The Cursed Dragon

by Rachal M. Roberts

  Then suddenly there was a wild pain of a thousand needles pricked inside her muscles as they crossed the threshold into severe dehydration. The pain was so intense it cut through her anger, she knew she had to stop or die. With her heart pounding hard to pump her thickened blood, Kalara hurled her frozen masterpiece at the source of her pain.... Ravanan.

  Unimpressed by her careless use of magic, Ravanan easily caught the ice ball and set it down gently to avoid damaging the precious robe inside of it. He hadn’t stopped her or dodged the frigid projectile. Just as before, he was protected with his bio-anti-freeze – it was a talent he had developed long ago from being her mate.

  Kalara was now seething mad. She was fed up with Ravanan. How dare he casually catch her ice ball with his hands like it was a damn game!

  Vile hatred was in her eyes “I don’t want to have anything to do with you!”

  Kalara marched her naked self over to one of her display cases which contained a sleek black outfit that would hug the body and not get in the way of a sword fight. She looked for a way to open it.

  Ravanan watched Kalara gliding her hands over the case, unsuccessfully looking for a latch. He said flatly “The case doesn’t have a door.”

  She glared at him for his know-it-all advice, then being sure to accentuate each word she hatefully replied “I... don’t... need... one.”

  Ignoring the tingling in her arm, Kalara made a fist and thrust it through the chilled glass, shattering it. She was dizzy.

  With her weight against the case, she closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning and donned the black suit. She was full of rage, needed to get out of that room, away from him, and she needed a drink of water, desperately.

  On her way out of the chamber she looked over at him and cruelly said “Maybe you should have just killed me in that mall.” Then she entered the pitch black tunnel.

  Chapter 10

  Driven by her severe thirst, Kalara wandered farther into the dark crevice, knowing that soon she would be in the main lair and could get a drink in the seer pool. Even with all the twists and turns in the darkness she found navigating a whole lot easier without that black robe catching on everything. That is not to say she didn’t scrap herself on the jagged corners of rocks. She had just hit her shin on a rock and could feel it already bruising and swelling against her tight pants leg as she stumbled over another.

  Progress was slow in the total darkness but Kalara kept her hands on the walls to keep going in the right direction and avoid disorientation. Her head was pounding with dehydration and the path was going up and down, turning narrowly, but she kept climbing and would find her own way out just as Ravanan was making her find her own way back to her past.

  Kalara’s mind was on one thing and it wasn’t the dark tunnel she was in. Ravanan’s rejection of her after the incredible night they had shared was really bothering her. She was having a hard time believing he felt that way about her. He sure didn’t seem upset when he was on top of her - or holding her all night long! How could he be so cruel? His words stabbed at her heart – ‘you make love like a human’. What the hell? He knew all along about her amnesia – what did he expect from her? It wasn’t like she was keeping it from him. How could she not act like a human?

  It saddened Kalara to know he wouldn’t touch her again. Her unrequited love caused big tears to well up in her throat - it hurt to hold them back but she didn’t want to cry over him, she couldn’t cry anyway because she was bone dry. Her throat felt like it was bulging and her tongue was swelling. Her dry mouth reminded Kalara of wasting her body’s water just to hit him. All that effort and he caught her ice ball like it was nothing!

  The chilly subterranean air did little to cool her rage. Why wasn’t Ravanan more willing to help her? She wanted the same thing he wanted, only she wanted it right this minute and he seemed to not be rushed at all – as if time had no hold on him. His cautiousness and attitude only made her that much more angry.

  Hitting yet another rock with her forehead, she uttered words of wrath and the dry tears broke free of her control when her headache began pounding even more. It worried Kalara that though she was crying there were very few tears to show for it; it had to be because of the dehydration. She rubbed her itching face where a salty tear had escaped from her eye and continued on, but her other hand slipped when she leaned on it to climb onto a rocky ledge. She fell to the dirty cavern floor, banging up her knees.

