“We were just leaving,” Millie said. “We didn’t know this place was occupied.”
“But you took something that belongs to me,” Baba Yaga wheezed.
“The canteens?” Wylan hedged. “I’m sorry I ate the food, I was—”
With her free hand, Baba Yaga let loose a blast of blackened magic that tumbled Wylan to the side, near the spectral feet of the ghosts surrounding them. The ghosts began to churn anxiously, and Wylan had the feeling that if Baba Yaga wasn’t holding them back, the ghosts would have torn into her.
“The Baby,” Millie said. She took Kira from Josef, and held her protectively to her chest. Her other hand reached for her sword, but didn’t draw it.
“Ah, now you’re catching on!” Baba Yaga cackled.
“But she’s living,” Millie said. “You hold no power over the living.”
“Nonsense,” Baba Yaga said. “I hold sway over all the living, in the end. Some people’s ends just come sooner than they should…”
“And she’s to die?” Millie looked down at the baby in her arms. “I won’t let her.”
“She’s not to die, but she’s certainly of value to me.”
“Why?” Millie asked.
Baba Yaga only chuckled, a phlegmy wheeze of a laugh.
Wylan didn’t rise from the ground. She didn’t want Baba Yaga’s attention turned to her. Instead, she surveyed the area, thinking of anything she might be able to use to fight back the ghosts. What use was there? They weren’t physical. She couldn’t actually harm them. Or could she?
Her eyes were drawn back to the knobby, bone wand that hung from Baba Yaga’s waist. If this hag was controlling the ghosts, there had to be a way she was doing it, right? Wylan didn’t think her power over the dead would extend past the Dark Below. Maybe she was using magic? That made the most sense.
Baba Yaga finally spoke. “She was born of the ether. She was born from the discontent in the land. She’s mine!”
“Discontent?”
“Give her to me, or you will all die,” Baba Yaga said.
The ghosts shuffled forward, and that’s when Wylan acted. She launched herself at Baba Yaga, knowing she would likely pass through the specter, but she wasn’t aiming for a collision with the ghost, she was aiming for the wand that looked all too physical against the translucent hag.
Her hand gripped the bone wand, and it tore free from the ghostly energy of Baba Yaga. The hag laughed as Wylan tumbled through her and then rolled to her feet. “I’m not physical, you cow.”
“But this is,” Wylan said, holding up the bone wand. It was like ice in her hand and her wrist throbbed as if she’d dunked her arm in ice water. She tried not to show her discomfort, refused to show weakness before the hag. Webs of frost bit at her flesh. Where her blood flowed through, her hand felt as though it was being chilled to ice.
Baba Yaga’s eyes narrowed, and she immediately released her grip on Josef, who slumped to the ground, coughing and gasping for air. “You will give that back to me,” Baba Yaga commanded, holding her hand out expectantly.
All of the ghosts turned toward Wylan, wonder and awe showing in their dead, frosty faces.
“Now!” Baba Yaga said with more urgency, eyeing the ghosts.
“I don’t think I will,” Wylan said, circling around Baba Yaga so her back faced the closest way out of town. “I think this is your source of power, and when I give it back, you will likely kill us.”
Wylan could feel a glimmer of power within the wand. She could feel the tenuous thoughts of the ghosts that circled them, thrumming through the wand and down her arm with the cold of her bones. She could feel their dread at the sense of dragon power that surrounded the living people. Wylan could feel the brush of fear associated with white dragons, and she knew how these people had died—in a frozen storm of dragon ice. She could sense the desire for freedom, but the eagerness to please the one with the wand. But she didn’t have control of them yet, and how she would ever take control of them, she didn’t know.
“I will kill you regardless!” Baba Yaga held up her hand, and in the palm gathered a glowing, black nimbus of light. There wasn’t any time to waste. Wylan pointed the wand at Baba Yaga, and somehow it sensed her need, her desire to escape the town.
