by Lucia Ashta
I was mindful to keep my focus trained on the dragon’s eyes. It wasn’t just my experience of distraction and subsequent swat-propelled flight that compelled me. There was something else—a knowing, perhaps—that spoke to me then, telling me that I must look at the dragon’s eyes at all times while in its presence.
Whether what I felt was true or not, or whether it was important or not, I wasn’t certain. But neither did I care. I wasn’t about to question anything I felt in moments such as these. My learned knowledge was woefully inadequate. My only real strength came from those sources I couldn’t readily identify. In this battle that had already begun, intuition and instinct were my only true reliable assets.
I stared into those deep red eyes, searching for the origin of their faint glow. I didn’t find it, but those eyes that carried so much hate fascinated me regardless. What made this creature hate so deeply? It was my experience through observing the nature that enveloped Norland Manor that animals didn’t hate. They fought and they killed, but never for sport. There was always a reason to the actions of animals, one that prioritized the survival of the animal, its family, and, ultimately, the species.
There could be no doubt that what flashed within the dragon’s eyes was hatred, a deep and violent disregard for that spark that sustained life in others. It would seem that what drove the dragon was the desire to extinguish that very spark in anything but itself.
As I approached the creature, ignoring the alarm bells that clanged in my head at the ludicrous notion of drawing nearer to a monster that could so easily kill me, I experienced a new sensation. It was only then that I realized that never before in my life had I encountered another life form I couldn’t understand. Certainly, I’d come across many other beings, especially people, who were so different from me in their principles and actions so as to be almost foreign. Yet they weren’t. I might not agree with their courses of action, but I could identify why they did the things they did in the way they did them.
It was something that I’d always been able to do, since as long as I could remember. I didn’t realize then that this was an ability entwined in my magic all along, unique to just a few others of the magical world. Even as a young girl, magic had been within me. I simply hadn’t identified it for what it was and, I’d assumed everyone could do what I did.
But this beast presented a newness that startled me even amid the danger he posed. I couldn’t feel within the dragon. I couldn’t sense what drove the dragon to be the way he was. I couldn’t reach out an invisible hand to delve within the heart that beat within. There was a wall there, an impenetrable void that disoriented me, even as I walked, morbidly, toward what might be my death.
Then, all of a sudden, something washed over me, a certainty. I couldn’t die at the hand—or paw—of a creature I didn’t comprehend. This would violate notions of balance. And, first and foremost, the world prioritized balance.
I knew this like I knew other things. The things I knew in this way had no ready explanation; I just knew them, because I did.
I reached out to the dragon once more with that invisible, feeling hand within me. Yet again, there was nothing. There was no explanation for the rage that boiled over with every hot and stale breath that made my face drip in sweat just from proximity to the beast.
And so I walked on, knowing that I was safe, owning that with every fiber of my being.
“Clara!” It was Marcelo. He didn’t know what I knew about this dragon. Or maybe it was something that I had learned about me that actually had very little to do with the dragon. “Watch out!”
I didn’t look to Marcelo when he called out his warning. My eyes were trained right where they needed to be. And the red eyes that met mine didn’t blink.
I walked right by the dragon that had already hurt me once. It wouldn’t hurt me again—not now, not today, and maybe not ever.
In a world of my own, moving further into unknown powers with each step I took, I daringly ran one insignificant-looking finger along rippled scales that were surprisingly cool to the touch, despite the inner furnace that always burned.
Behind me, Marcelo’s eyes bulged and his chest swelled in a sudden intake of sharp breath. Mordecai didn’t breathe at all. He watched, as Sylvia did from above him, hovering off the ground, waiting to see what happened. Not even the firedrake had seen something like this before.
The dragon tilted its head to follow the trail of my finger with a forbidding look. It seemed to be the only look it was capable of.
The moments it took me to drag my finger along the length of the dragon’s side distorted. It seemed to take longer than it did, despite the great length of the muscular, scaled body. My finger touched every single scale it crossed, noticing each slight ridge before it descended regularly into smoothness.
It took forever, but, eventually, I broke free of the dragon and walked straight toward the front door of the castle. Leaving foreboding and the astonished stares of my companions behind, I wrenched the massive wood panel inward.
I wouldn’t knock like a visitor. There were times when decorum should be abandoned. This was such a time, and I left decorum, limitations, and all sense of safety behind.
The cool damp of yet another castle enveloped me and plunged me into darkness.
Chapter 26
I could see nothing at first. Although the sun hadn’t yet risen, the pitch black of night had begun to abandon its hold on the sky. Inside the castle, however, there was no light. Not even the flickering flame of a distant candle interrupted the abysmal darkness.
Trying to compensate for anything my sight would miss, the remainder of my senses responded with full alertness.
The muffled sound of steps, crossing the courtyard at a run, filtered in through the open door behind me. Then there was the hideous noise of a giant dragon spewing fire. I’d never heard a dragon roar fire before, but there was no doubt that’s what it was. I couldn’t imagine anything else sounding as vicious and over-powering. It rattled through me, shaking me to my core.
