Alexis smiled at Ryuu. “Thanks.”
“Don’t be too hard on Ladon.” Ryuu smiled back as he sat next to the bed. “He’s been very repentant and hasn’t left your side for more than a few minutes at a time. How much do you remember?”
“I was suddenly in excruciating pain and then not much after that except for some really twisted and vivid dreams.” Alexis wasn’t ready to discuss the images seared in her mind just yet. “How long was I ill?”
“A little over two weeks,” Ladon said. “If you hadn’t woken up soon I would have called for an emergency evac to get you to a medical facility.”
“If I was so ill, why didn’t you?” Alexis bit at him.
Ryuu reached out and laid his hand on her arm. “He wanted to, Alexis. I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why?”
Ryuu sighed, “You are one of us now, Alexis. What do you think would happen if the doctors discovered the differences in your physiology? Or worse discovered that your body carried millions of tiny machines beyond the technology of earth?”
Alexis closed her eyes. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive them, but she understood. If they had taken her to a hospital she would have ended up as a science experiment, most likely against her will by order of the government. The excuse of national security could cover a multitude of sins.
“So what do I do if I break a bone or contract some tropical disease now? It’s not like my field work isn’t without hazards.”
Ladon shrugged, “One of the perks of the nano machines is they will repair most injuries and illnesses. They will also constantly renew your body’s cellular structures.”
“So I’m immortal now?” Alexis grinned for the first time since this conversation started. “That’s so cool.”
Ryuu and Ladon chuckled.
“Not immortal, but your aging has slowed dramatically. You might appear immortal to those around you, so care must be taken with us living among humans. And you can still die from a mortal injury. Some injuries are so severe that the nano machines aren’t capable of repairing the damage before you die.”
Alexis let out a giant yawn.
Ryuu stood, “We will let you rest. Your body still needs time to recover from its ordeal.”
He walked towards the door and Ladon stood to follow. Alexis reached out and snagged his hand.
“Could you stay? I don’t want to be alone.”
She sounded like a frightened child, but she wouldn’t tell Ladon that she was terrified the nightmares would come back. Ladon studied her face for a moment, then nodded his head once and sat back down by her bedside. Secure in the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, Alexis closed her eyes and drifted off into sleep.
27
A monster…. That is what had to be hiding in the dark.
She was standing on misty moors, but the further she tried to look into the distance the more absolute the darkness became. She was afraid of what was hidden in that inky blackness.
She walked, the small circle of light following her with each step. It wasn’t long before people appeared in her line of vision—a great long line as far as the eye could see. She could make out the features and faces of those nearest her, but those further up the line were simply silhouettes that faded into the darkness.
She didn’t know why, but those further away felt older, as if they were from some past generation. Instinctively, Alexis’s mind deduced that those faded silhouettes had already passed on. All at once Alexis felt the death those of millions who seemed to parade into the dark only to be destroyed.
She pulled at the arms of a woman and man in her circle of light. Alexis knew that they were still alive, but they wouldn’t be if they continued walking the line. But they would not stop their forward progress. Alexis begged and pleaded to no avail.
“Fafnir calls,” the couple said. One by one the entire line took up the chant.
“Fafnir calls.”
“Fafnir calls.”
Until the entire multitude thundered in the mist-shrouded dark.
In the distance, a great roar was heard, and a monstrous shape undulated through the darkened air. Alexis didn’t want the shape to find her. She knew that this was a dream, but her mind still cried out that if that thing found her they would be connected.
“Wake up, damn it!” she cried out to herself as the monster came closer
Alexis bolted awake with a scream. The last imaged burned into her mind was the glittering of white iridescent scales.
Ladon grabbed her face and forced her unfocused eyes to look at him.
“Are you with me?” Ladon’s fiery golden eyes glittered with concern as the wild look faded from Alexis’s own blue eyes.
Alexis sobbed and clung to Ladon. This scared Ladon almost as much as the coma she had been in these past weeks. Alexis wasn’t the type to seek comfort from others. She was too independent for that. Whatever she experienced in her dream state had shaken her to her core.
Ladon worried that this out-of-character Alexis was the result of her integration ordeal. Perhaps he should talk to Ryuu about it. The black dragon might be annoyingly knowledgeable, but it did have its uses.
Alexis slowly calmed down as Ladon absently stroked her hair and back. When her crying had subsided, she just stayed there wrapped in Ladon’s arms. She melted against him and sighed. Ladon knew that she felt safe in his arms. It wasn’t the declaration of love he longed for, but it was a start.
Alexis’s breathing became even once again as her body fell back into an exhausted sleep. Ladon gently laid her back onto the bed, so as not to wake her. He tucked the blanket up around her chin and brushed a stray curl away from her face. She was so beautiful. Not just physically but her core self was beautiful. She was strong, independent…she could easily stand on her own, despite the fact that she loved people and truly cared about those she allowed into her circle. She had taken her role of teacher and mentor seriously even though it hadn’t been the job she really wanted. Ladon smiled as he remembered the last-minute phone calls from students before they had left for the island. She had taken time, even though her schedule was packed full, to reassure them and arrange the help they needed from a distance. She was a treasure worth guarding.
