Marina, on the other hand, needed the oracle’s help now.
The oracle looked up at her warily. She’d been flipping through the pages of a magical book with a tired wave of her hand, and she paused as she saw her visitor.
“Marina, what are you doing here?” She stood, and Marina could see the deep stress on the very old woman’s face. Sometimes the oracle looked much younger than her age, but this wasn’t one of those moments.
“We need to talk,” Marina said, planting both hands on the desk and leaning over the much shorter oracle, who took her chair once again with a sigh.
“I told you the portal I left back at the mansion was for emergencies only,” the oracle said, running a hand through her pure-white hair. Sometimes it was fun colors like orange or purple, but today it was just white.
“Mercury’s gone. Lead took him,” Marina said before slumping heavily into a chair in front of the oracle’s desk.
The oracle sat back at Marina’s pronouncement about Mercury, her wizened gaze attentive but surprisingly not shocked by the development. “Interesting.”
“Interesting? What do you mean interesting?”
“I suspected someone would come for Lead,” the oracle said. She got up and walked over to the large, antique-looking window at the side of her office. She was wearing a shimmery, pearlescent gown that draped to the ground, and her hands were clasped behind her back. “I had thought the barrier I put around the mansion would hold them off, but I was wrong. Was anyone hurt?”
Marina shook her head slowly, shock waving through her. How could the oracle be so fine with this?
“Then perhaps it’s for the best,” the oracle said, nodding slightly. “After all, we have enough trouble in our own world.”
Marina shoved out of her chair and stood obstinately. It wasn’t her place to question the oracle, but she couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.
“How can you say that?” she asked, walking forward. Yes, she was naive. Yes, she’d only been awakened not too long ago and was still learning human and shifter customs. But how could letting anyone be kidnapped be right? “They just… took him. He’s gone.”
“Good riddance,” the oracle said, turning back to the window. “You know he tried to hurt a lot of dragons.”
“None were actually hurt, though,” Marina said. “They are all settled with mates, as far as I know. Mates they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t awakened in this day, thanks to what Mercury tried to do to them.”
“Fate works in mysterious ways,” the oracle said. “That doesn’t mean Mercury gets credit for any of it. He was lashing out like a crazy person, and as far as I could see, there was nothing but darkness in his heart.”
“He took off my collar,” Marina said. “He let me go to Kai. He isn’t all bad.”
The oracle stiffened slightly. “He should not have overridden my control. I know better than he does. And you should have stayed safe.”
“At cost to Kai?”
The oracle gave her a narrow-eyed glare over her shoulder. “You could have called me. I would have removed it.”
“You think you know everything—”
“Mercury was a lost cause,” the oracle snapped, turning toward her. “I’ve dealt with some stubborn dragons in the past, some bad apples, but Mercury took the cake.” The oracle put a hand over her chest as if wincing at the memory of something. “There was so much darkness in him. Darkness I can do nothing about.”
Marina knew there was more than that. She’d seen a flicker of light in Mercury, even if only for a moment, and she didn’t want to see it go out.
“I have to go after him,” she said firmly, balling her hands at her sides. “I don’t care what you say.”
The oracle flicked her sharp gaze at her, and Marina felt power shimmering around her. The lights in the room flickered and dimmed. The oracle’s feet left the ground, and she floated into the air effortlessly, rising to Marina’s height but surrounded by incomprehensible power.
The oracle’s eyes were glowing like stars. “Do you want to shift the cosmic balance of the universe?” She zoomed forward, coming even closer so Marina felt almost as if she could be obliterated by the force of the power in front of her. “Are you ready to start an intergalactic war?”
Marina took a step back, putting a hand up against the blinding light in the oracle’s eyes.
The oracle was almost nose to nose with Marina now. “Are you ready to make that decision for us? For humanity?”
“I… I don’t know,” Marina responded, gathering her boldness. “But I made a promise. I can’t go back on my word.”
“Your word. A promise you made with a prisoner. Is it even worth it?” The oracle challenged.
“Only time will tell. But I have to try,” Marina said.
The lights flickered, then went bright again, and the oracle lowered back down, slumping into her chair at her desk.
“Good,” the oracle said, her tone tired. “I needed to make sure, because there is no going back once you’ve decided.”
“What do you mean?” Marina asked, shocked as she sat in her chair as well, feeling her legs shake. “That was some kind of test?”
“Don’t look so surprised,” the oracle said. “I can’t have just anyone going to Drakkaris. There needs to be a reason for it, and I’d say you have a good one.”
“Drakkaris?” Marina asked, trying to wrap her mind around it.
“Yes,” the oracle said. “Lead’s home world. Mercury’s, too, if I’m not mistaken. That’s why they showed up here. You said there was more than just Lead?”
Marina nodded. “Several more.”
“I thought so. Lead was very tight-lipped, but if they were sending an envoy, I knew he wouldn’t come alone. So they were just biding their time, then.”
“What is it like there?” Marina asked.
