Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2)

by Travis Simmons

  Now her arm, she thought. Her severed arm lay on the bed near the socket it had been torn from. Blood stained the sheets around Wylan; had soaked into the mattress.

  Millie breathed out through her mouth in a rush and felt the healing energies come to her.

  “Josef,” she said.

  Josef jumped and came to her side.

  “Take the arm in one hand, the shoulder in the other. I want you to control the flow of blood. Instead of allowing it to soak into the mattress, I want you to direct it to the arm.”

  Josef paled, but nodded. He knelt beside Wylan, fixing her severed arm in a firm grip, and pushing it up toward the empty socket. He glanced at Millie to see if that was right. The healer stepped around behind him, shifting the arm slightly to align it properly. There were so many tendons and frayed muscles that had torn loose and were laying on the bed, but if she was right, they would soon bind together.

  Once the arm was fixed properly, Josef closed his eyes, and Millie felt the draw of magic.

  Millie waited until she saw the blood flow from Wylan’s arm, through the air, and to the arm. “Good, now hold them tight. I’m going to try something.”

  Millie laid her hands over the wound. Green energy wreathed her black hands. She closed her eyes and pushed the energy into the wound. Her mind sunk into the tear, she felt the muscles slack and dying, the blood flowing hard and true, the bone splintered and not pairing right, as if some splinters had gone completely from the bone.

  Her eyebrows creased, and she willed the bones together. She felt the bones yearn toward one another, but they wouldn’t connect, they wouldn’t rejoin with one another. Millie frowned and focused on the skin instead. She could mend damaged skin, but she’d never tried to mold skin together once it had been completely torn from the body.

  She imagined the skin mending together, the frays of skin weaving together like a tapestry of one healthy arm, but the skin and muscles were dying, and they wouldn’t mend. Millie pushed more power into the wound, but she knew it was pointless, if the skin and muscle had already begun to die, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  A sharp pain lanced through her head, and Millie sagged back on her feet, a sigh bursting from her lips.

  “What?” Josef asked. The blood was gone from the sheets, slipping up Wylan’s skin and to the wound.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Millie said.

  “You have to try harder,” Josef said. “Without her arm, she won’t be able to fly.”

  “I know th—” her eyes landed on Wylan’s weapon belt and she stopped talking.

  A length of bone stuck through the belt.

  “Baba Yaga,” Millie said.

  “What?” Josef asked, confused.

  “The wand. It’s from a black dragon,” Millie said.

  “And you think that can help?”

  “Death and creation,” she said. “The skin around her wound is dying.”

  Millie shook her head, a smile playing over her face. She clasped the wand in hand and slipped it from the belt. It was cold, and the power that slipped from it whispered of death and things beyond the grave. She ignored the chill that slipped up her spine and pointed the wand at Wylan’s shoulder.

  Healing energy was yanked out of Millie and through the wand. In a flash, the wand launched a beam of pure white light at the arm. The light grew brighter, hotter, blinding.

  When it faded, the arm was whole once more…except it wasn’t Wylan’s arm. It was covered in small red scales, and the fingers were tipped with long, black nails.

  For weeks Wylan was kept unconscious through Millie’s healing magic. In those three weeks, she was fed broth and her body mended, the healing of bone and flesh sped along by the rotation of healers that kept a constant vigil at her side.

  She missed much, but Josef figured she wouldn’t have liked most of what she missed. Millie told him not everyone was as lazy as he was when it came to cleanup, but he insisted that Wylan wouldn’t have liked cleaning up the bodies of dragons, the debris of shattered buildings, and burning their dead.

  Still there were other things that happened Wylan would certainly loved to have been part of, like the rehoming of the elves and the dwarves of High Haven. There had been no more room among the other clans for the refugees of the dragon attack on High Haven. Without home, the elves and dwarves had decided to hunt down the dragons. Other elves and other dwarves from different tribes had joined in the struggle, forsaking home and hearth to do battle with the pestilent dragons. They took to mount, and stormed Darubai…but now they needed a home.

  It was still in negotiations, but there were several districts in Darubai that hadn’t been used since the outbreak of the plague. Josef was certain the dwarves and elves would be moving into their own districts soon, cleaning and rebuilding as they went.

  The dragons had also stayed, and while they didn’t live directly in the city with the humans, they lived higher up in the mountains at the tallest peak that overlooked the city. It was now called Dragon Aerie and few wished to venture there to visit the dragons because of the fear that had been instilled in humans for ages unknown.

  The thing Josef was certain she would have missed, and Millie was sad that Wylan hadn’t been part of, was the planting of the fire fruit trees on the mountain passes above. She had convinced the clutch commander to let her plant one of the many seeds in a pot to place beside Wylan as she healed. He hadn’t let the seed go easily, but figuring how much of a role she’d played in the rescue of Kira—who had almost singlehandedly saved Darubai—he let the seed go.

  The other thing Josef was sure Wylan would have missed was when Marcella had reached back in time, through the realms of the dead, to call forth a powerful wizard to help her determine what spell had been used on the blade that helped kill dragons so easily. The ore was known as mithril, and according to the dwarves, it was easy for them to find. It had taken several days for the dwarves to mine enough of the ore to make several swords. Marcella had channeled the wizard on numerous occasions until there were nearly enough swords forged to outfit the entire dragon guard. Still production of dragon sabers continued.

  The dragons that took their roost in Dragon Aerie didn’t like the forging of the swords, even if they knew they were only to be used against the draconian army. Josef had convinced Marcella to give him one sword for Wylan, which he would teach her to use as soon as Millie allowed.

  Leaghan would train with Marcella who had agreed to channel souls of wizards to help teach the elf. They were now the only two living in the wizard keep at the base of the imperial palace, but Josef wondered if that would change in the coming years.

  And then, one day, Wylan’s eyes fluttered open.

  The first sight she saw was Josef sitting on the edge of her bed, cradling a small pot in his hands. The plant that grew there was one of the most beautiful things Wylan had ever seen. While it looked just like a tree she’d seen with Lissandra, there were stark difference as well. Its bark was white as snow, and its leaves as orange as a raging fire.

  “What’s that?” Wylan yawned making Josef yelp.

  “You’re awake,” he said. The smile that spread across his face was infectious. Wylan smiled back.

  “I feel like a dragon landed on me,” she complained.

  “Well, nearly,” he said.

  “How long have I been out?” Wylan asked, trying to sit up, but Josef pushed her back down when she winced in pain, her leg flaring.

  “A few weeks,” Josef said.

  “What did I miss?” Wylan asked. She looked to her arm, covered in red scales. “Oh.”

  “No, don’t be upset!” Josef said. “Look!” He drew a sword from his belt and brought it down with all his might on the arm.

  Wylan screamed out in shock, but the sword bounced off the scales.

  “See, now you have a shield permanently connected to your body.”

  “How did you know that wasn’t going to sever my arm?!” Wylan pulled the arm
to her chest as if it had been hurt, even though it hadn’t. To be honest, she hadn’t even felt the edge of the blade. She’d felt the connection, but it was little more than a sharp slap.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve tried it a few times before you woke up.” He smiled encouragingly at her, but Wylan frowned back imagining Josef hacking away at her arm while she was comatose. She was sure Millie would have scoffed at him and tried to chase him away.

  “Anyway, you missed loads!” And Josef began to recount how busy the city had been while she slept. As he told her the story, Wylan turned her head to gaze at the fire fruit tree on her stand. The tree filled her with joy because she knew it held something for the future.

  It held hope.

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