by D. R. Rosier
It was nothing like Rafe’s spell or dragon magic, yet it did the same thing. It wasn’t hard to repel most of the magic away from my body, it was just something a witch never had need of before now. So I kind of made it up. I had a few false starts, but it didn’t take me long to get the balance of things right. It was still much more than home though, even more pressure than Rafe’s spell relieved. Instead of feeling like swimming in a pool, it felt like clothes that were too tight, just short of losing circulation.
I started down the road. I was fairly close when a few people noticed me. They were clearing out burnt buildings. I could see some of the buildings were untouched, still covered in protective magic.
One of them, a man in his mid thirties holding a staff, walked toward me. The rest of them looked suspicious. It was obviously my clothes that clearly marked me as someone from another world. I moved my focus back to the man. He was in good shape, wearing breaches and a leather tunic. The staff had a magical aura on it that consisted of many spells, it was hard to determine where one began and the next started.
He stopped when we were fifteen feet apart, so I stopped walking as well.
“Who are you, and what do you want,” he said in a gruff no nonsense voice.
I couldn’t exactly blame him. I decided to go with the truth, if not all of it.
“I’m Dawn, my world had the dubious pleasure of meeting dragons recently. It came to our attention that the dragons are… if not at war than at least fighting with yours. I suppose I’m on a fact finding mission to find out if we are in trouble and if so what kind.”
He sighed and said plaintively, “We are a bit busy, couldn’t you pick another town?”
I blushed, “Well, this is the one I know about. Maybe if I helped out a little you could spare some time? And what is your name?”
He nodded, “Tanner. Help will be welcome, but treachery will not be tolerated. A threat is perhaps a poor way to start, for that I apologize. We have lost a lot of our homes, and the fields. Our common buildings resisted their attacks, but that won’t last forever if they return. Do what you can to help and I’ll share tonight’s meal with you and perhaps give you access to our records.”
“Thank you, I’ll take a look at your crops.”
He snorted, muttered about the crops being ash, and walked away.
“Rafe?”
“What is it little witch?”
I smiled at that, his mind voice was gentle, “Will I be making any enemies if I help these people to rebuild?”
He replied, “I don’t know, but I know I will not care. I will not tell anyone either.”
I thought about that for a minute. Good enough, I needed to earn good will from these people to get the information, and I knew Rafe wasn’t lying. I doubt it was even possible for us to lie to each other living in each other’s minds as we were.
I turned around and walked back the way I came, moving away from the town. I took a look at their fields and it was pretty bad. The wheat was blackened, there was also a field of corn that didn’t look any better. I reached out with my witch magic, sinking it into the ground and out into the field. The soil itself seemed okay, a little charred on top perhaps. There was also plenty of seed for a new crop that was spared by the fire.
Seems the dragons wanted to punish the town, but weren’t very thorough about it, once the fire was started they moved on. Witches were the masters of nature, plants and crops were easy, and there was a ton of magic. Sure, I wouldn’t run out of magic, but I would tire eventually of channeling it, so I was considering the best way to go about it.
I embraced my magic and time slowed to a crawl. First, I sent out a burst of magic to pulp all the burnt crops, making a kind of mulch out of them. The second part was the hardest because it wasn’t about the plants at all, I turned the earth, breaking the topsoil and burying the mulch and seeds below the earth. The third pass over the wheat field I broke down all the pulped matter to enrich the soil.
I reached out with my magic in search of water and found a nearby river. The next part was both the easiest power wise, and the most complicated. I created a spell to water the field, at the same time I launched a spell into the dirt for the seeds to take root and grow. I wondered for a moment what the townspeople thought of my little rain cloud directly above the field and not moving in the slightest as it poured rain down on the soil.
In this compressed time it took me about fifteen minutes all told, in real time it was much, much faster. I stopped the growing magic when I estimated it would be around two weeks for a harvest, from what I could tell that was about where they were at when the field was burned.
I turned around and repeated the process for the corn.
When I finished I turned back toward the town, and they were all staring at me with shocked looks on their faces. I supposed they didn’t have nature magic here. Perhaps Earth and water magic could have taken care of most of it, but not the growing part. Maybe not even that, it could be I didn’t use a magic object or a spoken spell, perhaps what I did was only out of the reach of the sorcerers who controlled the elements directly. Maybe a mage or wizard could do it.
They all looked away as I walked back into town. There were a few large buildings still standing, but most of the small ones were trashed. Unfortunately growing, or building a house with my magic, was out of the question. Though, I could help with cleanup.
Tanner said in understatement, “That was an impressive use of magic.”
“Thanks,” I said cautiously, “My magic works best on nature. I’m not sure if I can do anything for buildings, do you have any wounded?”
Or at least my witch magic works best on nature, I was trying not to be too trusting but I was horrible at it. I already liked Tanner.
“Mayhap. We don’t have any strong mages in this town, and only they can heal. The ones we got exhausted themselves keeping anyone from dying.”
I replied, “Lead the way.”