For an instant, sudden awareness that I’d abandoned my friends outside with a monstrous dragon swept through me, followed closely by panic. I’d been so focused on the knowing that revealed itself to me that I traversed the dragon and the courtyard with little thought of what I was leaving behind.
There was another roar of fire, one so terribly deep that the heat of it reached through an open doorway. Panic squeezed down on me harder, compressing my heart.
I almost turned to go back outside. I didn’t know what, if anything, I could do to defeat a dragon that was as large as this one. But I had to do something, anything!
Before I could turn my back on the castle interior, I realized something that should’ve been plainly obvious: I was the inexperienced one here. Both Mordecai and Marcelo were magicians far more capable than I was, and Sylvia was a firedrake. Would the dragon’s fire affect Sylvia? Exquisite, tight-knit scales completely covered Sylvia’s body. Could that exterior burn?
No, I was supposed to be inside, even if it was darker than the moonless sky under which we’d traveled. There was something I was supposed to take care of here within these walls.
Power simmered within me. I stilled, fully and resolutely, as if nothing could ever move me unless I wished it.
Two sets of agile footsteps came to rest behind me. Marcelo’s hand settled in the small of my back. His warm breath crossed the nape of my neck. Then he passed me, wanting to confront any potential danger for me.
Sylvia’s unmistakable cry snaked in through the door behind us, reverberating, bouncing off every wall and edge, as if her call were that of bats, mapping out the space. Her cry was not one of panic despite the fact that she was left alone to face a monster much larger than she. Her cry was the same eerie one of ancient power that I’d heard before, and I followed it through the darkness.
I closed my eyes, and behind closed eyelids, I could see. The firedrake’s cry bounced from one hard edge to the next in a vivid display
of color. I was able to see the light within the darkness.
The color was incredible, brighter than anything I thought I’d ever seen before. Greens especially came to life, vibrant as the lush springtime branches of Wisham Forest near Norland.
My feet began to move, leading me down a hall. I sensed the inhabitants of the castle were awake, waiting for us. I could feel them as prickles against the skin of my neck.
I could feel. My eyes were momentarily blinded, but everything else about me worked better than before.
And it only got better.
Now Sylvia flew inside too, with a grace that was unexpected in a firedrake. The dragon was too large to follow her indoors. Count Washur ordered the dragon to wait for us in the courtyard because it was the only place within the castle gates that it could fit. As large and terrifying as the dragon in all its ferocious glory was, we were safe from it—for now. We’d have to deal with the dragon again on the way out of this hellhole, but the way out might as well be a lifetime away.
An unplanned messenger of hope, Sylvia showed me the way. I wasn’t aware then that both Marcelo and Mordecai were unable to travel in the castle as I did. I did notice that they followed me. Protectors of the principles of magic and good in the world, they were only two steps behind me as I followed the sparkling path that Sylvia’s continued cries illuminated for me.
She must have known what she was doing, for I’d never heard her be so vocal before. Her echoing call led my comrades and me through a long hall, a hallway, and into another large chamber. Then, I hesitated. I knew I had to go deeper into this castle, but it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I steeled myself as I walked. I wouldn’t allow myself to pause, not even for a moment, fearful that once I stopped, I wouldn’t find the courage to continue where I knew I must go.
With the stairwell lit up in brilliant greens, I put one elven shoe on the first step, and then forced myself to put down the other.
Count Washur was down there. I knew it like I knew everything else I knew. He was down there, in that vast dungeon of horrors.
And so was my sister.
Chapter 27
Right before my foot landed on the damp, dirt floor of the dungeon, I knew Count Washur’s eyes would be the next things I’d see. Even as the rank smell of past torture and rotted prisoners assaulted my hypersensitive nostrils, I knew he was there.
So did Marcelo. He moved like a forest cat to stand by my side and slightly ahead of me. He was the man and I was his fiancée. He’d come here prepared to give his life in exchange for mine if he had to.
Yet, despite his gallant intentions, I needed to fight in this battle. It had nothing to do with rescuing my sister in the end, or even with ridding the world of a horrible force capable of inflicting great suffering. Instead, it had everything to do with me and the person—the witch—I was finally becoming. The truth was there for me to see, with or without open eyes. I was something new to the magical world, even if I’d been the last one to accept it.
I was the magician Mordecai’s runes had predicted. My magic was different. It was intuitive, centered in a heart that beat wildly with the power of the five-petal knot of five—not four—elements. When knowledge of my ways spread, it would empower others to discover a similar capability for intuitive magic within themselves. Not all possessed the ability to perform magic free from rigid spells. But many did.
I was in Washur Castle’s dungeon, deep amid the nightmares that dwelled in Count Washur’s hardened heart, to offer a possible victory to the world of magic. And none of this had much in particular to do with the undead count. He was just the means to an end.
The pallid count would be the catalyst that drew out my powers. I heard Mordecai step to my other side with Sylvia once more on her usual spot on his shoulder, when the flames of a thousand candles came to life.
The colorfulness I had grown used to was instantaneously replaced with a muted monochrome palette that revealed the Count, looking very much like the terrifying Vlad Dracula.