Along with the cold energy from the wand, another power slithered down her arm, like worms, or snakes slipping across her flesh; cold bodies leaving trails of slime in their wake. Wylan shivered with the power, and deep in the recesses of her mind she could hear words—foreign words to her, but words that could only be the language of the Dark Below. Words that would forever haunt her dreams with specters and apparitions too ghastly to mention. She saw a great skull loom up before her mind’s eye, crusted with dirt and blood. Deep within, bugs skittered and slithered.
Wylan screamed out with the horror of the wand, and it detonated. Lightning, blacker than anything Wylan had ever known lanced from the wand and collided with the nimbus of power Baba Yaga summoned. The nimbus exploded into a vortex of black and ghastly purple power.
Around them houses moaned with the release of energy. Sand and splinters tore through the air, swirling debris through the street, blasting back everything that wasn’t tethered down. In the distance, a house groaned and collapsed, adding its own rubble to the swirling power of the vortex.
Baba Yaga screamed, and her shriek was echoed in the mouths of the ghosts that filled the street. Their bodies stretched, lengthened, and streamed upward, pulled toward the vortex. An inhumane laughter issued from the swirling energy as Baba Yaga was engulfed in its power.
There was a concussion along the lightning into the wand. The power was so strong, so forceful that Wylan was blasted backwards. She hit the sand hard and slid for several yards. Her head spun, her limbs shook. The power of the wand whispered to her, and though she didn’t know the language, she knew what the wand was saying.
Come to me.
She dropped the wand in the sand. Moments before she blacked out she heard the thundering beat of dragon wings, and the shrieking bellow that reminded her of dragons and the destruction of home.
Wylan awoke suddenly when cold water splashed her in the face.
She sat up, coming face to face with a grinning Josef.
“Rise and shine,” he said. “We have to get out of here, and fast!”
Her arm throbbed as if she’d just pulled it from a block of ice. She had a hard time feeling her legs—they tingled and sharp needle stabs made her wince every time she moved. Her head felt as though it were filled with fog that every sound echoed through.
She shook her head, and the sandy dunes spun before her. She tried to lay down, but Josef gripped her arm, pulling her to her feet. Her legs sang with tingling jabs, and she gasped, falling against him, unable to feel her feet in the sand.
That’s when she got a good look around her. The long desert was full of roaming people, translucent like the ghosts had been. Unlike the ghosts Baba Yaga controlled, these ones were seemingly unaware of her. They milled about in various states of decay. The ones who still had eyes were vacant of any sight. The ghosts milled around without purpose, lost to torment.
She cried out and stumbled back away from the ghosts. Her legs burned with prickling sleep, and Josef caught her. The closest ghost glanced her way, its eyes glossed with cataracts, but seemed uninterested, and went back to its pointless wandering.
“Do you see them?” she wondered.
“Yea, a large clutch of dragons not more than a mile away,” Josef said.
“It isn’t safe here, come on,” Millie said. One hand tugged at Wylan, the other arm held the baby close to her chest. Her eyes weren’t looking at Wylan, or the ghosts gathered around them. Instead, her eyes were frozen with fear on something overhead, something large enough to cast a shadow over the ghost strewn desert.
“No…all the ghosts. You don’t see them?”
Millie glanced around, and then frowned at Wylan. “What’s wrong with you?” Millie tugged her a
rm again. “The longer we stay here, the more likely we will end up as food.”
Wylan shook her head again, but it made the ground around her spin, and she leaned heavier on Josef. He slipped the bone wand into her pocket and nodded at Millie.
They set out away from the ghost town, but not before Wylan saw the dragons.
It was an army of dragons—a storm of dragons larger than any clutch she’d ever read about. They streamed to the ghost town from all directions, converging on the settlement. Their wings blocked out the sun, like clouds covering the heavens casting shade on the roofs and the streets. Fire bloomed from the mass of dragons, and the town burned. Black smoke cascaded to the sky, bricks popped in the heat, and houses snapped. The sound of brick raining to the hard streets came to them like a pounding rain. Dust rose high in the breeze, streaming trails of gloom into the long desert.