“You will have to ask them,” the oracle said. “I won’t be able to guide you in this, Marina. I see only what goes on in my world. I know nothing but legends about theirs. There is too much going on here that needs my attention.”
“Things are still not going well with the tribunal?”
The oracle shook her head. “We are looking at all-out war. Which reminds me, I still need to call Felix, our contact, and see if we can make any progress there.” She tapped her finger absentmindedly on her desk. “But right, where were we?”
“Drakkaris,” Marina said, feeling nervousness run through her.
“Right, Drakkaris,” the oracle said. “All I can tell you is that legends speak of something sinister, something that happens to the dragons there. It is a dangerous place, Marina, especially for an unmated female.”
“I can take care of myself,” Marina said quickly.
“I know,” the oracle said. “I’m aware of your powers. You’re the only one of my dragons that I would even dare try sending there.”
“Wait. Send me how?” Marina asked.
There was a twinkle in the oracle’s eye. “The collar. On Mercury. It acts like a homing beacon, letting me keep track of my collared dragons. I put a lot of magic in it to make sure that monster never escaped. Enough that I think we can use it to open a portal.”
“A portal to Drakkaris?”
“Exactly. But I can’t promise you it will take you directly to Mercury. Magic is never that accurate at such a long range.”
“What will I do once I get there?”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find a way back. I can get you there, but my magic won’t be able to bring you home. If I were you, I would try to steal one of their ships. Best of luck, Marina.”
Marina felt suddenly dizzy as it sank in that this was really happening. She was about to be transported to a completely foreign place, with no sure way home. A place full of dragons.
“You better not lose it just yet, honey, because things are going to get stranger from here on out.”
“I…” Marina couldn’t catch her breath enough to respond.
“Breathe,” the oracle commanded, and Marina felt herself calming. “It will be okay. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. And if you can find others like Lead, then you should be safe. Despite his stubbornness, the thing he holds dearer than anything is honor.”
“True,” Marina said, nodding.
“Now go call your brothers. You might not be able to see them for a good long while, if ever,” the oracle said, folding her arms. “But don’t tell them that. They’ll just worry. Especially poor Kai. I’ll pack some things for you.”
Marina pulled out her phone, still not believing what she was about to do. Was Mercury worth it?
The Oracle was mumbling as she walked off, ticking off checklists on her fingers, clearly preoccupied, and Marina stared down at her phone.
Resolve built in her, and as long as she focused on Mercury’s quicksilver eyes and all the time in his cell and that time he’d kissed her and set her free to save her brother, she was clear on what she had to do.
She’d made a promise, and she was going to do whatever it took to keep it.
Mercury’s vision cleared slowly as he felt consciousness coming back to him. There was a ringing in his ears, and his head felt as though a truck had run over it. Several times.
The first thing he became aware of was the dark room that surrounded him. Everywhere was dull, uninviting metal that made his prison back in the awakened dragon’s basement look like a summer home.
His fingers were tingling above him, and as he flexed his arms, thick chains jingled, connected to hard, unyielding cuffs fastened around his arms, suspending him in the air. Beneath him, he could see the ground a few feet down.
He struggled for a second, testing the chains, but they were thicker than Lead’s skull.
Just great.
“I wouldn’t bother,” a voice called to him from across the room he’d previously thought empty.
Mercury’s eyes had to focus through the dark, where he saw a man dressed in flowing, noble-looking robes of mysterious workmanship watching him from a seated position on a small stool.
At the far fringes of his mind, there was a slight tingling like the feeling of his asleep fingers coming back to life. Something vaguely familiar.
“Those chains are Lead’s personal design. The harder you struggle, the more they sap your power,” the man added.
True to his words, as Mercury yanked on them, trying to free one hand, he felt something siphoning his strength like a vacuum taking away his energy. It took all his focus to not black out.
And at his neck, he could still feel the cursed oracle’s collar, a thorn in his side that just wouldn’t go away.
Couldn’t his captors at least have bothered to take it off?
For some reason, thinking about the collar brought Marina’s face into stark relief in his mind, like a three-dimensional picture. He recalled the sadness in her eyes as everything went black, before he awoke here.
He’d never see her again. That much was certain.
He didn’t really care about not seeing Earth. One world was as bad as the next. But he wouldn’t have minded being able to kiss her just one more time.
“What’s going through that head of yours, old friend?” The man’s voice from below him brought Mercury back to the present.
“Old friend?” Mercury replied. Of all the names he’d been called before, like monster, doppelgänger, or swine, “old friend” was something he’d never heard.
“You don’t remember anything, do you? Lead was right,” the man said, standing up from his stool and pacing slowly toward Mercury.
There was something about the air here that wasn’t earthly. A slight acidity to it that was unlike any place Mercury had ever been. That, coupled with this guy’s clothes and Lead’s crazy talk before he’d disappeared from the dungeon and Marina’s warmth meant he really was somewhere no one could find him.
As the man came closer, Mercury could make out a handsome, aristocratic face with dark, silver-gray hair that waved around his face and met his cold and piercing, dark-silver eyes.
