“Calm down, Ash,” replied Spear gently. “We have all agreed —the dragons, the Slayers, and the Wolvren—that Julianna cannot possibly offer herself up again. I think the blast gave everyone a wake-up call, even the doubting dragons. No one wants, nor expects, Julianna to hurt herself further.” He looked right at me. “I hope you agree to that.”
I nodded gratefully. The truth was, my whole body had been put through enough. I knew, as Spear did, that we’d have to do something, but for now, all I wanted to do was rest. “Thank you, Spear.”
Over the course of the next few days, I had many visitors. My father came to see me at the end of every day. Morganna kept popping in to update me on everything, although there was very little news to tell me. Lucy often came to read me stories. Throughout it all, Ash never left my side. He brought food up to eat with me and moved from sleeping on the chair to sleeping with me on the bed once I’d healed enough to be touched.
After a few days, thanks to Edeline and Ash looking after me, I was finally allowed downstairs. The lotion had worked enough that I could move quite freely and without pain. My skin was covered in scars that would never fully heal, but it was a small price to pay for the return of the dragons.
The day I was able to get up, a meeting was called in the parlor. Spear had deliberately only invited a few people. Beside myself and Ash, there was also my father, Morganna, Alpha, Edeline, Fiere, Xander, Jasper and, of course, Spear. A plate of cookies and a pot of tea were brought in by a maid and set on a small side table. I grabbed a cookie before sitting on the sofa next to Morganna. Ash took the place beside me.
“I’ve already told Julianna that we’ve all agreed that she cannot hurt herself any further to free the dragons. I think we can all agree that she has gone above and beyond what any of us could expect of her. I, on behalf of the dragons, want to thank you, Julianna, for everything you have done for us. Your bravery is unsurpassed and my gratitude knows no bounds.”
I cast my eyes down at his words. It was so embarrassing being praised so publicly, and yet my heart jumped with pride.
“However,” Spear continued. “We now have a problem. Julianna is the only person that can free our ancestors and family members. Because of this, we have to find another solution and we have to do it quickly. The dragons outside do not appear to be getting worse, but at the same time, they are not getting better either.”
“I say we head back up to pay those Goblins another visit,” My father broke in.
Surprisingly, Spear agreed. “Yes, I have to admit, it’s looking like a trip back up the mountain is our only way to solve this. The Goblins have gotten away with this for far too long, and I, for one, am sick of them tricking us.”
Everyone nodded. I nibbled on the cookie, not too sure. We’d all gone up there before, twice in fact, and nothing good had come of it. I didn’t see how dragging everyone back up the mountain would help.
I quickly finished the cookie. “We promised Krikor that the dragons, Slayers, and Wolvren would never return to the Goblin city together.”
“And he promised us that there were more Slayer swords in that village,” my father reminded me. “They can’t be trusted, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t just go up there anyway.”
“Actually I agree with Julianna,” cut in Morganna. “They might be more willing to cooperate if only a few of us go.”
“Are you volunteering?” Spear asked her.
Morganna nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. Of course, we are going to have to figure a way up the mountain first. With the dragons being ill, we cannot do anything.” She looked right at me as she said this, something that Ash picked up on right away.
“You surely aren’t going to ask Julianna to go with you?”
“Why not? She’s better now. I can’t go with you or with Alpha or with most of the rest of you. We have to show that we can be trusted, even if they can’t. I need to go up the mountain with another Slayer. It’s the only way.”
“What about me?” my father asked. “Or Jasper, or both of us? Why does it have to be Julianna?”
“Because I trust her with my life, that’s why, and you should know you can trust me with hers.”
I filled with pride at hearing my hero talk about me in such a way. Of all the people in this room, many of whom were bigger and stronger than me, it was me that she picked. I couldn’t help the grin that appeared on my lips.
Unfortunately, not everyone agreed. “I won’t be separated from her,” argued Ash. “I love her too much to let her go.”
“I’m not letting my daughter go up the mountain in the state she’s in,” roared my father. Pretty soon everyone was squabbling again.
I was just about to chime in, to tell them what I thought of the plan, when the room went dark. Something was blocking the sunlight. I turned to see a dragon landing, then another.
“It’s the dragons!” I shouted. “They are back!”
Chapter Twelve
I don’t know who got out of the house first, but we were all in the garden within a minute of spotting the first dragon. Three or four of the dragons had already landed, but the sky was filled with many more, too many to count.
“Someone go inside and grab some clothes for them,” directed Spear, running toward the first dragon. Jasper, Xander, and Alpha ran inside, following Spear’s orders.
The first few dragons changed into their human forms. I recognized one of them immediately. It was Stone. The last time I’d seen him was when he and his brother Ally were training me to hunt. It felt like so long ago.
“Where’s Ally?” I asked Ash, trying not to look at Stone’s naked body.
“I think he’s in the dragon hospital your father helped build. The last time I saw him, he was helping out in there.”
I looked to where Ash was pointing. A huge shed now took up most of Spear’s garden. My father had done an amazing job.
