The Cursed Dragon

by Rachal M. Roberts

  He listened and turned back, glad for the break and sat down to rest.

  The hallway was big. The pillars were big. There was a lot of black floor to cross, there had to be a trap somewhere. Annette studied the gray walls, they were not black and were weeping steady drips of water which was a little odd considering the lack of water in the cave until this room, and also the fact that there were no water stains or cave formations where the water landed on the ground, it was as if water spigots had turned on when they entered and like a giant fountain in some grand hotel, the water magically vanished to come out again on top.

  The flaming sconces were high up, thirty feet or more, carved from black rock and hung on the gray walls with what looked to be decorative little jagged lightning bolts.

  Annette remembered that horrible day of being hunted and watched, that is how she felt now. The level of fear she was feeling was great, the cat hearts were not working. And she knew..... Kalara must be on the other side of the far wall.

  She fingered her braided ring of Kalara’s hair. It would be her protection although she had never had the chance to test her work. Annette had imbued the little ring with the blessings of the Great Spirit to counter Kalara – should she attack again. Annette didn’t know what to expect, but if Kalara tried anything she’d be safe. Making that ring had been one of the first things Annette did after taking Kalara home.

  With trembling hands, Annette made a little ceremony to Mother Earth. She was nearly out of tobacco but this was important, she smoked half a pipe only. On the floor in front of her she dealt her peacock feathers, chanting, then spoke softly, “Oh Great Spirit, show me the trap that awaits.” the feathers remained feathers and no iridescent pool formed.

  The peacock pool’s failure meant something was going on. Annette looked over at Jeremy, and he was looking at her for answers, but she had none to give.

  She had an idea and took out the piece of tent that was their doorway along with a small dream catcher she had packed for when she met up with Kalara just in case things didn’t work out. She handed the tent to Jeremy.

  “Take this, let’s be fast.” she looked around at the sconces, “You need to go first and place it like you saw me do and then pull the little door open. I’ll come then and make sure to grab the real door when it appears. Don’t forget to grab the little tent door as we leave.”

  Jeremy took off at a brisk pace, tent doorway in hand.

  Annette couldn’t be sure in the blue mist but Jeremy’s body seemed to somehow glow.

  Now she was sure he was glowing brighter each time his foot landed on the black floor. Right when she was going to tell him to come back, Jeremy started to say “The floor, it’s gotten....”

  Jets of water and lightning flew to Jeremy, becoming charged ice that clung to his clothes.

  “colder.” he forced out through gritted teeth. It was his last word before the ice jetting from the wall spigots covered him completely.

  Annette was wide-eyed. She took a deep, horrified breath before tucking her little dream catcher in her pocket in relief that it hadn’t been her.

  The seer pool water was still splashing around wildly, Kalara had no idea what it meant. What she did know was that merely running to the seer pool had tipped her hunger over the edge.

  Kalara constantly wore Healer now to combat her hunger and exertion, but the ribbon robe could not make food from nothing. She dreaded going outside again but walked over to the exit. Some things just had to be done even if she didn’t want to do them, it didn’t help putting it off because it only made her weaker and that much closer to death. She needed food.

  If only Annette’s curse didn’t wound her so badly.....

  Kalara found herself thinking more and more of Annette lately, everything was that woman’s fault. There was nothing else to do but think, there was no food, she couldn’t practice her magic, hating Annette was all there was. Kalara angrily spit on the wall and cast “REVEAL”.

  The barren rock floor was not comfortable to sit on but Annette was tired of standing. She was stopped right there and had no idea how to proceed. The sound of water dripping off of Jeremy’s ice resonated throughout the chamber.

  Then Annette felt a cold wave of air move around her and the water seized up again. There in the quiet room something had changed and she hadn’t done anything to provoke it. The blue mist still hung silently in the air, not frozen. Annette turned her head to look down the grand hallway. The drips of water had frozen to make little icicles all over the walls and ice sheets were on the ground. She trembled knowing something was happening that she didn’t cause.

