Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “They will return with reinforcements in two weeks’ time. Their leader wants a fight.” He handed the pin to his brother.

  “You have always won,” Marcus intoned.

  Timothy took the pin as he watched the Dracas. “Our fate may yet be death.” He walked forward and stopped within striking range, but he did not shrink. He bowed his head and dropped to one knee, but his core remained erect. “We serve only the Dracae, benevolent Dracas.”

  Ladon grinned.

  “We serve you. We serve your brother. We serve the beasts who circle us now, their hides as clear as the waters of the river.”

  Timothy’s gaze, strong and true, turned to Ladon. “We are now and forever the Draki Prime.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Beasts.

  Not the small and skittering wild beasts of the forest, or the flying beasts cawing in the sky above the Dracae’s town. Not the bleating beasts within its gates, or the massive, pawing war beasts the human halves of the Dracos and the Dracas rode. Not the swimming beasts in the river where Antonius vanished. Not the slithering beasts with which the man named Faustus belonged.

  Not animals. Dragons.

  Marcus asked an unending stream of questions as if the two beasts could speak answers. They flanked the new Draki Prime, the Great Sir—the Dracos-Dragon—closest to Daniel and the Great Lady—the Dracas-Dragon—closest to Timothy on the other side. They stood in the clearing in front of the massive iron-and-wood town gate, between the beasts and their humans.

  Faustus’s men still lurked in the trees.

  “I need to go down to the river.” Some sign of Antonius flitted along the outer edge of Daniel’s newly-minted seer. A shimmer that he survived. A hope.

  Nothing else, as if someone had taken all his possibilities and sewn them up inside a hidden pouch.

  Ladon said something about present-seers and “stitching” to his sister.

  “Stitching?” Timothy asked.

  The Dracas-Human whistled for her steed. “Prime present-seers with the training and the talent can stitch the present to hide a moment once it becomes the past.”

  “What about the future?” Daniel asked. Antonius was gone, but there was hope.

  Ladon looked toward his sister, who patted her beast’s neck. “Maybe. We are not sure.”

  Then what good were they? They came to the Dracae for a reason. For protection and instruction. They should know.

  Daniel needed to know. “I have to go back to the river.”

  Ladon mounted his war horse. “You are newly-activated. Your activations will not settle for at least another half day. You three need to be somewhere safe. No running off. No chasing.”

  His beast snorted, to accent his point.

  “Bring out Andreas!” Ladon yelled toward the gate. “And searchers.”

  A man in the tower yelled back a response.

  “I will send men down the river.” Ladon turned his steed toward the gate. “You three need food and a calm place to finish your activations.”

  Marcus gripped their talisman. He moved first to the left as he walked, his hand out as if to touch the Great Sir. He snatched it back, his eyes wide as he watched the patterns of light move along the beast’s hide, then he bounced to the right, to repeat his action with the Great Lady.

  “How is that you glow?” Marcus reached out, then pulled back, reached out, then pulled back. “How do you make such colors? Why do patterns travel your hide?”

  Each dragon also carried a fine, transparent coat of hair. It wiggled and waggled, mimicking the air currents, as if its purpose was to imitate textures the way the beasts’ lights imitated the world around them.

  The man, the woman, and their two beasts were… godlings. Not normal humans. Not Shifters or Fates or the demons called Burners. They were the Dracae, Human and Dragon, and they had their own ways.

  The Great Sir sniffed at Daniel’s cheek. The dragon’s body took up about the same space as an average wagon. He and his sister walked along the earth on all fours, though their front appendages looked more like six-fingered hands than claws or feet. Their rear appendages looked similar, but not as dexterous.

  Timothy did not speak. He watched Ladon and his sister, who as far as Daniel could determine had no name beyond “Dracas-Human” even though her brother answered to Ladon.

  Marcus’s past-seer chimed and hummed, its energy aimed at the two beasts and not at the people or the situation around them.

  “Give me the talisman,” Daniel said. He needed to understand what the hope he felt meant. He needed detail.