Wylan stopped in her tracks, pulling Josef to a stop with her. She stared at the dragons, fury filling every fiber of her being. Her hands shook with anger as she remembered her home, blossoming in a similar fire, her father, half-eaten.
She reached for the pocket where Josef had slipped the wand. It had worked before on Baba Yaga, maybe it would work just as well on the dragons. She wondered if the blue dragon was among them, but did it matter? The dragons were there, and they were a pestilence that needed to be extinguished.
Wylan gripped the wand in her hand, and when she did, the ghosts around her suddenly noticed she was there. They turned her way, streaming over the dunes, their mouths opened in silent cries for release from their wretched existence. Rotting hands reached for her as if they might cleave the wand from her grasp and use it to open a portal to whatever afterlife waited for them.
Deep in the spirit realm, something else took notice of her, and she heard Baba Yaga’s cackle from far off.
Josef yanked her hand free from her pocket, and the wand came loose from her fingers, sinking back into her trousers. The moment her fingers left the wand, the ghosts went back to ignoring her, but she could still feel Baba Yaga’s eyes on her. She could still hear her distant cackle, and she knew before long, the hag would be on her no matter how far she ran.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to kill those dragons,” Wylan said, trying to yank away from him. She still couldn’t feel her feet, and the moment she was out of his grip, she stumbled.
“Do you hear this, Millie?” Josef laughed. “This girl thinks she’s going to take on an entire clutch of dragons all on her lonesome. Wylan, it takes at least two wyverns to take down one dragon. Even with that wand, you’d likely be dust before you got a chance to lift it.”
Millie shook her head. “You got that wand from a powerful spirit from the Dark Below…it can’t be good for you. And Josef’s right, there’s no way you can take them on and survive.”
“You were there, right?” Wylan asked. Their voices still echoed through her head. Just the conversation was enough to make her head spin. “You saw what the wand did. Do you think the dragons could live through that destruction?”
Millie shook her head losing patience. “No, I don’t think they could. However, I also know you wouldn’t make it through wielding that wand one more time even if they didn’t destroy you on sight.”
“What do you mean?” Wylan asked, her gaze finally breaking from the dragons and settling on Millie’s face.
Millie nodded to Josef, who drew his sword with one hand and held it up before Wylan so she could see her reflection in the tempered steel.
She didn’t look anything like herself…she looked like a shadow, or a dream, of what she had been. Her hair had faded to gray, her eyes were no longer golden, but shadowed yellow pools. Her skin was washed out and pallid; her lips cracked and gray. She raised her hands before her face and stared, stunned. It wasn’t her own skin—she was covered in red scales. She flexed her hands remembering when she’d transformed. She didn’t feel the scales at all, but there they were, like ruby gloves covering every inch of exposed flesh. But why didn’t her face show the transformation?
:It’s me,: the voice from before spoke into her mind. :The wyvern…your wyvern. I’m Lissandra.:
What? Wylan thought, shaking her head. The wyvern didn’t answer.
She ignored the voice and glanced back into the sword, but all she could see was her pale features. When she looked down again, her arms and hands were covered in blood-red scales, her fingers tipped with black talons.
“I’m changing,” she said.
“What?” Josef asked, sheathing his sword.
“My face looked normal in the sword, but I’m covered with scales wherever I look!” Wylan brushed at her arms, but she didn’t feel a difference there.
“That must your wyvern soul,” Millie told her. “But to us, you look like a ghost.”
“What’s happening to me?” She asked. “I’m seeing ghosts you can’t see; I hear Baba Yaga coming for me, and now this?”
“Baba Yaga?” Millie said. “I thought she was dead.”
“She’s always been dead, Millie,” Josef scoffed. “I doubt a little blast from a wand is going to end her existence.” He shuddered.
“We don’t have time for this, talk while we walk,” Millie commanded.
They started walking, slowly at first because Wylan couldn’t get the hang of walking without being able to feel her feet. In time, it became easier for her, though she still hesitated, worried that she would fall flat on her face and Baba Yaga would catch up to her.