  Annette peered across the grand hallway to notice the far wall was now gone and walking between the two giant black pillars was Kalara coming towards her. She stood up, teeth chattering.

  “Kalara!” she cried out, “I’ve been worried sick about you!”

  Kalara, dressed in a sultry blue ribbon robe, looked over at her with an angry stare that quickly turned to shock. “EVOKE SIPHON” she heard Kalara say. Before Annette could contemplate what that greeting meant a little black blade materialized in Kalara’s hand which she then threw at her.

  THUCK! The dark blade Siphon landed in Annette’s shoulder. “What the hell?!” she exclaimed looking at it then back to Kalara who was still walking.

  Annette pulled out the dagger and threw her dream catcher at Kalara.

  The dream catcher hit Kalara but it fell away pitifully without working its evil curse. They both watched it fall.

  Annette couldn’t believe what was happening. Why wasn’t any of her magic working?!? She felt a little faint but wielded Siphon up to use against Kalara.

  Despite the freezing air, that oddly warm spirit energy was growing in Kalara, just as it had in Manaus. Annette threateningly held the dagger a little higher, “That was a bad thing to do Kalara! I didn’t want it to be like this.” she warned.

  Kalara smirked. “EVOKE SIPHON”.

  Annette’s eyes grew wide when the blade vanished from her hand to reappear in Kalara’s.

  ‘How was that possible?’ Annette wondered, but not for long as the room started spinning and she dropped to the cold floor.

  Annette tried to calm her speeding heart. It was so cold. She was laying on the floor and heard Kalara’s footsteps come closer to her head.

  Her pulse began to slow and her body felt heavy with an odd feeling like she wasn’t getting enough blood.

  Beat..... beat...... beat..... beat..... like the ticking of a clock winding down. She had no strength left to fight and she felt oddly dry and very cold as she opened her eyes to see where Kalara was.

  Kalara startled her. She was right there, looking down at her. “Why are you here?” she calmly asked.

  “uhhhugg” Annette attempted to answer.

  “Can you not talk? That won’t help me. You see, I’ve been having these dreams lately.” Kalara sat down out of Annette’s reach. “I was hoping you could interpret them for me. In my dream I’m always hungry and have lost everything and then you show up – bringing me food. Now what do you think that means?” she asked with a wicked smile.

  Annette tried to answer again with a weaker “uhhhugg”. She could see Kalara and she could hear the bitch talking, but all she could think of was getting a hold of Kalara and killing her before her magic did any more damage. Why was it so cold?

  Beat..... beat..... beat..... beat..... it was getting slower. Annette worried she may be dying, trapped like a bug in a web, but it wasn’t possible, the blade had hit her shoulder, it wasn’t a mortal wound. She just felt so weak and Kalara looked stronger by the minute. There was nothing she could do, not even a cursing chant.

  The end of her life wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not this soon. How was it possible? Little Kalara was taking her blood somehow. What evil magic was in that blade? Without touching her, she was killing her. Each pump of her heart was tugging at her throat, the back of her neck, her chest, her legs and arms – all were begging
her to just give up.

  “Give up.” she heard Kalara say.

  Those last drowsy moments were quiet. Hot blood oozed from her knife wound, trickling down her shoulder and into her armpit, feeling wet, each spurt less forceful than the last, her powerful heart was draining her dry. Annette could feel her blood warming her skin while at the same time not sending continual warmth to her core. Where it should have been warm in her bones, now she felt icy-cold, chilled, and then even colder as her blood froze on her shirt.

  She suffered. Kalara demanded. She cried-or rather yielded dry sobs. Her body hurt. Kalara laughed. She cried harder. She had no choice but to submit, every heartbeat was going to Kalara. And because she cried, her blood was flowing away faster, draining her..... Annette hated it that she was helplessly giving Kalara her life. She hated her.

  She.... hated.... her.

