by R. J. Lloyd
“The men are to ensure that you are safe. The perimeter check is to be sure that there’s no Vulrumok in the area. They run in clusters around here,” he replied.
I blinked. “Vulrumok?”
“Yes.” He almost looked amused. “They are feral, gangly creatures with heads near the shape of a large feline, limbs like humans but much longer arms, bodies like a sickly human, grey skin, wiry hair in patches, white eyes. They have a need to feed and will overindulge in whatever flesh they can find. The sounds like make is haunting screams when they find a target, so we have that in our favor. But they run on all fours, and they have a long reach with talons as sharp as the sharpest blades in my armory.”
I gasped. “They sound like some urban legend.”
He stroked my cheek. “They are no match for us as long as we spot them and attack first.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.” I bit my lip, wrapping my arms around myself.
Kane chuckled. “We are not far. It is only a short distance after this portal. To the final one which is very close to Boutrol’s lair. Like I said, you need to rest, little one.”
“Joy.” I bit my lip. “Better get out there before you’re dragged out.” I nodded to Wulfgar, who had appeared at the door of the carriage once again. This time, still on his horse.
“Kane?” Wulfgar raised his eyebrow.
“You are lucky you are my friend.” Kane kissed my cheek and climbed out of the confined quarters.
Wulfgar patted his back. “No. Dorian is lucky. As your friend, I have to speak to you like a brother. And, like a brother, you do not listen easily.” Wulfgar rode off to take his spot in the formation.
Mounting his horse, Kane looked back and smirked as I closed the door. “Alright men. Let’s move on.”
Dorian signaled, and we started moving again.
Kane was not wrong. The portals were not far apart. And when we had all passed through the final one, everyone tightened in formation and all dismounted.
“Men, prepare your weapons. We do not intend on needing them, but be sure your shields are readied as well. Dragons are unpredictable.” Dorian paced.
Handing the reigns to Lochlin, Kane patted Dorian’s shoulder. “You will not need them. Boutrol is an old friend of mine. And none of you will be close enough to…”
Dorian cleared his throat. “My liege…”
“Nor will you.” Kane squeezed his commanding officer’s shoulder and let go, strolling over to the carriage. “Wulfgar will join Auriena and me the rest of the way in. You all are to stay here, protect our horses and the carriage. Once we have what we need here, we are going to the Emalne villages in Hurthfeur.”
“But…”
Kane cut off Dorian, shooting him a warning look. He didn’t need to say anything further. Dorian fell into line and started ordering the men around unnecessarily
Wulfgar chuckled as the two men came to the carriage door. “Okay. You’re right. I wouldn’t want to be ordered around like that. I’ll take the brotherly role.”
“Careful.” Kane raised a single eyebrow.
A full-on roaring laugh emanated from Wulfgar. “Have you ever known me to be careful?” he patted Kane on the back and stopped, allowing his king to come in alone.
Kane, shook his head, grumbling.
I giggled. “You sure we should be trusting them?”
“With our lives, despite their insolence.”
“Then I trust them.” I kissed his cheek.
Some of the tension rolled off him, and he straightened up the best he could inside the carriage. “Take only what you will need for a few hours. You will ride with me. But a carriage will send a message we do not want to send. Wulfgar will accompany us. Are you up to it? Boutrol can scare the fiercest of warriors.”
I scoffed. “Me? I’m good. It’s just a dragon, no?” My feeble attempt to appear calm and collected didn’t even convince myself.
He took my hand in his. “You will be fine. I know him well.”
I nodded. “I’ll be right out.”
Kane returned my nod and exited. He and Wulfgar readied their steeds. Flinging a bag over my shoulder, I joined them. With one arm, Kane reached down and lifted me up in front of him, wrapping his arms around me to gain control of the reigns.
“How far is it?” I asked quietly.
Kane signaled for the horse to start moving. Responding to the commend, we started at a gallop with Wulfgar close behind. “A couple of hours.”
