The Dragon's Betrayal

by Martha Woods

  “KEYA!” I yelled, more furiously than ever, and pulled so hard on the cuffs around my wrists that they dug into my flesh, blood spilling along the trunk of the tree.

  Fire exploded from Mordeos' throat, so white hot and blinding that I was forced to clamp my eyes shut as the flames barreled out onto Keya's head. Through narrowed eyelids she appeared fully engulfed by emerald fire, lost so deeply in them that there seemed no possible chance of survival.

  In that moment, my world ended. I strained against the tree trunk, determined to make it free from this trap if it killed me, and if it didn't, then to kill Mordeos himself with my two bare and bloodied hands.

  But then an amazing thing happened. A second dragon emerged suddenly, shooting upward from the emerald flames. Its flesh golden, black scales flaking way, drifting off in its wake as it barreled upward.

  I gasped, tears flooding from my eyes, my heart hammering in my ears.

  Upward Keya shot, blowing gold flame from her jaws for the first time in a decade, straight at Mordeos's eyes. Panicking, Mordeos jerked a wing hurriedly upward, shielding himself from the attack as best he could, his own stream of green fire ceasing.

  Keya took advantage of his momentary distraction to shoot off, behind him, considerably smaller and weaker, but much faster than the Dark One, and achieving a considerable head start as she made her way off above the treetops.

  Adrenaline pulsed through my body. I needed to help her. To join in the fight. To free myself, no matter what the cost. I pulled on the handcuffs, gritting my teeth, and pulling, pulling, pulling, as hard as I could, trying to think of some possible exception, any chance I could find, however distant it might seem, that would allow me to break free, and rush to her aid.

  Yet the harder I pulled, the more and more hopeless it seemed.

  They were getting smaller and smaller now, receding toward the horizon. Mordeos snapped repeatedly at her, trying to lock his jaws around her, but Keya kept dodging the attacks, missing him by mere inches. Growing more and more pissed off, Mordeos finally snapped, and flung his tail up at Keya, striking her in the gut, and forcing her several yards back through the air.

  “You motherfucker!” I screamed, and the two idiots on the ground before me cackled with laughter, loving how helpless I was, savoring the fact that I was about to see the woman I loved, killed before my very eyes.

  My muscles strained. My eyes tightened. I clenched my teeth so hard that they nearly broke off against one another.

  And still, my restraints would not budge.

  I looked again.

  Mordeos was trying to repeat his success. Swinging his spiked tail upward, again and again, battering Keya through the air with each blow he landed. But Keya was strong, and resilient. Snapping back at him. Throwing bursts of fire in his direction, sometimes even gliding near enough to dig her claws into him, and tear strips of black scales from his hide.

  Mordeos's patience with these tactics, at last, grew thin. Tiring of these games, he dodged a sharp gold bolt of fire from Keya's jaws, and lunged at her, snapping with his own powerful jaws.

  Instantly my stomach plunged.

  I watched, horrified, brimming with greater hatred than I had ever felt before, as Mordeos' teeth sank into her neck. Keya struggled desperately to free herself, but he began to thrash around, tearing her through the air, her limbs flailing wildly.

  Then he let her go, tossing her carelessly toward the forest, her body seeming to fall lifelessly. It was unwholly unclear, at that moment, whether she was alive or dead, but Mordeos followed after her, as though with the goal of finishing the job.

  I lost it.

  I let out a horrible roar.

  My hatred bubbled up, solidified. The conflicting energies of the Protectors and the Dark Ones alike burned like a nuclear fire inside me, with an intensity so great that no Earthdragon alchemy, or any magic in the world could possibly restrain it. My body exploded. My wrists burst through the cuffs, bloody and raw. My wings expanded. My tail lashed out. My eyes strobed red and gold, and my scales formed a checked pattern across my body, black and gold, in a way that they had never shown before.

  Evrun and the Earthdragon turned just in time to see what had happened, but it was already too late for either of them. I grabbed the tree to which I'd been tethered and pulled it from the ground by its roots, like pulling up a weed. I flung it from my jaws and crushed the Earthdragon as he ran in his human form, ending him instantly. Evrun fell to the ground, knocked down by the force of the attack, and scrambled to lift himself back up again.

  Before he could transform I opened my mouth up wide, and spat a billowing torrent of gold and green flame down onto him, hoping to incinerate him instantly, and to be able to get to Keya and Mordeos as fast as possible. He disappeared behind the flame for a fraction of an instant, but then leapt out, wings stretched wide, and rose into the air, rushing straight toward me.

