Beneath Stained Glass Wings

by K Kazul Wolf

  I grip the handle of my sabre tight, raising it an inch from its sheath. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I?” Both his eyebrows raise, though the rest of his face is cool, neutral. “I believe you were the one who called my name.”

  “You’re Maur?”

  He sighs. “No, I’m the other dragon whose name you called. What are you here for?”

  “I’m here to ask for help. I—”

  “No.” He waves a hand. “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. Whoever told you my name should have kept it to themselves. Now, kindly escort yourself out.”

  He turns to walk away and a protest forms at my lips, then stops. The walls ahead of him push forward and create a path for him. And the walls…they aren’t just showing the dance of the water, they’re moving with the water, like the water. It shimmers like a fish, silver and smooth. I catch Maur’s figure, or my reflection in the shifting surface. Mirror-like.

  “W-wait!” He’s getting away. I run forward, reaching out a hand to grab his shoulder—

  Spikes shoot from the walls, pointing toward me and blocking my path. I flap my wings, jumping into the wall behind me, and freezing. How the hell is he doing this?

  He turns minutely enough to glance toward me. “You have your answer. Leave me be, serpent. Go back to your safe little haven in the sky. Let those other idiotic dragons help you with whatever you need.” And then he keeps moving forward.

  No. He does exist. He could help me. He could be our chance to fight back. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood and reach out. The spikes are made nearly entirely of water but…they won’t listen. It’s like trying to manipulate an illusion made from rock, not liquid.

  But he’s getting farther away. It looks like the ceiling’s about to crumble behind him, about to block me into my small room of spikes.

  I growl, bite hard enough that my vision swirls and push. Come on, I can’t let this one stupid little thing keep me from this. I won’t let him call me powerless. I’m no serpent.

  The spikes crack, then shatter.

  Maur pauses and I stumble forward, the exhaustion of who knows how long without sleep catching up to me. I pull out my sabre, ready to bat away whatever he throws at me next. “I can’t go back. I don’t want to. I’m going to destroy them all like they destroyed me. I’ll kill them all; don’t make me be the death of you, too.”

  A smile twitches at the edge of his lips for a moment, a twinkle running through his yellow eyes. “So maybe the serpent can cast a small illusion after all. Very well. Don’t assume that you can take me quite yet, though. Who sent you?”

  I straighten and take a deep breath. “Dantea sent me. She said you’d be the best person to go to.” Possibly the only, unfortunately.

  “Dantea?” He takes a few steps forward, and I raise my sabre between us. He has no weapon; at least that’s in my favor. “Why didn’t she come herself?”

  I blink. “She’s an old woman! Do you really think she’d travel this far with her joints the way they are, my lord?” It’s too easy to slip back into old titles, to feel the submissive wave wash over me.

  Spikes shoot from the walls, pressing against my shoulders and my arms, their shimmering surface sharper than my blade.

  “Do not call me by that title, serpent. You know my name. Use it.” He turns and walks away with my blade pointed at his back.

  For a moment, I’m lost. Can he trust me from just saying her name?

  The spikes dissolve around me, losing their shimmering surface and falling as thick, grey, wet sand. The wall behind me caves in as well, and I scramble forward to catch up to him.

  “It can’t have been that long,” he mumbles while he walks. “Maybe…around forty years?”

  “Well, she isn’t a dragon.” Does he know anything about the ground dwellers? Even I know that they live shorter lives than us. “It’s not like she’ll live as long as you.”

  “You forget your place, illusionist,” he growls, eyes flicking toward me for a moment.

  My feathers rustle again, and I scowl. “Weren’t you the one who said not to use your title? We both live longer than ground dwellers, and even I don’t live as long as you. We both have dragon’s blood.”

  He gives a noncommittal harrumph and keeps walking. At least he isn’t trying to kill me with spikes this time, I guess.

  “Where are we going?” I snap. “I haven’t even said why Dantea sent me, and you just keep walking on, pointlessly.”

  He pauses. “What a courageous little serpent you are! Would you rather we sit?”

  The ground twists beneath me, a chair forming under my feet, knocking me into the seat and rising to the ceiling faster than it popped out of the ground. I roll off just before it smashes against the ceiling, whipping my sabre around to slice into the dragon’s arm—

  My blade simply lands in the sand. A projected illusion without a stone like my father’s? But it’s real, I felt that as I sliced into it. Almost like he’s moving the sand, or perhaps the water within the sand? No, illusions aren’t made to control earth, and not even a dragon can move that much water.

  Unless this one can.

  My mouth goes dry, my grip tightening around the hilt of my blade.

  “Whoops.” Maur sits at a large table a few feet to my right. “I let my hand slip. Impressive reflexes, though, I must say.”

  “What is wrong with you?” I raise my sabre. “How are you doing this?” It’s all sand and water, but I swear that those spikes were solid, and it felt like I landed on a cushion when that chair knocked me off my feet.

  He smiles, leaning back. “I have an army of sand foxes behind the walls, ordered to do my bidding. And believe me, if you keep pushing your limits, they’ll be happy to come out and make a meal of you.” He motions toward the table, the chair at the other end of it “So I’d highly recommend you explain yourself before I let them loose on you. And they haven’t eaten in quite a while.”

