As it turned out, she had.
In fact, she had missed the last three days of work. Diggs had called in regarding her first day of absence, but had not done so for the next two days.
Joanna’s source also told her that Officer Diggs had petitioned recently to re-open a case—one involving several employees of a local company who had died while oversees on a company trip last year.
The company’s name was Rune Corp.
Somehow the case had been closed, but when her source had examined the paperwork more closely, he was unable to find any indication of a full investigation.
As Joanna watched her segment come to a close, she was satisfied that she was on to something. For now, all she could do was report on the disappearance of a local police officer, but while Northern Virginia was chewing on that, she would focus on determining how or if Rune Corp was involved in the police officer’s disappearance.
She wasn’t sure what the connection was, but her reporter’s nose was rarely wrong, and she smelled something at Rune Corp that was a little off, even though she had never been there herself—a situation that she planned on correcting as soon as possible.
CHAPTER 24
SIGELA, THE FIRE DRAGON, peered across the solar system from her vantage point from inside the star that gave the Earth its light and its warmth.
Even though she was still banished to the heavens, she could still see plainly everything that happened on the distant blue planet. She could also feel the events that transpired there through the many pieces of her essence that still remained and through the eyes of her followers.
No one but her own family wanted her to return to the world, and not even some of them now, it seemed.
The other dragons, her own brothers and her sister, were more than happy to use only the parts of her that benefited their own precious Drayoom families. How happy were their followers to feel Sigela’s presence when one of them needed to be warm on a cold night or when they burned with passion for one another.
Without her, no progress would ever have been made down there, and most life would not even exist.
The Fire Dragon laughed, and a torrent of plasma rose and spit out from the surface of the Sun, its glowing tendrils reaching out toward the Earth.
Down on the planet, the Drayoom whom Terrada had named Redemption—the one called Merrick—and everyone else...they all believed the prophecy of Sigela’s return had been avoided.
They did not understand the basic tenets of prophecy—that by its nature, a true prophecy could never be negated.
It was really as simple as that.
Sigela believed that Merrick was indeed destined to be the new Ard Righ and that he was still the one to ultimately release her from her prison and to fulfill the prophecy.
Sigela knew the truth, but she had little hope that Merrick or any of the other Drayoom would understand for a very long time the way that events were truly interconnected and unfolding. Just as a gnat could not comprehend the thoughts of a human, neither could a Drayoom understand the complexity of a dragon’s mind or the plans that they made.
How long would it take for one of the Keepers or one of the Drayoom leaders to look around and see that their very planet was fundamentally out of balance—that it had lost its equilibrium?
The extremes in temperature.
The storms that ravaged an increasing amount of the Earth’s population.
The dragons themselves were at war, even if their followers did not yet know it—and it had all started because of Merrick’s actions.
And no matter what the young Ard Righ or the Earth Queen or even Araki’s own Emperor thought or tried to do, none of them could not change the truth of the prophecy.
Sigela would return to the Earth, and she would remake it in her image.
Perhaps not today.
Perhaps not tomorrow.
But some day in the not too distant future, the Fire Dragon would fulfill the prophecy.
It was inevitable.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 25
MERRICK FELT HIS BODY dissipate into the very air around him even before his mind could process that the Prince had just told him to hang on.
Merrick was accustomed to traveling around the world through the body of Terrada, but the Earth Dragon was composed of things that were familiar to him—roots, rocks, dirt, and even bugs.
Traveling as a part of Araki was a completely different experience.
The Wind Dragon’s body was everywhere and nowhere at the same time and was constantly moving and in flux. It was, at best, controlled chaos.
The Prince had given them the same advice that Merrick always gave first timers when traveling through Terrada—to stay focused on something in their minds that was easy to remember—something that reminded them clearly of who they were.
Merrick had no problem holding his identity together while his separated molecules were propelled first through the troposphere and then up to the clouds where the Wind Family’s outpost resided.
He knew that Master Banzo would handle the journey with ease as well.
Even Mona, as human as she was, had traveled through Terrada before and would find the trip into the sky different, but not dangerous.
However, this was Jonathan’s first time, and Merrick allowed himself for a second to worry about whether his young Alpha would make it in one piece up to the cloud. As soon as his mind wandered, Merrick felt his own identity start to blur, but he quickly tightened his mind once again until he had a clear image of who and what he was.
When he had first journeyed through a living dragon less than a year ago, he had used Mona as his focal point, but since then, he had discovered a lot about himself, including the meaning of his creation name. As Merrick’s molecules were whisked skyward, he chose to focus on that, instead.
Through much hard work and the suffering of others, Merrick had learned that his creation name described one who was destined to suffer but to also ultimately redeem himself. When he defeated his brother, Eudroch, Merrick had thought that his destiny had been fulfilled.
