Sorcery

by Layla Heart

  He grips my shirt tighter, shaking his head just a bit. “I can’t lose him.” His voice is broken, he’s falling apart in my arms.

  “I know.” I keep holding him. It feels like Kit has been getting support from everyone since the attack, everyone but Rune, and I guess that makes sense. Even though he can feel our emotions, he can try and soothe them, but he has no idea how to deal with his own, he never has.

  “Now what?” Bane sounds like he’s in pain, and when I look at him, he holds his hand against his chest again, pulling a face. “I put pressure on it as a wolf, pain just flared up, nothing big.”

  Right.

  “How are we getting Rune back to normal?” Litha looks up at the big dragon, who is still angry, banging his shoulder against the invisible wall from time to time, trying to break out.

  I wish I had the answer. I’ve only seen what my dad does to insane dragons, and I’m not doing that to Rune. The moment the images and pain flit through my head, Rune’s dragon lets out a loud roar and bangs his shoulder against the wall harder, obviously still able to feel our emotions, aware of what’s going on in our heads.

  Bane lets out a slow breath, looking at Rune, and shaking his head. “I’ve got an idea, but I have no clue if it’ll work.”

  “Which is?” Aideen lets Litha lean on her shoulder.

  Litha’s so tired from the magic use, but she hasn’t blacked out. Progress, but she really needs to sleep and rest, as we all need to.

  “I can try and make him shift back... Use my powers. That may work.” But even as he says it, he doesn’t seem convinced. “It’s about all I have. Insane dragons are... I don’t know many accounts of people successfully shifting back.”

  “More ideas?” I look around the group as Litha and Phoenix’ mums walk back over, both not looking very happy. “Anyone? Kit?”

  Kit shakes his head, but doesn’t let me go.

  “I guess Bane’s idea is as good as any, if that’s all we’ve got.” I look over to him. “What was your exact plan? How were you going to make him listen?”

  “Really? It’s a stupid idea.” He doesn’t get any other responses, so he sighs. “I can probably do this from outside the circle, force him into transforming back into Rune. Once he’s shifted back, we undo the circle and get him the hell out of there. His body is still weak, he’s still hurt, and his dragon won’t cooperate with his body like that. As long as he’s in pain, the dragon will try to break free, get rid of the pain.” Bane eyes Kit, who isn’t moving, staying put. I know that whatever Kit did that set Rune off won’t be resolved just because we get Rune back to his human form, but it’s all we’ve got to work with right now. Get Rune back and then we can try to solve the rest.

  “Let’s do it.” I carefully get Kit to let go of me and I stand up, before tugging him up with me. Then I help Aideen and Litha up as Bane helps Phoenix up.

  If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to come up with a new plan, but I have no idea what else we can do.

  I don’t know how to get a dragon to shift back, especially one willing to eat the two people he loves most... He has to be far gone to even consider it...

  I have no idea if we can even reach him like this...

  6

  I’m not sure what the guys think they’re going to accomplish, trying to force a dragon to shift back. But I have no idea how to solve this myself, so we’ll have to try it. Like Finn said, it’s the best plan we have right now. Getting insane dragons to return back to their human form... It’s basically unheard of, not basically, it is unheard of.

  Mum comes up next to me. “Where do you want us? In case you need our magic?”

  I look back, Litha’s mum has her arm around Litha and Litha still looks weak from using all her magic on the fire-shield earlier. “Stay close, please. I have no idea what happens next, but we may need energy for protection or something.” I’ve never done this before, so just about anything could happen, and I have no idea what I could accomplish with my magic, apart from maybe trying to forcefully heal Rune or something. Which hasn’t worked before, but with the antidote in his body, maybe it works better this time. “And if you have any ideas yourself...” Mum’s the highest priestess of the witches, so she’s got a lot more experience with magic than I have, she has decades on me, even though she’s been trying to teach me ever since I was little.