But this was why something about her nightmares disturbed him. Her naturally strong mind made his connection to her nano machines tenuous at best, but he received brief flashes from her nightmares while he had tried to wake her. Those flashes had stirred something long forgotten. It was familiar, and he knew that it had something to do with the time right before they had fallen into stasis. But he still couldn’t remember what it was he had forgotten, and it was beginning to frustrate him. He had a feeling that what he couldn’t remember is extremely important.
*****
“I’m telling you, Ryuu, that whatever happened right before we went into stasis is the key to all of this.” Ladon paced back and forth in front of the seated Ryuu. “What’s more…I think that somehow Alexis tapped into something that is lost in my memory and it gave her nightmares.”
“It is possible that the nano machines that you transferred to her carried some information from your memories; but what makes you think that? You said yourself while she was unconscious that you couldn’t get a read from her nano machines, and when you first met she was able to shut down your nanos to prevent you from reading her brainwaves.”
“All of that is true, but for just a second or two I caught a glimpse of her nightmare a little while ago. It seemed strangely familiar and…dangerous, for a lack of a better word.”
“It may have been a reflexive action of one mate calling to another in times of distress. The dangerous feeling could just have been Alexis’s own emotional state.” Ryuu sipped on his coffee. This mated business made dragons crazy evidently. It was a good thing he didn’t have a mate at the moment. Somebody had to stay on task.
“But why did it feel so familiar?”
Ryuu shrugged at Ladon. He didn’t have all the answers after a
ll.
Ladon plopped down into a chair only to pop up almost immediately and rush to the door. Ryuu turned to see a pale Alexis leaning against the door frame breathing heavily. Her body hadn’t yet recovered from the coma she woke up from barely twenty-four hours before.
Ladon scooped her up and glared at Ryuu until he vacated the most comfortable chair in the room. Carefully Ladon placed Alexis in the chair and pulled another to sit next to her.
“I’ve had a thought,” Alexis said once everyone was seated again. “We’ve been trying to figure out what happened long ago through the lens of the Drakonians, or dragons. But we can assume that any Drakonians on Earth at the time all of this happened fell into stasis like you did.”
“That is a reasonable assumption,” Ryuu conceded.
“I think I know where you are going with this,” Ladon said. “If no Drakonians were left there wouldn’t be a direct record of what happened.” He thought for a bit. “But doesn’t that leave us without a way to figure out what happened?”
“Directly, perhaps,” Alexis said with a nod. “But you are thinking only in terms of Drakonians. There was another species here at that time as well…humans.”
“But we only found a few years of census information after we fell into stasis before it appears that is stopped altogether.” Ryuu hated to punch holes in her theory, but he had searched the entire library as she lay in a coma. He found that the library seemed to have been abandoned less than ten years after they had fallen into stasis.
“Here at the library…yes, we have precious little information. But you are thinking too literally and discounting an entire history outside of this compound.”
“Alexis, I hate to agree with Ryuu, but humanity doesn’t even acknowledge that dragons ever existed. We searched your historical records before coming back to this library for information.”
“That’s your problem…you studied history, not mythology.” Alexis smiled at the men’s dumbfounded looks.
“Those are just stories…” Ryuu growled in frustration.
“But even myths have a gain of truth in them.” She turned to Ryuu, “Didn’t you tell me that your nano machines preferred working with water the same way Ladon’s prefer fire?”
“Yes.”
“Ryuu in Japanese mythology was the god of the sea, who also happened to be a dragon.” She turned to Ladon. “Ladon was a dragon in Greek mythology that guarded the golden apples, though I am not sure how that relates to you.”
Ryuu barked a laugh and Ladon looked down and actually blushed. Alexis looked back and forth between the two men.
“Okay, what am I missing,” she said with crossed arms.
Ryuu wiped a tear of amusement from his eye and said, “Ladon was infamous for giving out a solid gold apple as a gift to the handmaidens who were particularly enthusiastic in the bedroom. It was a rather coveted prize and one only he and his genetic line could give.”
“Why is that?”
“Most Drakonian nano machines are only able to manipulate one planetary element, if any at all. You need to understand that I am using element in a more ancient sense, not the periodic table kind of sense,” Ryuu explained.
“So you are referring to earth, water, wind, fire, and heart or soul, right?” Alexis filed away this information for use later.
“Exactly. As I said, most only have an affinity for one, but some bloodlines contain certain nano machines that have an affinity for more than one. No one is quite sure why. It might be some sort of genetic quirk that allows the machines to reach more of their potential.” Ryuu had fallen fully into lecture mode. Ladon groaned, but Alexis seemed riveted. “I don’t know if it is still the case or not, but back in our day, Drakonian society had a definitive hierarchy, and it was based on the abilities of the nano machines. This led to certain bloodlines being considered nobles and even royalty. The ruling bloodline was always able to control three or more elements. The nobles two. Those that served noble houses, one. The commoners could only use their nanos to control aspects of themselves, such as healing and aging.”
“So why does that make Ladon the only one who could give the golden apples?” Alexis asked.