However, after much meditation, he had concluded that suffering might always be a part of his life, but so would redemption. On one count, he felt a confidence he had never before known—understanding at his core that he would always survive—always come out on top. On the other hand, he and maybe those close to him might also have to suffer continuously and repeatedly.
Over the last six months, he had known nothing but contentment, from both his relationship with Mona and from his job. But six months was a mere blip on the timeline of someone’s life.
He held out hope that those around him would not have to suffer because of him, but the fact that they might was a realization that Merrick himself was just coming to terms with. Until he thought it through more, he wasn’t planning on sharing his suspicions with Mona, Cara, or anyone else.
A sudden drop in temperature interrupted Merrick’s thoughts as his molecules rose higher and higher, until they were miles above the surface of the planet.
At first he felt freedom—ultimate freedom, the likes of which he had never before experienced. That initial sense of elation, however, quickly became overwhelming. He felt free, but there were too many ways to go and no structure or framework on which to orient as he struggled to keep himself whole amidst the swirling chaos.
And then he saw it.
There was structure here in the air. But it was like no other structure he had experienced before. There were swells of pressure and currents like those of an ocean or a river. There was ultimate chaos and ultimate order both at the same time. Air was everywhere and every place that other things were not. The air was defined by the absence of things, and yet, it provided the life and sustenance for all living things.
For the first time, Merrick began to suspect that the so-called Wind Dragon might be much more than just the living embodiment of air and wind.
As soon as Merrick perceived the way the wind worked,
he rose even more quickly, until he felt as if he were sailing through the sky, bursting through one misty cloud after another. Within a matter of a few heartbeats, Merrick felt himself rise up through a floor of pure cloud to stand next to Prince Takehiko.
The Prince turned to look at Merrick with an expression on his face that told Merrick he had been waiting there for what he considered to be a long while. Merrick looked around, and as he did, he saw that the two of them were alone.
He was about to ask the Prince if he should be worried, but suddenly Mona popped up through the fluffy floor and then Master Banzo.
After a tense minute of waiting, Jonathan finally rose up from the floor and materialized, coughing and sputtering as if he had almost just drowned.
“I was worried about you,” Merrick said as he slapped his young friend on the back. “How was your first trip?”
Jonathan was bent over, his hands on his knees. He looked up at Merrick with his mouth hanging agape. Within a second, his knackered expression blossomed into a huge smile that told Merrick all he needed to know.
As he had suspected, Jonathan was a natural.
“If everyone has arrived now,” the Prince said, “I would like to welcome you to the sovereign territory of the Wind Family. This is but a humble outpost, but we hope that you find it agreeable. Normally, we would just continue on to the Cloud City, but perhaps you would like a little time to rest and to orient yourselves to your new surroundings.
“It is hard for me to imagine, since I have lived in the air all of my life, but our elders tell me that those new to our world must take a short while to find their equilibrium. I believe it is similar to what humans describe as getting their sea legs.”
Merrick didn’t want to admit it, but the Prince was right. They were standing on water vapor, and if Merrick thought about it for too long, he felt slightly queasy. He had grown accustomed to a lot of different environments in his recent past, but standing so many miles above the Earth’s surface on a bed of cloud vapor was distinctly unsettling.
“If you will all please follow me,” the Prince said, “I will take you somewhere you may rest before the next leg of our trip.”
Merrick and his group followed the Prince as he led them across a footbridge also made of billowy, cloud-like material that seemed to sparkle as if imbued with some foreign substance. The bridge spanned perhaps an eighth of a mile of clear sky, and looking down at that field of pure blue was surreal.
Merrick had traveled through the air many times in the form of lightning, but the experience had always been transitory and quick, and nothing like this.
Walking in the air across a bridge made of water vapor that wasn’t even solid underfoot was unnerving. Merrick’s stress abated only slightly with the knowledge that if he somehow were to fall through the clouds, he could easily summon lightning bolts to carry him away. If he was feeling this way, he could only imagine what the others in his party were experiencing.
One look at Mona confirmed his concerns. Merrick reached over, squeezed her hand, and held it as they walked onward.
After crossing the footbridge, they walked up a spiral set of stairs until they stood atop a platform that overlooked a small valley filled with buildings and streets, all made of clouds. Merrick was having a hard time even conceptualizing how much magic it must have been taking to keep the small town—or the outpost as the Prince had called it—together and aloft. He wondered if members of the Wind Family had that responsibility or if perhaps Araki himself kept the outpost from falling.
The Prince waved his arm in a long arc, extending it out toward the buildings and the people below.
“Welcome,” Prince Takehiko said, “to Outpost 14301.”
CHAPTER 26
SHE HAD NOT EVEN thought about the ramifications of traveling through Araki with an unborn child inside of her.
