by Eric Vall
Also, I was a fucking dragon that had the power to steal magical abilities from the enemies I killed.
Of course he wanted me to take over the care of his city, but this wasn’t a decision I should make in a split second.
“I’m really honored by all of this,” I began as I glanced back at Ruslan, “but I need some more time to think about this.”
I’d gone from being Evan the EMT to Evan the dragon, and now I had the chance to be Lord Evan.
What would I be after that? King Evan?
Emperor Evan?
The Dragon Emperor?
I kind of liked the sound of that.
Chapter 4
I stayed in the River Moonstone House for a long time after Ruslan left, mostly just thinking.
Would being adopted by the fox Demi-Human mean I’d be giving up any hope of finding a way back home to Earth and Aunt Emma? Would this be trampling on the memory of those who raised me?
Throughout my childhood, I’d never had a father figure, but I turned out just fine without one. My mother and my aunt had done everything in their power to raise me, and they were the ones who’d taught me right from wrong and that kindness was never a weakness. The only way to truly be strong was to be as soft as water, and I’d lived my life according to that motto. But other than my only surviving family, I’d never had help from anyone else.
But I wasn’t alone in this world, just as I wasn’t entirely alone back on Earth.
This was a new world where I had awesome powers. I was a fucking dragon, for fuck’s sake. Adventure was everywhere around me, and I’d met beautiful women who fought by my side, and one of them was even a divine princess who was in love with me.
There was so much in this new world for me, but what would it cost? Would I never see Aunt Emma again? Was she in a police station, praying for any news of me and wondering what had happened to me?
I shook my head to clear my mind of all these thoughts and questions.
I couldn’t stay in this marble hall for long since Hatra wasn’t going to be rebuilt and flourish again overnight. We’d all have to work ourselves to the bone first. Not to mention, we’d have to prepare for the representative of the White Jade Sect who would be arriving to inspect both the city and Alyona’s welfare.
While there wasn’t a time frame for the representative’s arrival, the attack by the Green Glass Sect had proved we couldn’t keep pushing self defense training back. With a population of around two hundred now, not counting the hundreds of the Blue Tree Guild, we’d have to be able to stand up to whatever threat faced Hatra.
With that said, I needed to check up on the self defense training of the villagers, which had been long overdue.
If I remembered right, the training would be taking place outside of the infirmary in case anyone was injured while learning the defensive moves.
The walk from the River Moonstone House was a quick one, since I was able to avoid anyone in my path simply by jumping up on the rooftops and traveling across the city that way.
I couldn’t believe the sun was still high in the sky with everything that had happened today. Honestly, I thought I’d been inside of the River Moonstone House and my spiritual sea for days.
A shudder went down my spine as I remembered the toxic sensation of the tendrils. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Asher lived with that thing inside of him. For the short period of time I’d touched it, the miasma had made me feel like I was in a living hell and I was continuously dying. There was no point in living or fighting after touching that, and all I could do just to keep a semblance of sanity was to give in.
I came to a stop on the flat roof of the infirmary and looked down at the full square. There were at least fifty people down there in neat lines as they followed the movements of the Blue Tree Guild warriors, and what they were practicing looked similar to Shaolin Kung Fu with its almost hypnotic movements.
At the very front of the group was young Ilya, and I couldn’t help the fond smile that grew on my face as I watched him practice. Other children surrounded him, but he was clearly the youngest and the smallest in the group. Even so, his movements were the most fluid, and I remembered I’d promised him I would teach him how to be strong.
I wasn’t sure what I could teach him, though. I hadn’t been able to help Asher, and I’d almost fallen into the darkness myself. How could I help him if I couldn’t even help myself to begin with?
Ilya looked up at the moment and cast his brightest smile at me. Then he waved at me as he turned away from one of the warriors who was guiding him in the proper movements.
I waved back at the little Asura, and I felt one of the burdens in my heart lift.
A teenage fox Demi-Human with his crimson hair tied up in a high ponytail laughed at Ilya’s exuberance, and he pulled the boy to the side of the group. I watched as the two boys sat on the ground and closed their eyes. Meditation was my guess, and I sighed as I looked away from the group.
There was a small structure on the flat roof of the infirmary, just big enough for a tapestry to act as a door and to cover the staircase that led to the ground floor. I shifted the tapestry aside and walked down the steps to the infirmary. I came down to Alyona’s former living area, but all of her things had been moved out of there and into a proper room.
Her new living quarters were actually a small suite of rooms in the same building mine were, with a terrace that looked out over the rebuilding of the city. There was a bedroom, a curtained alcove in one of the walls that served as her bed, with two additional rooms off to the side. One served as a sitting room, and the other was where all of her books and maps were stashed. One large table had been placed in the center of the room that had been turned into her study, and in that room was where the orb of miasma was kept.
It wasn’t proper enough for a princess, but it was definitely better than having her live and sleep in an infirmary.
Toward the other end of Alyona’s old bedroom was where Julia sat with the snake Demi-Human. The Elder had the girl wrapped up in blankets with a pile of books and unmarked pages on the table next to them.
