by Martha Woods
And then I saw something fall.
Something small and insignificant, slipping from his talons. Yet in that moment it was the most important thing in the world.
Realizing a moment too late what that something was, I watched the girl shoot right back down past my head, screaming all the way as she tumbled toward the earth. She would break every bone in her body from such a height, and there wasn't a chance in hell of her surviving it.
I dove back down so hard I nearly gave myself whiplash, doing my damnedest to outrun gravity as her screams became audible once again.
I swooped. I craned my neck up. I felt a powerful weight slamming down on me, nearly knocking me out of the sky for a moment. I managed to loop back up into my arc, however, my heart pummeling against the wall of my chest.
I'd caught her.
Against all odds, I had caught her, and I had saved her life.
Or at least, I had for the time being...
I could hear the girl hyperventilating as she sat astride my neck, and I felt her arms tighten around me. Her dependence filled me with a warmth, an even more pressing need to protect her at all costs.
Which was fortunate, because Yrsur was still far from done with her yet.
The Dark One shot down from the sky, hurdling toward me like a fallen star, and my eyes widened, taking note of his arrival at the very last second. I jolted out of the way, and Yrsur slammed into a pine tree, lopping off the top of the thing and sending it tumbling to the ground.
He managed to decelerate, and looped back around in the opposite direction, shooting right back toward the two of us. His mouth was open, and I could tell that he had every intention of using those mighty fangs against me. Yet it seemed impossible that I might dodge the blow in time, without running the risk of bucking too hard, and knocking the girl on my back to the ground.
I needed to get her to safety and fast, but I needed an opening that I wasn't about to get...
Yrsur sprang up between my legs, and threw his powerful jaws at my stomach. He bit down hard, and I let out a roar of pain. He jerked his head around, digging his fangs in deeper and deeper– my thick hide going some way in protecting me from the worst of it, but the pain still excruciating as the blood flowed in abundance down the front of my body.
I thrashed and kicked my legs at him, struggling to tear myself free. Finally I whipped my tail up, managing with terrible pain to slam the spikes at the end of it into Yrsur's face, at last smacking him off of me. His yelp of pain was even more severe than my own, and though I couldn't be sure, I thought I might have put out one of his eyes in the process.
The dark one backed away, hovering several yards back through the air, and I began to dive forward, thinking I might be able to strike against him before he had the chance to get in another blow.
If only I'd been fast enough...
Just as I neared, the Dark One opened its jaws wide, and sharp emerald flames boiled up from the depths of its stomach. It blew the searing fire up at me, and the girl screamed as I jerked back to avoid being hit. I feared that if I threw flame back at him, the heating of my throat might cause my passenger to suddenly let go of me, and plunge once more toward the forest. At this point, though, I really didn't have much choice– if I didn't at least try to fight back, there was no way she was going to survive anyway, and so I did the only thing I could do.
As Yrsur hurled another pillar of fire up at me, I parted my jaws and expelled a whirlwind of flames, meeting his shimmering green fire with my own gold inferno. The blasts met in midair and the two of us hovered, locked in combat. The air rippled between us, the whole world seeming to blur and distort from the heat. The temperature grew unbearable, even for me, as shot after shot of molten plasma seared through the night, making it nearly impossible to see what was happening. I heard the girl on my back crying out, her arms clearly burning, and I prayed to God she didn't let go.
I needed to act fast, to think of something, anything that might abridge this fight as much as humanly possible.
With no definite plan, but acting on desperate need, I began to circle around and around, the two of us moving in a slow, corkscrew motion, drifting gradually back down toward the tops of the trees. My hope was that I could get us just close enough to the ground that the wouldn't be too far for the girl if I did lose control of the situation. And moments later, I thanked God for making the effort.
I felt a sudden, unmistakable relief of pressure, as though the fire being blown up at me had suddenly ceased. I didn't stop my own blast quickly enough, and flames scorched the top of the trees– setting the forest ablaze, and adding another unwelcome ingredient to this clusterfuck of a situation.
My eyes darted along the horizon, searching for any signs of the Dark One, my heart racing as I failed repeatedly to track him down.
And then, suddenly, he was lunging at me, whipping through the flames, his red eyes looking positively crazed, his jaws wide and ready for a second helping of my still bleeding gut.
I flung my tail at him as hard as I could, hoping I might somehow jettison his skull clean from his head in the process. To my astonishment and horror, the Dark One's jaws opened wide, then fell with a vicious force around my tail, disregarding even the spikes as they tore through the roof of his mouth.
Never in my life had I known such pain as I experienced in that moment...
I shrieked in agony, and found myself absolutely helpless as the Dark One began to thrash his head around, jerking my body through the air with such an effortless force that I couldn't believe it. He swung me through the air with nearly the ease that he had the girl, the treetops swaying from the breeze as my head swept past them, my efforts to break free only sinking his teeth in further and further.
And then, all at once, I felt a lightening. A pair of hands slipping from around my neck. The girl screaming. I jerked my head around, eyes wide, and saw her soaring back across the forest. She slammed into the top of a tree, and instantly went tumbling down along the branches. Landing on one after the other after the other, her body contorting into unnatural positions as she fell, until finally she disappeared completely from sight.
