I could feel the magic burning its way into me like a dagger of ice puncturing my heart. The power flooded through my veins and drove straight to my brain, and it felt like a block of ice shattered my consciousness into a million pieces. A moment later, an explosion rocked the cavern, and I was thrown backward to crash to the hard floor.
But when I rose to my feet, I knew I would never be the same again.
Chapter Twelve
Raw power coursed in my veins, and it felt like I was on fire and freezing at the same time. The magic running through me was as intoxicating as the most potent drug on Earth, but with none of the mind-numbing effects. The opposite, actually, as I could feel every little gust of air running through the cave and the cold of the ice beneath my boots. I heard the voices of the Gray Hunters as if they stood next to me even though they were in a cavern three hundred yards away. Every sensation was magnified times a million as I felt the power within me. It was like a thundering waterfall compared to the tiniest trickle I’d siphoned from the fire goblin.
“This is amazing!” I gasped as I lifted my arms and flexed my muscles. My sleeve had been torn by a falling icicle, and my eyes went wide as I saw the tattoo on my left bicep. The color had gone from solid black to an icy white, and the tattoo seemed to move with a life of its own beneath my skin. I didn’t need to touch the tattoo to feel the magic humming through it.
I had a bigger problem to deal with first, so I whirled around and readied my axe for an attack against Frosdar. But as I scanned the surrounding cavern, I was surprised to find myself alone. There was no writhing, flailing dragon on the treasure heap before me. The cavern was empty and silent, save for the sound of the melting ice dripping off the head of my axe.
“And that’s how you kick a dragon’s ass, handsome! I am so proud of you! Amazing!”
I searched for the gemstone and found it lying next to the stone altar. As I picked it up, I noticed the altar had changed. It took me a few seconds to realize what was different. The inner light glowing within the altar had faded, and all that remained was stone as lifeless as the ice beneath my feet.
“What did I do?” I asked Nyvea.
“Each altar is the source of the dragon’s power,” she told me. “By destroying the gemstone, you severed Frosdar’s connection to the magical source. When you touched the gem you carved from Frosdar’s forehead to the altar, you closed the loop and absorbed all the power into yourself. Now, all the magic that was in Frosdar is now in you.”
“Whoa!” I breathed as I flexed my fingers again. “So, this unlocked my first magical power?”
“That’s right, hero,” Nyvea purred in my mind. “Doesn’t it feel magnificent?”
“Damn straight it does!” My triumphant laugh echoed off the walls of the huge cavern. “So, what’s the magical power? Can I make those little ice domes?”
“Ice shields,” she told me. “For now, you can only make them around you.”
“How?”
“Same way you used the fire goblin’s magic to warm you up. Just tap into the magic and let it do the work for you.”
It barely took me any effort to access the ocean of power running through me. Though I didn’t quite understand how it seemed the magic knew what to do. When I thought of making an ice shield around the head of the still-flaming fire axe in my hand, a thin layer of ice suddenly winked into existence, and I watched open-mouthed as the flames on the axe slowly turned the ice to melting water.
“Awesome!” I shouted and pumped the axe into the air. “Let’s see Riamod try to fuck with me now!”
Feeling triumphant, I turned toward the exit to rejoin the Gray Hunters. But as I started walking, I caught sight of a lumpy cloth-wrapped object at the base of Frosdar’s hoard. My forehead wrinkled as I squinted at it, but I couldn’t make out what it was, so I stepped closer to get a better look.
I gasped as I saw what looked to be a human. The cloth wrapping was a dress, little more than a thin shift made of gauzy lace fabric. The lumpy object was the soft, curving figure and pale skin of a woman lying unconscious on the ice.
“What the fuck?” The words left my mouth before I realized it. “Where the hell did she come from?” I hadn’t seen any women in the cavern with me before. Especially one like this.
The woman had long straight hair so platinum blonde it was nearly white. She had heavy-lidded, round eyes with sweeping blonde eyelashes that curled around her pale cheeks. Full red lips stood out against her alabaster skin, and her dainty nose and chin were like something I’d seen in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
She had the body of a supermodel, with long, lean limbs, toned shoulders, and legs that seemed to go on for miles. The flimsy dress offered little covering, and I felt blood rush to my face as I stared at all the visible creamy skin of her shoulders, stomach, and the curves of her hips and legs.
“Where’d she come from?” I whispered to Nyvea.
“She is Frosdar.”
“What?” That was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “What do you mean?”
“Who else could it be?” Nyvea asked. “I didn’t see any other sexy humans in here when you first walked in, and I tend to notice those things.”
I struggled to tear my eyes away from that very mortal, very well put-together body barely covered by her thin dress.
“So… uhhh... How did she get turned into a dragon?” I asked
“I... don’t know,” Nyvea said after a moment of hesitation.
I felt my eyebrows raise in surprise at discovering there was something the seemingly all-knowing amulet didn’t, in fact, know.
“I guess I’ll have to ask her when she wakes up.”
I finally lifted my gaze to her beautiful face, and for the first time I noticed the drop of blood leaking from a thin red line across her forehead.
“Did I do that?” I asked.
“Wound the dragon, wound the woman.”
