by Ava Kelly
A cloud—no. The shadow unfurling at the horizon moves too fast to be beckoning a tempest, no matter how strong the wind might get. It glides for a while, and then its elongated sides lift, lower, in a slow flap of wings. The shape draws closer, through the air separating them, until it taints the sky with a dirty flush.
Orsie stills, blood solid in his veins. No, it’s not true. He refuses to believe it.
His eyes sting, filling faster than he can stop them, but even through the tears, the red creature flying toward him is unmistakable.
She has found him.
The red dragon, Nevmis.
Red Mist.
Breath stuttering in his throat, heart pounding against his ribs, Orsie runs as fast as possible to the castle’s core. He runs through corridors, down stairwells, through hidden passages, until he skids to a halt on the dark floor.
He stumbles, close to the low obsidian pedestal that’s the very center of his magic, but he doesn’t care about the way the slab scrapes his legs. No, all that matters is pulling his home back inside his anaskett and fleeing.
Because he stands no chance against Nevmis.
Most dragons are not meant to be warriors. They don’t maim, don’t kill. Sure, dragons have tempers as thunderous as their patience is short, but they’ve never been fighters. An utter displeasure, violence is the one thing they always keep at bay, which is why most of them bask in and even cultivate the widespread rumors that dragons shouldn’t be offended. Or else. However, the rest of that threat is empty. At least it was before Nevmis started her war against the thieves of dragonsouls.
Stealing those is worse. It ends in death for their dragon, and this act only serves to taint the magic of the anaskett, their deepest flaw heightened until it becomes an all-consuming madness. Dragons are always wary of embittering their souls, resorting to appeasing their hunger for hoarding in ways that don’t hurt living things. They collect droplets of water, aromas of flowers, sea shells or fallen leaves. Snowflakes.
Nevmis, though, she gathers hatred.
The air is already thickening with a reddening haze, heavy and scalding as it travels into his lungs, and Orsie forces himself to focus, pulls back the walls, folds stone over stone. The castle shakes, groans, trembles, until it’s no more. Not out there, among the icy peaks, but inside his anaskett, where it was created.
A shadow falls on Orsie, and he looks up from where he’s kneeling on the now barren ground. Nevmis rumbles, great jaw opening and closing dangerously. She’s larger than any dragon Orsie’s ever seen, her maw bigger than Orsie’s entire body, and a pang of fear travels down his spine.
“I see you’re making my quest easier,” she rumbles. “I have long been yearning for that black anaskett of yours.”
A steep wall of rock looms behind him, while Nevmis blocks his way out. If Orsie turns now, he’s stuck. No, there must be something else he can do.
“You can’t have it,” he says and runs, as fast as he can, between Nevmis’s legs. In his biped form, he can fit well enough. All he has to do is reach the edge of the cliff. From there, he dives and spreads his wings in midair before he glides down into the ravine leading north. His plan is to fly as far as he can over the sea and hopefully find refuge with the Thjudinn and their great icebreaking ships. He doesn’t think for one moment that he can win against Nevmis.
The dragons’ greatest, kindest warrior, turned into this beast. Orsie’s heart breaks for her, for him.
A roar echoes through the peaks, scratching at Orsie’s ears, and he pushes. Faster, faster!
Something heavy slams into him, interrupting his flight. Orsie hits a boulder at great speed, and he almost slides down into the chasm, but he manages to catch onto a cliffside. On the other side of the deep ravine, Nevmis is poised for attack, grin filled with malice.
She took Mother’s anaskett when Orsie was too young to understand.
He roars back and lunges. He turns in the air, strikes with his tail, swipes, and Nevmis stumbles back. On the underside of her wing, a long gash bleeds onto the white snow. Orsie wastes no time in resuming his flight, but Nevmis catches up again.
This time, he isn’t as lucky, and they scramble for a dominance Orsie cannot win. Not against someone with as much power as Nevmis has, her magic engorged by all the souls she’s stolen over centuries.
Nevmis lands another hit, sends Orsie crashing into rocks. He drags himself up and runs and fights and flies some more.