  If Daniel waited a half day, the hope he felt on the outer edge of his new seer—on the edge of what used to be his umbra obscura—would vanish.

  He pressed on his forehead. What was this thing in his head? The umbra had solidified into a presence, a ghost, a reflection—he did not know how to describe it. Not yet. His seer was a part of him but distinct the way that his left leg was distinct from his right.

  He’d always had two arms and two legs, but one mind. Now he had two arms, two legs, and two minds.

  He had two thinking parts now, and one of them saw the future and a sliver of hope. “I need to go down to the river!” he yelled.

  A man ran out through the gate. He nodded to Ladon, who pointed at their Mama’s body.

  The Great Sir sniffed at Daniel again, then at Marcus, then at Timothy.

  “He says you three need to be careful. No using your seers unless you are holding your talisman. Understand? You are not fully activated. He says all three of you smell as if a fever comes.”

  Daniel grabbed Marcus’s hand. “Give it to me.”

  Marcus pushed him off. “I will look!” He gripped their talisman and his seer rolled over Daniel like a wave of sound that was not sound. “Rocks. Shore. Anger.” He blinked. “Then not much more. I cannot pick out landmarks.”

  Marcus curled his hand around Daniel’s shoulder. “We’ll survive this,” he said, and handed Daniel their talisman.

  He looked down at the two small, entwined dragons of gold and silver, and then up at the real beast next to him.

  Talisman, flicked through his head. These two beasts and the people around them were now the context through which Daniel’s visions of the future filtered. These dragons, their humans, the Shifters who protected them, the people who spent their time training and building their magnificent, fortified town.

  He felt numb because he was stuck in the dead space between two lives.

  The Great Sir snorted.

  Daniel looked up. The beast nudged him gently. Soft, calming blues and greens moved along the skin of the Great Sir’s neck. He snorted again, and lifted his head toward his human as if listening. Then he nudged Daniel again.

  Papa had been correct. The dragons did mesmerize with their hides. More colors and patterns moved along both beasts’ sides and reminded Daniel of the colored shadows thrown through the church’s rosette window. Several trails of bumps wove into an intricate plaited pattern down their backs as well, and both beasts’ heads were topped with crown-like crests.

  Thick-necked and long-tailed, they did have a vaguely lizard-like profile, but their shape and musculature looked more wolf-like.

  They were not like any beasts Daniel had ever seen before in all his life.

  Ladon reined his horse toward the gates. “Dragon says you are the least offensive Parcae he has ever met,” he called.

  Daniel leaned close to the beast. “Your name is Dragon?”

  The beast nodded yes.

  His sister’s name is also Dragon, Daniel’s seer flicked out.

  The Great Sir twisted his head and snorted at Daniel.

  “He says your seer feels musical,” Ladon said.

  The largest man Daniel had ever seen walked toward the group. All of the men who had come through the gate so far had towered over the brothers. The men were wide at the shoulders and muscular, and, his seer whispered, all capable of either morphing their bodies into alter
nate appearances, or enthralling with breaths called “calling scents.”

  “Andreas,” Ladon said, “We have Fates.”

  Andreas Sisto, Daniel’s seer whispered. Second of the Legion.

  The man was, according to the scroll Antonius had found, a cohort in and of himself. He certainly was big and imposing enough. He appeared to be a good four or more inches taller than Ladon, who was taller than most men.

  “They’re calling themselves the Draki Prime,” Ladon said.

  The Dracas-Human handed off her horse to another man who had come through the gate. “They activated on a Legion insignia.” She threw her brother an angry look.

  Both dragons flashed.

  Andreas Sisto walked over. He crossed his massive arms over his equally massive chest and glared down with ocean-green eyes at Daniel and his brothers. “Draki Prime, you say?” An eyebrow arched but his face remained otherwise impassive. “Did someone tell you three to call yourselves that, or did you pull it out of your collective Parcae asses?”