As he reached Mercury, he began to walk in a slow circle. “I heard Lead’s full report, but I had to see you with my own eyes.”
“So are you satisfied?” he replied sarcastically.
“No. I’m not. The boy I shared my early childhood with, the boy who saved my life, he would have never become the fiend I see before me now,” he said, his tone dismayed.
“I’m so sorry to have disappointed you, old friend,” Mercury said contemptuously.
Regardless of what this guy said, Mercury had no friends. Just enemies and a three-mile-long open tab with fate that was finally about to come due.
“Wake up, Mercury. I know you’re in there. Stop this foolish game,” the man said, bristling with anger as he stood closer.
If Mercury could have, he would have kicked the guy in the face.
But that wouldn’t help anything right now.
And besides, he couldn’t shake the strange niggling feeling he got when he looked directly at the man’s face, an odd familiarity he’d never felt for anyone before in his miserable life.
But to his chagrin, there was no memory, no recollection, no evidence.
“Nothing. I suppose I had hoped for too much,” the man said with a defeated shrug. “Very well. I will stand by the council’s decision.”
Somehow, the man’s words made Mercury’s neck tight with suspicion.
“Decision?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. I just… I had to try,” the man said, turning his back on Mercury and heading for what looked like a door. With a wave of his hand, a solid metal block with no handle or hinges shifted to the side, revealing a dark doorway.
“Farewell,” he said, turning once more to regard Mercury. Then he left, and the unreasonably large metal block slid back into its place, leaving the room silent once more.
Good riddance.
Still, the fairly sure knowledge that his doom was impending didn’t help to settle the tumult hammering inside his heart.
Maybe being around that lovely sea dragon had made him too soft. Too dependent on the warmth she brought into his dark life, like a fire lighting up a freezing-cold room.
But while he was thinking to himself, something he’d become very used to over centuries of loneliness, he felt an odd buzzing around his neck. After a moment, he realized it was the collar twitching and twisting as if some ghost were trying to wrench it free. It began to vibrate, and he could feel energy pulsing through it.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, going limp around his neck again, like a regular old metal chain would.
Mercury cursed himself for getting his hopes up for a split second that something, anything was about to happen. This was reality. There weren’t happy endings for men like him.
Stupid collar. The damn thing was probably just faulty.
Chapter 3
The trip the to the oracle’s beacon was even more intense than the oracle had said it would be, though Marina supposed that made sense, as she was traversing through space.
Her head spun as dark light swirled around her everywhere, everything moving so quickly she couldn’t even comprehend it. She felt she was moving a million miles an hour, going past stars and planets that looked like little dots in her periphery.
Then, as suddenly as she’d felt thrown into space when she’d stepped into the portal the oracle had summoned, she felt solid earth beneath her feet once more.
She stumbled forward, everything lurching inside her as she tried to merely stand. Her head was spinning like the ocean in the middle of a storm, everything upside down, as if she’d been tumbling in the eye of a waterspout tornado.
Once she felt she finally would be able to stand without falling over, Marina stood up straight and tried to get her bearing.
What she saw was unlike any earthly place she’d ever witnessed.
She was in the middle of a city, streets and lanes stretching out aro
und her in every direction. Above her, buildings rose to every height, some short and blocky, others tall, piercing the sky with pointed towers.
Everything glimmered in metallic colors, some familiar, others strange to her. She recognized gold, silver, bronze, brass, everything one could imagine. Even the street itself was paved with a light aluminum color, and she noted it was warm beneath her feet, not scalding like hot sand.
From the slope of the street, the city seemed to be on a hill, and as she looked down the street past the edges of the city, she could see lower down to what lay beyond. A sweeping landscape of multicolored foliage in green and purple and blue filled her vision, all the way to the horizon. Amongst the thick forests were lakes and rivers that dotted it. And beyond, an ocean spread past her vision, a light bluish-purple hue that was different from Earth’s oceans.
At least there was water on Drakkaris. She could work with that.
But as much as she wanted to just take in everything around her, she was on a mission.
Lead’s words before they’d taken Mercury came to her mind. Trial. Crimes. Things that didn’t bode well for the man to which she still had a promise to keep.
Several men were walking in different directions along the thoroughfare, all going somewhere different, and Marina turned to the closest one in the hopes of getting some answers.
But as she came up, she noted that he didn’t look like typical humans. Aside from the fact that he was tall, tanned, and incredibly well-built, he was wearing pants that seemed to be made of some sort of linen. He was shirtless, which only showed off his muscles, with a single leather strap he wore diagonally across his chest.
And then she scented it. Dragon.
“Where’s Mercury?” she asked, approaching the man boldly and catching him slightly by surprise.
“Wha—who?” he responded, shaking his head in bewilderment.
“The mercury dragon, where are you keeping him?” she asked more firmly. He was a dragon, so he surely knew of Lead and the others.
“There haven’t been any mercury dragons here in a very long time,” he said, scratching the back of his head. Then his eyes lit in recognition, and Marina felt his gaze scan over her before he raised an eyebrow. “Wait, who are you? Where did you come from?”
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