“So, if I had killed Frosdar…”
“You would be looking at a corpse rather than the breathing, albeit unconscious, woman before you.”
I crouched beside her. She looked so small compared to the dragon she had been moments before, but her muscles were as well-defined as the rest of her. I guessed she’d be just a few inches shorter than me when she stood up.
“What do I do with her?” I asked Nyvea, still in a whisper. “Is there any chance she will turn back into a dragon?”
“No,” Nyvea replied. “Or at least, I don’t think so. You absorbed the magic that made her Frosdar the Hoary, so unless you give her the power, she is trapped in her human form.”
“Wait, I could turn her back into a dragon?” I asked
“Yes, if you wished. You are very powerful now that you’ve taken her magic.”
“How would I do that?” I sensed her about to protest. “Not that I’m planning to or anything, but if I wanted to, how would I give her the power to turn into a dragon?”
“It’s the gemstone,” Nyvea replied after a long moment, and I heard a sullen tone in her voice. “You must use it as the focal point to fuel the magic into her flesh.”
I stared down at the pale white stone in my hand. It wasn’t perfectly clear like a diamond and had a hint of cloudiness. Though the white light had faded, there was still a low vibration in my hands as if power remained in the stone.
“If she can get the gemstone, she might try to force you to return the power,” Nyvea told me.
“How would she even get to it? Is she still as strong as a dragon?” I asked as I put the stone away in my pack.
“You’d be better off killing her right here and now,” Nyvea told me. “She might be able to use a little of her magic. I’m not sure. Even without powers, a woman as beautiful as her is dangerous, and she will want to pay you back for changing her into a human.”
“I’m not going to kill an unconscious woman.” I stood up and backed away. “Even if she was just a dragon.”
“There’s no good enemy like a dead e
nemy,” Nyvea insisted. “You’ve defeated the dragon. Killing her is the final step in ensuring that the power is yours forever. Besides, she is your enemy, and she would have killed you without hesitation.”
“Maybe, but it seems a bit harsh, the whole ‘eye for an eye’ thing. Especially now that she’s not Frosdar.” I stared down at the unconscious woman. It seemed such a waste killing someone so utterly gorgeous even if she had been a dragon just a little while ago. Finding out she was now a human just added to my hesitation. I could kill dragons, but a woman? “Maybe I could find something else to do with her. Like lock her in prison or something?”
“Why not turn her into your sex slave?” Nyvea’s voice held a note of mockery, but a moment later changed to her sultry tone. “Wait. Actually, I quite like that idea. We could have all kinds of fun with her, you and I.”
She filled my head with those same images of the pale woman and me doing interesting things in bed. Some of the images featured Princess Selene, the blonde chambermaid, or all three at once.
“Yes. I’m warming up to this idea quite nicely,” Nyvea purred. “As I can see you are, too.”
“Enough, Nyvea!” I hissed and ground my teeth in an attempt to stop blood from rushing to my face and other rebellious parts of my anatomy. “I’m not going to turn her into a sex slave. That’s not how things are done on my Earth.”
“You’re no fun,” she said in a pouty voice. “I guess it’s back to killing her, then.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Listen, handsome.” The flirty tone had gone from Nyvea’s voice and was replaced by a hardness I’d never heard before. “You have taken all her power and then turned her into a human. What else can you do with her? She’ll just kill you when she gets the chance. You should finish the job.”
I raised the axe hesitantly over my head and let out a sigh. The idea of killing an unarmed and unconscious woman went against my every instinct. I’d trained for years to save lives, first as a medical student and then as a firefighter. But I had promised Barodan I’d kill the dragons. Just because the dragon turned into a woman, that shouldn’t change anything, should it?
“I can’t do it,” I growled and lowered the axe. “I can’t kill her, not like this.”
Just then, the woman gave a little moan, stirred, and opened her eyes. They were still the same icy blue, but normal human eyes instead of the reptilian orbs of Frosdar. She let out another moan and struggled upright. Horror twisted her face as she glanced down at her body, and she screamed as she ran her hands over her human chest, stomach, hips, and legs. Her icy blue eyes flashed up to meet mine, and a burning intensity blazed there.
“You!” she shouted. “What have you done to me? How did you--”
“Easy,” I said and held up my free hand in a calming gesture, “don’t do anyth—”
She launched herself at me, and her fingers bent into claws as she raked at my face. I dropped the axe and caught her hands as I backed away from her. She kicked, spat, and snarled at me, and her eyes were as cold and sharp as the stalactites overhead.
“You bastard!” she shrieked.
“Rethinking that decision not to kill her?” Nyvea sighed.
“Stop!” I shouted, but my words only made her madder, and she doubled her efforts to bring me down. Her knees flashed toward my groin, and I had to twist out of the way of her attack. I thrust my leg behind hers, twisted my hips, and brought her to the icy ground as gently as I dared. She struggled and tried to break free of my grip on her wrists, but I was much stronger than her now, and her body could only buck a bit beneath mine as she fought to throw me off her.
I acted without thinking and tapped into my newfound ice magic. I willed the shield to pop into existence, but not around my hand. Somehow, instinctively, I made it form around her right wrist.