“What is Baba Yaga?” Wylan asked. “I’ve read so many different things.”
“She’s a hag,” Josef said. “She’s a more powerful being of the Dark Below. She’s able to control spirits, and she has a lot of influence over humans while she’s in the human realm. There are supposedly three of them, all sisters with the same name.”
“You sound like a text book,” Millie muttered.
“Did you just call me smart?” Josef asked. “Thanks!” The grin he shot at Millie nearly consumed his face, and his blue eyes danced with mirth.
“I don’t know if I could ever be accused of calling you smart.”
“Do you think she did this to me?” Wylan asked.
“I don’t know,” Millie said. “It’s like you’re here, yet at the same time not. Like a ghost.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Wylan asked. Her hands shook and she felt a strange uneasiness in her stomach. What if she was trapped like this forever? Somewhere between living and inside some dimension of the Dark Below where Baba Yaga could hunt her forever?
“Oh yea, this happens all the time,” Josef gestured grandiosely. “I bet even now there’s at least twenty people in Darubai all possessed by Baba Yaga. You could probably start a club or something when we get there. ‘Baba Yaga’s Monkeys’ sounds like a good name.”
“No,” Millie said.
“Well, I thought it was a good name, but you all can decide on one for yourselves.”
“No this isn’t common. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with something like this,” Millie said.
“I’m sure it has something to do with that wand,” Josef said. “It’s like it linked you in some way to the spirit realm.”
“Likely that conflict with Baba Yaga,” Millie said.
Josef nodded. “And if you were partially in the spirit realm, that would explain why you can see scales. When you look down you’re seeing your wyvern soul. When you look in the sword—something that’s physical and tied to the physical realm—you would see your human body.”
“And that leads me to the question of what kind of wand that is,” Millie said. “That’s very powerful for a wand.”
“And what’s it made of?” Josef wondered. “Most wands can’t release that kind of power, and if they’re forced to, they will be completely destroyed in the process. Your wand is still whole.”
There were more questions than answers, and Wylan barely had a mind for just walking. Her head spun wi
th all the questions. She glanced behind her, wondering where Baba Yaga might be, but all she could see were the hundreds of spirits that slunk around the Dar Desert, lost in their own torment.
The dragons still converged on the ghost town, and now it was little more than a burning heap of rubble. It was the first time she’d gotten to see how some of the towns she’d foraged through with Cuthburt had come to be destroyed. She’d known dragons had done it, but knowing something and seeing it firsthand were completely different.
She wasn’t afraid of going after the dragons. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to take them out. She knew an attack like this was precisely what happened to her home in Dulasan before her parents found her. She’d seen one dragon make this kind of destruction at her home as well. Her hand itched to take hold of the wand and end that storm of dragons now. But what the others said was true. If she did that, there was no telling the consequences it would have. She was partially in the spirit realm now, that she believed. If she let out another blast from the wand, would she then be fully in the realm of the dead? Would it kill her, or would she walk the realm as some kind of creature that she didn’t have a name for? Would she be like the undead in the long desert?
For a moment, Wylan didn’t care. If it meant putting an end to the blue dragon who’d killed her family, then she would do it. But the words of the rainbow lady came back to her. Kira was going to help her, that had been the promise she’d made for Wylan coming to save her from the ghost town. She’d seen what Kira could do in her dreams; she’d felt some of that very power within her when the baby had soothed her wyvern soul and eased her from her shift.
Still, the power of the wand called to her like a lump of frozen stone in her pocket. The frosty power hummed against her leg, whispering commands for her to take up arms and drive those dragons into the Dark Below where they belonged. When her hand twitched toward the wand, she pulled it away, remembering how Baba Yaga had felt her more strongly when she’d gripped the wand.
What she was afraid of was Baba Yaga, and whatever was happening to herself at that precise moment. If she drew the wand again, she knew Baba Yaga would have a more concrete fix on her. She also knew touching the wand would draw the attention of the numerous ghosts that filled the spirit realm that overlay the long desert.
Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2) Page 4