He remembers the story, clear as day.
Mother told it many times. The tale of the red warrior, the fiercest, bravest of all the dragons, who set out to recover all the dragonsouls stolen by vile creatures and kings. She took them back, cradled inside herself for safety.
With each soul she saved, the more bile she absorbed, from the rancor festering inside the stolen anasketts after centuries and centuries of captivity in the hands of mortals. That’s what Mother thought, at least.
Because, well, Mother couldn’t believe what Nevmis was doing, slaughtering her own dragon brothers and sisters for their magic. From a hero, Red Mist turned into a feared creature. The dragons fled, following the pull of their magic toward the lands that called to them most, until they became a solitary race, hiding from the hunters and the dragonslayers, hiding from Red Mist.
Orsie hurts, from the tips of his wings to the end of his tail. His claws scramble on the ground, a very familiar stretch of rock beneath his feet. Oh. They’re back where they started, with Nevmis looming over him.
She was once the dragon hero before all the souls she saved poisoned her mind. Nevmis carries so much darkness the air becomes red around her. Heavy.
Diseased.
“Here we are,” Nevmis says, puffing heat over Orsie.
He growls back, frosting over her nose, causing her to sneeze.
“Petulant child,” she hisses. “There is no escape for you.”
Her claws press against his ribs, not pushing through but taking, and Orsie howls with a sound that tears at him from the inside.
With his anaskett now shining dark from between Nevmis’s long clawed fingers, everything is gone.
“Look at you,” Nevmis sneers, “unworthy to keep it. Human and weak. Pathetic.” She rounds Orsie, tail flicking against the surrounding rocks. “I should stomp on you right here and now.”
“Why don’t you?” Orsie asks, teeth clattering.
“It always amuses me when one of you comes to reclaim it. Nothing will stop me from drinking it. You will fail, and it will surrender itself to me.”
Anger bubbles up in Orsie, despite his desperation and in spite of all the weakness seeping into his bones.
“No. I’d rather destroy it than let you taint it.” He screams at Nevmis, throws a rock, but all he gets is smugness from her maw. “You are unworthy!” Orsie yells, the sound echoing around them. “You!”
His nose itches, his eyes leak, and Nevmis might step on him, but he can’t stop.
“Your evil drove dragons apart; you took Mother. You don’t deserve to be a dragon!”
The ground shakes next to Orsie with the hard hit of Nevmis’s scaly fist. Her head lowers dangerously close to him, nostrils leaking rusted air. It burns, but Orsie doesn’t back down.
“For that,” Nevmis finally growls, red eyes shining with malice, “I’ll let you live. Consider your agony prolonged.”
She turns, flies away, and Orsie collapses in violent shivers.
*
It’s only been a few hours since the torment has stopped, long enough for the sun to dip below the horizon, but it feels like days; lifetimes wrapped in mere seconds after his anaskett was pulled from his chest. Inside him, the new chasm refuses to close, its gaping edges dripping pain through his weakened body.
Orsie shakes worse than he has ever shaken in his life. His skin hurts with cold and battle scrapes, his muscles refuse to cooperate, his nails, oh, his scales.
He doesn’t know how long it takes to push himself to his feet again. The v
iolet-blue of dawn creeps over the sky to the east, and Orsie wraps his arms around his naked body as he gazes around. His home is gone, so is his immortality. The scales on his arms are now mere drawings on his skin.
One by one, they will fade from their vibrant shine to nothingness for each rising crescent he is apart from his magic. The echoes of this cadence, measured in dragon moments as the moon renews from darkness to a sliver of light, will amount to a bit under two years in the timespan of mortals.
When the last one fades…
Orsie swallows. Too little time, not nearly enough, but it’s all he has.
He’s thirsty and cold and hungry, too aware of everything at once, his skittering gaze falling onto the slab of stone he used to cover the apples’ hiding place. It must have moved during the fight. Orsie rushes over to fish out the backpack. His change of clothes from the village is still there, and he hurries to put them on. They’re thin, too flimsy for how cold it is up here, but it’s better than nothing. Next, an apple.