  “Really?” I scoff. The books my father had mentioned foxes briefly, but they were above-ground predators, nothing special or magical.

  He rolls his eyes. “You aren’t very skilled at detecting sarcasm, hmm?”

  Hesitating, I lower my blade. Is he going to help or try to kill me again? “I…” Well, I suppose trying to tell him is my only option. “Sometime after you left, Dantea joined a rebel group.”

  His eyebrows raise. “She hates dragon-kind that much?”

  I shrug. “I suppose she does as much as I can, being one. But not as much as you think. She doesn’t hate you.”

  The expression freezes on his face, unnatural. “Is that so?”

  “Well, yes. I don’t have proof, but—”

  “Oh.” He waves his hand, turning to look at one of the walls. “I believe you. You aren’t lying.”

  I pause. “How do you know?”

  He lifts a hand, drumming his fingers across the table. “You really don’t know?”

  I scowl and slowly shake my head. Dragons, he’s strange. Then again, I suppose I should have expected that. The other Fallen I’ve met are different, and he goes beyond Fallen. He’s a dragon who left home. As far as I know, the first dragon who’d left by choice. They hunt anyone who can get back and yet, here he is. He escaped them.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I barely hold back a snort. Close my eyes on the man that tried to skewer me a few times, then attempted to smash me against the ceiling. Such a smart idea.

  He sighs. “Serpent, if you plan on getting anywhere in life, you’ll have to take a few chances. I promise on my very own hide that I will not kill, maim, or harm you. Yet.”

  Such a comforting man. Why did Dantea think this was a good idea? Giving him a look to let him know that I’m not okay with this whole situation, I close my eyes.

  15

  The Test

  I grip my sabre tight, though it’s next to useless with my eyesight gone. And that’s not even taking Maur’s tricks into account.
<
br />   “Very good,” Maur’s voice comes from my left—wasn’t he sitting on my right? I barely open an eye to see where he is and find the room as dark as my eyelids.

  “Oh, no cheating, dear.” From behind me now? “All right, I want you to focus on the water around you. Now, don’t call a mirage. I hope they at least teach you how to sense up there, but you never know what they’ll resort to next.”

  I bite back questions and irritation and breathe. Focus on the in and out, the little water moving back and forth between the room and me. I know it’s there but I bite my cheek to hone in on it—

  “We’ll be having none of that, now.” He’s so close I can feel his warm breath on my cheek.

  My eyes snap open but he’s nowhere in sight. A mirage, it has to be. But where…?

  “I told you, no cheating, serpent.”

  I bare my teeth. I don’t have time for this nonsense. I reach into my pocket, taking out the crystal my father made. I catch the faint light in the room, spot the concentration of shimmering mist to my right. I point my sabre at it.

  He fades into vision, the fog parting around him as he walks toward me and snatches my wrist from the air. He eyes the stone in my hand. “Hmm. A tool to illuminate illusions. A cheat to easily redirect light to create mirages, to track illusions. The little serpent is too good to learn, is that it?”

  “Learning is beside the point.” I keep my voice even, though my heartbeat is not. “Dantea sent me, but I never said why.”

  “Whoever said I cared?” A grin spreads across his face but doesn’t reach his predatory eyes.

  I open my mouth, then shut it. I want to have a smart comeback, the right words to convince him I’m here for a good cause, maybe one he’d care about. But exhaustion pulls at my thoughts before they can reach their destination.

  “I will happily listen to you.” He tilts his head. “Or, well, I will put up with listening to you. So long as you prove you are worth my time and don’t use this thing as a vice.”

  And with that, the room plunges into darkness.

  My heart pounds hard against my ribcage. I drag in a breath, worried I’m about to be pulled into the sand again. But nothing changes. The air may look solid, but it’s the same as it was before.

  “Now, again. Close your eyes.” His voice is behind me, moving from side to side. “You can’t cheat that much even if you wanted to, now.”

  A scowl on my lips, I close my eyes. I draw the water into focus, how it flows past me, through me. It joins more and more water, the entire room shifting and changing. I can barely make out the thicker water of the walls as the air shimmering around me. It’s dizzying, and I sway trying to keep tabs on it. It’s easy to find water in the desert, the trails of it so faint that they stand out like a sore thumb.

  “Good. Now, find me.”

  “But how?” It comes out soft, weak, and I hate myself for it. I should know this. I should be able to cheat his stupid tricks. I broke his spikes, and what’s so wrong with using the crystal?

  “Easy as your lungs move and your heart beats.”

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? I focus on my breathing, my heartbeat, but nothing changes. I drown in the moisture in the air, breathing it in and feeling no change in it.

  “Find me.”

  Tracing an illusion isn’t difficult. Shouldn’t be difficult. You can catch the glimmer of an illusion if you’re looking for it, sometimes feel the dense mist in the air. Even in the city I could do that. But down here? It’s like everything is an illusion, the moisture clinging around me, blinding me.

  A sigh echoes through the air, red light seeping through my closed eyelids.

  I open my eyes to Maur staring at me.

  “I was right. You remind me of someone I once knew.”

