Special Passage (The Coursodon Dimension Book 4)

by M. L. Ryan

  Morons, I thought, they haven’t gotten used to me after I’ve been flapping around them for hours? I soon realized their fixation turned out to be a good thing for the villagers—had the soldiers not been similarly distracted, they certainly would have slaughtered the men trying to defend their homes.

  I managed to set a large Sycamore ablaze, answering the questions concerning my ireless ability to get my flame on. No dragon-Viagra required, and the villagers surrendered with little more than a few minor injuries. I still felt like shit having played any role in the takeover, but at least no one died.

  Jifga made an appearance only after any chance of danger had passed and explained the terms of their capitulation—relinquish most of their stored provisions, harvestable crops, and farm animals, and the benevolent warlord would let the men live and allow the women and children to remain un-enslaved.

  “Well,” Ulut commented, “those are fine choices.”

  “Right, and Jifga’s just a kindhearted soul. I suppose it could have been worse,” I grumbled sarcastically. “He could have seized all their food.”

  “Knowing Jifga, he will, eventually. For now, I think he’s trying to keep to his end of the bargain.”

  As if not already wracked with angst, I was pissed I hadn’t thought to lay out better limitations on what he could and couldn’t steal during his Hailey-enhanced incursions. I knew I hadn’t covered everything. Had I been capable of smacking myself in the head, I’d have done so. Maybe I can roast my toes later to punish myself for the oversight.

  24

  In the next weeks, we made periodic treks throughout the countryside, raiding and conquering. The only positive was after the first attacks, word of my incendiary scariness traveled quickly, and I barely needed to show up for the villagers to lay down their arms at the first sight of Jifga’s warriors.

  I tried to shift back into my human form, always without success. If being stuck in a weird animal form wasn’t bad enough, being manipulated to terrify innocent people as that creature was playing havoc on my emotional and physical welfare. Fortunately, Ulut helped me deal with many of the problems created by being stuck as a non-human, offering tips learned during his own long-term entrapment as a dog. While he commiserated with my mental ups and downs, he couldn’t fully understand my despair over helping Jifga. In the end, we decided not being able to turn back into me was likely for the best in one aspect: we’d have had no leverage with Jifga if I was human, and I was fairly certain shifting into Birdzilla wasn’t completely under my control.

  Another positive was my ability to push out thoughts to others beside Ulut. It took considerably more energy to do so, however, and unlike when I “spoke” to my doggie friend, anyone in the vicinity could hear. Not that anyone would understand my telepathic revelations, but there was no point making Jifga aware I had other means of communication. For that reason, I didn’t attempt it often, but the few conversations I had with Alex or Sebastian made me feel less alone.

  Except for Ulut, Jifga limited my contact with the others—the warlord might have been an unscrupulous asstard, but he wasn’t stupid. While the only actual magical juju displayed involved me bending into Birdzilla and Ulut shifting into a dog, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to wonder if anyone else in our group was magically inclined. Jifga didn’t quite understand what we were, but was shrewd enough to know in his case, there was safety in our paltry numbers.

  I desperately wanted to sleep next to Alex. Wrapped within his arm was calming in the best of times, and these certainly were nowhere close to that. Not that spooning would be physically possible given my immensity, but any contact would surely soothe my tattered nerves.

  Of course, Jifga wouldn’t allow it. All but Ulut were confined or constantly guarded, albeit with somewhat better accommodations than before. Instead of crowded three to a cell, the prisoners were now housed in pairs, and Jifga held true to his promise of tastier and more plentiful rations. Surprisingly, those chosen daily as shields fared the worse, forced to sit shackled in Jifga’s tent and subject to the malevolent warlord’s whims. Never outwardly cruel, but not exactly benign, either, Jifga was particularly fond of making scurrilous comments about me in front of Alex and Sebastian, as if goading them to reveal their own abilities. Of course, that behavior didn’t necessarily indicate deviousness; he could have just been a dick.