  “I’ve never attempted this before either. Wolves don’t tend to get stuck like this...” She pulls a face. We’ve lived on werewolf lands for generations, which means that we’re most knowledgeable about them, not dragons. And with dragons having all but disappeared after the war... Not much opportunity to learn either.

  “Bane?” I glance at him. “Do you need anything from me?”

  He shakes his head, but then stops, motioning for Kit to come over.

  Finn pushes him towards Bane, but Kit’s not letting go of the fae, who, with a sigh, comes over himself too.

  “Can’t do this without Kit here. He’ll focus on Kit, no matter what we try. Kit and Litha seem to be his focus.” Bane takes Kit’s arm and Rune growls, his attention on the guys, and not in a good way, his eyes flashing dark. Right... I don’t ever want to end up on the wrong end of a dragon’s anger.

  Then Litha stands between me and Bane, her hand slightly shaking as she takes mine, but she’s standing with her back straight, looking at Rune with what seems like confidence. She’s shaking, that’s how tired she is, but she’ll stand there, to show Rune that she’s still here for him.

  “Rune?” Bane focuses on the dragon. “Look at me.”

  Rune’s dragon eyes Bane for a moment, before he looks at Kit again, and then Litha, the low growl not stopping. Fury obvious.

  “Rune!” Bane raises his voice more, a different tone to it. “Look at me.”

  This time Rune’s dragon defiantly looks to the side, away from us. At least he’s aware of what’s going on, even if he doesn’t want to cooperate.

  Bane grins. “Good.” What? Why is that good? Why is the dragon defying his commands good?

  Bane steps forward, closer to the edge of the protection circle. He holds his hand against the invisible wall. “Rune. Chance back into your human form.” His voice isn’t as loud as before, but there’s something else behind it, something that makes even me itch to shift or something.

  Is this his magic? Is this his power?

  Rune doesn’t do anything, banging his shoulder into the invisible wall again and I can’t help but flinch, since the exact same shoulder made a very worrying cracking sound before and a shudder goes through the dragon as he hits the barrier.

  “Rune. Change back.” This time, Bane’s voice drops lower, to something that settles in my body, something very instinctive wanting to follow the command. “Change back.” He raises his voice just a little bit, but it’s enough to make Rune flicker for a moment, his dragon’s form not as solid as before. Bane glances back at me, then at my mother before his eyes falling on Litha’s mother. “He’s trying, but the dragon is still too overpowering to control, especially in the weakened state they’re both in. Anyone here who has healing magic that actually works on him, or something else to numb the pain?”

  “I tried healing him before, but it didn’t work. But I haven’t tried since the antidote.” I step closer, putting my hand on his shoulder. “We can’t get in there to see if the results are different this time without putting ourselves into a lot of danger, but I can try on your hand first.” It’s not as badly hurt as Rune’s leg is, but I couldn’t get the venom infected area to budge on him either, just like I couldn’t on Rune.

  Bane nods, then his eyes are back on Rune. “Don’t wait too long, I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. There’s a limit to how long you can order someone around, even for me.”

  I nod, letting my magic flow into him. I can feel the antidote in his body, flowing around in areas it’s not really supposed to be, but I guess that unless you use a really targeted approach, that would happen. We’re go
ing to have to get the antidote out of them as soon as possible, because it’s doing damage too, just not as much as the venom did.

  Then I slide my magic into his arm, exploring the edge of where the venom had spread before. I can still feel where I’d put the magic barrier in place, sliding past it as I undo it, and then I move further into his hand, trying to get hold of the whisps of antidote, pushing it against the new edge of the venom. It heals some of the area, going from just before where his thumb starts to clearing the first joint of his thumb, but I can’t budge it further, the venom too strong and too concentrated.

  Someone puts a heavy hand on my shoulder, sharing their magic with me, but no matter how much I try, I can’t get it to reach the knuckles of his other fingers.

  “Sorry.” I shake my head. “It won’t work. I can’t move it enough.”