“Oh. Is that all.” My sarcastic tone was not hidden well.
He chuckled. “Yes. That is all.”
I leaned back into him. With one hand on the leather straps of the reigns, he wrapped his free arm around my waist, his hand holding my side and pulling me in close. “Is there a chance he will try to kill me?”
“There is a chance he will try to kill me,” he replied.
I sighed. “That’s not encouraging.
“I did not take you for the type that accepted lies of encouragement over the truth.” He steered us around an embankment.
“No.” I closed my eyes. “I do not.”
“No. You do not,” he agreed. “But, I will say that he and I share a respect for one another. So, as long as we do not give him reason to lose that respect for me, then he will respect you as the one I love.”
“I suppose there’s that.”
When I opened my eyes again, we were sprinting through a mess of barren trees and jagged rocks along a reddish brown landscape of grassless dirt.
The landscape seemed to stretch out just like that for as far as I could see as we rode along. That is, until I saw the snowcapped tops of a small mountain range off in the distance.
I sat up, causing the horse to slow with my movement. “Is that…”
Kane, not letting me go, slowed the horse’s pace even more. “That is Boutrol’s home. Let us hope he is there.”
“Or that he is not.” Wulfgar’s voice was full of caution.
“I need him to be there. I need to know how I got here,” I blurted out.
Both men were silent.
Sensing something not being said, I looked between then both. They were both staring straight ahead, not saying anything.
I brought my leg around so I could sit sideways and look back at Kane. “What?”
“It is of no consequence.” His voice was flat.
“Kane?” I was nearly scolding him.
“Auri.” He paused, obviously not wanting to tell me. Seeing that I wasn’t budging, he growled. “I fear your reaction if we are to find out that you can portal home.”
Wulfgar steered his horse away and put some distance between us.
“I can portal home. Well, take several portals and ride for a number of hours. We just did it.” I attempted to keep my voice calm.
“Not Everwinter. I mean…”
I reached up and put my finger to his lips. “Home is Earth. Yes. It’s my birth home. But home is also Everwinter now. It is my current home. And it is the home I want to stay in as long as it is with you.”
I pressed my lips to his and felt him relax slightly. His hand slid up my back, but our moment was brief as Wulfgar cleared his throat, having come closer to us again. Looking up, I noticed that a set of expansive wings were extending above the side of the rock face ahead of us.
“Looks like he’s home,” the raider chuckled.
Kane pulled me in tighter. “Turn around, little one. Look.”
I brought my leg back over the other side and adjusted back into my seat, my eyes not leaving the sight before me. “Boutrol.” The name came out in a whisper.
I was completely enraptured by the impossibly large set of wings, so much so that it took a long moment before my mind registered that they had taken flight, and the creature that was attached to them was coming our way.
I gasped, feeling Kane’s arms holding me even tighter. The horses were at a stop. But as Boutrol came closer, they started to back up, showing their fear. The men trie
d to keep them steady, but it was obvious that they were torn between listening to their masters and getting out of there.
The dragon, skimming the landscape as it came barreling toward us swooped up, revealing its abdomen before stretching its wings out wide by his sides and gliding back down, landing with a thump that shook the very ground beneath us.
Both horses took to their front knees as if bowing and stayed there.
Both men dismounted and bowed as well.
Boutrol turned to me and snorted. His voice boomed deep, vibrating through me as he spoke, “Your king bows to me, yet you stay stationed on your steed. Are you frozen in fear, child?”
I’m not sure how long it had been since I blinked, but when I finally did again, I was pretty sure the entire Sahara Dessert was in them. Well, them and in my throat, causing me to cough. “Sorry. You kicked up quite a bit of dust. I was struggling to think around it.”
I started to get down from the horse, who lowered fully down to rest as Kane instructed him to do. Wulfgar’s doing the same with his horse following suit as well.