  If not spending much time with Alex wasn’t bad enough, when we were together, he seemed uncharacteristically distant. As much as I wanted to pass off his reserve to our untenable situation, I couldn’t help worrying it had more to do with my current condition.

  Previously, when my first transformation into a flaming dragon-bird came up in conversation, Alex reflexively winced or shuddered. The reaction was fleeting, and he probably didn’t know I’d seen it, but it was there. I knew he loved me: human me, hawk me, and maybe even temporary-monster me. However, we might never get out of this damn dimension, and if we didn’t, a relationship with a massive she-creature was likely more than he bargained for. Just my luck, I finally found the man of my dreams, my soulmate, and I turned into a raging, scary, B-movie-monster freak. Usually, a guy didn’t have to deal with that kind of change until their lover went through menopause.

  I’d just returned from an uneventful foray to a village off to the south, when Jifga—flanked by Bex and V, his hostages du jour—pulled Ulut aside. The warlord, enmeshed in a deep, one-sided conversation with a dog, must have looked odd to casual observers but based on the tilt of Ulut’s head, the request garnered some skepticism from him as well.

  Ulut trotted over to my “room,” a spacious outdoor area, now partially covered with a thatched roof, the ground spread with a thick layer of soft, green plants dutifully collected from the riverbank and refreshed each morning by my personal attendant, Hyattia. Once I’d convinced the bald Dekankaran I had no intention of charring or eating him—mostly by not charring or eating him—we settled into a routine where he kept me comfortable and I didn’t char or eat him. Hyattia gave Ulut a wide berth as well. Clearly, he wasn’t thrilled with paranormal animals no matter how normal they appeared.

  “Jifga wants to know if he can ride you,” Ulut announced without preamble.

  “Did you tell him I’d rather be tied to a horse and dragged by my tongue?” I answered, hoping my expression matched the annoyance I felt.

  He made a doggie noise deep in his throat, not quite a bark or a growl, that from experience, I knew conveyed either disdain or mirth. In this case, both sentiments were appropriate.

  “I explained the unlikeliness of the request being granted, but he insisted I ask,” he continued.

  “What an egotistical megalomaniac. Does he fancy himself mounted upon his fiery steed, leading his troops to victory?” The thought of Jifga straddling my back, sword on high, made me want to impale myself on the nearest tree.

  “Well, he probably wasn’t thinking of something akin to a pony ride around the compound,” Ulut agreed, “but, do you think it is even physically possible?”

  In truth, I had no clue if I was big enough to handle a passenger. Stories of wars led by mythical warriors on dragons aside, I suspected the answer was no. I judged my weight was less than expected for an animal my size, and thereby assumed I was still more bird than anything else. Not being an expert on aerodynamics, I couldn’t image having enough strength to lift both me and any significant additional weight.

  “I’m almost positive I couldn’t carry a person,” I concluded finally. “You, maybe, but not an adult person.

  He nodded. “We should see if you can fly with a weighted pack.”

  “You sound like Sebastian. Always testing what I can and can’t do.”

  “In this case, it might be prudent to examine the extent of your capabilities. One never knows what may aid us in our escape.”

  His command of languages was truly astounding; I envied the ease at which he learned a foreign tongue. “Now you really sound like Sebastian,” I observed.

>   “Thanks,” he replied testily. He finished with the throaty harrumph, confirming my previous assumption of its dual meaning. I guessed I wasn’t the only one who found comparison to the Xyzok confusing.

  As much as I detested the thought of Jifga touching me in any way, it suddenly occurred to me I might use the request to wrangle something from him.

  “Tell Jifga I don’t think I can fly with him, but I’m willing to try.”

  Ulut narrowed his eyes. “What happened to the horse-and-tongue analogy?”

  “There’s a catch. I’m willing to try if he allows me visitors. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I’d like to talk to someone other than you sometimes.”

  Particularly Alex.

  He laid a paw on one of my wings. “No offense taken. I will get the pawboard and let him know your terms. I don’t want to expend too much energy transforming back and forth just to relay the message.”

