Dragon Oracle Urban Fantasy Boxed Set (Dragon Oracle Complete Series: Books 1 - 9)

by Jada Fisher

  I didn’t have to resist that urge for long, however, because after the second rotation, I flipped right into total darkness.

  “There are particulars of your curse that we want to make sure you understand. Things that could not or should not have been said at your trial. We want to make sure you understand.”

  It was the council again, standing in a circle around Maedryell, who was kneeling in the center. She was dressed in a white gown that looked remarkably similar to the shape and pattern her smoke took when she was at rest, and her hair—which had grown considerably in three months’ time—was shining and soft in gentle ringlets all around her head.

  “Does it matter? I will be the shepherd our people need. The last to die on our soil.”

  “You will not be dying, Maedryell.” The woman looked up sharply with her one eye, but the councilmember continued like she wasn’t glaring. “Dying would be a release. You will simply…cease to be alive and become something else.”

  “Alright. Semantics. Point being, I don’t understand why you need me to know all the details. I’ve killed thousands, helped kill millions, this is my punishment. The end.”

  Another robed figure stepped forward, the smallest and youngest-looking, her long brown hair done up in intricate braids.

  “Maedryell, one day, you could be the last arbiter of understanding what happened here. If we do not tell you, then who? We will write of it, yes. We will teach it, yes. But if anyone understands how even the most protected and best laid plans can fare, it’s you.

  “So, we will tell you everything, in the hopes that if one day all knowledge is lost, what we have done will continue to live on in you. Because should Faeldrus ever escape his bonds and finish his plan, we want our descendants to have a way to fight him.”

  Her face softened and I saw sorrow etched across her features. She looked so young, so full of so many things that would never happen. She couldn’t have been much older than me, and yet she’d helped start a war and ended it.

  Oh… I supposed I’d done that too.

  “Your fate is to be tied to Faeldrus. As long as you exist, he cannot fade. And as long as he exists, you shall as well.”

  “You’re granting him immortality? Why would you do that?”

  “We thought if anyone would understand, it would be you. Or are you not the woman who drove a dagger into his spine and watched as he bled out only for him to find a way to give himself a new body?”

  Wait, she had what!?

  “Death, as we stated before, is an escape, and it is not one we can grant Faeldrus. So, he will wait and rot in the prison we have sealed him in, unable to die, unable to do anything but decompose.”

  “…I understand.”

  “This curse is about balance. Two seers and yet two who are not seers at all, bound for eternity. As long as the two of you exist, our magic will always return. There will always be more of us, even if we must shift and adapt. You will be the relief that guides all our children to their final rest, and that wretched traitor will be the nightmare that reminds us all of what will happen should one of us go unchecked again. You are his guardian as much as you are our shepherd.”

  “But I thought I would not be able to interact directly with mortal affairs?”

  “You will not. For the most part. We have never done a spell such as this before and I’m sure there’s to be exceptions.”

  “I understand.” There was that phrase again. Maedryell was taking it all much better than I would. “And what if somehow, someone in the future finds a way to kill me?”

  “You cannot kill what is not alive. You cannot be killed. The curse is a rule of our people, binding to reality itself. There will be no breaking. There must be a dragon and a broken seer, two halves of a cursed whole.”

  “I’m finally free of him, and you’re tying him to me yet again.”

  There was the slightest hesitance from the woman before she answered. “Yes. It is a mercy—”

  “—but not a kindness,” Maedryell finished. “Yes. I… I understand. I am ready.”

  The woman nodded and stepped back with the others. The same robed figure that spoke at the hearing began again, but the floor opened below me and I sank into darkness once more.

  One would think after so many times being rudely jolted back to reality, I would have grown used to it. But as I was thrown back into my own body, it felt like I was turned inside out on the way there.

  That could also have been because I was flying through the air and my clothes were on fire.

  I really needed to stop taking mini mental vacations. I was missing all the fun.

  I hit the floor, bouncing several times, and as soon as I had control of my momentum, I used it to roll around back and forth. I was vaguely aware of sharp glass crinkling below me, but that came second to the fact that the fire was being smothered.

  When I was certain I was only smoking and no longer actively on fire, I sat up, groaning. I was on the floor of some office building, the inside completely ruined.

  Except by the floor, I meant the ceiling, because the entire place was upside down on top of being wrecked.

  “Oh hey, you back?” Mal asked, her hand in my face. “We took a direct hit there. Thought you were done for.”

  I took her offered palm and she helped me to my feet. My knees almost buckled but her hands on my middle gave me some stability. “Easy there, easy there. You’ve been glowy-eyed and mumbling for almost an hour now.”

  “An hour?” It hadn’t seemed like an hour. My vision had been minutes, barely.

  “Yeah, about-ish. Not like there’s a bunch of clocks in the apocalypse. But big shiny dragon guy is chasing us, so you know. I think you brought up a shield or something because I’m pretty sure we should be burnt to a crisp right now.

  “Where is Maedryell?”

  “She disappeared with the other oracle we found. You should have met the guy. He was real big and strapping. You left quite an impression, though. He’s gonna go back to the others and join with their little prayer circle to keep trying to connect to ancient knowledge or whatever it is.”

