Trapped by the Dragon

by Riley Storm

  In response, it clamped down around his arm, three rows of teeth digging into him on both sides.

  “Motherfucker!” he howled, stiffening the fingers on his other hand and jabbing them into as many eyes as possible, pushing yet more lightning through each of his fingertips.

  Four eyes exploded, drenching him in nasty eyeball fluid.

  “Perfect,” he muttered, then turned to the side and nearly vomited as a droplet made its way inside his mouth.

  Enough energy had poured into the beast that it finally died, and he kicked it over the edge of the wall, getting to his feet.

  Nearby, Natasha pointed her wand at a trio of creatures clearing the lip of the wall. Blue sparks shot out and impaled each creature, toppling it back over the edge. Two more appeared in their place.

  “Enough of this,” Rane snarled, getting to his feet and walking over to the edge of the wall.

  A slimy gray snout poked its head over the top, and he slammed a fist into it, sending the creature back into the snowstorm beyond, out of sight.

  Then he reached over the edge of the wall with one arm, extending the other to the sky above him. Lightning shot down from the storm clouds above, and then out of his fingers. Like a giant hose, Rane swept his hand along the edge of the wall, frying creatures and clearing them off.

  A loud holler went up, and they stopped climbing.

  “That’ll teach you,” he snarled, ceasing his attack and looking around.

  Natasha was watching him with approval in her eyes.

  Nearby, the two novices began to cry as they looked at their dead comrade, realizing they would never talk to her again.

  Rane clenched his teeth together as he watched the scene play out. A few seconds earlier and perhaps she would have lived, and the other two wouldn’t have to mourn. He’d watched as the four novices had passed. They had been polite and respectful to both him and Natasha. Now one of their number was dead.

  He frowned suddenly as his brain clicked in to something.

  One of them was missing.

  “Aw shit,” he sighed, and without waiting flung himself over the wall and into the murky gray snowstorm below.

  Chapter Seven

  Natasha

  She gasped as Rane disappeared below, the snowstorm moving back in as he fell out of sight, his powers not working when he wasn’t focusing on them.

  “What the fuck!” she shouted. “Where is he going?”

  One of the novices looked up at the noise, her eyes filled with panic. “They have Aleria!”

  From below the wall, she heard Rane shout, and something that might have been a blast of lightning sounded as well.

  Natasha looked at the novice, then the wall where Rane had gone over. She put two and two together.

  “Oh come on!” she moaned, not wanting to do what she was about to do.

  But the spell was already on her mind as she climbed up onto the battlement and prepared to drop off.

  “Protect them!” she shouted as the next nearest group of novices finally arrived on the scene, wands drawn, looking around wildly. “See to their aid!”

  Then she did something stupid. She jumped off the edge of the wall to go take on an entire horde of gremlins. With just Rane as backup. And no wall limiting the quick, agile creatures from circling around behind her.

  Even as air billowed around her robes and slowing her descent, she was shaking her head.

  “Yup, this is a stupid idea, Natasha. This is how you die, following a dragon. Good job.”

  Yet she couldn’t shake the fact that Rane hadn’t hesitated. He’d also clearly noticed the missing novice, and without a care for his own well-being, had jumped over the wall to go help her out. He didn’t even know whether the young witch was alive or not.

  “Rane!” she shouted as she touched down, snow nearly blinding her, reducing visibility to little more than a few feet.

  Something howled nearby and a shape resolved itself out of the grayish-white snow. It was a gremlin. The hideous creature came up nearly to her chest, and likely outmassed her by two or three times. It was all the more impressive the way Rane had simply picked up two of them at once. He was so strong…

  The beast open its maw and came at her.

  “Thank God you’re dumb,” she muttered, thrusting her wand forward. Fire billowed out from the tip, and the gremlin swallowed it, burning from the inside out.

  She stepped to the side as the already dead creature raced past her, its limbs not aware that it was dead.