  In no mood for these games, I jerked up the tree I'd used to kill his friend, and batted him down from the air with it, forcing him hard to the ground. He roared with pain and I dove toward him, ready to do what I should have done three days ago.

  He thrashed and he struggled, angling for the upper hand. And maybe, on another day, before I'd had anything to live for, he might have gotten it from me. But the simple fact of the matter was, I wanted it more. And I wasn't about to let myself be bested.

  I sank my teeth into the bastard's throat. I lodged them in as deep as I could, and pulled furiously. Evrun cried out. He thrashed, and scratched at me with those vicious claws, getting in a number of fierce blows to my face, and around my eyes in the process. But I just kept biting down harder and harder, so hard that a tear began to form in his throat, a hot green, magma like substance bubbling violently up as he tried with his dying breath to blow fire at me.

  And then he was still. Completely still, and motionless. His hollow red eyes, gazing off into infinity.

  I drew myself up from him, his blood still spilling from my lips, and wasted no time in leaping from the ground, and soaring over the trees.

  It took me no time at all to locate the two of them. They'd set the trees around them ablaze with gold and emerald flame, thick black smoke snaking upward into the dark night above the place where the battle raged.

  I descended rapidly, heart racing, praying that I wasn't too late.

  I nearly fell from the air, horrified, at the sight of her lying on the ground, immobilized, her face down in the grass.

  But she was still breathing, I could distinctly tell. Still holding on. Mordeos was standing over her, sneering. Preparing, it seemed, to end things once and for all.

  “You should have fucking wised up while you had the chance!” he spat at her. “I gave you that chance, you fucking whore! After everything! After everything I did for you! After everything I gave you!”

  “You... Didn't give... Me... Anything... You took... Away everything... Everything I was... Everything I... Should have been... And even worse, I... I gave it to you...”

  Mordeos screamed– he actually screamed with indignation. He brought his foot up as though to stomp the life clean out of her, once and for all, and I bolted toward him so quickly that there wasn't even a chance for him to react.

  I grabbed him in my jaws, and began thrashing him around through the air, trying to push my teeth into him, trying to break him completely in two. But Mordeos was pushing back. He was trying to transform in my jaws, his thick black hide preventing me from penetrating to where it really mattered.

  I spat him out, shooting him through the air, still in his human form. He crashed through the trees, disappearing in darkness for a moment. Then he leapt back out, a dragon once more, his jaws open as he moved to engulf me with flame.

  I was too quick for him, breathing out a torrent of my hybrid flame just as his own flashed up at me, the blasts meeting in midair with an almost nuclear fury, pushing us both back through the air as the flames lashed and licked between us.

  The
heat rapidly became unbearable, so great was the fury of our hatred for one another. His visage rippled wildly through the heat haze, refusing to remain still across the pillar of flame.

  I edged toward him, trying to push my flame in his direction, to overpower him. But Mordeos remained stationary, unintimidated, maintaining his fire steadily, effortlessly as I approached, so that I began to think the two of us may each engulf ourselves at once the moment I grew close enough.

  But then suddenly, Keya emerged. She rose up from the ground with her slight golden body, determined to aid in the fight, despite my desperate wish for her to remain where she lay. She spat a pillar of gold at Mordeos, hitting him in the belly, and he seemed more annoyed by the attack than deeply aggrieved.

  He jerked his head away from me, dodging my flame by dipping several feet south through the air. He snapped at Keya, and slammed his tail against her face with a sickening crack, knocking her back to the ground.

  And here, at last was my breaking point.

  I surged forward at Mordeos while his back was still turned, and he made it no more than a fraction of a degree toward me when I leapt at him. I clung to his back, and sank my teeth into his neck, even harder than I had done to Evrun. He began to thrash, to scratch at me, then to beat at me with his tail. Several of the strikes landed, slamming into my hide and tearing away at my scales, blood flowing along my sides, the injuries burning as they widened, deepened, multiplied.

  But still I held on. I felt the life draining away from him. The manic pulsing of his heart. The bubbling lava, spurts of fire erupting from his neck. His claws dug deeper and deeper against my skin, fighting back to his very last, and it only made me clamp down further. Certain that the end was at hand. Certain that he was about to be liberated, just as Keya would be liberated from him, always and forevermore. Liberated as I was, at last, from the burden of my past. From any confusion about who I really was. What I was really meant to be.