  “It’s not going to work.”

  “Pardon?”

  “There isn’t a way to break the spell. It’s just… It just is. As long as oracles exist, there must always be one dragon and one shepherd to balance us out. Without them, we all disappear. All of us. So they never put in any backdoors. Any loopholes. They made it unbreakable.”

  “Nonsense, all things can be broken.”

  “I don’t think this one can.”

  There was a roar above us and suddenly, the wall was torn away, revealing the face of Faeldrus. He grinned, rows of perfectly white and shining teeth glinting in what was left of the fluorescent lighting, and then he opened his mouth.

  I knew that he was going to toast us even before the back of his mouth illuminated, fire quickly blooming to life. I threw my hands—er…hand—up and screamed something that even I couldn’t quite catch.

  And like an old friend returning from a long trip, a wall of magic rippled into being in front of Mal and I, the fire hitting it with the force of a truck.

  Wow, it hurt. It hurt like being hit with a baseball bat all over my body. But it was also exhilarating. I was calling up a shield.

  I was calling up a shield!

  I let out a laugh that might have been a little bit on the insane side, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t had a grip on my magic, hadn’t been able to fight, in so long. But I was finally doing something. I was an active participant in my destiny once again.

  I let out a cry and shoved the wall of energy forward. It rippled in rolling shocks, slamming right into Faeldrus and sending him tumbling away for a moment.

  I knew that it would only be a moment, but I suddenly felt more capable than I had in weeks. “Come on!” I said, adrenaline pumping through me as I grabbed Mal’s hand for once and pulled her along.

  We raced along the ceiling-floor of the office, vaulting over broken fur
niture and jumping over others. I wasn’t exactly an Olympian with it, all things considered, but it was good to be on my feet again.

  “Hey, Davie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are we gonna do when we reach that window on the other side of the room?”

  Oh. That was a good question. “Uh… Jump?”

  “Jump? Not knowing what’s on the other side of that dirty glass?”

  “Uh… Yes?”

  “My kind of gamble. Remember to pull in your arms and protect your face, friend. Glass likes to get everywhere.”

  I nodded and that was about all the time I had before we were launching ourselves through the window.

  It hurt a little more than I thought it would, kind of like hitting a wall then the wall exploding outwards in a way that was very…prickly.

  But that prickliness vanished as I looked down and my stomach dropped. We weren’t above a chasm or a pit of spikes, but we weren’t exactly on the ground either.

  “When we hit, pitch yourself forward then roll on your shoulder. Make sure to bend your knees,” Mal said with a bright grin. It seemed like she was absolutely loving this.

  For once, she wasn’t alone. Sure, I was terrified, it was the end of the world and I was still conflicted about the whole trying to sacrifice Maedryell thing, also there was the whole rapidly popping in and out of visions, but I was kinda having a little fun.

  Just a little.

  We hit the ground and even though I tried to listen to Mal’s advice, it still hurt quite a bit when I rolled forward. I was pretty sure that I felt my chin and elbow both get clipped, the skin scaping raw, but I wasn’t dead when I skidded to a stop, so that seemed like a victory.

  “Uh, Davie?”

  “Yeah?” I repeated beat for beat the same as our conversation before.

  “We’re about to fall.”

  “We’re about to what—”

  “We’re ab—”

  It was right about then that I realized we hadn’t landed on ground at all. No, in fact, what had scraped me was the partially rusted and jagged roof of some kind of van.

  A van that was only half on the little plateau the office building had crashed into, the back already leaning off the precipice.

  “Oh, sh—”

  There wasn’t time to move. Wasn’t time to roll. One minute, we were crouched there, and the next, the whole vehicle was falling.

  We didn’t have far to go, however. A vicious jolt shocked my arm as we hit, but somehow both of us managed to stay on top. We didn’t stop moving, though, instead sliding down what I guessed was an embankment, occasionally getting air, before the van crashed right into the oiliest, greenest body of water I’d ever seen.

  “Ah! This way!”

  Mal was already up and scrambling for a partially-fallen interstate sign. It was in a language that I’d never seen before, its letters more runic than our Romanized alphabet, but its older purpose was clear.

  I grabbed it right after her, swinging myself up and letting Mal haul me the rest of the way when my shaking arms and legs couldn’t manage. Man, I missed being strong. If we did somehow manage to stop the end of the world, I hoped that I could find a way to bulk up again.

  “You okay?” Mal panted.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “I guess Maedryell really can’t leave us alone even for a minute.”

  “I guess not. But we managed.”

  She huffed a chuckle at that, looking up at the sky. We were partially obscured, but I had no illusions that we would remain that way.

  “Come on, we need to find a safer place before Faeldrus can find us or until Maedryell pops back to this plane. How long is she usually gone?”

  “Minutes. You woke up right after she disappeared. Honestly, I’m surprised she’s not back yet.”

  “More of that classic Davie luck.” A screech sounded somewhere close and we both flinched.

  “Geez, this guy is really after you. Too bad you can’t transfer his attention to someone else for a bit, give yourself a break.”

  “Hah, right? Like money from my checking to my non-existent savings account.”

