows you are going to use the fire. It’s different using a power you share and using the wyvern’s form as a weapon. They wyvern understands its fire is a weapon, but it doesn’t like being thought of as an object to its human half. When you fully understand what the wyvern wants, then it will be there any time you need help.”
“Any time?” Wylan asked.
Millie nodded. “Any time, unless you’re doing something it doesn’t agree with. We haven’t run into that issue much.”
“Can I do it again?” Wylan asked, eyes wide with shock. She pushed away the tiredness and focused again.
“Go for it!” Millie gestured toward the rock. “Try more power this time. See if you can push the rock over the next dune.”
“Don’t be surprised if you faint,” Josef said.
“Will it get easier, the energy play? Will I eventually be able to do these things without tiring?”
“Eventually,” Josef said. “It’s like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes and the less force you have to exert.”
The next dune wasn’t that far away, and it wasn’t that high. She felt another power from within her swell up, and her mind stirred awake. She didn’t need to explore to know that Lissandra was bolstering her, feeding her some of her power to strengthen her mind and limbs. The wyvern stayed with her for this small task, lending her strength where she had little.
“This will be a good lesson in control,” Millie said.
Wylan judged how much power she would need. She reached down to the soul, gathered the fire, felt it swirl up her body in a rush of near-blistering heat to gather around her hands. When the fire raged with what she thought would be enough power she let it loose in a series of fireballs.
The rock jettisoned over the next dune and as it spun Wylan could see that it was completely black from the force of her fire.
“It’s as easy as that?” Wylan asked.
“Easy as that.” Millie crossed her arms and appraised Wylan with joy in her eyes. “It feels amazing doesn’t it?”
“Yes!” Wylan laughed and stared at her hands, hardly believing the fire had come from her. She rubbed them together, expecting them to hurt or feel dry and cracked, but something had protected her from the blistering heat this time. She could only imagine it was the wyvern, as Josef said would happen.
:Thank you!: she said to the soul.
Lissandra seemed to purr and a rumble of acceptance shivered within her.
“But what I don’t understand is why it’s so easy,” Wylan said. “I thought magic would take a lot more to control.”
“You’re thinking of wizard magic, which does take a lot of training,” Millie told her. “Our magic is just another tool for us to use. It will tire you until you’re used to using it frequently, but it’s there for us to use.”
Wylan nodded. She figured that made sense. Still she was a little dismayed—even while she rejoiced in the ability to use her magic so well—that it wasn’t a little more esoteric.
“Do you want to rest?” Millie asked.
“Nope,” Wylan said. Lissandra was still offering her strength, and it was the most alive and awake she’d felt in days. “Am I going to work with the fire more?”
Millie chuckled. “We can do that later. For now, I think it would be best if we tried to get some distance in before we make camp.”
Wylan was too tired that night to learn anything about weapons use with Josef. After he’d hunted for her, and she ate her fill—once more, thanks to Lissandra’s love for fresh meat taking over, she didn’t have to think about eating—she lay back in the sand, and waited for dreams to find her.
Millie curled up to her left and Josef to her right. They had made a sandwich of her. The nights in the Dar Desert were cold, and she radiated a kind of heat from the wyvern soul that the others used to warm themselves. The first night it had seemed odd, but she felt how content the wyvern felt within her, almost as if it nested among family. Wylan soon got over any discomfort she had. That night, she hoped the nearness of friends would help ease her mind, but it didn’t.
Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2) Page 7