It tastes worse than he remembers.
Yet he needs nourishment to travel, seek out Nevmis, and reclaim his magic.
He tries not to think about what would happen otherwise as he searches for a way down from the plateau. Now that he doesn’t have his wings, he must rely solely on his limbs. He tries but is only marginally successful, and he has to stop a few hours later. Sitting behind a boulder that provides cover against the wind, Orsie rolls up one sleeve.
Mother never searched for hers. She lost all her scales and remained mortal. She never left Orsie, not of her own volition, and now Orsie knows his own fate. If he doesn’t recover his anaskett, in twenty-four rising crescents, his transformation into a human will be complete, irreversible.
He draws a shaky breath, promises to himself and to Mother: He’ll find both their dragonsouls.
*
Up high, the springs are hidden under stone and ice, so Orsie appeases his thirst with snow. He’s done so before, even took pleasure in crunching ice between taking puffs of cold air. It shouldn’t be much different now, he reckons, even without his magic. He’s a frost dragon, after all. However, it turns out to be a mistake when a few hours later his throat hurts too much to swallow. He forces himself to chew on apples, even though the fruit is not enough. His stomach is empty, his entire body bruised, and his palms are bloody from jagged rocks.
Orsie pushes himself, from one cliff to another, around ravines and through narrow passes.
He is slow in his descent, so much slower than when he had his wings. His legs shake, his throat a painful reminder of his new fragility, heat running through him in a way Orsie’s never felt before.
The realization he’s sick frightens him.
Human sickness courses through his body, slowing him as if he’s trying to walk through water, submerged at the bottom of a cold, hot, and painful sea.
Chapter Two
A Short Way Up
Standing in the courtyard of the garrison, Ark groans at the pile of dirty weapons littering the ground. He shakes his head, then pushes the hair out of his face before kneeling to gather arrows. Footsteps fall behind him, and he turns, only to see their heads severed—
Ark gasps awake, shaking and drenched in sweat. He lights a candle with trembling fingers, stares at the flame until the image in his mind fades away. Only then does he remove his shirt to let his heated skin cool off. His hair falls over his face, escaping the loose tie, and Ark catches the strands between his fingers. In the glow of candlelight, the color seems lighter, like Mana’s. The corner of his mouth quirks at a distant memory, when he was a child and, sitting in Mana’s lap, catalogued with her their differences. Same straight nose and short forehead, amber eyes instead of gray, a nearly similar set of lips. Not as big as Mana was, but Aiti, his other mother, assured him all Thjudinn find their size later in life. Now, Ark is taller than anyone he knows. The breath that leaves his chest trembles.
He used to keep dreaming about their deaths, over and over, after word came from the western forests. All around Danv, caravans were being attacked on their way north toward the orchards. During those months, more and more soldiers from the surrounding garrisons were being dispatched to the lengthy hunt through the mountains. It was how they died, one protecting the other, right as they found the bandits’ lair. That’s what the returning messenger said.
The thought still doesn’t warm Ark because now he’s alone. Has been for the past sixteen years.
He waited for their bodies to be brought home, and now, in a mirror of those miserable mornings, Ark makes his way outside the barracks. As dawn slowly lights the sky, he follows the road for a while, then climbs a tree just like he did years ago to watch the passage coming into Crinidava from the mountains.
Surrounded by the silence of the valley and an early fog creeping in through the trees, Ark waits once more. His chest aches as his mind replays the memory, almost as fresh as it was the first time around.
His mothers are dead.
The exact anniversary of their death is lost sometime during the previous week—nobody knows for sure. Today, though, is the day their bodies were finally brought back home. Tomorrow is the night of the pyre that turned them to dust.
Ark closes his eyes, replays in his mind those moments of early dawn when, with trembling fingers, he scooped them up into their urn. He couldn’t bear to keep them apart. After that, there was no funeral. The Thjudinn are buried at sea, under the cold water of the Sal, and that’s where he needs to take them. Ark himself might be half-Danvian, and his mothers might have been exiled from their ship for bringing him into the world, but they were fierce and brave. They deserve to be honored as daughters of the Seaborn. For now, they rest in his room, safely locked away.
