Dragon's Awakening (Heir of Dragons: Book 1)

by Sean Fletcher

  “Vas a yurad di campi!”

  There wasn’t a moment of hesitation, not a single missed syllable. Edwin chanted with such command that Kaylee couldn’t help feeling a small swell of pride that she’d driven him to do better with his magic than he ever had before.

  Unfortunately, it also looked like he was going to kill her.

  As Edwin thrust his hand out and shot the tornado of crystals towards her, Kaylee called upon her elemental magic. The volatile kind.

  The kind she hoped she could control.

  The temperature in the room plummeted. Ice crystals clouded the windows and spider-webbed up the panes. The room’s gloomy light grew dimmer. Somewhere outside thunder rumbled.

  The crystals soaring towards her were intercepted mid-air as sparks of lightning shot out of the tips of her outstretched fingers and snapped at each one, reducing them to nothing but melted puddles on the carpet. Kaylee waved her hand again and the window burst open, letting in a torrent of air in that tossed the contents of the room everywhere. The cold wind hit Edwin and he blinked, as though coming out of a trance. He looked at the destruction around him, horror etched on his face.

  “Holy crap! Kaylee I’m sorry—I don’t know—I didn’t mean to—”

  But Kaylee wasn’t listening. The howling outside the house was matched only by the howling in her mind. She tried to quell the energy growing in her chest but that only seemed to make it fight harder against her.

  “Stop!” She yelled. She tucked her arms in, as if she might physically wrestle the wind into its place. “I command you to stop!”

  The curtains tore off their rods. The doors slammed. The wind was like a howling pack of wolves, tearing through the house. Kaylee fell to her knees, drawing on all her reserves of strength to put a lid on the power pouring out of her. This wasn’t what she had wanted. It had broken free from her control and it didn’t want to go back.

  “Edwin!” Kaylee yelled. “How do I stop it?!”

  He was suddenly in front of her. His cheeks were flecked with small bloody cuts from the swirling remnants of crystals still in the air. His hands shook, but he reached towards her arms, still covered in dragon scales.

  “No!” Kaylee yanked them back and thunder rumbled as she did. “You can’t touch me! Not like this!”

  Edwin merely stared at her. This close his eyes were like the center of a mighty hurricane. A calming pool she wanted to sink into and let envelope her and not worry about anything ever again. His eyes said he didn’t worry about the surrounding storm or the growing sparks of lightning shooting from her fingertips. He wasn’t bothered by the destruction or the scales that had helped cause it. It was as if there was nothing else in the world but her, him, in this space together.

  He reached forward again and grasped both her hands in his. He began chanting, his words barely rising above the wind.

  At once the magic inside her began to quiet. Kaylee felt the power receding to the place it had been. The wind inside the house lessened, then died. The remaining crystal shards in the air thumped dully as they hit the carpet.

  But still the thunder outside rumbled. Kaylee closed her eyes and pushed her concentration towards it, focusing on dissipating it. She began to shake with the effort. There was so much power! What could she possibly do against it? It was a force of nature contained inside her and no matter how hard she tried she wasn’t sure she could ever manage to control it.

  Then Edwin clasped her hands tighter and pulled her into his chest. She could hear his chanting more clearly now that the wind inside was gone. She couldn’t understand the words but his soft voice, steady and sure, was calming all the same. The constant up and down of his body as he breathed steadied her trembling.

  He finished the spell. Silence reigned.

  Kaylee looked up. Her hands had shifted back to normal. Outside, sunlight once again streamed through the backyard.

  Baba’s room was another story.

  The place was a wreck Kaylee wasn’t sure it’d be able to recover from, as if a herd of kindergartners had been unleashed to wreak havoc on it.

  “I’m sorry,” Edwin mumbled into her shoulder, still holding her tightly. “I’m so sorry. I was mad and took it out on you even though it wasn’t your fault…I never thought it’d get that out of hand.”

  “You did amazing,” Kaylee said.

  Edwin pulled back and stared at her. “I nearly killed you!”