  Annette could see her left arm from the way she had fallen, its veins now looked like deathly purple rivers. Little black lightning bolt patterns – zigzagged across the back of her hand.

  Beat..... beat....... beat......... beat........... her blood felt loose and watery. Her eyeballs hurt with too much pressure. The world around her grew dim. Annette wanted to scream, one last time to make a noise, somehow make an impact on the world around her, but it was no use, sleep was easier.

  Then Annette stopped looking through her opened eyes.

  Her soul was quiet as it lay there listening to how death sounded. All of her rich life blood, and now only drops remained. Moisture had left her. She was so dry. The vanishing, thickening blood was sticky on her shirt and skin, it was the only blood that Annette couldn’t give to Kalara’s vampiric thirst other than the blood that had run from her tear ducts and orifices.

  Annette’s soul knew it was over and was anxious to leave. The body was still performing its muscular work, using up that last bit of energy, her heart was still weakly pumping just as a snake’s heart will pump for an hour after its head has been cut off. It was a sad, quiet time while her heart pumped out the last drops of beautiful red blood, draining her veins completely.

  So cold. So thirsty. So dry. So hollow. Annette’s soul shivered uncontrollably, cold and afraid to become a timeless non-rock of the Earth, a helpless observer of time barely attached to the body. Annette hated to leave the beauty of the Earth and the fun of life, but then again she wanted to get as far away as she could from her cold, dry corpse.

  The pulse throbbed like a slow engine, ticking, heavy – slowly, ticking each second away like a century, counting out these most irritating moments of her life. She wanted to die, end the torture – every moment, they were dragging her down like weights when she wanted nothing more than to float away.

  Beat....... beat........... beat.

  Strangely, her soul both wanted the last drop to stay and also to go, she mourned it. Annette’s soul would forever know this moment as The Vanishing, when that last drop left.

  Then everything in her body went silent.

  Annette’s soul lifted and saw something forming around her in the blackness.

  The something became a room, it was colorful like the green and blue Earth. There were flowers and a gentle waterfall in the corner that flowed out to nourish an ancient tree living in the center of the room. The carpet was green grass, the ceiling was sky blue with golden sparkles for stars. It was beautiful, the opposite of chaos, it was everything that made sense in the world and she could stand on it, knowing.

  No sooner had the room formed when there came to be a spirit near the water, some would say a saint or angel, others would say an emotionless government employee who looks up your numbers on a table to find the value assigned to you, and yet a few others would call it a judge. Whatever it was, it looked at her for a time of counting.

  In an instant the spirit knocked on the wood of the tree to declare the decision and then a doorway opened off one of the walls. The spirit vanished. The Room of Deciding was disappearing behind Annette and she was being pushed to and through the door.

  The hallway remained dark as her soul went further into it. Nothing was behind her. Then in front of her she saw a spot so dark it looked like a black hole. The spot was so black that the tunnel she was in became noticeable.

  Annette had heard of the evil some called Hell, she’d never been sure about it until now when floating further in she began to hear faint moans and screams of torment, they were coming from the dark, far away but they revealed the chaos and sadness of the black hole. Just hearing the sounds of so many hurting and lonely souls horrified her, she wanted no part of it.

  But there was nothing she could do because her soul was being sent there. The Nothing behind her was growing larger and pushing her away. There was nowhere to go but forward.

  Terror filled Annette’s soul. She shouldn’t be going towards the negative energy of that black hole. Countless times she had been through smudging ceremonies, her soul was clean, purified, this wasn’t right. And it wasn’t fair, she shouldn’t have died there in that cave away from her tribe and land. They could have helped her soul find its way, and said the proper prayers to send her to her ancestors.

  The voices were louder now, the black hole was larger. Some were calling out “hello?” while others were whimpering, but none were joyful.

  Annette’s soul heard something then. Was it a voice or a wind of Mother Earth? She looked behind her at the Nothing that was pushing her but instead saw a faint light in the distance. There was hope, there was another way to go.