Salazar and Winston flanked the five-hundred-and-twenty-one-year-old thing that had once been a man.
I searched around our opponents, knowing that Gertrude was down there somewhere too. I couldn’t see her with my eyes, but I sensed her just the same.
She was in this room.
I wouldn’t be leaving it without her.
From that moment on, nothing went as I might have predicted.
I stared into the undead Count’s eyes, noticing for the first time that they would’ve been beautiful were it not for an icy cruelty that illuminated a color as clear as the water from a virgin stream. They seemed out of place on the Count’s face.
He intended to kill me—and my sister and my fiancé and my mentor and my firedrake friend, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be involved—and he intended to make us suffer first. It was evident in those pale blue eyes that were too pale, a sign of the slow death that claimed the soul of this man ages ago.
He didn’t hide his hatred or his intent to maim and murder. He didn’t conceal who he was because he was long past seeing his hideousness for what it was. To him, his cruelty was power; his lack of empathy, strength; his heavy-handedness, necessary to accomplish what he needed to in his warped and extended life: greater and greater power.
In a flicker of those frigid blue eyes that was so subtle as to be virtually non-existent, I saw that the Count meant to prove his darkness. He meant to flex the muscle he’d given up everything worthwhile to develop.
He was, without a doubt, a lord of darkness, a conqueror of souls and happiness.
Chapter 28
It all happened at once. My senses were overwhelmed within seconds of the true confrontation.
A shrill sound pierced the dank, humid silence of the dungeon. It reminded me of Janice’s cry, which confounded the beasts of Count Washur’s army in its attack on Irele. If I were a part of the secretive magical council, I’d definitely forbid any magic that would create something like this.
As far as I could tell, the sharp pitch came from nowhere. Painfully, I forced my eyes open to see if the Count was responsible. I barely registered that he wasn’t where he’d just been. Instead, Winston and Salazar had moved in his place.
I attempted to keep my eyes open, knowing that I must. Salazar had already tried to kill me once before, and Winston had kidnapped me and tried to do worse. There are many things worse than death that a man can do to a woman, and I suspected that Winston of the House of Chester, sadist wolf clothed in the latest aristocratic fashion, had considered most of them.
Still, I could only open my eyes for spasmodic interludes, sufficient only to witness Winston and Salazar’s approach in intermittent installments. Were my friends equally paralyzed? Would a single sound kill us all, shattering us as easily as the famous opera singers did crystal?
Another flash of opened eyes. My enemies had moved a step closer. The Count was letting his minions do the killing.
With the next flash of open eyelids, Winston and Salazar were a step farther back. Another opening of the eyes, teeth clenched against the pain, and the men were a step farther back still.
I couldn’t make sense of it, and I bent over clutching my head. They were going the wrong way to kill me. Perhaps the noise would kill me then! That was it. This sound would pierce my brain and my heart and I’d crumble to the floor, another body to rot in this putrid place.
I prepared to die. I didn’t care anymore. I was willing to die if it would rid this sound from my life.
I kept my eyes closed, sure I’d never need to open them again. There was relief in knowing that. The struggle would finally be over. My breathing grew easier, even though my hands still pressed against my ears so hard that I thought they, too, might break.
I didn’t know the sound wasn’t actually a sound or that my hands did nothing to repel a cry that didn’t actually float in the air. Neither did I know that this wasn’t an advanced and forbidden spell, rather a basic
one I’d have learned to counteract with ease, if only my magical training had been what it was for all other magicians.
It was a steep price to pay for unconventional magical training.
A big, heaving sob was rising through my body. I wanted the pain to end, once and for all.
And just then, it did end.
Marcelo disengaged himself from Count Washur, just long enough to perform the counter spell he’d known most of his life. It only took him a few breaths to murmur the spell he knew from rote memory from a time when that was how he learned. He couldn’t spare those few seconds sooner, and he still shouldn’t spare them now. His eyes had flicked to me uneasily, seeing I was in pain, but for a while, he was wise enough not to abandon his opponent no matter what was happening to me.
Finally, Marcelo gave into what Count Washur was counting on. His plan worked even better than he anticipated. Marcelo saw in me a woman he loved, and he began to mutter the spell to alleviate me, even when those utterances should’ve been used to protect himself.
Meanwhile, Mordecai was advancing toward Winston and Salazar. He left the Count to Marcelo, allowing his son’s need to avenge his family to outweigh the grave risk the undead man posed. There were some things worth the risk of death. Honor was one of them.
If Marcelo didn’t kill the Count, Mordecai would. He’d avenge Albacus.
If only Marcelo hadn’t distracted himself with me, he could have continued to confront Count Washur from a place of strength—at least as much strength as the split of him could muster.
Marcelo was a worthy opponent, even to someone like the Count. But only if he were fully focused.
When I was finally able to regain focus, I noticed something—many somethings—began to emerge from the low ceiling of the oppressive space. I couldn’t see them at first, but I could feel them, the things. These blobs, dripped from the ceiling. They had no eyes, arms, legs, or mouths. Still, they were terrifying. They were the essence of darkness, and gravity became an enemy in that moment as it pulled them inevitably downward toward us.