He was a few months shy of eighteen when it happened. Back then, he was young and raw and eager to set off on the road on his own. The late captain convinced him to enlist, arguing that life experience and strength were needed for such a long journey, especially if he wanted to make it through Hriss in one piece. Arguing that if he kept his mothers’ endowment wages safe in the treasury, and then added his own, he would have a greater chance at success. In hindsight, the old captain might have just been protecting the coffers of the garrison, much like the current one, Captain Geren, seems to be doing.
It’s law, in Danv. This kingdom thrives on its military resources, sometimes hiring them out to high bidders. It’s how most make a living here, in their youth, and it’s not a bad deal. Enlist at fifteen, serve until thirty-five on a meager stipend. If you’re lucky enough to survive, the garrison rewards you with a hefty endowment, enough to buy land, perhaps start a family. Many are unfortunate, their lives cut short before their service is over, but even then, the full wage is given to their families.
So Ark made a plan for himself: serve, bury his mothers, and then see to a life of his own. He didn’t realize, back then, that seventeen years is too long a time to wait.
He enlisted, learned and worked and managed to survive. He hasn’t set foot outside the mountains surrounding Crinidava, but he’s had his fair share of bandits and wild animals. By chance or fate, he was never sent to the battlefields and he’s thankful, but word got around that Ark was being unjustly coddled. Battles kept calling for troops, beasts kept terrorizing the roads, the soldiers either retiring or moving or perishing, until he barely knows anyone anymore. The jibes of his fellows got worse when a new captain took over two years ago.
There’s no one left of the old guard, except for Ark and Dekin. None of them ever knew his mothers, the two Flitz archers who had saved many in skirmishes. None remembered. They didn’t have friends outside of the garrison, and neither does Ark. The Thjudinn are not very open to outsiders, and Ark never bothered because he was meant to leave for the Sal anyway.
Dekin is an old man now, still holding strong for his age, still useful in training the recruits. That’s the only reason Geren keeps him around, after Dekin gambled away his endowment. Ark sha
kes his head, reminded of the garrison’s poor state. All this new captain wants is dumb soldiers who don’t notice when their wages are shorted. If he keeps buying this much wine and having this many feasts, his soldiers will fall drunk on their faces at the first sign of danger.
Which brings Ark to the core of the matter. There is absolutely no reason for Geren to hate him so much. He doesn’t show it, not to his face, but he keeps antagonizing the other soldiers against him. It’s stupid because Ark is their best archer. Yet Geren keeps giving him the most menial of tasks. Ark has scrubbed more floors and shoveled more manure in the past two years than the rest of his entire service. He’s not even being sent out with the patrols anymore, and that doesn’t help the sour looks he’s receiving from the others, the tension around the barracks becoming unbearable. But Ark only has one year and a few months left until his thirty-fifth. He just needs to hold on a while longer, keep his head down, even though Geren seems to be playing games with him.
Weary, Ark rubs a hand over his face and turns his attention to the forest. Today, he remembers his mothers; everything else can wait until tomorrow. With that thought, he jumps down to the road, then takes the long way back, through the trees.
Crinidava sits nestled in a valley surrounded by mountain peaks. The weather is not much warmer than higher up, the harsh winters unsurvivable by those without shelter. Though small and poor, it’s a place where many roads traveling across neighboring lands meet and the site of many past battles. Danv is no stranger to being coveted—fortunate, too, as its kings have always managed to thrive against conquerors.
Mana and Aiti liked it here as much as they longed for the Seaborn. They raised Ark in the traditions of the Thjudinn. To know the ways of his people, to understand a language he’s never learned was part of his heritage, Mana used to tell him. Aiti thought it natural to miss waves he only heard as an infant, but also amazing how much Ark liked the forest. Half of him, she once told Ark, belonged to the sea. The other half, though, should make his bed or there wouldn’t be any treats after dinner.