  YES! She’d always heard about this, the on-going argument if it was the way to Heaven or if it was the final trick of the brain as it died. There was eagerness that finally she would find out which way it was. After her whole life of waiting, it was finally happening. Her happy soul remembered the distant smell of burning sage and rejoiced.

  She turned and started moving towards the light. It wasn’t white light, but instead it had a faint black light quality which she’d never heard anyone describe before.

  Although she was making progress and the ultraviolet beacon grew larger while the sounds of screaming souls grew quieter, her phantom extremities began to tingle with ugly numb pain like the nerve endings were trying to reconnect after being cut off from oxygen-rich blood. The tingling was maddening, Annette’s soul tried to shake off the pain but it wasn’t helping. It was almost like her body was waking up.

  Not only was she tingling, but her soul felt weighted down with lead, making it harder to reach the light. The tunnel had been long before but with the added weight it was going to take forever to get through it. That did not matter though, she would advance for eternity just to avoid the black hole; she didn’t even want to look back at it. Annette continued to float on laboriously, but happily at the chance, nothing was going to stop her from moving away from the black hole.

  The path to the purple light seemed to stretch on forever with the pins and needles pain and added weight. Maybe her body was coming back to life. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat though. Annette’s soul wondered if she should be going this way, but decided she should when she remembered the sounds coming from the darkness. (Not that she could have turned back anyway because her soul was unknowingly being gently tugged and pushed.)

  She didn’t understand. Things weren’t right, that much she could feel, the light should be white, not purple, and she shouldn’t have a dead weight body caging her soul still. She thought maybe she wasn’t alone. Her soul spoke out “Mother Earth? Great Spirit? Where am I? Are You here?”

  There were no acoustics in the tunnel, her voice did not echo and fell flat in the air.

  Mother Earth did not answer.

  Annette’s soul was truly lost, the only thing she knew was that she didn’t want to go to the black hole, it terrified her.

  Maybe all of this was a dream. She was getting closer with each step, a few more and she would be out of the tunnel. Her body had to be waking up now because she was light-headed and the painful tingling was all over
her arms and legs. She was dreading those few remaining steps because the tingling was going to be severe. Up ahead she could make out shapes, lights, the tunnel was opening into a purple hallway with purple flames high on the walls above her.

  Then it hit her, she had died in a hallway, laying in front of Kalara. All of a sudden she didn’t want to go any further and turned around back toward the darkness.

  Annette’s soul stopped where it was. No, not darkness, she didn’t want to go there, anything but there. Even if the tingling grew worse the closer she got to the purple world, she would suffer it. She didn’t want to take even one step back towards that blackness. Was there no other choice?

  If she ventured out into the world of purple, what would be there? She paused and strained to hear sounds from where she stood just inside the tunnel. There was no sound. So Annette took another cautious step.

  Now she could see what was outside waiting for her. There was her cold body with sunken skin. It looked leathery like it had been tanned and preserved. It was laying where she had left it. It didn’t look inviting but rather used and shriveled, and much older than she was.

  Then her soul took another step and felt cold. Two more and she would be out. Another step.

  “AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Annette’s soul screamed at what she saw, even her body’s mouth opened and let out air. It was a dragon, a giant purple dragon looming over her dead body.

  The dragoness was now looking at her dead body with her head cocked to the side, she had noticed the air pass out from the lungs.

  This wasn’t Heaven, it was Earth and she was in Brazil. But why was there a dragon? Was this a dream? Dragons weren’t real, everyone knew that.

  In that instant, Annette’s soul wanted to hide inside the tunnel, but taking a step back would bring her closer to the darkness and she most definitely didn’t want that. And she couldn’t stay in that spot because the darkness could maybe suck her in.

  She wanted to cry. She didn’t want to move, but her body was wanting to. It wanted to walk around and make the nerve pain stop. She didn’t know what was going on, so Annette’s soul just went down to her knees and cried in dry sobs. She could hear her voice crying without tears and groaning, it strangely comforted her in this weirdest of times.