Wylan was dubious about eating a mysterious meal that seemed to have appeared out of thin air, but her hunger made her throw caution to the wind. Besides, if this killed her would that be so bad? At least then she’d be with her parents in the Great Above. She tore into the delicacies laid out before her. There were sweets and there were creams. She devoured a large portion of white meat she’d never seen before, but it was delicious all the same. After copious amounts of root vegetables and gravy, Wylan finished. She was afraid she might not be able to move after the meal, but the eerie feeling of emptiness that infused the town made her stand.
Rummaging through the kitchen she found several canteens that she filled with water and slung across her chest. Pounds heavier with the burden, she went in search of anything she might be able to use as a weapon. There was nothing within the house.
It took her searching through three more homes—all as cold as the first, though not laid out with food—before she found a short sword. It was certainly not the kind of weapon to go up against a dragon with, but the blade was sharp and she felt infinitely safer with it in her grasp. She paid no mind to the voice in her head that said she knew less about using the weapon than she knew about tracking the blue dragon.
Wylan stopped in the center of town and looked around. The town center was largely composed of a rock garden with various statues of lizards and cacti. Elaborate curved benches dotted the garden, and Wylan chose one seat to ease her stomach and wondered what she was going to do next.
Family dead. Home gone. Visionary rainbow lady nothing more than a fantasy. She was lost with no call to lead her wyvern soul. Despite having the canteens, they didn’t provide an endless supply. It was unlikely she would find more food or water before hunger or thirst killed her.
And out there somewhere, the dragon lurked. How she was going to locate the beast, she hadn’t the faintest idea. With any luck, maybe it would find her.
She refused to cry. She could mourn when that bastard dragon lay dead at her feet.
And how do you expect to do that? She asked herself. It didn’t matter. She would figure it out.
A thunder of wings shook the air and Wylan jumped to her feet. Fear thrummed through her body, she fled to the nearest home. Ducking inside, she tried to silence the voice within her that pointed out she would be a pitiful match for a dragon if she ran from the sound of wings.
But the wings didn’t belong to dragons. The wings belonged to a green and a blue wyvern who landed elegantly near the stone garden. Their figures shivered; their scales seemed to boil and recede until a naked black woman and a naked blond man stood on the hard-packed road.
Wylan blushed and averted her eyes, despite her desire to study the man in more detail. She found her eyes wandering up his sculpted legs, but she averted them again. Her face burned in shame, but he struck a nice figure.
“Since when does a town still stand?” the man wondered.
Wylan glanced up at the question. They were dressing now. The woman tied a sage dress behind her neck and stepped away from the man. She was lovely, her skin like coffee, her eyes clear and dark.
“Do you still feel her?” the woman asked.
The man tied his trousers around his waist and riffled around inside a sack, coming out with a white tunic. His hair was blond and tousled, his nose sharp, his eyes penetrating and blue as a stormy sky. “No.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, belting a sword to her side.
“I don’t know, Millie, do I look like a yellow?”
Millie didn’t answer him. “The town is so…cold.”
“A white dragon you think?”
“I don’t know, Josef, it feels haunted somehow.”
Josef shivered. “I’d rather deal with a white dragon than ghosts.”
“You and me both,” Millie mumbled.
The man tucked their bags under a bench and joined the woman. “We know she’s here.”
The woman nodded, her bushy hair barely moving with the action. “We will have to spread out, look for her.”
“Your plague won’t work on ghosts,” Josef said.
At the mention of ghosts, Wylan glance around her. She stood in a cold hallway that stretched into darkness. She could imagine any kind of specter leaping out of the shadowy depths to drag her to some Dark Below where she’d suffer an eternity. She placed her back against the wall, keeping her eyes on the wyverns as much as she could fight the desire to look behind her and make sure nothing was creeping up on her. If only I could learn to shift like that, she thought, then I could be a match for the blue dragon.
:You’re obviously forgetting its size,: a voice scolded her. She looked around the dark interior, the walls without a trace of sand or grime, as if freshly washed. Where had the voice come from? She didn’t see anyone near her, and she wondered if it might have been one of those ghosts Millie and Josef spoke of.
“Like water is going to touch them?” Millie laughed at Josef, drawing Wylan’s attention back to the street.
“Well, they’re misty-like…”
“Like being the operative word.” Millie turned to Josef and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Josef scoffed.
Millie laughed. To Wylan, it sounded like music.
“Just come on,” Josef said. They walked down the street and vanished from sight.
Wylan stepped out into the street. She followed in their wake, keeping to the shadows as much as she could. With the sun high in the sky she knew it was no use trying to hide.
Poison? Water? She wondered. Did they have powers like she did? That would only make sense, right? But if I breathe fire, does he spit water? It was a comical thought and gave her hope for facing the blue dragon. Unless it spits in my mouth when I breathe. The thought made her gag.
“What was that?” Millie asked, dragging Josef to a stop.