“I’ll get him,” Ash ran off toward the shed.
Ally was going to be so happy. He’d been so utterly depressed that his brother had been killed. Even when we found out that he’d not been killed, but his soul reaped, he was still upset. I don’t think I’d seen him smile since the last day we were all together.
“What happened?” asked Spear, pulling his jacket off and handing it to Stone. “Why has it taken so long for you to get back? Your souls were released a week and a half ago.”
“We were confused. There were so many of us waking up at the same time. Some had been trapped recently like me, but some of the dragons had been trapped for decades. There were also many that didn’t wake up. We tried everything we could, but nothing would wake them.”
“That’s because Julianna only released the souls from one sword. There are still so many swords to find.”
Stone looked confused. “That’s what happened? Our souls were harvested?”
“I guess you could put it like that,” replied Spear. “What happened next?”
“I thought we’d all come back from the dead. I wasn’t the only one. I wanted to come home, but some of the others wanted to find out what had happened to them. When we left the building our bodies had been kept in, we found ourselves in the woods at the base of the Triad Mountains. A quick flyover showed us to be near the Slayer village. The village where Julianna comes from.”
Stone glanced over at me. “I wanted to get revenge. Most of the others did, too, so we flew down to the village.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear the rest. The biggest and bravest of all the Slayers were here in Frokontas. There was no one left to defend the village against all these angry dragons.
“What did you do?” roared my father, rushing up to Stone.
At that moment, Xander, Jasper, and Alpha came running up, their arms full of clothes. One by one, the dragons began to shift into their human forms behind Stone. Stone raised his hands.
“It’s not what you think,” replied Stone quickly. “No one was hurt.”
“They’d be
tter not be!” yelled my father, poking his finger against Stone’s chest.
Spear pulled it away. “Enough. You heard him. No one was hurt.” He turned back to Stone. “So what did happen?”
“We went in to attack but Julianna’s mother came running toward us with a white flag. Actually, it was a white dress on a stick, but we got the message. We thought we’d won without having to fight, but when we shifted, she told us about everything that had been happening. About how Julianna had done what she set out to do and turned the Slayers and the dragons into friends. Of course, I didn’t believe it at first, but the rest of the village came out and corroborated her story. They were so nice to us.”
“That doesn’t explain why it took you so long to get back,” argued Spear.
Xander threw a pair of pants at him, which he slipped into. Stone looked embarrassed now. “We didn’t know we were friends before seeing Julianna’s mother, so we might have...kind of...well, we might possibly have burned down a few buildings.”
I sighed. So many of the buildings in Dronias had already succumbed to the fire of the dragons.
“No one was in them, but we felt bad so we all agreed to stay and rebuild them. I know we could have sent someone home to tell you that we were okay, but we didn’t know you were waiting for us. We decided as a group to help out there and then all come back at once. We wanted to make a splash, so to speak.”
I looked up. The skies were still filled with the returning dragons. “Well, you’ve certainly done that,” I commented.
“You burned down part of the village?” My father was close to having another temper tantrum. I ran up to him and whispered into his ear.
“Daddy. You were the one who took these dragons’ souls, forcing them to be trapped. Some of them have been in there for over twenty years. Don’t you think you might want to cut them some slack? After all, they are the ones who should be mad at you.” I raised my eyebrows at him. He nodded, slowly accepting my words.
“I’m going to need you to go to the fire pit,” announced Spear loudly so all the newly returned dragons could hear him. “We have much to tell you and my house will not accommodate so many people. Julianna, do you think you are well enough to round up everyone and ask them to meet us there?”
I was just about to answer when I heard a yell coming from behind me. I turned to see Ash coming toward us with Ally.
“Brother!” Ally yelled, rushing toward Stone. Stone grinned as Ally crashed into him, knocking him to the ground. The pair of them play-wrestled for a few seconds before Ally pulled Stone to his feet and gave him a huge hug.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said to Spear over the commotion.
It took over two hours to get everyone around the campfire. The dragons kept on coming, so I had to wait until the last one had arrived. Someone lit a fire and a wild deer was roasting above it. Flagons of beer were passed around, and the noise of conversation was almost deafening. The whole thing had turned into a party of sorts, so when it was time for Spear to speak, he had to shout loudly to be heard.
“Welcome back to those of you who came home to us today. I’m sure many of you will want to catch up with old friends and family members. I’m going to ask you all to stay in your human forms. You’ve probably heard the rumors over the course of the past couple of hours, but for those of you that haven’t, a lot of the other dragons that came back to us got ill not long after coming back. It’s already been well over a week since you got your souls back so I’m assuming you will come down with whatever it is. If you stay in your human form, you will recover. At the present time, we cannot find a cure for those that fell ill in their dragon form. I do not want the same fate to happen to anyone here so it is imperative that you do as I say for your own health. At the first sign of any illness, you may come to my house to be looked after or you may stay at home to be looked after by your families.”