Desperate, Mona used the thought of the life inside her womb—Merrick’s child—as her focal point, but that caused her even more anxiety. No matter how she tried, she could not take her mind off of the dangers her baby might be facing, even as she struggled to keep her molecules together despite the chaotic patterns of the wind that pulled and pushed them with every passing second.
As she tried to concentrate on following the flow that seemed to be guiding her upward, an even worse thought occurred to her. Her unborn child was half Drayoom, and she knew that dragons gave Drayoom children their creation names while they were still inside the womb. Suddenly she was afraid that Araki might somehow disturb or influence her baby as well. Even though Merrick didn’t have any Wind Dragon blood in him, there would probably be no stopping the Wind Dragon from doing something to her child while they were traveling as a part of the living wind.
The temperatures dropped, and she began to shiver as the surface of the planet disappeared completely from her view. She saw and felt the chaos all around her even more but continued to fixate on her unborn child.
As she rose higher and higher, she started to panic as she found it more difficult to remember who she was.
She did not get a feeling that the Wind Dragon was necessarily an evil force. But she did sense an unbridled and raw energy that at any moment could rip her to pieces—not out of malevolence, but as a bi-product of the nature of the dragon itself.
At the height of her anxiety, her molecules reassembled, she felt the dewy water mist of clouds under her feet, and she found herself standing next to Merrick and Prince Takehiko, trying to catch her breath.
She touched her stomach with one hand as if she would somehow be able to detect the health of the life gestating inside her. Merrick looked over at her, and she once again tried to hide her true emotions, but she knew he could tell that she was distraught.
Luckily, Merrick seemed to be attributing her distress to the journey and to the new environment among the clouds. Even though she wanted to share her news with Merrick more than ever, she knew that if she did, he would be angry and would insist on them both going home right away, and Mona didn’t want to be the reason he stopped his mission.
As she walked along with the group, she reasoned with herself that she was only a few months pregnant, and that she was feeling stronger and steadier now that she had survived her first trip with the Wind Dragon. She had panicked during the journey up to the clouds, but everything was fine now. As she listened for warning signs from her body, she heard none and concluded that her child was still alive and safe inside her.
She took a deep breath as Merrick reached out and held her hand. His touch soothed her and gave her even more strength and resolve. She would continue on to the Cloud City, and both she and her child would arrive safely.
There was no other option.
CHAPTER 27
CARA’S TRIP BACK to the Earth Clan had been uneventful. At this point in her life, traveling with Terrada was almost routine, even though the experience still left her filled with some degree of awe every time.
She had arrived in the valley as usual and made her way into the mountain’s innards and down to the city of the Earth Clan with no problems.
People recognized her as she walked down the familiar street that led to the center of the city.
She thought about stopping and checking on Bradley as soon as she arrived, but she decided to head to the Earth Council first to see if she could speak with some of its members to let them know she and Bradley were here. And to give them a heads up that Merrick would be on his way soon.
After half an hour of walking, Cara arrived at the large clearing that was usually filled with merchants and townspeople engaging in their daily commerce and social events.
Today the area was empty except for the two guards standing at the double-door entrance to the large stone building at the far end of the clearing—the place where the Queen and the Earth Council held court.
The fact that there were guards on duty meant that some members of the council and maybe even the Queen were there. But Cara was showing up unannounced, and as
she made her way over to the guards, she hoped that she would be allowed to gain an impromptu audience with whichever council members were there.
Cara walked up to the large double doors made of bark. Each door was embossed with half of a gold circle that connected at the center to form a full circle crisscrossed with lines that formed geometric shapes. The resulting design was similar to the one used in the large, round window in her own office back at Rune Corp.
The two guards standing on either side of the doors wore tunics and kilts of heavy cloth, similar to Scottish tartans, but devoid of the plaids and other Celtic patterns typical of that fashion. Each of them had a broad sword hanging by his side with a hilt and a blade made of divinium.
“Ho there, members of the Fianna,” Cara said, acknowledging them as soldiers in the Queen’s elite guard.
The guards looked down on her and stared for a few seconds before one of them allowed himself to break into a slight smile.
“Ho there, yourself, Cara, daughter of Ohman,” the first guard said. “It’s been too long since you’ve graced our city with your presence. My name is Uthra, and this is Penn.”
Cara knew that this was no time for her mind to be on other things, but she couldn’t help but notice that the one called Uthra was being a bit more friendly to her than the Fianna were usually known to be.
She wasn’t sure why, but in the off chance he was actually flirting with her, she decided that it couldn’t hurt to play up to him if it would help her get in to see the council.
“Gentlemen, I hope you’re both having a good day,” Cara said. “Where is everyone? This place is usually packed this time of day.”
Uthra leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest.
“It was crowded not an hour ago,” Uthra said, “but when we received word that you had arrived...well, the Queen ordered the market place closed. For your safety, of course. And then called a special session of the council. I guess she figured if you were here, there was probably something you wanted to talk to her about.”
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