Wylan ducked around a corner as Millie turned. Wylan cocked her head in their direction, waiting to hear footsteps come her way. She was worried she wouldn’t hear them coming over the racing of her heart and her ragged breath. What if they weren’t good? What if they sided with dragons? What if they were hunting the baby for the dragons? They seemed to laugh and joke like friends, but that didn’t mean that they were nice. Even bad guys had to confide in someone, right? Maybe villains even joked when they weren’t hatching evil plans and cackling maniacally.
What if they find me? Wylan wondered. What do they intend to do with the baby? The thought of them finding the baby before she made her blood run cold. Josef said he couldn’t feel her any longer once the entered the town, just like Wylan couldn’t feel the rainbow lady.
And then what are you going to do with her? She wondered. If the baby could control dragons, did that same control extend to wyverns?
“I didn’t hear anything,” Josef said.
Wylan peaked around the corner to see the couple move farther down the road. Just as she stepped into the street to follow them, she heard a baby cry behind her.
“I know I heard something that time,” Millie said.
The voices grew quieter as Wylan crept away from the main street, searching for the baby. Her spirits nearly sang. She hadn’t been stupid; she had felt the call of the rainbow lady. She was here in this ghost town. Never mind how the baby was in this town, she was here, and Wylan was going to find her.
She tried to quell the thought in her mind that told her the baby could be used against the dragons. If the call had been real, then the vision must as well. If the baby could bend dragons to her will, then she could…
:Stop,: that other voice said. Wylan halted her progression down the dusty street and looked around. There was no one there. :You of all people should know what it’s like to be unwanted as a baby.: The words stung, but they were true. Until Kethill and Cuthburt had rescued her from Dulasan hours after dragons had struck, she’d been abandoned. She wasn’t sure if her true mother had been killed in the attack, or if she’d sim
ply left her. Whenever she thought about her old mother or the town she got a sense of being unwanted. Wylan pushed the thoughts away, they couldn’t help her now. She continued walking but she couldn’t stop her thoughts from how the baby could help her. But she was just a baby. She was a baby deserving of love and protection just as she had been. She couldn’t let the child be used…
But how much of that thought was the influence the rainbow lady had over Wylan? She’d commanded Wylan to protect her with her life…what if she could make Wylan do that?
The thought of how the baby could help her stayed with her. This child was different. This child had power over the dragons and that meant power over the blue who had killed her parents.
Only slightly more worrying was the voice that kept coming to her. Was it that wyvern presence that had taken her over? It had a similar feel, a deep resonant voice reminiscent of dragons, but she couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of was the voice was coming from within her, not outside.
An infant cry sounded to her left, and Wylan ducked down an alley sure that’s where the cry came from. The sound of chatter and scuff of footfalls was close behind her. The others were catching up to her.
Her heart hammered, but she wouldn’t hide this time. They wanted the baby, and so did she. Whoever got to her first could claim her, right?
:Not sure that’s how this works.: She pushed the voice aside.
There were two of them and one of her. Not to mention she didn’t have the first idea of how to call her wyvern or how to control the fire she’d belched out.
Wylan ducked into a house and was only mildly surprised that this one wasn’t cold like the others. This house welcomed her in a wash of warmth and acceptance. The inside was lit as though there were no roof at all and the sun shone down on the interior. Wylan could feel music in the air. It wasn’t anything she could hear with her human ears. Instead, it was a sound she could feel with the part of her that was wyvern.
The serpentine power shifted in her lower regions as if the noise were putting it to restful sleep. Wylan felt the ease the beast felt, as if they were as bound as they had been when she wore the wyvern’s scales.
She felt the peace infuse her and turn her mind from thoughts of using the baby to thoughts of keeping her safe. Thoughts of collecting her and taking her to a city. Not just any city, but Darubai itself. The imperial city was where the baby needed to be, in the safety of other humans where she could work the best.
She couldn’t turn away from her quest.
Darubai is safety. The thought intruded on her, and this time she knew it wasn’t her own thought. It’s reasoning spread through her body, and she found herself agreeing. Darubai would offer many safeties that life in the long desert didn’t. Wasn’t that what she’d argued to her father, to get him to agree to a move?
She followed the music deeper into the house, through sprawling rooms and ambling hallways. All the while the light grew brighter. It wasn’t a light that hurt her eyes, it was a soft light, a light that drew her on just as the vision had drawn her to the town.
She was distantly aware that the other wyverns were within the house with her. She didn’t care. All that mattered to Wylan was the music and the call of the vision.
And then she found her.
The baby rested in a downy crib of intricate knot worked wood. Light emanated through the slats and carvings from the baby just as surely as the song came from her. Wylan stopped in the doorway, uncertain that she was actually seeing what she saw. The baby turned her head and gazed at her with silver eyes that held more intelligence than a baby’s eyes should ever hold.
Wylan slumped against the doorway, all motives of using the baby as a weapon seeping from her. The baby smiled at her. She was soft, as if Wylan were seeing the baby through a haze or a dream. Her hair was pale, though it held a hint of the coloring she’d bore in the vision. In time, Wylan knew the baby’s hair would be as vibrant as any rainbow she’d ever seen.