  As I watched him trot away, I realized how lucky I was to have Ulut as my ally and companion through this mess. Before a few weeks ago, no one in Dekankara knew he could change into a dog. He’d exposed the secret to his unsurpassed tracking abilities and his third-dimensional livelihood—one he’d guarded since adolescence—to help me. It was true: There was no better friend than a dog.

  Jifga took my deal without hesitation, albeit with the caveat of the visitors being guarded. No great surprise that, as his greatest fear was losing his shields. Not that anyone had attempted to escape, but Jifga didn’t worm his way to warlord with carelessness.

  As I anticipated, I could not bear a man on my back—literally or figuratively. Jifga’s weight made my legs collapse and the cloying scent of his poor personal hygiene took hours to dissipate from my feathers. While disappointed the experiment proved a failure, he did stick to his half of the bargain—I could have one non-Ulut guest, twice daily, for no more than an hour each, on days when I wasn’t “working.” When we were out terrifying the countryside, I got one post-incursion visit. Given all the details in the agreement, I was surprised he didn’t draw up a written contract and make me sign with a bloody talon-print.

  There were no scheduled terror runs, and in a magnanimous move, Jifga let both Sebastian and W out of the jail to keep me company because I’d missed my morning tête-à-tête. I’d hoped Alex would come, but because I foolishly neglected to add in a right-to-chose clause, the selection might have been random. I made a mental note to be more diligent in any future negotiations and pushed out these thoughts to Sebastian.

  “Deviousness takes much practice to perfect,” he explained. “For most, years and years.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Well, my dear, I started out more cunning than the average Courso, therefore much less time. But, still a bit longer than for a typical human attorney, I imagine. You, on the other hand, are not naturally conniving. It might take a lifetime.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.”

  Sebastian was silent for a moment. “Craftiness has its place, as does sincerity. The real trick is to know when it is appropriate to utilize them. I want you to be wily and less naïve, but it would be a tragedy to attempt to obliterate your underlying decency. It is one of your more endearing qualities.”

  “More so than my excellence in destroying stuff?”

  “That, my dear,” he said with a wry grin, “is not endearing, it is alarming. Useful, but chilling nonetheless.”

  I asked W, through Sebastian, how he was holding up. He assured me he and the other Jyryxahal were fine, and still thrilled to be of any service to me. If they were devoted before my transformation into Big Bird, they were downright reverent now. He gleefully repeated some of their newest invocations, dealing mostly with the gloriousness of my conflagrational immensitude. Why that was an admirable quality was beyond me, but I’d long since given up hope of swaying them away from thinking I was worship-worthy. It was strange, they seemed so sane and logical in all other aspects of their lives, but if I learned one thing from my zealous mother, religious beliefs weren’t always rational.

  With ironic amusement, I wondered what she might make of my disciples. I could almost hear her now, “Sure, my one child kicked out of Sunday school for asking too many questions ends up with her own religion. I knew she’d end up going to H- E-double hockey sticks.” Given my current predicament, that wasn’t too far from the truth.

  Two more days went by, and still Alex hadn’t come. I tried not to dwell on his absence, and was, oddly, not completely unhappy to go on another of Jifga’s plunder quests, if only to take my mind off my wayward boyfriend. The seemingly spur-of-the-moment crusade to a settlement called Bifido promised to be an easy morning—we weren’t going far, and Jifga only brought half the usual number of soldiers.

  While I’d expected yet another routine fly-in, freak-out-the-villagers, and fly-out kind of day, the inhabitants had other ideas. As soon as I appeared, hovering over the little hamlet tucked against a small mountain range to the north, a barrage of arrows launched into the sky. Only a few actually made it near me, and those that did make contact bounced off without a scratch. When they started firing the burning ones, however, that was a different matter. Those suckers stung.

  I ascended out of range, and Jifga gave me the signal to fight fire with fire. Being an unconscionable bastard, he probably preferred the destruction of a completely unpicked plot to inflict the most damage, but I chose instead to scorch a semi-harvested field, mainly because I could see there were no people there.