“How’s she doing?” I asked as I walked over to the two women and leaned against the wall.
“Her body was healed, but her mind is in shreds.” Julia rubbed her eyes and sighed deeply. “If those mages hadn’t torn up her mind as they did, I would have tried to wake her, but I don’t dare try anything. Not now, at least. It’s too early for me to have gained her trust.”
There was a book open in Julia’s lap, and I peered at it. I still couldn’t read the language of this world, but I could see there were a variety of herbs and plants sketched out on the pages. Some of them looked familiar to me, things like mint and lavender.
“What now?” I asked with a frown. “Do we just wait for her to sleep forever?”
I thought this was similar to when Alyona had fallen into deviation. This was another situation where my healing powers wouldn’t help no matter how much I wanted them to. What I needed was knowledge of how to heal fractured minds and damaged spiritual seas, but I was a paramedic and not a psychologist.
“No, of course not.” Julia shook her head as she set the book carefully on the table next to her. “I sent Afra to bring as much dried lavender from the storerooms as she can.”
“Dried lavender?” I echoed and wondered if she was going to make some sort of herbal tea. “Why?”
“Lavender has several properties, including healing.” The Elder tapped the sketch of the lavender plant on the book she’d set down on the table. “She’ll have daily hot baths with desert salt and dried lavender leaves. The salt will strive to purify her body and mind from any darkness, and it’ll draw out the pain from her mental wounds. As for the lavender, it’ll serve for a variety of purposes. From calming her to encouraging her spiritual sea to grow peaceful, and for her heart to be full of love.”
“It’ll really do all that?” I moved off the wall and leaned down to look closer at the book. “I t
hought you just used lavender for tea and things like that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them being used for healing.”
“Do herbs not work like that in your own world?” Julia asked, and curiosity and the thirst for knowledge sparkled in her pale blue eyes.
“No, not that I really know of,” I replied with a shake of my head. “I mean, my aunt would always be talking about the metaphysical properties of everything, but there was nothing ever proven by science.”
I chuckled fondly as I remembered how every morning there was a teapot in the kitchen, ready for a different tea Aunt Emma had brought back from an adventure or grown in her small garden. I hoped I’d absorbed enough of that herb lore growing up with her since it seemed to be true in this world.
“Well, herbs have a wide variety of healing capabilities here,” Julia said as she closed the book with a soft smile. “You should talk to Moskal or Maksim, they’ll be able to tell you more about them. That is their forte after all, and my brother would enjoy teaching you what he knows.”
“I guess I’ll have to put that on my to do list,” I said with a nod. I hadn’t thought about that, but the two men were both herbalists, and they would be able to help me learn about the medicine of this world. “Probably needs to happen sooner rather than later.”
Julia hummed lightly as she glanced at the snake girl in the bed next to us. Then she slid her hand into her robes and pulled out her fan to tap it against her knee.
It was a nervous tic, I realized. Having the fan in her hands reassured the Elder, and I wondered if it came from the hundreds of years she’d been alive. She’d surely seen terrible things, being the oldest of the three Elders.
“Is it safe to say Ruslan spoke to you?” Julia suddenly asked as she glanced up at me and played with the fan in her hands.
“About the adoption?” I clarified. “Yeah, he did.”
“I see you didn’t give him an immediate answer.” The Elder snapped the fan open with a smooth movement of her wrist and began to gently fan herself.
“How do you figure that?” I frowned at her words and wondered how long it had been since that conversation with Ruslan. “Did he tell you?”
“Ruslan would have been ecstatic and yelled it to the heavens,” Julia laughed lightly behind her fan, and the laughter made her seem younger. “The dear wears his heart on his sleeve.”
“What do you think about it?” I asked, and I didn’t break eye contact with the Elder. “Ruslan adopting me, I mean.”
“I think you would make a fine heir.” Julia’s eyes lost their amusing light, and she became solemn as she spoke. “You’re brave, and you have a strong moral compass. You wouldn’t lead Hatra to doom and, perhaps, things would have been different if you were here a thousand years ago. Perhaps Hatra would never have fallen. Perhaps instead of Ruslan adopting you as his son, you would have become his older brother.”
The Elder, the Keeper of Knowledge of the city of Hatra, was so sure in her words that there wasn’t even a single drop of doubt in her. She sat ramrod straight as she stared at me with resolute eyes.
“Thank you for your thoughts,” I said with a grateful nod.
“So you will take him up on the offer?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“I am still thinking about it,” I murmured as I ran my hand through my hair. “But you’re busy here. So, I’ll go draw up some plans for rebuilding the city.”
I grabbed a pot of ink, a brush, and a pile of blank pages from the desk before I turned to the stairs. A few moments later I was out of the infirmary, and I used my stone powers to form a table from the stone of the roof. A bench followed, and then I sat down to sketch. I didn’t have any plans or ideas of what I wanted to sketch out, I simply just started.
The whole world around me disappeared, and all I could focus on was each brush stroke as it slid across the pages in front of me.