  “I don’t know what either of those things are, but if it’s anything like transferring a jinx, you owe me a ration.”

  “Basic—” I stopped short, my heart stuttering to a halt in my chest as my brain seemed to zoom ahead at unchecked speed.

  “Uh, Davie, you alright?”

  Transfer. Transferring money from one account to the other. Transferring a jinx. Transferring a debt.

  There must be a dragon and a broken seer, two halves of a cursed whole.

  Gasping, I vaulted to my feet, every nerve in my body feeling lit up with excitement.

  “Mal, I know how to deal with the spell.”

  “You figured out a way to break it?” She sounded somewhere between elated and shocked, but I couldn’t blame her.

  I just shook my head, feeling the weight of my realization wash over me.

  “No. We’re not gonna break it.”

  7

  Passing the Buck

  “What could you possibly mean by that?”

  I could have answered her, probably, but then Maedryell popped into being and grabbed the both of us.

  “Here we go!”

  That was all the warning we got before we were spinning through the in-between place, colors flashing by too fast to comprehend. Thank goodness I’d apparently missed out on a bunch of the jumps by being locked in visions.

  The launch was just about as long as the first one, and the next thing I knew, we were tumbling out onto the hard, rocky floor of the cave that we’d left our friends in.

  “Davie!” Mickey cried and then I was caught up in my sister’s arms again. “You’re back! What happened to your face?!”

  I let out a weak sort of chuckle and looked at Bronn, who was waiting patiently for my sister to finish loving up on me. He was so good like that.

  “I just took a tumble. Comparatively speaking, this is nothing.”

  It really was, considering that one of the times I’d gone off on my own I’d lost almost an entire arm.

  “You may have a point, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

  Finally, she let me go and Bronn took a moment to hug me, kissing the top of my head. I got the feeling that he wanted to linger, but he knew I had a task to do.

  “Alright, how many people did I miss the introductions of while I was out?” I asked, looking past him. He kept his arm around my waist to steady me, however, and I appreciated the move. I was just so weary, like all that adrenaline and exhilaration had worn off and I was left with an aching body and no energy.

  “While you were out?” Mickey asked with concern. “What do you mean?”

  “She was all glowy,” a large man said, smirking. He had a vague sort of familiarity to him and I was pretty sure he was the man that Mal had described to me. “Eyes, mouth. Thought she swallowed a glowstick or something.” He stood and wow, he was tall. Taller than Bronn with broad shoulders and thick, black coils tied up into a poofy ponytail. “Name’s Princeton. And you are?”

  “Davie. I guess I’m kinda the leader around here. Barely.”

  “Yeah, I gathered as much from the explanation here while you lot were running around. Granted, not that there was a lot of explaining from the main crew considering they were all joining hands and kumbaya-ing or something.”

  “We were trying to reach into the ancient knowledge or whatever it is that gives us visions,” Mickey said, borderline defensively. “Which was explained to you.”

  “I know, I know. I wasn’t saying I didn’t get it. I just figured you guys were all busy enough and didn’t need me to join in.”

  “He doesn’t like being touched because he can see a person’s deepest secret,” another girl said, standing up. She looked a bit younger than me with electric green hair against her tan skin. “Hello, I’m Lakshmi. You pulled me from my realm a couple of hours ago. Nice to meet you when you’re mor
e…present.” She offered her hands. “I’m a second-generation oracle in my world. My gift is I can hear thoughts occasionally. If they’re loud.”

  How could thoughts be loud?

  “Come on now, tell me you’ve never screamed in your own head.”

  “See, now that’s invasive,” Princeton said with a laugh. “Now I don’t feel so bad about my stuff.” He grinned broadly. “Um, there aren’t any other, what did you call them, oracles in my world—at least that I know of. I’ve just been dreaming about our past and seeing stuff since right about when I hit puberty.”

  “Oh, as if that isn’t a turbulent enough time for a kid.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “As cheery as this conversation is,” Bopha said, also rising, “and as much as I enjoy getting whiplash trying to catch everyone’s lips moving, shouldn’t we continue searching? And why is Davie here? I thought that the enemy was still coming after her. Is she our bait or not?”

  Perhaps from anyone else that would have been a harsh statement, but like everything with the woman, it was entirely matter-of-fact. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what Sok would be like if she hadn’t been trafficked and tortured.

  “I know what we need to do to kill Faeldrus.”

  “You found a way to break the curse!?”

  “No, not really.”

  “But you just said—” someone else started.

  I held up my hand. “The curse is unbreakable, as far as I can tell. Maybe if any of us had some real magical know-how, we could figure out some loophole they never thought of, but we don’t have that sort of time.”

  “Faeldrus can’t be killed without the curse broken.”

  “Actually, Faeldrus can’t be killed while under the curse.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it’s not. The curse can’t be broken, because it’s been woven into the fabric of what makes all of us. But while we can’t undo it, or counter-curse it, we can transfer it.”

  “Transfer it? If it could be just hopped around all willy-nilly to different oracles, I feel like Maedryell would have thought of that. Right?”

  “She’s correct. I can’t just hand off my power or my responsibility. It would be too easy to trick some poor soul and free myself.”