  She sat there, not caring anymore, resting. She was mad at everything, the dehydration was one thing, but to be rejected, which in turn was because of the main problem – she didn’t know who she was. She was mad at whoever was responsible for it, if anybody was. Maybe her amnesia was an accident. She wasn’t ready to blindly blame Annette for doing this to her. No, it was something that just happened. She must accept that and so should Ravanan.

  The fact that she desired him from the moment she saw him spoke volumes. She felt like she was his mate. Last night was the first time she had been with a man. Kalara caught herself – dragon - that she could remember. He should want to help her and do all he can to get her memories back.

  Kalara had to admit that Ravanan was right – she was uncomfortable next to a dragon whose mouth she could crawl into. She remembered that dream where he tore through his human chest and she shivered with fright from thinking about it. No one could understand what she was going through. Her total memory loss was an accident and a disease; a terrible disease without a cure and even her rescuers didn’t want to help her.

  She could only rely on herself so she forced herself, on her tingling arms and legs, to get up again. She kept feeling the walls to navigate through the complete darkness. On the way down to the wardrobe chamber she didn’t recall seeing any other paths, there was only one way. She had to be going right she told herself.

  Bam! She hit her head hard against a low ceiling, she felt blood trickle down over her right eyebrow. She paused a long moment to collect herself after that. She didn’t remember the passageway being this long. She needed light, if only she could cast spells. Maybe if she calmed down and relaxed then she could cast a spell of light. Maybe that was the key to spell casting, she had to be relaxed to feel it flow from her just like Ravanan had said.

  She hated it that Ravanan was always right, it got under her skin. He was so perfect, so good at everything he did, so good-looking - and he didn’t want her. Her anger, coupled with dehydration, was making her heart work hard and fast, keeping the newest gash on her head open and draining blood. There was nothing she could do about the wound, she was forced to accept it and actually started to like it because it gave her something else to focus on other than him.

  Enveloped in darkness, blood dripping, Kalara carefully lowered herself to the ground. Blood was running into her eyes, she wiped it out, getting her fingers in it. Then she delicately felt the severity of the gash, not caring that blood was all over her hands and fingernails. The sharp rock had snagged her skin, she tried to reposition the jagged flap of skin over the wound. It didn’t cover it completely. She patted the skin down, winced at the pain, and more blood oozed out. Kalara enjoyed feeling the hot blood on her hands, it signaled to her she was still alive. She wiped her hands on her neck and chest to warm her skin and then relaxed her head against the cold cave wall. She just needed to wait a bit for the gash to stop bleeding then she could continue on to get a drink of water. It couldn’t be that much further.

  She sat there quietly in the pitch black passageway. There was solid rock all around her, Kalara felt small next to the cool walls, she was so useless and ineffectual, especially against a mountain. Even her hot blood that was now dripping onto the rock didn’t warm it a fraction of a degree.

  She needed to keep all the blood she could – it had water in it. Kalara felt with her fingers and located the cold bloody spot on the rock wall, then collected as much of the dripped blood as she could and sucked it off her fingers. Aside from the twangy iron taste her tongue danced in the w
etness of the cool blood, but there was nowhere near enough to quench her thirst.

  Kalara wiped the wet rock again, trying to get more of her spilled blood, wanting to get it all back. Then Kalara resorted to licking the dusty and slightly muddy rock. It was her blood and it was all she owned. She had nothing, not even the clothes she was wearing for they belonged to Ravanan’s mate, the Mighty Amethyst, not her. The bloodied Kalara sitting in that rock crevice owned nothing and the darkness around her did nothing for her self-worth, she was rough, ruined, and lost.

  As angry as she already was, Kalara got angry with herself for feeling like that. She refused to wallow in self-pity any longer and found something else to occupy her heart, the rigid, cold, uncaring feeling of rock. In the darkness of that mountain the rock never changed, it couldn’t be hurt, it had nothing to lose, couldn’t be affected, it simply was there. Just as she was. In the quiet dark Kalara stopped thinking and simply listened. There was nothing to be scared of, no animals and no people. The cool air hung about her. She rested her head against the wall, the rock didn’t move, didn’t breathe, it was just rock. She reached out and ran her hand along the wall. The mountain didn’t care that she was touching it. Kalara made a fist, hit the ground hard.... the rock didn’t care and neither did the darkness. Kalara waved her hand in front of her face, not seeing it.... only the briefly passing body heat gave away the action.