As time passed, I realized it was the city from my vision that I was sketching out, Hatra rebuilt and more glorious than ever before. A Hatra that would be the most beautiful city I could craft with my hands, and it would never fall to anyone. That was the only thing I was sure of, that I would do whatever it took to protect the city I called my own.
The scales on my arms shifted as I sense a presence of sheer purity make its way up the stairs, and I knew it was Alyona, but I didn’t look up.
“I heard what happened earlier today after you left the meeting with the Blue Tree Guild,” Alyona said as she sat down next to me at the stone table.
“What part?” I set down the ink brush. “The torture or what happened later?”
“Both,” Alyona spoke softly as she placed her hand over mine. “Laika came to speak with me.”
“Why didn’t she come talk to me?”
“Because she was ashamed from what her grandfather had commanded her guild members to do.” There was no judgement in Alyona’s sweet voice as she calmly continued. “She felt you would judge her because she’d been unable to retrieve any information from the prisoners and that the method used had angered you.”
“What?” I looked at Alyona with confusion in my eyes. “I wouldn’t say I was angry, exactly. Even so, Laika wasn’t the one who made the decision to rip apart the girl’s mind, but she made the decision to stop it so we could do things my way.”
“She doesn’t want you to judge her guild, either,” Alyona hummed gently as she tilted her head and peeked at me. “Will you judge the Blue Tree Guild for acting as they have always done?”
“Alyona, I won’t judge them for that.” I pulled my hand away from the princess and buried my face in my hands. “In my old world, there are laws against torture, but people have found many ways to work through the loopholes. For me, I never thought about torture because I was working and studying to save people. Killing and torturing was never in my job description. What happened in that brig was beyond any moral reason for the old me, it was sheer cruelty. But I’m not the same person I was when I came to Inati. I understand now we need the information in the prisoners’ minds, but whatever information they would give us through torture would be tainted by their fear of pain, so I didn’t think it was a useful practice.”
“You are starting to understand,” she said as she smiled at me.
“Oh?” I chuckled.
Alyona placed a gentle hand on my back and leaned on my shoulder. “This is a world where power is what rules. Every day, every moment of existence in the world of Inati, is governed by who is the strongest and who is the weakest. A spider may eat an ant, and then the spider will be eaten by a frog. And then that frog will be eaten by a hawk, and so it will continue as a vicious but necessary cycle. Kindness and mercy is often met with betrayal and a dagger in your back.”
“You don’t believe that, not fully.” I pulled my face from my hands and stared at Alyona. “You risked everything for people you don’t even know. You’re the gentlest and kindest soul I’ve ever met. If those prisoners had been under your command, you wouldn’t have done that. You would have found a different way to get the information you needed.”
I knew Alyona wouldn’t have done that, she never would have forced her way into someone’s mind as they were bleeding from their mouth and nose. Alyona would have taken someone’s place if they were being tortured, she would never be able to torture anyone because her heart and soul were softer than water.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Alyona said as she pulled her hand from my back and let it fall in her lap. “All that matters is if I have the power to stand up after the dagger has been plunged into my back, and if I can continue protecting that which is most important to me no matter how dirty my hands will become. That is how you have to live in this world, you suffer and you fight for what you believe is right. So do that, Evan, stand up and help me change this world into a better one.”
“Of course I’ll change this world,” I said with a frown. “I’ll protect you, and everything you treasure. There are more Hatras throughout thi
s world, more cities and people who cower underneath the threat of the demons and miasma. I won’t let them live like that, wondering if any day now they’ll fall to the threat of the demons. But to do that, I need more power. Just like you said. I need more power than I have in my hands right now. I need the power to stand against an entire world.”
Even as I spoke, I could almost hear my mother and Aunt Emma cheer me on. They had always told me one person could change the world and that I could be that person.
But they weren’t here.
“If I give you power, it will be meaningless.” Alyona placed her hands on my cheeks and forced me to look in her gemstone eyes. “Your critics will laugh in your face and sneer behind your back. They will say you are hiding behind my skirts when you would never need to. Evan, I don’t think you understand just how much power you have. You’re right when you say you heal people, you have healed the city of Hatra, and its scars have begun to mend and fade away. You brought an army to this city and routed another one, you have bled and sweated just for the sake of protecting this city. In less than a month, Hatra has gone from a forgotten ruin to a city that will once again thrive and become a jewel in this desert. All because of you, my dragon.”
There was unshakeable power in Alyona’s words, and I wondered where she gathered this complete and absolute trust in my ability to change this world.
“It’s still only one city,” I half argued. “I’ve been able to do so much for Hatra because they wanted the help, they were open and welcoming to me. I won’t get the same welcome elsewhere once people find out I’m a dragon.”
“Then become something else as well,” Alyona whispered, and her gemstone eyes glowed as stars danced inside of her amethyst irises. “Allow yourself to become something greater, greater than you’ve ever dreamed of.”
“What?” I asked, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Become heir to the House of Hatra.” Alyona’s voice echoed in my ears as she pleaded quietly with me.