Dusting my skirts off, I stood upright and clasped my hands in front of me. “I’m sorry. Am I too late to bow? Or should I since I haven’t? I would offer a high-five or a handshake, but I’m pretty sure you’d crush me. I guess I don’t know the protocol for these sorts of things. Ask Kane. When I first met him, I was a train wreck then, too.”
There was a silence from all of them that made my stomach plummet.
Rising up, Boutrol tilted his head as if studying me. Nothing about his posture or expression gave any indication of whether he approved of me or was about to eat me but was unnerving to say the least.
He leaned back in and sniffed me. Then, he roared with laughter. The wind stirred from his movement. I had to hold on to my hair and skirts from being whipped around.
Kane had risen and stopped by my side. When he stopped laughing, the dragon looked directly at him. “You are protecting a human? I shouldn’t be surprised since you saved this planet from its inevitable destruction.”
“You helped.” Kane bowed his head.
Shifting to sit, Boutrol bowed his head back at Kane. “That I did. But this human. She is different is she not? Not from Naelyra. She smells different. And she speaks of things I do not know.”
“Yes.” Kane was keeping his answers short, which told me that he was tense.
Looking at each of us in turn, Boutrol stops on me. “Your guardian and your king are scared for you. Yet, while scared, I sense there’s more wonder in your reaction. Which surprises me since you are with child. I would think that you would be far more protective of your wellbeing.”
My throat tightened in that moment. “Pregnant? How do you know?”
He laughed again. “See? You stand in front of me, never having seen a dragon by my estimate, and I make thinly veiled threats, yet you want to know how I know something that seeps off of you in scent. Something these two should have caught long before now.”
Both Kane and Wulfgar’s expressions were pinched with confusion. They looked between each other and then to me before back to Boutrol, obviously not having been able to smell what the dragon was picking up on.
“They cannot smell you? Oh, that is delicately rich.” He leaned forward and sucked in a slow breath, taking in my scent fully. “Oh! I see.”
“You see what?” I took a step forward as he sat back up, feeling Kane lightly on pull me, silently asking me to come back to him.
A smile tugged at one side of Boutrol’s face. “Your magic is strong. And so is your need to protect yourself. You’ve guarded yourself from them all.” He sniffed me again. “Or rather, you’ve protected your womb.”
I turned back to Kane, unsure what to say. I didn’t know I was doing anything, much less keeping something detectable from him. “I…”
“Oh, don’t start groveling. Kane is a wise creature. If he knew that you had this ability, he would have told you to implement it to protect his offspring. Would you not, king?”
“I would.” He stepped up next to me, keeping his eyes on the dangerously majestic beast.
“But how did you know then?” I looked up at his massive face.
The very same face lowered, coming right in front of me. Our images were reflected in his large eyes. “Because, human, there is only one kind of magic that works on my kind. And a simple warding spell, orchestrated or naturally grown, is not it.”
When I reached out and touched the tough, scaly surface of his face, I felt Kane’s hands grip my waist. He didn’t pull me back, but he held tight as if on guard.
Boutrol sat back up and snorted. “I have no intention of hurting her, Kanedraven. Nor you or your raider. I like her. But I have the feeling that the determination that she is, in fact, with your child is not why you have come. While this is news you needed, you want to know how she got here on Naelyra, do you not? Then bring her, and we will talk.”
Before any of us could respond, Boutrol turned and started back toward his mountain, his wings lifting him off the ground gracefully as he glided through the air almost lazily. Wulfgar grabbed both horses and nodded as Kane and I followed.
I slipped my hand in Kane’s. “I didn’t think you feared him.”
“I didn’t think I would have such a protective reaction over you,” he explained.
I chuckled. “Interesting.”
“That you are,” he countered.
The rest of the walk was spent in silence. Kane’s grip on my hand was tighter than usual, which let me know that either he was still nervous of me around Boutrol or reacting to the news that I was, in fact, with child, something I wanted to address badly. But I figured that on a walk into the lair of a dragon wasn’t quite the best time. So, I opted to put that conversation on hold. As it were, I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it yet.