I gaped, horrified, wholly clueless in that moment as to whether she might still be alive or dead.
All I knew for sure was that I was angry. Angrier than I had ever been. And needing, more desperately than ever, to give that anger its proper release.
I turned To Yrsur, with a level of control I really shouldn't have possessed in that moment. I gave him a withering stare, and he almost stopped thrashing his attention piqued. Before he even managed to move, however, I opened my jaws as wide as they could go, and poured molten fire onto the son of a bitch with the ferocity of a nuclear bomb blast.
Yrsur cried out in pain. I felt his teeth prying free from my tail, and felt the fire make contact with him, sending him tumbling back toward the forest. I sustained it for as long as I could, breathing out a steady, vicious blast, and not letting up until I was certain I'd engulfed him.
Finally I let up, my lungs feeling on the verge of collapse as the smoke cleared in front of me. And there was Yrsur. Writhing in agony. His jet black body now lit up like the tail end of a rocket, every inch of him covered in golden, relentless flame.
But still, he lived. And so still, I had work to do.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and I charged, once more, and for the last time.
I opened my jaws wide. I aimed straight for his throat. I clamped my jaws shut around him, scarcely even burned by the intensity of my own golden fire.
Yrsur howled more ferociously still. Jerking his head around. Crying out in such pain that even I nearly felt sorry for him. But still further I tightened my grip on his neck. I clamped down, and I held and held, until at last I felt the thrashing cease.
He went limp in my embrace. He grew heavy. And then he fell.
I tore my jaws from his throat, and watched him plummet toward the ground, decapitating several burning trees as he soared down, down
, down into the forest.
There was a sickening thud, and I felt my entire body go numb. My limbs shaking, stunned by the enormity of what I'd just done.
Yet there was no time to ruminate on it now, I knew.
I circled down, easing my way through the blazing canopy of trees, finally settling down against the forest floor at the spot were Yrsur had landed. I'd intended to make sure that he was really dead, but there quickly proved to be no need for that.
He'd shifted back down into his human form upon landing, and already the flames had so engulfed him that his body was scarcely recognizable. His head scarcely remained attached to his body thanks to the force with which I'd taken a bite out of him, and a deep shiver ran through me from my fangs down to my tail at this fact.
I had never killed a man before– even a man as vile as Yrsur.
Somehow, I had the feeling that I just jumped straight out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak, and that it would be a cold day in hell before The Dark Ones let me get away with this without any kind of retaliation.
I thought about this for little more than a second, before my thoughts turned once more to the girl– the thought of finding her again, in a state in any way resembling the one in which I'd found Yrsur, made me feel sicker than anything. I was determined, no matter what else might happen to me, not to let this come to fruition.
I tore through the forest toward the spot where the girl had fallen, not entirely sure how much cause I had to be hopeful. I raced through the trees, throwing them aside as needed, but careful not to move to fast, and risk trampling her, or burying her beneath a fallen tree in the process.
I began to sense her presence again.
Encouraged by this, feeling more and more certain that she must surely be alive, I began to pick up the pace. Trusting my instinct. Praying, to whom I didn't know, that this might still somehow be alright. That she might still have survived. That the strange sense of hope I'd discovered so suddenly at the sight of her wouldn't drain from my life just as quickly as it had come. That I might somehow, in some way, be able to save her from the fate I had brought down upon her.
And that, at last, was when I saw her.
I froze, staring wide eyed at her motionless body. Smoke was rising up around her, the fire not yet having spread to the spot where she lay, but the flames rapidly encroaching.
In a panic I shifted back down, and ran to her in my human form, apprehensive about what I might find up close. It could have been a lot worse had I been up higher, but I was unsure of just how much comfort this should be to me as I came to the spot where she lay. Her eyes were closed. She wasn't moving. Her limbs lay unnaturally sprawled around her, all four of them clearly having broken in at least one spot or another as she'd toppled down along the pine tree branches.
Despite not even knowing this woman, tears welled up in my eyes for her, and I felt a burning in my throat that had absolutely nothing to do with the fire in my belly.
In spite of everything, there was still this serenity about her. Something so deep, so profound. As worried as I still was, there was something in her manner that assured me that she was still alive, before even reaching forward to check. I did check, though, placing my fingers to her throat, and listening for even the slightest tap of life against my fingertips.
There was a pulse. There was a soul. She was alive.
I breathed an incomplete sigh of relief, knowing as before that good news could be short lived if I didn't get my ass in gear.
I stepped back for a moment, thinking of the best possible way to get her out of here. The forest was collapsing around us now, and I knew that there was no way I could carry her out in my human form– even aside from the circumstances, I was becoming increasingly aware of the bleeding wound along my abdomen, and knew that it would be impossible for me to carry her on foot.
She would need to come with me in my dragon form, then, although I realized instantly that I wouldn't be able to carry her on my back. It remained to be seen whether she still had use of her limbs, but even if she did, she would almost certainly spill over and fall from my back if I tried to carry her off unconscious.