  I was a Protector. Defender of all that was good and true in the world. And most of all, a guardian against those wretches of the earth such as Mordeos, who would corrupt this world, and the goodness in it, for the sake of his own depravity. His own greed. His own lust and hatred.

  I was no Dark One. I was everything the Dark Ones stood against. And never again, after all it had taken for me to arrive at this very realization, would I forget that.

  At last, after what seemed its own small infinity, I felt Mordeos's body slacken. His struggling ceased. The life drained away, even as his blood continued to spill through my lips.

  His fire was gone. A life wasted so long ago was finally at its end.

  I released him, letting him fall. His body shrank as he tumbled toward the earth, transforming back down into its human form. And as he fell, I thought I distinctly saw his head separate from the rest of him, falling along its own separate trajectory toward the undergrowth.

  I hovered there panting for a moment, my adrenaline still racing, but balanced out by my concern for Keya, and thoughts of tending to her as quickly as possible.

  I glided down toward the ground.

  “Keya! Keya!” I shouted, transforming several yards up off the ground, and hitting the undergrowth with a running start. She lay there in the undergrowth, bruised and bloodied, holding herself.

  “Keya! Oh my God, Keya! Are you alright?”

  She turned slowly to me, looking weak, but when I began to kneel down to her she rose, unsteadily to her feet.

  “Is- is he-?”

  “He's dead,” I finished for her, nodding. “He'll never hurt you or anyone again.”

  She closed her eyes and shivered. Tears fell from her eyes, and I wasn't sure what to make of this. I felt an irrational surge of jealousy, and hated myself for it, trying not to dwell on this.

  “Look, we need to get out of here. The fire is spreading fast, and we don't know if there are more– “

  “Promise me something,” she said desperately, ignoring my words. I froze, caught wholly off guard.

  “What– of course... Of course, anything!”

  “Promise me. You'll never turn into what he was. Promise me you'll never let me follow that same path I was on again. Promise me that leaving it behind will be enough. That there's a way out of all this, and I won't just keep going around in circles. Trapped in this life forever.”

  I smiled sadly at this. I stared, deep into her eyes. Seeing the same questions. The same fears I had had for so long. Fears which had only gone away the day I laid eyes on her. The day I knew that I truly wasn't alone.

  Slowly I reached out for her. I ran my fingers slowly through her hair. I stared deeply, softly into her eyes, the burning forest reflected back at me in them.

  “You're already out of it,” I whispered softly to her. “You were out of it the moment you took that first step. The Protectors don't care about your past. They only care about your future. What you can be. What you really are. That's all I care about, too. And I promise you, Keya. I will always be with you, no matter what. No matter how scary this all seems, I will be by your side, every step of the way.”

  “I know you will,” she said, sounding relieved, and at last she smiled at me.

  “Iammarth?” she said after a long moment's silence.

  “Yes?” I said, beaming at her.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said softly, my heart spilling over. Then I leaned into her, and the two of us kissed, for what felt like a very, very long time.

  We took off from the burning wreckage of the woods. Me in my dragon form, and Keya human, resting, her arms wrapped around my neck. We would make it back to the Protectors faster this way, and they would be able to send the Earthdragons to come extinguish the raging forest fire– hopefully before any humans took serious notice of what was happening.

  The sun was rising behind us as we soared along, and occasionally I would look back, to see Keya bathed in its golden light. Looking absolutely serene, absolutely calm. Free of inner demons. Free of her past. Truly free, as all beings, human and dragon alike, aspire to be.

  I knew that the struggle wasn't over. Not for us, and not for the Protectors. But I knew that, somehow, things would work out in the end. We would be alright, as long as we had each other. As long as we had the love that we'd come to share.

  The world had seemed such a dark place before we'd found that love. Closed and hopeless. It was only because of that love that we now saw a future ahead of us. A future that neither of us believed we could ever deserve. But that had been granted to us, in the end, because we'd had the courage to reach for it. To be our best selves. To fight for what we truly believed in.

  And as Keya clung to my neck, and the wind rushed in our faces, and the golden sun washed over the two of us like a tide, I didn't think there was any challenge to that future, any obstacle we couldn't face, as long as we had each other.

  After all– we'd made it this far, hadn't we?

  THE END

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