But when I went to summon another shield for her other hand, I found the magic seemed to slip away from my grasp. I tried again, and still, the magic refused to respond to my call. Frustrated, I drew a dagger with my free hand.
It proved unnecessary. The woman had gone deathly still and silent. Her icy blue eyes were locked on me, and a calculating expression crossed her face.
“Are you done?” I asked as I waved the dagger in front of her face. “Or are you going to keep trying to kill me?”
She gave no response, just narrowed her eyes and fixed me with a hard glare.
“Good,” I said as I drew in a deep breath. For a moment, we lay there, neither of us moving. The woman was pinned beneath me, her right hand encased in a thin layer of ice. I held a dagger near her throat, but I had no desire to use it.
“Do it,” Nyvea purred. “One quick slash and your troubles are over.”
“Wait!” the woman said before I could respond to Nyvea. “Let me live, and I’ll serve you.”
“Serve…me?” Her words caught me totally by surprise since she had just attacked me. “How?”
“I say sex slave,” Nyvea whispered in a silky tone. “She obviously wants to be yours. How could she not? You are so amazing.”
“You have my magic, and my power,” the woman said. “I don’t know how you gained it, but I can see you don’t fully understand it. The energy pulses from inside of you like an angry sun.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know exactly how I gained your power.” I was surprised to find she had a pleasant voice when she wasn’t shouting at me. It had the precise and clear pronunciation I’d heard in the king’s palace in Whitespire.
“I can teach you,” she went on, and she fixed me with an unwavering stare. “I can teach you not only how to control the power, but how to use it properly.”
“You have me for that,” Nyvea insisted in my mind. “You can use her for…other things. I’ll watch. It will be fun.”
I was about to point out that Nyvea had just told me she thought I should kill the white-haired woman, but she continued.
“For example,” the dragon-woman said, “you don’t know that your body needs time to recover from using magic. Magic is not something you control, but it is a raging torrent, a force that only the gods themselves can contain. All you can do is access it, but your body rebels against any attempts to overuse it. Thus, once you tap into your power, you must give your flesh time to rest, lest you risk burning yourself out.”
It struck me as incredibly odd, receiving a lesson in magic from the woman, recently a dragon, who lay pinned beneath me. Yet the information she was giving me was interesting, so I didn’t interrupt her.
“You have taken my power for your own,” she said, and I saw a flash of anger in those icy blue eyes. “It gives you the ability to summon a shield of ice. But once you use it, you must rest six heartbeats before you can access it again.”
“Six heartbeats?” I asked and my brow furrowed. “Not six seconds?”
“Time is relative,” she said with a shake of her head, “but it is an outside force. The speed of your heart is the only constant our bodies know.”
“So, if my heart’s beating crazy fast I could have access to the power faster?”
“Correct,” the woman said. “I can see that my time will not be wasted teaching you. Perhaps, you will not need as much time to master the ability as I believed.”
There was a hint of disappointment in her words. Less time to learn the magical power meant less time for her to figure out how to escape.
“What do you think, Nyvea? I asked in my mind. Is she being sincere?”
“Not a chance,” Nyvea responded. “She’s just looking for a way out.”
“Let me live,” the woman went on, and her voice took on a hint of pleading, “and I’ll teach you everything I know about this magic.”
“Hey, you have me for that!” Nyvea whined.
“Two teachers can teach me twice as fast, right?” I thought to her.
“But she’ll betray you,” Nyvea protested. “The first chance she gets, she’ll stab you in the back or just run off.”
I knew f
rom the dragon woman’s calculating expression that Nyvea was absolutely right. This woman planned to bide her time until she could find a way to get away. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t prove useful, and I had more than enough leverage to keep her from betraying me.
“How do I know you won’t betray me, Frosdar?”
Her expression hardened, and she met my gaze in silence for long seconds. “My name is Arieste. The human’s called me Frosdar. I will not betray you.”
“Alright, Arieste, I’m going to get up off you now, but only if you swear that you’re done attacking me.”
“I already agreed.” She gave a sullen nod.
Nyvea made a little disappointed sound as I got up, but I had to admit I had definitely enjoyed pressing my body against the white-haired woman. I shrugged away the thought as I stood and helped her get up.
“I will let you live,” I told Arieste, “but only after you swear that you won’t try to attack me.”
Her icy blue eyes met mine, and I saw the calculating look again.
“And, if you try to run away, you’ll be in the middle of an icy wasteland, on foot, with no supplies, and wearing that.” I gestured at her thin dress.
She looked down, and for the first time seemed to notice just how much skin was visible through and around the gauzy fabric. Her cheeks flushed bright red, but she held her head high.
“Such dignity and strength even in the face of certain death,” Nyvea purred. “I think I might come to like her.”
“You just said you wanted me to kill her,” I replied to the woman in my amulet.
“I’m easily swayed, handsome. She is very pretty, and I want to see you fuck her, but I’m also worried she’ll betray you. Such a dangerous combination is alluring. Don’t you agree?”
“I’ll spare your life, and I’ll offer you a horse and safe passage under my protection back to the human kingdom of Whitespire,” I said to the woman who had once been the ice dragon.
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