  As she moved, something else sliced through the air from where she’d stood. Natasha hissed in surprise. If she’d stood her ground to deal with the first gremlin, the second would have taken her by the neck. A killing blow.

  Had the two been working together, or was it just a lucky move?

  Natasha pointed her wand, the spell she wanted coming to mind as the monster from the Abyss pivoted on three legs, turning to come back at her. The ground turned to liquid underneath and the gray thing sank like a stone.

  She then focused her energy and the ground squeezed tight around it, killing it.

  “Rane!” she shouted again, charging forward as the sound of battle reached her through the howling wind. “Where are you?”

  “Over here!” he shouted.

  The snow suddenly cleared and she saw Rane in the center of a dome devoid of snow, crouched over the still form of the missing novice.

  A gremlin emerged from the snow and Rane’s lightning spat out, striking the creature in the side and flinging it back, a huge chunk of its flank missing.

  Natasha rushed to his side. “You found her,” she said, dropping to one knee, putting her fingers to Aleria’s neck.

  “She’s got a pulse!” she cried, her fingers coming away streaked with blood. “It’s weak, but it’s there. We need to get her up to one of the healers. Gremlin saliva is venomous! She’ll die from her wounds.”

  “Take her,” Rane ordered. “Get her out of here. Now!”

  Lightning sizzled and Natasha’s hair stood on end as he fried another pair of gremlins. She looked around, noticing the edge of the dome growing darker in places as shadows blocked out the snow, not quite visible but very clearly moving.

  “They’re surrounding us!” she said. “You’ll never defeat them all. I’m not leaving you!”

  Rane turned to look at her and Natasha gasped. His eyes had gone a brilliant royal blue, little sparks of lightning filling the irises.

  “Take the witch,” he ordered, his voice deeper than ever, flowing with an almost melodious tune to it. “Save her.”

  “I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself to a bunch of monsters from the Abyss,” she snapped. “You want to do this, we do it together. I am not helpless, and I will not stand by idly as one of my number is hurt. You are at Winterspell under our protection, Rane. It’s time you understood that.”

  She expected him to protest, to tell her to be gone. But Natasha had forgotten that among the dragons, women fought alongside men, with no distinction given to the sexes. They were all warriors when the need arose, and a female dragon was among the fiercest of them all.

  “So be it,” he growled, nodding to his left. “You take that half. I’ll take this one.”

  Natasha stood tall, moving to stand back to back to Rane. She held her wand at the ready, half a dozen spells in her mind. This was what she’d trained for, what she was ready for. It was time to show Rane what she could do.

  The gremlins came charging in, only to be met with a wall of flames that burned the snow and slimy gray flesh of the monsters equally. Terrible howls filled her eardrums as a handful were fatally scorched in seconds.

  Then one jumped clear of the flames. Behind her, something exploded with a loud boom that rocked her, but Natasha stayed upright. Her wand came up, and a ruby-red beam drilled the charging gremlin right through the head. It dropped and slid to a halt five feet away.

  “Is that all you’ve got!” she shrieked, battle lust burning in he
r veins. “Come on!”

  A bark of laughter came from Rane before he bellowed a wordless challenge at his enemies.

  The pair of them lashed out with magic and lightning as more gremlins came forward, a mindless horde trying to reach the center where precious human flesh awaited their hungry mouths. Rane and Natasha fought back to back, sending every snapping, howling thing to its death and back to the Abyss where it belonged.

  “How many are there?” Rane called as he fried yet another.

  “I don’t know. A few dozen, a few hundred. A gremlin horde can vary in size. These ones are fairly large, so I’d guess they’re a smaller one. We must be reaching the end,” she called back, casting an icy spear at her closest foe, impaling it and dropping it dead.

  She hoped they were nearing the end at least. It felt like time had been going on for ages, but in reality she knew it had been a minute, maybe two at most.

  Her wand flashed and fire blossomed, turning yet another gremlin into a well-done steak.