  “Please, you’ll have to do a lot better than that to hurt me. Besides,” she winked, “notice how good you suddenly got at magic. I didn’t hear you stutter a single time.”

  Edwin’s mouth hung open. “You…did that on purpose?”

  “Kind of? But I’ll pretend like I did. It worked, didn’t it?”

  Edwin scoffed. Kaylee grinned, meeting his eyes again. Sudden color rushed into his cheeks. “Y-yeah, I guess it w-worked.”

  He realized he was still holding her hands and let go. Kaylee wiped them on her jeans. She let Edwin help her up. Together they surveyed the room.

  “Baba’s going to kill us,” Edwin said.

  Kaylee bit her lip, remembering how helpless she’d felt when her magic had taken control. The power had grown so strong, so fast, and no matter what she’d done it hadn’t obeyed her.

  “Kaylee?” Edwin was looking at her with concern. He reached out a hand towards hers again, then paused and dropped it. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “I lost control—”

  “Plenty of dragon-kin more experienced than you have done the same. And your magic is far stronger than most.” He seemed to remember something. “Do you still have that charm I gave you a little while ago? The one that’s supposed to help you focus?”

  Kaylee nodded and pulled it from beneath her shirt. “I know you said it wears off after a day or so, but I…kept wearing it anyway.”

  There Edwin went again, his face growing beet red. He cleared his throat, then reached his arms around her neck and undid the tie at the back. “I-I’ll recharge it for you. Maybe that’ll help you feel better.”

  “What the heck?” Jade stood at the doorway, Maddox peeking over her head.

  Jade’s jaw dropped the longer she looked around. “We saw the storm and—this place is a disaster zone!”

  “Nice!” Maddox said, flashing them a thumbs up. Jade whacked him.

  “Not nice! Baba’s going to—eep!”

  Baba had suddenly appeared beside them. There were dark circles under her eyes and her bathrobe was more askew than usual. Jade took two big steps away from her. Despite being twice her size, Maddox stood ramrod straight, as if expecting punishment at any moment.

  Baba took stock of the room, her head swiveling from the shredded wreck of what had once been a bookcase, to the melted puddles of crystal on the floor, over to the splintered window.

  “Huh,” she said. She groaned and stretched. “Ruined a perfectly good nap but I’m glad you two got your lover’s tiff out of the way. You’ve had it coming for weeks.”

  Kaylee could have cooked steaks on how hot her face grew. Edwin’s wasn’t much better. Baba waved a dismissive hand. “Hurry and clean this up, then scram. I’m beat today and don’t feel like dealing with overly-emotional teenagers wielding magic powers.”

  Then she walked back upstairs, grumbling the entire way.

  The four of them were silent for a full five seconds.

  “Dude, Edwin,” Maddox said, kicking at a glob of crystal. “You did all this?”

  “Half of it,” he said.

  “I’m impressed. That’s more magic than I think I’ve ever seen you do.”

  “Once a random thunderstorm popped up I knew something was going down,” Jade said, rubbing Kaylee’s back soothingly. “Glad to see it was just you two trying to kill each other.”

  She glared at Maddox. “We would have gotten here sooner but someone wouldn’t stop trying to convince me the storm was natural.”

  “Weather is weird here!” Maddox said defensively.


  “Weather is weird when you’re training near a freaking storm dragon-kin, you idiot.”

  Maddox grunted and bent to scoop up some of the mess. Edwin went over to his overturned book of spells, which had miraculously survived the whole ordeal, and began to flip through it. His finger settled on a page and he began to chant, softer this time, so softly Kaylee couldn’t hear the words. The cracks in the window stitched themselves together. The tears in the curtains reformed and draped themselves back over the rod. All around them the signs of destruction began to heal.

  Out of the corner of her eye Kaylee saw Maddox wink at her. “I said you were good for him.”

  And for just a moment, Kaylee had to agree.