  Bane looks at me, his eyes wide. “But you...” He holds up his hand, which now looks like he’s wearing some weird glove with just fingers in it, barely any black on the rest of his hand. “You did that.”

  I nod. “It’s not enough to heal Rune, and definitely not enough to take away the pain to calm his dragon. I’m sorry.”

  I can almost see him recalculate his plan. “If we can’t heal him, can we put him to sleep? Sedate him? Work magic on him that way?”

  “And then?” I look at him. “We can’t move him when he’s still a dragon. And what happens when he wakes up? He’ll go back to destroying everything, just the same. You can’t force him back when he’s asleep.”

  Bane sighs, a pained look crossing his face as he eyes Rune in his dragon form. “Can we... Can we sedate him so that we can do something about the wound?” He makes a frustrated sound. “We’ll build a damn tent over him so he’s not so out in the open while he’s out. I know he can’t shift back and forth while he’s asleep, or sedated. But can we make him feel better in his dragon form while he’s sedated and then try to do this again?” He puts his infected hand against the edge of the protection circle. “I feel like if I can take away the pain, I can get him to shift back.”

  I nod slowly. If he can get Rune to flicker like that, losing his dragon shape just for fractions of seconds at a time, when he’s still in this state, I guess that taking away the pain may work. But I have no idea how to sedate a dragon that size. I look back at Mum, who shakes her head, then Aideen, who also doesn’t seem to have a clue, before my eyes fall on Finn. Of everyone...

  “No.” He shakes his head resolutely. “I don’t know how to do it. I just know how to...” He swallows hard, shaking his head again, his jaw setting. “I have no idea.”

  “Sedatives that dragons are extra perceptible to?” I keep my eyes locked to Finn’s. “You’d know them. Not just from... Not just from your family, but from your studies. You’ve studied those things the most of all of us. You’re the one who knows about herbs.”

  Kit turns to Finn, his eyes wide. “Queen’s bane. It could work.”

  Finn’s eyes grow, as he shakes his head. “That’s dangerous shit. Even if we would try, where would we get a dose big enough for a gigantic dragon here? That stuff doesn’t grow here, it’s too warm.”

  “I know where we can get some.” Litha’s mother comes closer, her eyes weary. “Diana has some at their cottage. Unless they’ve moved or cut it down since we went away?” She looks at Mum.

  Bane’s mum has it? What? Why would she have it? And in big enough quantities to do serious damage?

  Mum nods. “She still has it. And it’s enough for a dragon, yes.”

  Wait, what? How can they be so comfortable about it? Finn and Kit are nearly falling apart just thinking of it, and somehow our mums act like it’s harmless.

  “Kit? Finn?” Litha looks between them, scared. “What’s dangerous about it?”

  Kit takes a deep breath before he answers her. “If we use too much, he may not wake up again. And... it can cause heart and lung problems. So if he does wake up again, we may have another problem on our hands still.”

  “But it’s our only option right now.” Finn sighs. “There isn’t anything that works as fast as queen’s bane or will be easy enough to get our hands on in large enough quantities to be useful. Everything else will take days to prepare, after we’re able to find the ingredients.”

  Great, so to get him to calm down, we could ruin his body forever, or kill him... But as I look around, I know that we really don’t have another choice. Rune can’t stay in this state and we can’t keep him locked in the circle for the rest of his life, however long that takes. It’s not an option.

  “Let’s do it.” Bane looks at everyone, one by one, waiting until they nod before looking to the next. “Let’s get my parents, and let’s get that herb or whatever you’re talking about. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

  7

  I’m surrounded by pain. No matter what I try, which way I turn, I’m surrounded by pain. My dragon is furious, insane, from the pain and fear of losing his hoard.

  When I felt Kit pull away from us, from me, the dragon broke free and I wasn’t able to stop him anymore. I wasn’t strong enough. I was too surprised, too surprised by Kit’s actions, too surprised by the sudden violent reaction of my dragon. I’d never imagined that he’d even consider pulling away from us, ever...