Ladon sighed, “He’s telling you in a roundabout way that I was considered a noble of Drakos because I could control fire and the earth spoke to me, which made it a simple matter for me to find veins of gold and jewels easily and forge them into something I could give as a gift.”
“So the part of the myth where the Hesperides found your still-twitching body was probably from when you fell into stasis. So, who were the Hesperides? Since I doubt they were truly nymphs of the evening.”
“They were three sisters who happened to be among Ladon’s favorite handmaidens. They were known to be quite wild and experimentive.” Ryuu chuckled. “Despite the fact that they were willing to entertain any Drakos that visited, they still managed to hoard a vast number of golden apples. They also had a cousin…she wasn’t technically a handmaid, but she would visit. What was her name Ladon?”
“Arethusa. Man, I remember she was a limber thing. She could do this thing where she would throw her leg up over…” Ladon trailed off as he realized that Alexis was glaring at him. “What?” he asked, genuinely confused. She couldn’t be jealous, the women he was talking about had been dead for thousands of years, but Alexis was upset about something.
Alexis stared at Ladon in silence. He wished during this time that Alexis’s mind wasn’t as strong as it was so he could connect to her nanos and figure out what she was thinking. After was seemed like an eternity, the spell was broken and Alexis turned to look at Ryuu. Ladon knew he shouldn’t be jealous, but he couldn’t help the punch in his gut when she looked away like she was dismissing him.
“I feel that we have drifted off topic a bit,” Alexis stated primly. “The point that I was trying to make is that human myth contains grains of truth in it. I found Ladon on a dig in Wales. That area has a myth of a battle between a red dragon and a white dragon…Fire and ice.” Alexis noticed both men frowned when she mentioned a white dragon. “In that myth the white dragon tried to enslave and destroy the people until the red dragon, who felt the people were under his protection, challenged the white dragon. It is the myth of Y Ddraig Goch. It is such an important myth to that region that even today the red dragon is used as the nation’s symbol.”
Alexis paused, hoping that the two dragons sitting with her would offer insights on the foundations of this myth like they had the others, but both remained stubbornly silent.
“In the myth, the red dragon battled and defeated the white dragon, locking him away in the ground before falling into an eternal sleep himself in his lair.” Alexis knew in her heart that this myth was the key. It didn’t feel like coincidence that the other dragon myths had a basis in real events. Besides, a white dragon kept coming up…in the myth, in her nightmare.
“Who is Fafnir?” Alexis demanded.
“Where did you learn of that name?” The normally calm Ryuu growled at her. “That name should have been erased from the annals of history.”
Alexis was tired of being kept in the dark. These two claimed that the alien cooties that Ladon gave her somehow made her Drakonian just like them. So they didn’t have a right to keep their history, even the unpleasant parts, from her.
She was just about to launch into a lecture about that very thing when a disorienting sensation over took her. Alexis’s head spun to the point that she almost fell out of her chair. As it was she had to concentrate to keep what little food she had in her stomach down. She closed her eyes until the world quit its whirlwind. When she opened her eyes again, she found her vision split; one side was observing the world around her like normal while the other had numerous images flashing through it at speeds so fast that she could barely hold on to any of them. Yet even in those flashing images she had the impression of several brutal images involving a white dragon and a pale man she didn’t recognize. She strained to slow down the images to see more
.
“Enough!”
Ryuu’s cry of pain broke Alexis concentration, and suddenly the images stopped as the world spun around her once more. This time when she opened her eyes, only the present world appeared. Both men were holding their heads in their hands.
“By the stars, she is powerful,” Ryuu groaned.
“I couldn’t shut down her nanos and they smashed through every barrier my own erected,” Ladon sighed as he rubbed his temples.
“Same here. I’ve never heard of a transformed mate being able to do such things.” Ryuu closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
“What the hell was that?” Alexis demanded.
“It would seem, my dear, that you are able to control the element of the heart and soul. While all Drakos can use their nanos to glean information from the minds of species who do not have nanos, only a select few can enter the minds of other Drakos. Normally the nano machines would be at a stalemate unless invited in.” Ryuu sighed and rubbed his temple. “You, however, managed to not only shut our nano defenses down, you seemed to have left a doorway that you can use to contact us at any time. With training, you probably could even control the actions of the individual whose mind you invade. Ladon said you naturally had a strong mind, as you shut his nanos down the first day you met, but I think even he underestimated you.”
“I don’t want to control anyone.” Alexis’s eyes glistened. Too many changes too fast. “I just don’t want to be left in the dark.”
“Then I guess we need to tell you about Fafnir.” Ladon got up from his chair and walked towards the kitchen. “You should eat first because you may not want to after you hear the tale of Fafnir.”
28
After a filling meal of a simple stew and bread, the men spent the next few hours talking about a dragon named Fafnir. They had been right about the story causing the loss of appetite. This Fafnir had been the Dr. Mengele of the Drakonian race. The fact that he was considered minor royalty because of his ability to control fire, water, and the mind via his nano machines kept him from the harshest penalties for a while.
Breathing Fire (Drakonian Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