  Kalara wasn’t just in the dark anymore – she was becoming part of it. Perhaps it was delirium brought on by her dehydrated state, but her thoughts were clear as a bell to her and in that moment a seed of identity was born. The black cavern air wasn’t just touching her skin, it was inside her, filling her with its cold nothing as she breathed it in. Darkness and cold, the void in the rock, all of it was the definition of nothing. She had nothing, was nothing, and any empathy she may have had just took on the feeling of nothing.

  In the stillness of the cool dark air she felt every bump and scrap that the cave had given her. Her little jaunt back to the main lair had changed from a short hike to a troubling ordeal and then to an oppressive journey. She knew she couldn’t stop there, her mouth had never felt so dry. Water. Beautiful water. Surely she didn’t have much further to go. She was going to have to fight, continue on. She wished Ravanan would have followed her and cast starlight on her, but no, she would have to do it alone. She didn’t have him. Maybe this is what he wanted, for her to leave him and get hopelessly lost so he wouldn’t have to deal with her, just like Annette who sent her away to Jenniffer’s apartment. Kalara didn’t appreciate it, she was growing tired of being cast aside. Ravanan wouldn’t get off that easy. He brought her to Black Blade and he would have to suffer the consequences of doing so. She would make him listen, make him help, and if he didn’t, then she would make him give her the killing blow. He couldn’t get out of facing her or let her die in a dark fracture of rock from dehydration.

  Kalara stood up again and slowed her pace to that of a snail, feeling the ceiling and the walls; using her toes to feel the path beneath her. With nothing to see, she tried to attune herself to the acoustics of the cave. It became a game to her, one that she wasn’t very good at. She even managed a smile at her opponent, but the cave was a relentless foe and struck her left temple with a hard stalactite.

  The passageway would have spun for her if she could have seen it. She reeled from the pain, stumbling. Was she seeing stars? Maybe it was sunlight. Maybe they were moving comets, or maybe the stars were dancing to a well-choreographed ringing gong in her left ear.

  It wasn’t the hardest of hits but it was at a delicate spot, it made her breathing speed up faster than it already was. Kalara sat down again, ready to give up. There was no way she was getting out of there. She wanted to rest but knew better than to take a nap; that would destroy her sense of time. At the moment, she knew she had to be close to the end of the corridor. It hadn’t taken her that long to travel through the tunnel with Ravanan. How much further was it? She hadn’t been in there that long had she? But just as tossing and turning in the middle of the night warped time, so did the utter darkness and Kalara lost all track of it. If she fell asleep, it would not be good but the temptation to sleep was heavy on her. Her left temple was throbbing with pain and her left ear was ringing. She had a feeling her vision was blacked out too but there was no way of knowing.

  Kalara told herself she would rest but not sleep. She concentrated on the heartbeat she plainly felt in her left temple, her whole head was pulsating in rhythm with her temple. She wouldn’t sleep but had to lay down as the strain from having to remember which way was forward was tiring her. Kalara laid down in the narrow corridor that was barely wide enough for her body, she made sure to have her head pointing in the direction she needed to go and her feet toward the way she had come from; that way, just in case she nodded off, when she woke she’d be headed in the right direction.

  The cold, hard bed she had made reinforced the fact that tons of cold, uncaring rock surrounded her. She just needed some rest. She wouldn’t sleep, she would make herself focus on the pain to stay awake. The pain reminded her of when Ravanan had lifted the glittering mist and her body was attacked. At least now her bones weren’t broken and she could move everything. Kalara reached up to feel the gash above her right eye, it hurt when she touched it, it was swollen. The wound was crusty, that was good -she could breathe a little easier now, although she strangely missed having her fresh hot blood to comfort her.

  Then her mind said “What? Wait a minute, you don’t want to feel your own hot blood.”

  Kalara was thankful for the conversation, she answered back in agreement. “You’re right, feeling your own hot blood is bad, very bad.”