  Then, just like that, there were no more. The last one came in, and it was impossible to tell whether her red beam or Rane’s lightning had got to it first. But the creature exploded into goop.

  “Take that!” Rane barked, turning to face her. “We did it!”

  “No thanks to you!” she said, sticking a finger in his face. “What did you think you were doing?”

  The dragon’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

  “You! You just leapt over the wall. Didn’t say why, didn’t wait for me to come with, or for backup to arrive. You just went over.”

  “She needed our help,” Rane growled, pointing down at the novice. “I found her. We saved her. We did it, Natasha. Look around you. We killed them all. Us,” he said with an air of swagger and confidence she’d rarely seen in him before.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking around at the sheer number of corpses. “I guess we did, didn’t we?”

  “You’re damn right,” Rane growled as his hand slid around her waist and he pulled her tight. “We kicked ass.”

  Natasha barely had time to process what he was doing before he kissed her. Mouth to mouth, hot and heavy, right there in the middle of the battlefield while they straddled the unconscious form of the young witch they’d saved.

  It was hot. She gasped in surprise before melting into it, her body singing with a desire for more. The need to turn around and let him take her, right there in the middle of the raging snowstorm. Oh, by the Furies, she wanted it. Wanted him.

  Then Aleria moaned.

  Both of them pulled back, eyes open wide, shocked at what they’d just done.

  “Umm,” was all she could muster.

  “I’m sorry,” Rane gasped. “Shit. I did not mean to do that, I don’t know why I did that.”

  “Yeah,” she said, distracted still by the heat of his touch, the burn of his lips.

  “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Same,” she agreed, her mind snapping back. “Don’t do that again.”

  “I won’t,” he promised, looking around in shock.

  “You had better not tell anyone about this,” she said, leveling a finger at him again.

  If he told, if word got around that she’d made out with a dragon, she was finished. Loiner would have her head on a platter, that much was for certain.

  “I won’t,” Rane said. “It never happened, yeah?”

  “Never happened,” she agreed as Aleria moaned again, slowly returning to consciousness. “Come on, let’s get her back to the wall. She needs help.”

  “Right.” Rane scooped up the young woman and nodded. “Ready when you are.”

  She gestured for him to go. Wind swirled around his feet and he flew into the air on a vortex of wind, leaving Natasha alone on the frozen ground.

  Her hand came up shakily as she touched her lips, reliving his kiss.

  A kiss she hadn’t fought. No, Natasha had returned it. She’d wanted to kiss Rane.

  What the heck did that mean?

  Chapter Eight

  Rane

  His hand came away from his mouth.

  Smiling to himself, he stared up at the ceiling as he lay on his bed. They had kissed. He’d kissed her, true, but she’d kissed him back, there was no denying that.

  After the events on the wall had reached higher-ups, the two of them had been relieved of all duties for the rest of the day by the Master on watch. Apparently, the gremlin attack had been the strongest in nearly three years. Funeral services were to be held later that night for the witch who had lost her life. The dragons weren’t invited, though thanks had been extended to Rane by the Coven and its leader, Circe, for saving the young novice.

  The smile faded. They hadn’t been fast enough to save the one novice. Rane frowned at himself, realizing he’d never even gotten the woman’s name. Reminding himself to do so the next time he saw Natasha, he took a moment to mourn the loss.

  “There was no way you could have known,” he told himself, speaking out loud, trying to ward off the sudden influx of dark thoughts as reality truly set in for the first time.

  He’d been so proud of himself, for leaping into action right away, and for the way the two of them had held off the gremlins, driving them back into the Abyss at the base of the wall. So caught up in that, though, he’d not allowed the fact that someone had died to seep in.

  Is that because I’m so used to it now? That I don’t even spend a second thought on it?

  So many had perished on Dracia that the dragons had become numb to death, it seemed, barely noticing it in passing after the trauma they had endured.