  Daniel curled his hand around the Legion insignia in his palm. The woman Ladon called Sister would, that night, whisper to Andreas Sisto her version of their activation. And for the next few months, Andreas Sisto would act as if he’d as soon slice open the brothers as look at them.

  Though in truth it would be a front put on by the community’s leader. He would mimic the mood of the town and would slowly, gradually, force it to shift toward acceptance of their three now-resident Fates.

  He’d do it more for the Dracas than for anyone else.

  Daniel pressed on his forehead.

  Why was his seer forcing these thoughts into his head? He could not be distracted. Daniel and his brothers just came into unimaginable power. Their parents died in the forest. Daniel lost Antonius to the river.

  “The future-seer says he needs to return to the river,” the Dracas-Human said.

  The giant named Andreas Sisto crinkled his nose, but not in the same way Livia Sisto had when she’d sniffed out the brothers’ emotions. “Explain yourselves, children.”

  Timothy stopped gawking at the town and the dragons, and looked up at Sisto. With a greater calm than Daniel expected of his brother, Timothy took their talisman. “You are Livia Sisto’s father.”

  Sisto uncrossed his arms. “You know my daughter?” His skin was a darker shade of bronze than Livia’s but they carried the same healthy warm glow. His hair, though, was almost as black as Ladon’s.

  Timothy pointed at the forest, his seer chiming again. “She brings my wife.”

  Sisto blinked. “Your wife? You look barely old enough to be out of diapers much less married. How old are you three?”

  “We are in our sixteenth year,” Marcus said. “If we are ‘barely old enough to be out of diapers,’ then why does your daughter bring my brother’s wife to be the new dragons’ virgin? She is our age.”

  Andreas Sisto pinched the bridge of his nose and mumbled words in a language Daniel did not understand.

  Ladon pointed at Marcus. “I will not have the villagers thinking we steal their children! Is this a rumor the priests from Rome spread?” He glanced at the Great Sir and the beast stomped his big, dragon foot.

  “That story stops now,” Ladon yelled. His horse whinnied.

  The Great Sir blew a plume of fire into the air. Closer to the gate, the Great Lady released a similar plume.

  The dragons breathed fire. And, it seemed, the “dragons’ virgin” story was not as simple as the villagers thought.

  Timothy looked between Ladon and Andreas. “Then why do you—”

  “Quiet, Fates,” Andreas Sisto said. He turned toward the men exiting through the gates. “Send out riders! Find my daughter! Now!” he yelled.

  Daniel wanted to stand in silence. He wanted calm and clarity and to not cause problems.

  Sisto had enthralled him the way his daughter had enthralled Papa. He must have breathed out one of his calling scents, and so the brothers would, for now, stop asking questions.

  But he needed to get to the river. All this about their age was a distraction.

  Daniel snatched their talisman from his also-silent brother. Hope was slipping away.

  He ran for the river.

  Chapter Twenty

  The dagger with the blood jewel was no longer on the rock when Daniel returned to the river.

  The water rushed by. The trees rustled and the birds sang. And Daniel refused to let go of the shadow of hope haunting the edges of his new second mind. The whispering part. The one that told him what he’d always known—a life with Antonius would have been good for everyone. For him. For his brothers. For Ingund and for the people of Daniel’s new context.

  He gripped the insignia so tightly it bit into the skin of his palm.

  Let there be pain. Let the blood flow. Maybe its sharpness would illuminate the shadow on the edge of his life.

  A monster took Antonius and this place was now and forever, for Daniel, a place where Hell broke through onto Earth. The rocks, though sweet and lovely, marked the maw of the underworld. The water carried only the Ferryman to The Land of the Dead.

  His Draki-ness was nothing more than Purgatory.

  He was supposed to be hungry. Their activation needed feeding. But he felt nothing. Why was he still numb? Still confused and overwhelmed? Did it matter?

  Daniel stood on the rocks and thoughts of Antonius circled his mind, body, and soul. Thoughts of their kisses. Thoughts of smiles shared, and smiles gone. Thoughts of a what-will-be that was now will-never-happen.