I was just going to have to hold her, then, I determined, and pray that the effort didn't hurt her further than she already had been. And so, transforming once more, I drew my front claws up under her arms as gently as I could, watching closely for any signs of pain or discomfort from her. When none arose, I let out a slight sigh of relief, and kicked off laboriously from the ground, just as a curtain of gold fell shut around the spot where we'd been, engulfing the surrounding trees in flames.
I took off into the night, soaring once again across the full moon, the burning forest below me a dizzying sight.
The world really did seem as though it had just ended, and I realized, hating the fact that Fri had been spot on about everything, clear from the beginning. I'd been reckless and impulsive, and God only knew how far the consequences may span from here. Yet I knew I couldn't worry about that right now. My only concern needed to be getting this girl to safety. Taking her somewhere far away, where I knew that the Dark Ones would never find her, and making sure that she was made well again.
I owed her that, I knew. I would make sure that I made up to her for my profound idiocy, even if it was the last thing I ever did on this Earth.
And that, under the circumstances, was feeling like a much smaller if than I might have hoped it to be...
4
Alicia
Everything felt warm.
I guess that made sense, given that the last thing I remembered was the entire world seeming to go up in flames all around me.
But this was a different kind of warmth. The good kind.
Like nothing could harm me. Like nothing in the world could possibly reach me, as long as I remained where I was. As long as I protected the mysterious force watching over me.
It was something I could never really remember feeling before in my life. Yet it was how I imagined a child must feel, wrapped safely in the arms of her mother and father.
And at that thought, I slowly eased awake, my eyelashes fluttering, and the room that surrounded me seeming more like a dream than reality.
It was a long time before I did any more moving than that. The energy to rise kept coming in waves, jolting through my arms and legs, but then ebbing away again, like the tides lashing up against the shore. The hazy security I felt when relaxed gave way to feeling like total shit whenever I tried to exert myself, and so sooner or later I just kind of gave into it. Convincing myself that there was no point. That my body would cooperate when it was ready, and that until then, I would be best off just to listen to its advice.
Finally, after I don't know how long, I did at last manage to life myself slowly up in bed.
The very first thing I was aware of, instantaneously, was the fact that I was completely naked. A mountain of covers rubbed softly against my nude body, and though I could feel that the room surrounding me was a mix of ice-cold air wafting in from outside, as well as radiant heat wafting from a fireplace in the corner, here where I lay I felt as snug as a bug in a rug.
I sighed once I'd made it all the way up onto my pillow, a little bit dizzy from the effort.
“Oh, God,” I sighed, lifting a hand up to my temple, and pressing my fingers against it. The movement itself didn't hurt, but I felt a sudden tingle run along my arm. Like it was telling me that it should be hurting, but that for some strange reason, it wasn't.
My legs didn't hurt either. Yet I specifically remembered being grabbed by the ankles in the jaws of a ferocious black dragon back at that melee in the forest, then flung into the woods and having my limbs smashed to pieces by those of the trees as I fell to the undergrowth.
So why wasn't I hurting? How long had I been in this place?
And for that matter, where the hell was this place?
I pulled both of my arms out from beneath the covers, very carefully, and studied them. They were still covere
d all over with cuts and scratches, but any breaks I'd received seemed to have healed up nicely. Or at the very least, just enough for me to be able to move them without crying out in agony.
I lifted up the covers, and saw that my chest and my belly were just as scuffed up as the rest of me, as well as my legs. But any broken places in these, too, had seemingly made a miraculous recovery of sorts, though how, I couldn't even begin to conceive.
Unable to arrive at answer to this question, my mind returned once more to the fact that I was naked...
I suddenly felt my face go beet red, wondering who had undressed me, and trying to decide how exactly I felt about the most obvious candidate.
Had the man– or the dragon– or whatever the hell he was with the golden eyes even made it out of that fight alive? And if so, was he the one responsible for the state I was in?
It felt ridiculous to get so hung up on the idea of him seeing me without clothes on, in light of everything else that had happened. And after all, hadn't I seen him naked as well? Didn't that make it only fair that he would see me in such a state, and doubly so when he had legitimate medical reasons for wanting me out of my clothes, judging by the state I was in...
I wasn't offended. Just embarrassed.
I'd felt such an intense surge of emotion toward him during those few seconds back there before the second dragon had struck. Such longing, such passion for a man I didn't even know. So to wake up like this was like discovering that your secret crush had not only seen you naked, but that he'd been taking care of you and mending your wounds for God knew how long, after having saved your life.
I was grateful, but it made me feel helpless, and a little bit pathetic.
Looking once more around the room, which appeared to be some sort of log cabin in the woods, I suddenly spied a neat pile in the corner, of what looked like my clothes– which, despite being ripped and tattered, felt like an improvement over having on nothing at all, as cozy as it might have been until now. Plus, on top of the pile, I saw that my camera had been stacked as well, and this alone would have been incentive enough for me to go over and reclaim my missing items.