He seemed more wary after seeing my magic than distrustful, but he waved me up next to him, I assume so I wouldn’t be behind him, and walked me over to one of the standing buildings.
“This is the town hall, where we all meet for meals and discussion.”
I pondered that for a moment, they ate meals as a town? Kind of like a Viking Meade hall I supposed, interesting. We walked in and I could see a lot of long dining tables set up, as well as a raised dais. Nothing throne like though, it was merely an empty platform. Along the wall to the left I saw fourteen people lying on bedding arranged on the floor. There were mostly burns, some of them very bad with second and third degree burns all over their bodies.
Just scanning with my magic I found some broken bones as well, a couple with internal damage.
“Who is this?” asked an older but still beautiful woman, looking at me suspiciously.
Tanner waved a hand, “Relax Maya, she offered her help in return for information on our enemy. It looks as if the dragons may have turned an eye their way.”
Maya didn’t seem very thrilled, but she nodded shortly and took a seat at a table, her eyes never leaving me. I had the feeling she’d given me enough rope to hang myself. I was starting to wonder if these people were infiltrated a lot. I suppressed a smile and walked over to the closest person. It was a teen boy of maybe fourteen, he was heavily burnt and the right side of his body had taken a good hit giving him some broken ribs and other internal injuries.
I had two ways to heal. The first was as a witch, witches healed by using a person’s DNA as a kind of model, then encouraging the body to return to that model. It was more powerful than angel healing only in that it could grow a lost limb, the model could also be tweaked to remove a hereditary condition. Angel healing did basically the same thing but without any interpretation, so no fixing a hereditary issue, and it only worked on existing tissue, so no new extremities.
Still, angel healing was easier by far so I only bothered with the witch kind when one of those two things were required. Als
o, using angel healing was rather, euphoric. It was also one of the things that were unique to just me as well, besides the blonde hair. I was half angel, my sisters are half demon, quarter angel, quarter witch, so they didn’t get it.
I reached down and touched him with a single finger on his forehead and brought forward the power. Soft white light filled the room as my power entered the boy and started repairing the flesh. It also fixed the ribs, killed some inimical bacteria, and purged his body of impurities. Unlike witch magic, this took no control, spells or even thought, it was simply turn off and on. Which meant outside of power there was no real limit, I didn’t have to worry about losing my concentration.
On this world, I didn’t have to worry about running out of magic either. I was almost afraid to turn around when I finished to see their reactions. I smiled at the teen’s awed look, finally a normal reaction. I was half thinking my succubus beauty would be wasted on this world. I winked and moved to the next person.
I was feeling a little self conscious, it seemed the kid had gone and got his friends, and some of the adults had come in to check it out, and none of the healed people left. I had half the town watching me as I healed the last person in line. I supposed they were as surprised at what my magic could do as I was with a whole world of magic users, doing different things that my magic wouldn’t be able to do very well.
After the healing I just walked around, introducing myself to people and waiting for dinner. I was leery of doing anything else out of the ordinary. The town was still wary, but they were a lot friendlier than when I showed up, especially the family members of those I healed. Oh, I didn’t save their lives, but it would have taken the mages a few weeks to heal everyone up.
It seemed strange, they had so much more magic to work with, but their… interface with it took a lot of effort. Almost like they’re doing it wrong, they got so far and gave up. Did they really have three magics? Or was it just one with three incomplete approaches? I supposed it didn’t matter, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.
I still had a couple of hours before work when we sat down. When he had offered to host me for dinner I assumed private, but of course the rest of the village was there as well. When dinner was finished he got up and walked to the dais and stood on it. The various conversations were all silenced.
Tanner spoke, “As you all know we have a visitor today. She is searching for information on the dragons who her people have encountered. She offered her help today merely for this reason.”
He paused a moment and looked at me, “I am the head of this clan and it’s my job to teach and pass on our history, usually from right here. So that’s what I’ll do for you now. I’ll have to start the story before the dragons so you’ll understand. The first race we ever met from another world wasn’t dragons, but they were another shifter race.
“They called themselves Phoenix. They were extremely large, maybe half the size of a full grown dragon. When they were in their phoenix form, their wings, tail, and beak were sheathed in a white hot fire, their bodies varied from orange to blue flames. They were birds of prey, and had invaded other worlds before ours to either control or destroy the population.
“We fought them for years until something else came through. A dragon. The dragons seemed alien to our thinking, but had an odd kind of honor to them. They became our allies. Phoenix fire was even hotter than dragon’s fire, but dragon blood was in a way our salvation. With it we could create more powerful protections that had to be seen to be believed.
“In return for their generosity, we took over the care and maintenance of their herds, to free more of them from the manual labor of day to day living to fight our common enemies. It would usually take two or three dragons to take down a phoenix, or a mix of one dragon and four to eight human magic users. We were staunch allies, to the point where we would sacrifice ourselves to save the other in battle. They were our strange, but close and trusted brothers.