  He wiped at his eyes, then stepped off the rocks and around boulders. He should remove his boots. His mother would be angry if he ruined his boots.

  But his mother was dead. The Shifters would bring back his dead father and papa. No one was going to bring back Antonius, no matter how they searched the banks. His seer at least told him that truth.

  He’d made it through the beginning of his activation. His brothers’ seers vibrated at the edges of his mind and he knew deep down that he wasn’t alone. He’d never been alone. Not really. He was a triplet. But now they were a triad, and not alone took on a whole new meaning.

  Except he was alone.

  Daniel squatted at the river’s edge just as the shaking started. The twitching. The cold knocking on his spine like pelting hail.

  He dipped his hand into the cold, flowing water, and closed his eyes.

  Antonius touched his shoulder. Antonius, who was not there, not in the river, who was gone for good and taken away by a man who was more Parcae than human—Antonius his love—touched Daniel’s soul.

  He was shaking. His hand, in the water, flinched uncontrollably. His teeth chattered. His stomach shook as well and Daniel vomited up what little he’d eaten that day. He vomited out the water and all the bile. But he could not vomit away the last few days.

  Sisto picked him up out of the river. He must have fallen in. He didn’t remember. Timothy yelled something at the other Shifters. Marcus followed behind. Sisto tossed him onto the back of his grand horse and rode him and his brothers into Dragontown.

  Timothy leaned over Daniel’s bed. “Of course you got the fever,” he said.

  Only a few candles burned in the room, and when Timothy moved away, his face disappeared into the shadows. A blanket weighed on Daniel’s pelvis and legs. People rustled just outside his vision, so he was not alone.

  Someone burned sage and the small, dark room smelled like the church’s refectory. Like a world with Antonius should smell.

  “He’s shaking again,” Marcus said from somewhere in the shadows.

  A woman leaned over Daniel. “Are you sure this is less an activation fever and more a broken heart, past-seer?”

  He recognized her bronze eyes and hair. Livia Sisto, the enthraller who took Ingund. He’d told her that he would take his sister-in-law’s place. That he would be a hero.

  “It’s both,” Marcus said.

  Of course it was both. His brothers mourned—the Shi
fters mourned with them, even though they did not approve of Fates. But they were all people and no one should lose their parents at the hands of horrible monsters.

  “When we were in the ruins, if I had said Faustus’s name, told you what happened, you would have helped,” Daniel muttered. He wasn’t the past-seer. He shouldn’t know that. But something deep inside told him that if he hadn’t been so guarded, that if he’d asked, Livia Sisto would have been the hero he and Antonius had needed.

  She looked over her shoulder at someone out of his view, then back to him. “The only what-ifs you can control, Daniel of the Draki Prime, are the ones yet to come,” she said.

  No. He couldn’t control those, either. He looked away.

  Livia Sisto gripped his jaw and made him look at her again. “I’m going to enthrall you to think that you’re healthy,” she said.

  Yes, his seer whispered. It only whispered, because his talisman might be near, held by Timothy, but it did not touch his skin. And no matter how heartbroken he might be, his seer was not suicidal.

  Daniel sat up and gripped Livia Sisto’s arms before she breathed out her calling scents. “Please don’t take him away from me.”

  Confusion played across her face. She looked to his brother.

  “Antonius,” Timothy said.

  Understanding dawned in Livia Sisto’s eyes. “Here,” she said, and gently kissed his lips.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he refused his body’s shaking. He refused its fever and its physical manifestations of his broken soul.

  But the break stayed.

  Daniel lay down on the small bed’s poky mattress and curled into a ball.

  Happy shouts floated under the room’s door and over Daniel’s bed. More filtered around the small window’s shutters.

  Singing followed, then drums.

  Daniel swung his legs over the side of the bed. Livia Sisto’s consistent enthrallings had contained the fever. He’d eaten, as the Shifters demanded. And his brothers spent much of their time alternating between worry and anger about him stealing all the attention.