The baby reached toward Wylan and cooed. A smile spread over her impish face and the music shifted within the house from one of calling to one of rejoice. As the power infused her and pulled her thoughts from those of loss and to those of joy, Wylan laughed, her hands going to her mouth.
She stepped into the room, neared the crib, and reached for the baby.
“Stop!” a voice commanded.
Wylan spun to the door, a gasp frozen on her lips. In the humbling power of the baby, she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone in the house.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“Millie,” Josef said, easing past her. Millie pushed him back.
“I said who in the long desert are you, and what are you doing with that baby?”
“I—I’m Wylan Atwater and she called to me.”
Millie stepped further into the room. “Tellik shit, what happened to this town? Who sent you? Was it a dragon?”
“She may be one of us,” Josef reasoned.
“I am one of you. I’m a wyvern!”
“Prove it!” Millie said.
Wylan looked to her feet. “I can’t.”
“And why’s that?” Millie wondered.
“I can’t control the beast,” Wylan said.
“I’m going to give you another chance to come clean. What are you doing here?”
“The wyvern soul might be new to her,” Josef said.
What was she doing here? What brought her here? What happened to the town?
It was more than Wylan could handle. Tears spilled hot down her face and a sob broke from her lips. Her parents dead. Her home ruined.
“Dragons brought me here!” Wylan growled. “That damned beast tore my house apart. My mother burned before my very eyes!” She was yelling at Millie, taking threatening steps toward her. She could feel the wyvern soul within her, bubbling to the surface, threatening to spill over. It must have shown in her eyes because Millie took a step back. “It killed my father! And you have the nerve to ask me what I’m doing here? What in the long desert are you doing here?”
The ground beneath her smoldered with each step she took. Millie’s eyes were wild with fear, no longer looking at Wylan, but instead the ground beneath her.
The baby began to cry.
“This plague brought me here!” Fire kindled along the walls, fueled by her rage and smoke billowed to the ceiling. “It changed me. It killed everything I’ve ever loved. So do it. If you’re going to kill me for answering her call, do it!”
The wall to her left exploded outward in a fury of fire and she couldn’t hold the beast in check any longer. The wyvern soul consumed her. The shift happened faster than she thought possible.
Millie couldn’t believe her eyes. Rather, she couldn’t believe Wylan’s eyes.
Dragon eyes, she thought. She’d only ever seen them once. The baby from Dulasan. Can it be? It was like she was there again. She could hear the mother yelling that the baby was a monster and to get rid of it. She could hear her assistant, Sasha, telling her that the baby was the reason for the dragons coming back and she hoped they killed her. She could feel the heat of the burning town searing into her skin and she could hear the screams.
It's her! Millie thought. All these long years, someone had survived. She had a unique chance she never thought she’d get—to salvage something from that night. Maybe it would even let her mind rest easy, knowing that she could care for someone she’d left behind to die in dragon fire.
“Millie, get back!” Josef commanded. He pushed the startled healer behind him as Wylan roared a gout of fire straight for them. The wyvern soul gleamed around Josef like a blue aura of scale armor. When the fire struck his water shield, it hissed and steamed. Fire rebounded from the shield and lit the ceiling aflame.
Millie was helpless in this fight. There was no way she could protect against the fire, and there was nothing she could do save poisoning Wylan, and she refused to do that. It had been eighteen years since she’d left Dulasan. Eighteen was old for
someone new to the wyvern soul. They typically shifted at a young age, and could then be trained. She’s new, she’s untrained, was all she could think despite the flare of anger that shook her slight figure.
:Well, you asked for proof.: Josephine, her wyvern soul, chimed in. She pushed the anger aside. Millie recognized it as belonging to Josephine. She had to be clearheaded. She had to figure out how to get the baby out of danger without giving into her wyvern’s anger. Then she could worry about Wylan.
At the end of the hall to her right there was a slight opening. Wylan had blasted the wall out of the room, and where the room joined with the hall, there was a hole that might be big enough for Millie to climb through. She glanced at Josef. The soldier showed no signs of weakening, but Wylan did.
At the time, the red wyvern was intent on battering through Josef’s water shield and had little mind for Millie. She slipped down the hall, her hand running over the hole. It wasn’t nearly as big as she’d hoped, but she would have to make it work. She slipped a leg through the hole and bent low. Reeds from the wall’s interior scraped against her dark skin, drawing blood. She winced, but pushed further. A reed stabbed her leg and the wyvern soul shifted within her like a snake uncoiling and ready to strike.
She pushed it aside and tried to ignore the pain. She’d have to work fast, already she could feel the healing energy Josephine was directing at the wound. It wouldn’t be good to have the wound heal around the reed jabbed into her leg. She winced and pushed further through the hole and emerged into the sunlit streets of the mysterious town. She took a deep breath and stretched her cramping muscles. The town was just as silent as before, even the sounds of fire and the roar of Wylan within the baby’s chamber was somehow muted in the street, as if it happened a mile away, rather than just a few feet. Nothing seemed to stir, yet at the same time she felt a definite stirring in the energy of the town.
Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2) Page 2