Sitting on what I could only describe as a dragon’s version of a throne built into the rock face of the mountainside, Boutrol waited for us. “Does she not take well to traveling at your natural speed, Kanedraven?”
“I suppose I am being a bit more cautious than I typically would be with a human, all things considered.” Kane moved to hold me closer.
The dragon’s wings ruffled and folded in next to him as he shifted to get comfortable. “Yes. All things considered. I suppose that is wise. Please, do sit.” He waved his wing out, gesturing to a stone bench nearby.
“Thank you.” I took a seat on the hard surface, but Kane came around back and stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders.
“Such a royal pose. Fitting for Naelyra’s king.” He pulled his wing back in. “Now, to answer your question of how she was able to come here, I do not know for certain. I can tell you that I felt the magic when the portal opened, both times. And I felt it when it closed. It was strong... and forced. Whatever dragon at the source did not comply willingly. And they destroyed the crystal after she was here.”
Kane stopped rubbing my shoulders. “How can you be sure it was destroyed?”
“And why would someone open it but then close it right away?” I added.
He nodded as if thinking about our questions. “I can be sure because I found the fragments. They are here.”
“But...” Kane started.
Boutrol finished, “The crystals that are able to withstand that sort of portal have been gone for a very long time. Yes. I have been trying to trace its roots. It is not Naelyrian. And to answer her question, they only needed you to come through.”
“But why would they only need one person? One being?” I was confused, thinking that I could have been anything coming through. A man. A bear. A fly.
He turned to look straight at me. “No. I didn’t not say just one being. They needed you.”
“Me? But why? And how could they know? I could have been…” I trailed off, looking back and searching Kane for answers. “I could have been anyone… anything.”
He growled. “Someone knew. Someone there planned this.”
“For the prophecy.” Boutrol tilted his chin up.
Kane’s growl grew sending chills to rush over me as he spoke, “This prophecy is ridiculous!” He stormed away from the bench and went to the cliffside, pacing.
I looked up at Boutrol. “He doesn’t believe.”
Boutrol watched Kane in the distance. “I am aware. Kanedraven and I spoke of this many battles ago when it was first foretold that he was part of it. What he has gone through has left irreparable scars on him. Now, he believes the prophecies from the gods are manufactured by them as well. Once, he was one of their pawns, he doesn’t want to feel like that again.”
I followed his gaze and watched as Kane stopped pacing and stood, arms crossed, looking out over the desolate landscape. “I don’t know his past. But I see and feel his pain. I can understand why he feels like he does. But you. What do you believe?”
Standing, the massive beast flexed his wings. “I believe you both are in grave danger, and Kanedraven will put his life on the line for you. But it might be what is necessary to keep all that he loves from falling into the wrong hands. Some of the gods are crafty, selfish and hungry. A couple crave war. And for whatever reason, they love using him as part of their games.”
Still watching Kane, I sighed. “Boutrol?”
“Yes, Auriena?”
I wondered if he was just as surprised that I knew his name as I was that he knew mine. “The gods aren’t some mythological creatures that are unseen, unheard. Not beings you have to have faith that they exist without any real evidence, are they? They’re nothing more than powerful creatures that like to play power games, aren’t they?”
The dragon laughed heartily. “I do like you, Auriena Raulson. You are very gifted with many talents, observation being one of your keenest.” He strode over next to Kane. “If a portal is what you desire, my friend, a portal is what I will make you. But I, too, will destroy its access after whoever passes through it. So, choose wisely. Obviously not everyone on Earth is on the right side and blind to our existence here.”
Silence befell our conversation as I walked up between them, wrapping my arm around Kane’s bicep. “I don’t understand. Was I some random female they chose, hoping that I’d be able to bring their so-called prophecy to fruition?”