  “So much for an afternoon of celebration,” he muttered, staring up at the stone ceiling.

  Despite the abrupt bout of melancholy, Rane wouldn’t let himself take the blame for it. After talking to the survivors, it had become clear that there was no way the young witch could have been saved. The gremlins had chosen the perfect time to attack under the cover of a terrible snowstorm, when visibility up and down the wall was vastly reduced.

  Rane wondered if it would call into question the practice of using the youngest, most under-trained witches to man the walls. Would they start putting stronger, more capable witches out there?

  He doubted it. Winterspell didn’t seem like a place that was overly open to change. Certainly not massive change, or quick. The dragons were the perfect case in point there, with how many were resisting their presence…for no actual reason.

  That was the part that bothered Rane the most.

  “I saved that witch’s life today,” he growled to himself. “I did. Not anyone else. Sure maybe Natasha would have, but I did.”

  It was a big deal for him. Never before had Rane been on the frontlines, the first into combat against an enemy. Yes, he’d fought a few minor fights during the last big retreat on Dracia, and then against the Infected that had made it through the portal, but he’d always been a minor supporting actor there. This was his first time being the leader.

  “Yet still they hate us.” He sighed, flopping against his pillow in frustration. It wasn’t fair. Rane just wanted to feel comfortable in Winterspell. Instead, he and the others had to walk on eggshells half the time, never knowing if they were around witches who welcomed them, or who wanted them gone.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous?”

  Rane shot up as a body appeared in the doorway to his room to accompany the voice.

  “Rokh,” he said, addressing the fire dragon leader of his people. Of the survivors. “What can I do for you?”

  “You sound frustrated,” the big shifter said, leaning against the doorframe, thick arms casually crossed in front of him. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just irritated at our situation here,” he said, waving his hand. “Nothing new.”

  Rokh nodded. “I get it.”

  “It’s just, I saved that woman’s life today,” Rane said quietly.

  �
�Do you want a parade?”

  “Go suck an ice dragon’s icicle,” Rane fired back hotly. “No, I don’t need my praises sung from the rooftops. I’m not that vain. I hope,” he added.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I just wish that they would take that into account.”

  “Did Circe herself, the head of Winterspell, not personally thank you?” Rokh put in, leaning forward a little to drive his point home.

  “Yeah,” Rane grumbled. “She did. That was nice. But she did it right before she said that we shouldn’t attend the funeral of the witch who didn’t make it. It would make things uncomfortable.” He clenched his fist tightly, the sleeve of his shirt protesting at the sudden flexing of his bicep.

  “Ah.”

  Rane glared at the dragon head. “Ah? Just ‘Ah’, that’s all you’ve got? It’s not right, Rokh. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be at that funeral. We’ve done nothing wrong. We’re not imposing on anyone, yet many of them seem to think we’ve turned their lives upside down.”

  “We have,” Rokh pointed out.

  “What? How?” Rane sat up, confused, but eager for someone to shed some light on a perspective that had left him in the dark up until now.

  “You said yourself, you aren’t vain. I’d agree with that. I don’t think any of us are. No more than any Dracian at least. Yet you wanted to be recognized for today. Just a little, right? You felt properly respected by having the Circe thank you herself. Am I correct?”

  Rane shrugged. “I guess. Yes. It was no little thing that Natasha and I did, fighting off that many gremlins, or so I’ve been told. I don’t expect a banner of my likeness to be hung from the top of one of the towers. But a thank you is pretty nice.”

  “Exactly. You wanted that bit of attention. Attention that could have been going to one of the witches.”

  Rane’s mouth fell open. “Are you telling me that they hate us because we took the spotlight off of them?”

  “I don’t know for sure of course,” Rokh told him. “But having encountered this Loiner who seems to be their leader, I’m tempted to say yes. She’s a powerful woman who wants more power. I think she was getting ready to make her move for it shortly before we arrived.”