  Even with Edwin’s magic helping, the cleaning still took the better part of an hour. After ten minutes the drain of Edwin’s ‘very complicated cleaning spell’ (which he had clearly never used on his room) he had put the book down, exhausted, and proceeded to help them pick the rest up by hand. Sifting through the wreckage was not pretty, and Kaylee had trouble even recalling the larger parts of their battle, as if it had all happened in a haze. She saw Maddox wince as he extracted a particularly large shard of still-solid ice from the wall just above where Kaylee was sure Edwin’s head had been.

  And Edwin…the entire time he cleaned he appeared deep in thought, his gaze distant like he was looking at something much farther away than Kaylee would ever know, leaving all of them behind.

  “There!” Jade said, placing the final book on top of what remained of the shelf. She peered around the room proudly. “Good as new!”

  “Kind of…” Kaylee said, kicking the scorch marks on the floor. At least those were still there. Other parts had been so bad Maddox had been forced to cut away sections of the carpet.

  “Meh, it’s good enough,” Maddox said. “Well, you guys have the rest of your training day off, I’m thinking—Edwin?”

  They all looked over at Edwin, who was pulling some books back off the shelf and flipping through them.

  “Yo, Edwin?” Maddox said.

  “What?” Edwin snapped the book shut. Maddox sighed.

  “What’d you find this time, man?”

  “Nothing.”

  Maddox cocked an eyebrow at Kaylee. “Do you think it’s nothing?”

  “I definitely think it’s something. Especially since he zones out on me at least five times a lesson.”

  “I do not!”

  “Talk, Edwin,” Jade said.

  Reluctantly, Edwin brought the book over to them and laid it flat on the center table. Kaylee, grimacing, brushed away a few remains of sea turtle pottery they had missed. Maybe that was why Baba had so many: collateral damage.

  The page of the book showed a miniature version of the magic chart Edwin had hanging in his room. Only where that one was relatively straightforward, this one looked about then thousand times more advanced.

  “I was just thinking about what those Slayers said that night when I…when they attacked. Do you guys remember?”

  “I was a little more worried about the sharp things in their hands instead of their witty barbs, Edwin,” Jade said.

  “Right, well, Brendan said they wanted Kaylee for something. They couldn’t hurt her because of that.”

  Kaylee’s blood ran cold. “They did say that, didn’t they?”

  “I started thinking what they could possibly want Kaylee for,” Edwin said. “If we’re honest, if she’s such a threat, killing her would have solved their problems much faster than capturing her.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Kaylee said.

  “Ditto,” Jade said.

  “Then it hit me when Kaylee and I were, er…arguing,” Edwin said. He turned the book around. Kaylee tried to make sense of all the numbers and strange symbols and charts, but it was about as futile as doing her algebra homework. “To understand it, you first have to understand how Slayers, Merlins, and dragon-kin magic works. Kaylee, you saw Brendan use rune marks before, right?”

  “Yeah, he drew them in the air.”

  “I remember that,” Jade said, crossing her arms. “That’s pretty uncommon for a Slayer to have access to that kind of magic.”

  “Which means they might have a different power source,” Edwin said. “The same source they’re undoubtedly using for something else.”

  “You’re losing me, Edwin,” Maddox said patiently. “Remember what we talked about with presentation and dumbing down the magic mumbo jumbo.”

  “There are three ways of casting magic, classified into three different tiers,” Edwin went on. “Without, Within Assisted, and Within Freeform.”

  Maddox was rubbing his temples. “That’s…not dumbing it down.”

  “Most spells draw physical energy from the user,” Edwin said, unperturbed. “After a while the caster grows tired and has to stop or risk having their body shut down. Most Slayers who cast magic aren’t true magic users. They don’t have a source inside them so they’re called Without magic users. Basically, each Slayer has a finite amount of magic they can summon through rune marks, spells, enchantments, etc. When that runs out they have to recharge from a pre-charged magical item, or from someone else with magical ability Within them.

  “Merlins use energy from within themselves to conjure spells, and supplement their powers with charms and spell books. Their magic is limited by how physically resolute they are, as well as, uh…”

  “Whether or not they stutter while saying the spells?” Kaylee guessed.

  “Yeah. That. You didn’t have to say it aloud.”

  Kaylee waved her hand. “It’s not exactly a big secret, Edwin. Nobody’s judging you.”