  “Yes, bad.” Her mind replied and then showed her pictures of her multi-hued guts spilling out of her stomach; and it put the noxious smell of her guts in her nose then said “That was bad. You are nowhere near that bad off right now. You’ll be fine, just some cuts and bruises – nothing a little sleep won’t cure.”

  “NO” Kalara cried out, “I can’t go to sleep, I need to go to water.”

  Her mind sang sweetly to her “In sleep you can dream of water.” That was the last thing Kalara heard as she drifted off.

  The deep sleep ended, Kalara opened her eyes. She was blind! Her vision was black, her body ached laying on the cold hard floor – why was she on the floor? She heard absolutely nothing. Normally Seven the cat was getting into something loud and breakable or else his hooks-for-claws were getting caught in the carpet loops – but not this time, what was he up to? It was too quiet. Was it time for Jenniffer to come home? She blinked her eyes and still couldn’t see.

  A few heartbeats of panic later, she remembered where she was. How long had she been asleep? She couldn’t swallow, there was no spit in her mouth, just some dirt. Her hands felt dirty, her face and chest also. She had crusty eyes. Her body was stiff with pain, it took her a while to stretch and work the kinks out. Did her hair have mud or blood in it? She was thirsty, so very thirsty, her tongue was swollen. She laid her head back down in quiet thought.

  The truth was she didn’t know who she was and no one cared about it but her.... and that was alright. She would help herself, her whining was over. Her foolish lust of Ravanan’s hard body was not helping her either. At least she was alive, hearing her raspy breath attested to that. But no, she was more than ‘just alive’, she knew where she was and how she got there which was a good way to be. She knew magic was real, it was the only way she could be where she was instead of in Jenn’s apartment. Even if she couldn’t do what other dragons could, she could do more than a human, she could detect auras at least.

  She craved water. Fighting the cave to find water would mean her death. Even though she felt a new strength in the darkness and wasn’t scared of being there, she still needed light to get out and get to water. Wanting light more than water, she spoke out as best she could to make an audible voice and cast “STARLIGHT” nothing happened. She went through her t
houghts again. Ravanan seemed to always know where he wanted the light to go, she hadn’t told her blood what to light up. She would have to be very specific about what she wanted. She wanted light more than anything, she wanted herself to be lit up so she could walk, it had to last a while until she got out of the cave. Again she cast “STARLIGHT” and she blinded herself with light that was glowing all around her. “OW!” she yelled and blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light.

  Kalara tried to get up, but she was light-headed and dizzy. She would have to wait for her body to recover from its exertion at having cast a new spell for the first time, but she was so dehydrated she couldn’t wait long. Her body was dried out, she pinched the back of her hand and the skin stayed mounded up. Kalara knew she was in a bad way, but having light now made all the difference, she’d be able to go straight to the seer pool and get water.

  Finally Kalara stood up with her body glowing. Her head was going to explode, she had to shut her eyes and lean against the cave wall for a moment until the feeling passed. Her balance shifted and she toppled, she couldn’t maintain it and crumpled back down. But at least she was still glowing.

  She was famished too, there was a pit in her stomach, Kalara didn’t know if it was because she had cast a spell or because she had been knocked out for no telling how long. Giving her heart time to pump thick blood to her head, she got on her knees and crawled towards the main lair, not wanting to delay any longer. She kept crawling, lighting the pathway before her, afraid that standing up would pull the trigger on her head.

  Kalara crawled as quick as she dared. She had done it, cast a spell... and she would get out of the crevice. Casting a spell was monumental, it signified many things and was the start of something new for her. She wasn’t a human. She wasn’t helpless and could no longer be held captive. She could work out her own way to find her memories. She would get strong again. The tunnel was well lit by her spell and she could see beautiful formations that adorned the walls. It wasn’t long before her sensitive nose picked up the savory aroma of pizza. Was she dreaming? No, she was not. It was pizza, up ahead. She followed her nose and kept moving forward over the slopes and turns until she exited back into the wardrobe chamber. There was the weapons arsenal, she stopped where she was, rolled over onto her back and cried without tears. All that work and she was back where she’d started. She heaved with loud, dry sobs.