  I blink at the sudden light, squinting at his face. “Who?”

  “The illusionist who essentially ruined my life.”

  The sand shifts beneath me, wrapping around my feet and then shooting me up. I bend from the force, trying to grab at my ankles, but before my fingers touch my skin, I’m buried in the sand again, trying to claw through a substance that I can find no grip on.

  Until I’m shot into the sky.

  I catch myself, spreading my wings and softening the fall to the sand. The sun glitters on the waves and dunes, almost dipped below the horizon. I’m a little wet, sand clinging to my short hair.

  What is wrong with this dragon? I glance around, pleased and slightly irritated to find the pack that Dantea sent me with is only a few feet away. With a sigh, I walk over to it, snatch it, and pause.

  It’s obvious that he wants nothing to do with me. He told me to do the impossible, something an illusionist could never hope to do, and when I failed, he was unforgiving. So I should head back. Carita and the wings are waiting for me. They need me. This was an idiotic idea, just like everything else I’ve done until now.

  And yet…

  Maybe he wasn’t trying to crawl under my skin. Maybe he was trying to teach me how to work my illusions better.

  I know the better option is the certain one; the one where I make progress and move forward. But Dantea sent me here and her view on dragons is curious. One that Carita doesn’t share, but I do.

  So if she sent me to Maur, there has to be a reason. And my father raised me with a curiosity too profound to let logic win this struggle.

  I drop my pack, sitting on the sand next to it.

  Waiting a little while longer can’t hurt.

  “You’re still there, aren’t you?”

  Maur.

  I open my eyes. They burn a little bit, the spray of the ocean wafting into my face. I scramble back. Wasn’t the ocean farther away when I fell asleep?

  I spit sand out of my mouth before answering. “Would you be asking that if you didn’t already know?”

  “True enough.” He’s nowhere to be seen, either keeping himself out of my sight for some stupid theatrics or having left already.

  I could beg him to stay, or to teach me, or to join the Story Collectors’ cause, but I can’t bring myself to. It feels slightly childish, but I refuse to grovel before such an arrogant person. I did enough of that in the city in the sky.

  I grab my pack, poking through what Dantea packed. I haven’t seen half of the food in here; dried meat that’s all sorts of shapes and shades ranging between brown and white, fruit more varied in color than wings, and what I assume are nuts—some are covered in thick spices and coatings. It looks as if Dantea went around the market and took handfuls of whatever random stuff was in reach. Maybe she did. I can’t decide if the medley of sharp, tangy smells is awful or somewhat enticing.

  “You really aren’t going to get up and leave?”

  I jump, wings spreading to spread a spray an iridescent rainbow over the sand. Then I scowl. Guess he’s keeping himself invisible, then. “No. I came here with a purpose, and I won’t leave until I fulfill it.”

  “Hmph.”

  He’s on my right. For now.

  “Are you going to listen to me?” I pick out one of the bits of dried meat and nibble it. It’s…sour.

  “Well, that entirely depends on if you’re worth listening to, serpent. Tell me, what is an illusion?”

  I sigh. At least he’s not moving all around, playing games. “It’s manipulating water vapor through dragon senses.”

  “And that’s what both dragons and illusionists cast?”

  A trick question? “Yes?”

  “Then why are half-breeds like you called illusionists, but dragons are called dragons?”

  I finally manage to swallow the weird meat. I’d spit it out, but I don’t want to waste anything I was given. “Why does it matter? I didn’t come up with the name; dragons did.”

  “Not all dragons did, no. One dragon did.” He’s closer now. Lower, too. Sitting. “She did it to keep you separate; to make sure you knew you were less-than. You aren’t a full-fledged dragon, you don’t have the right to be identified by anything
but what you were useful for at the time: illusions.”

  I eye the spot where I think he is. He can tell me all he wants of how awful dragons are; I already have my own opinions. “Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m on the side of uncovering the truths the idiot leaders of the sky have buried for generation upon generation. I’m against the incompetence that is so heavy in your skull.”

  Dumb. Stupid. Useless. I know what I am but it still stings. I will always remember what my idiocy cost us, what the dragons have told me I am my whole life. I turn back toward the ocean. “So you’re against me, but you’re also against the king?”

  Another stretch of silence.

  “It’s a king, now?” His voice is awfully quiet.

  “It’s always been a king.” Maybe he’s really the idiot here. “Dragons are immortal; you know that.”

  He laughs, sudden enough to make me jump again. “They honestly have you worshiping us up there. Horrifying and impressive all at once. Tell me, what does this king of yours look like? Have you seen him walking in his scales?”

  “Why should I tell you?” He’s done nothing for me.

  “Because you’re trying to get on my good side, remember?” There’s a smile in his voice.

  Maybe all the dragons are as terrible as Carita thinks they are. I take a breath. “He was golden, and he was massive—at least five times as tall as you are, in this form. And his crest was so large that I was surprised he could hold his head up—it looked like a mane.”

  “Ah. That explains everything, then. The previous lord of the sky was, in fact, a lady. She was gaining on age, and probably died of the mortality that dragons do actually have. I can’t believe he’s the king, though. What an idiot.”