  “Anyway…Different than both these magics is a dragon-kin’s. Theirs is very similar to that of a Merlin except they draw on a greater power inside them. Even more than Merlins do. Dragon-kin don’t need spell books or charms or any of that. So Merlins magic: from Within Assisted, dragon-kin from Within Freeform. Merlins channel their magic to cast spells, dragon-kin channel their magic to shift and use their elemental powers.”

  “Like my storms,” Kaylee said.

  “Like your storms, exactly. And while most elemental dragon-kin magic shares similar properties, I noticed something different with Kaylee’s when we were trying to kill each other.”

  Edwin snapped his book shut.

  “Most magic is volatile. It’s harnessed, used, and then vanishes and, unless it’s told not to, most times elemental magic will come out destructively. But Kaylee’s is restorative. Not only can she release it as a destructive force, she can also harness it in its un-destructive form, charging it up and storing it inside her. It’s a rare combination for a dragon-kin to have.”

  “Aaaand you lost me,” Maddox said.

  “I get it,” Jade said. “Kind of like a charged item or Merlin, she can recharge depleted magic users or power other magic objects. Maybe even people.”

  “Or spells,” Edwin muttered, more to himself than anyone.

  “I know that look,” Maddox said, clapping him heartily on the back. “You’re thinking of something!”

  “Excellent deduction skills,” Kaylee said drily. “What is it, Edwin?”

  “Well…you know how Alastair told us that Slayer activity is rising in cities around Scarsdale?”

  “I didn’t hear that!” Kaylee said.

  “Right…I forgot to tell you,” Jade said sheepishly.

  Kaylee glowered at her. “Oh, really? It just slipped your mind, did it?”

  “Anyway...now we all know.”

  “Their attacks are growing stronger as we move more into Fall,” Edwin said. “In two weeks it’ll be the end of October, and after that November.”

  “Yes, we understand how calendars work,” Maddox said.

  “And do you know what happens at the end of November this year?”

  Jade’s eyes lit up with sudden realization. “No. Way. The Dragon Moon!”

  “Hold up, I thought that was just a myth,” Maddox said.


  “I didn’t think it was anything at all,” Kaylee said. “What’s the Dragon Moon? Is that like the winter equinox?”

  “Similar, but exactly one month earlier,” Edwin said. “And the Convocation want people to believe it’s a myth, Maddox, because what do you think the Slayers would do if they suddenly found out it was real?”

  “They’d do what they’re doing now,” Jade said. “Attacking more often.” She pounded her fist into her hand. “They’re definitely prepping for something.”

  Before Kaylee could complain that she still had no idea what they were talking about, Edwin turned to her, “The Dragon Moon is when, for one day every ten years or so, all dragon-kin lose connection to their elemental powers. That means no elemental magic, like your storms, and very little shifting ability.”

  “What about Merlins and Slayers? Do they lose their magic?”

  “No, just the dragon-kin.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  Edwin tapped his chin. “I’m not really sure why it is, but if I had to guess it’s because dragon-kin have a stronger connection to the earth, seeing how you use elemental magic.”

  Kaylee thought that theory sounded about as airtight as a cheese grater, but she didn’t have a better one.

  “If the Slayers want to attack on the Equinox, then we just tell Alastair and get the Convocation to stop them before they do…whatever it is they’re doing,” Maddox said. “Easy!”

  “I’m pretty sure Alastair knows the Slayers are getting more aggressive, Maddox,” Jade said. “We come to him with that and he’ll brush us off like he always does.”

  Kaylee looked pointedly at Edwin. “Unless we had solid proof of a plan they’re trying to hatch.”

  “Exactly,” Edwin said. “And I’m putting the pieces together. I’ll keep looking into it, but the fact that they want Kaylee is a sign they’re going to be doing something big. Something they need an immense amount of harnessed elemental magic for. I just can’t think of what…”

  All four of them sat back, the enormity of what Edwin was implying weighing on them.

  “I…can’t think of anything,” Maddox said after a bit. “Edwin?”