“What about the rest of the trapped dragons?” asked someone I didn’t recognize.
“As you all know, the Slayers and the dragons have called a truce of sorts over the past few weeks. That is largely thanks to Julianna. Julianna, where are you?”
I raised my hand. Hundreds of pairs of eyes fixed on me. I gave everyone a shy smile.
“Julianna not only brought our tribes together, but she is also the one who is responsible for freeing you. To free you she has had to draw her own blood time and time again. I will not ask her to do it another time and I don’t want anyone else asking her to either. We are going to have to come up with another plan to free our people.”
“We already have a plan, Spear,” said Morganna, standing up. “Julianna and I are going back up into the mountains. We are going to speak to the Goblins.”
“No!”
I had thought it would be my father or Ash that spoke up first, but it was Alpha. He’d not left Morganna’s side this whole journey. I could understand why he wouldn’t want her to go back to the Goblins alone. He’d wanted to take his men back to their village, but because of the dragons’ illness, had been unable to. I felt sorry for him because I could see the determination on Morganna’s face. He wouldn’t be able to stop her any more than Ash would be able to stop me. He gripped my hand tighter as though he knew what I was thinking.
“I’m going to go,” I whispered so that only he could hear.
“I know you are. I know that there is nothing I can say or do to stop you, and yet I don’t want you to go.”
I turned to look at him. “Morganna is the strongest person I know. Not one of the men here would beat her in a fight. I’m safer with her than with anyone else. Besides, I can take care of myself.”
Ash sighed in resignation. “I won’t stop you, but do me a favor. Wait a few days until you are fully healed. Your body has barely recovered.”
I nodded. It was only fair to honor this one request.
“You’re not going to let her go, surely?” my father asked Spear.
I stood up, letting go of Ash’s hand. “It’s not up to him, Father. I am my own person and I make the decisions for me. Morganna, I will go with you. I just need a couple more days to recuperate and then I should be strong enough to climb the mountain.”
Alpha and my father stood up. They both looked ready to fight
“Gentlemen,” Spear began, talking to the pair of them. “I am not their keeper any more than you are. They have both decided to go to the Goblins. It makes sense that it should be them. They are both Slayers and they are both fearless. The Goblins will either talk to them or no doubt they will be forced to talk to them.”
“You can’t get up the mountain,” my father said, suddenly thinking of it. “The only dragons that are in that form are too ill to fly, and the rest of them can’t turn into their dragon form because they’ll get ill.” He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, smirking now that he had found a way to thwart me.
He had a point. The only way out would be to scale the sheer cliff, and I had neither the equipment nor the talent for such a thing.
“I’ll fly you up,” said Fiere, standing up. “I’ve already had the illness and recovered. I’ll shift, fly you up the mountain and then come home and quickly shift back.”
My father looked at him with daggers in his eyes, but there was nothing he could do.
Morganna and I were going back up the mountain.
Chapter Thirteen
Fiere flew us almost to the entrance, leaving us about a twenty-minute walk away. I expected him to drop us off then fly back. The longer he was in his dragon form, the more dangerous it was for him. None of us knew what would happen to him if he stayed too long in this form. He’d had the illness once and gotten over it, but there was nothing to stop him getting it again.
He didn’t fly off though. He rounded behind a tree and shifted into his human form. I threw him a shawl I’d packed, which he wrapped around his middle.
“Shouldn’t you be going home?” I shouted across to him.
He came over from the tree. “I j
ust wanted to talk with you before I left you here.”
“Okay.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I haven’t known you for a long time, but I’ve seen the way my son looks at you. I almost decided not to bring you this morning. I was worried you’d get hurt or worse, and it would break Ash’s heart.”
“What made you change your mind?” I asked.
He gave a small laugh. “It was Ash. He came to me early this morning. I told him that I was going to tell Spear that I wasn’t going to take you, but he told me that I should. He said that you were so stubborn that you’d only find another way if I didn’t. He asked me to look after you.”
“You can’t,” interjected Morganna. “The Goblins want us to come alone. I don’t know why they only want one tribe at a time—maybe they are afraid we’ll break into war right in the middle of their underground town—but we promised that we wouldn’t come with another group.”
“I understand that,” he replied, “but I owe it to Ash.”
“You’ve got no armor. You don’t even have any clothes,” reasoned Morganna. “How will you be able to protect us?”
It was true that Morganna and I had dressed for this. We were both kitted out in the best protective clothing that the dragons had to offer and most importantly, I still had my sword. Fiere only had the shawl I’d given him.
“I’m a dragon, remember? I don’t need clothes. I’ll follow you up the rest of the way and keep out of sight.”
“No,” I shook my head. “You’ve been ill once. The longer you are in your dragon form, the more likely you are to become ill again. I couldn’t bear it if you became ill because of me. Once we are done with the Goblins, we’ll head back down the mountain. I have a flare in my backpack. I’ll set it off once we get close to home so someone can fly up the cliff to get us.”
His face looked pale, his forehead clammy. “But...”
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