“But then, the war was won. The phoenix you see barely got along with itself, so their population wasn’t that big to begin with. After that we had peace for two thousand years, which is two generations of dragon kind. We still traded for blood as a lot of our defenses and strongest magics depended on it. We continued to send grain and care for their cattle. But after those two generations, once the dragons that fought with us human magic users had passed, the respect for our race passed as well.
“They are an aggressive species, and not all, but enough of them started to see humans who were stuck in this form as less than them. Some few even said we were no better than their cattle. They started to send less blood, and started to demand more. They were stronger and better, why should they work for anything when they can make us do it.”
Tanner frowned in thought, “Perhaps my bitterness colors this story, but I truly believe what I just said. I suppose it’s a pretty common story. Once we lost our common enemy, those differences we didn’t see as very important suddenly became a wedge to drive between us.
“We tried to negotiate with them, explain why we needed the blood, but finally we decided without an attacking enemy we didn’t really need the strong protective magics the blood could give us. So we sent a final offer, when that was refused, we pulled all of our people off their world and broke off talks as well as trade.”
He grinned, “You might imagine, that didn’t go over well. The dragons were too used to having the manual hard labor done by us, now they were faced with the need to farm, as well as care for their cattle. My ancestors should have known better, but they didn’t see the alternate solution. Perhaps they were too naïve and peaceful. When we stopped providing for them, instead of picking up a plow, the dragons started raiding us for supplies.
“When we refused to give over, they started to raze our fields with fire. Of course, that put us in a tough spot, without our most powerful protections the dragons figured we would either feed us both, or that we would starve. They failed the lesson they had taught us. So we started sending over raiding parties. So far, the only casualties had been fields, so we just suppressed any lone dragon we could find and stole the blood.
“It was a little ironic, their own blood powering the protections we needed to defend against them. So here we are at our latest difficulty, we can’t get to their world anymore, but they still come here to raid. Even worse, they aren’t stopping at just the fields now, they attacked multiple towns yesterday.
“So Dawn, I’d expect what you should expect from dragons is they see you as cattle. Not all of them, but most. On the good side, they won’t attack you unless you either have something they want, or you attack them first. I would suggest you not help us further.”
I was kind of speechless, and it was obvious to me it wasn’t dragon nature that was the problem, it was human nature, or what they had of it. Once the common enemy was gone it was laziness, racism, and a good dose of arrogance that caused the breakdown. The only amazing part was it took two thousand years. On Earth shit like that happens in twenty years. The only explanation for such a long peace was that the dragon part was more faithful than the human part.
What have you done for me lately… it was a common theme apparently, across all worlds.
The absolute worst part is the escalation was directly related to what I did for them… for money. The dragons no longer feared reprisal on their own world. What have I done?
Chapter 12
I dropped my magic muffling spell as I walked through the world gate. My impression was Tanner dealt with me honestly after the help I’d given. I packaged up the memory, sent it to my family and hoped no one would tell me I was an idiot and go back to get the rest of the story. It fit to well though, both human nature and our own history. His story had the ring of truth to it.
Regardless, I was home with plenty of time to take a nice shower, put on a little black dress and my jewelry. I was early to work and didn’t really have to go anywhere, I was on the sex club side tonight where I lived. Lily was already
gone, either she needed to get there early for some reason, or she was avoiding me. I shrugged it off as paranoia, since I was still waiting for her response to the fact I was in love with her, desperately.
As if I didn’t have enough problems.
I did take a moment to let her know I was back, just in case she was worried or something.
Don’t get me wrong, outside of getting myself involved in changing the balance of power in a war, and that one aspect of my love life, everything else was pretty damn good. I was mated to one of those dragons, but at least it was from a clan that saw humans as equals. Well, the one in charge did, along with my mate anyway.
I supposed I wouldn’t hear from my family for a day or two, maybe more. They had to lay out plans, and I was sure the only one I would hear about is if they needed me to contact the dragons for any reason. I was probably the best person for that, being mated to one.
I got contacted through the necklace. That was fast, so much for a few days.
Cassie asked, “Did you get their DNA?”
I blinked, “Yes, I’ll send it in a minute. Why?”
Cassie’s tinkling laugh filled my mind, “I’m curious, you know what that means. Your idea that they weren’t accessing their magic quite right was insightful, and probably correct. I want to look at their DNA and see if I can figure out the right way. Don’t worry, I won’t be telling them either.”
“Sounds good, let me know though if you figure it out? I’m still kind of curious myself.”
Cassie replied, “Sure, sounds good. Gotta run! Luv ya sis, and I’m glad you’re home safe.”
I said goodbye and then packaged up the DNA info I had in a memory, all fourteen of the people I healed. It was a witch thing, we never met a DNA strand we’ve forgotten. Then I sent it.
I guessed all the protestors weren’t back when I walked past the private rooms and sensed couples in three of the suites. Not that I’d be going outside anyway. I made my way down to the den and grabbed a drink, giving Sam a nod on my way by. He was with some of the customers so I didn’t interrupt just to say hi.