  My dragon broke out, pushing me to the back, not letting me keep any control over our body. Locking me out, or more precisely, locking me inside my body.

  Normally, I get control over our actions, over what we do, we work together, but right now, the dragon has full control, it’s too strong.

  I panicked when it wanted to attack Aideen, because she was so close to Kit that the dragon assumed she was the one trying to take Kit away. And then it had half a heart to eat Kit, of all people... Of course, when it decided that the pain wasn’t going anywhere, the pain in its leg messing with its mind, Litha was also looking pretty tasty...

  The worst part was that I wasn’t able to see much of what was going on, only rarely able to slip close enough to the surface to see what was going on. Glimpses here and there, not enough to get a full picture.

  The pain, it’s suffocating and at the same time it’s like needles running through my body, not just my leg, it’s taken over everything in me as I’m stuck inside the dragon.

  The dragon only knows two things, it’s in pain and its hoard is in danger. Kit was in danger because of his pulling away from the hoard, while also being the cause for the danger by doing it. A perfect recipe for insanity for an already compromised dragon.

  I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never experienced dragon’s insanity, not even close to it. And I don’t have much hope that I’ll be able to break out of it, I don’t know many stories of people who actually survive going into this insanity and coming out the other end... Not coming out the other end sane or anything, but coming out of the other side at all.

  Usually, dragons are killed when they go insane, no matter where they are. Even when we still had our own lands, insane dragons would be put down, because they killed indiscriminately, which put everyone in danger, no matter who they were.

  I don’t want to die, I really don’t, but if it’s the only way to keep them safe, I will gladly die for them, because I don’t want to wake up human again, in control of who I am, if it means I’ll have to live knowing I killed the ones I love... Because that’s what insane dragons do.

  The dragon roars, its movements different this time, jerking against a force wrapping around it, and I feel a sliver of control return to me. I pull to the surface, try to push the dragon down again, fighting the dragon, but no matter how hard I try, I’m forced down again, the dragon back in control.

  For the flash I was aware of my surroundings, I saw Litha, Bane, Finn, Kit, Aideen, Phoenix, Litha’s mother and Phoenix’ mother all standing at the edge of a protection circle, the dragon locked inside it, and while they weren’t hurt, they looked pained and tired. But they didn’t look harmed and they were alive, which is all I can wish
for at this time.

  I’ve never been scared of my dragon, but right now, I am. Its thoughts are just to kill, to kill more, to maim and to die if that doesn’t end the pain. It’s simplistic, but I have no way to gain control of those thoughts, I’m too exhausted to gain control over them. I can’t make it refocus or promise it that the pain will go away, at some point, the pain is too intense and the dragon only knows the now. It’s in pain now, that’s all it cares about.

  A darkness descends onto the dragon, different this time, not the suffocating darkness of pain, or death, but a darkness that creeps up and then overwhelming like a wave, drowning me in it. The dragon fights the darkness for a couple of moments, but then gives in, slumping onto the ground, the pain burning through our whole body, flaring up badly, before it’s gone.

  I try to gain control over the dragon, but then, the wave takes me under too and I’m gone, out.

  If this is death, let it stay and take away the pain, keep them safe from my dragon’s insanity...

  When I come to, I’m still locked in the dragon’s body, the dragon is still keeping me forced down. It knows that most of the pain is gone, the infected leg just aching a little, but not enough to hurt anymore.

  I have no idea how much time has passed since I was last aware, it can be minutes, hours or days. I wouldn’t know the difference. I try to push up against the dragon’s awareness, take some control, take a peek at our surroundings, but the dragon pushes me down deep. I can’t even feel my connections to the others anymore, the dragon has taken everything over, I’m just riding along inside the silence, not able to do anything or see or hear or feel anything anymore, locked inside a husk.

  The same thing as before happens, the dragon roars as I feel it retreat some, giving me the possibility to take a sliver of control. I reach out as fast as I can, taking as much command over its senses as I’m able to.