  Even that didn’t discourage the Bifidorians, who redoubled their efforts. From above, their strategy was obvious—take out the warlord and hope the raiders scattered without their leader. Also inherent in the plan, I believed, was the likelihood I’d be wary of letting loose when the two factions were so close. They were right to an extent; I wasn’t going to risk killing today’s shields, Bex and Z, and would do all I could to keep the poor villagers from harm. Jifga and his marauders? I’d fry them in an instant.

  Since that wasn’t a viable option, I searched for an alternative. The villagers were getting closer to where Jifga stood with Bex and Z, and I worried they were in range of a stray arrow. I sent another blast toward a structure I prayed was actually as uninhabited as it appeared. I’d held back a bit with the field, so I had enough power left for the second burn, perhaps a perfunctory third if I kept it small, but I knew that would be it for the fireworks.

  Come on, people, I thought grimly as they didn’t stand down when I torched the building. It was bad enough the hostilities were edging ever closer to my friends, but Jifga’s men clearly had the upper hand when it came to brutal fighting. Sure, the townsfolk gave it their all, but a just cause and righteous defense of their homes was sorely inadequate compared to mercenaries with better training and weaponry. The ground was littered with bodies—mostly Bifidorians—and yet they still pressed on.

  Sending out a mental question to Ulut, who kept pace below me, I requested advice. “What should I do now? I might have one blast left, but I think I should save it.”

  “I agree, no sense depleting yourself.”

  I noticed Jifga placed the Jyryxahal in front of him, using them as protection against both the advancing townsfolk and me.

  Asshole.

  “Bex and Z are getting awfully close to the action,” I pointed out.

  The information seemed to surprise him. “That’s disturbing. From the ground, I couldn’t tell.”

  I did my best to describe the situation from my aerial vantage point, but the additional intel didn’t foster any new ideas.

  “Why won’t they give up? What’s the point if they all die?” I wondered, watching a few more villagers dropped by sword-wielding soldiers. Ulut didn’t answer—not that I expected him to—but I knew I couldn’t stand by and let any more innocents perish.

  I swung back around, soaring over the bulk of the fighting. Jifga’s contingent appeared to be well on its way to victory, but I noticed
a small band of townspeople circling around behind them.

  Oh, crap. If they don’t get killed trying, they just might kill Jifga. What if Jifga dies and his men don’t despise him as much as we think? What if they go back to the compound and their comrades feel compelled to kill Alex, Sebastian, and the rest of the Jyryxahal as compensation?

  Suddenly Jifga dying didn’t seem all that great an outcome, even if it wasn’t by my hand, or wing as the case may be. Better dealing with the devil you know than the savages you don’t, I reasoned.

  Without much time to contemplate my options, I did what any self-respecting, semi-depleted, fire-throwing being would—I landed between the Bifido fighters and Jifga, Bex, and Z and tried to look fearsome. Whether it was my steely gaze or fear of being crushed by my awkward descent, the combatants stopped and the fight was soon over.

  Bex and Z were shaken up, but despite Jifga using them to save his own cowardly skin, they remained otherwise unharmed in the melee. A number of the warlord’s men laid dead, although far fewer than those who opposed them. I surveyed the severed limbs and gore littering the battleground with inexplicable detachment. The grisly carnage seemed unreal.

  My dispassion dissolved, however, the moment the women and children of the village emerged from their hiding places. The wails of grief rose to such a deafening pitch, the sound wrenched my soul. The dead Bifidorians weren’t just bits of anonymous flesh. They had people who loved them, just like Jifga’s minions who initiated and perished in the shitstorm.

  “What a colossal waste,” I remarked to Ulut. “All because Generalissimo Greedy-Pants is an avaricious, megalomaniacal fuck. I realized there was a question about Jifga I didn’t think I’d gotten a clear answer to. “How’d he get this far west in the first place?”

  “From what I’ve gleaned from eavesdropping, he lost his eastern lands during a conflict with another warlord. Then, he moved into the southwest because there were far fewer factions vying for territory. It didn’t take long to establish himself.”