by Rain Oxford
“According to his memories, he was approached by Isera. He hated the life of a servant that he would grow up to be and resented the dragons for it. He thought he could make a better life for himself and his father. It seems his father let him do it because he was too afraid to stop the little kid. That and he didn’t want his son getting caught trying to poison the queen. Nobody would suspect a child, so it was easy for him. He could put the poison in food or even just touch someone. He rubbed the plant into the fibers of his sleeve so that anyone who touched his hand would be poisoned.”
“Are we still at risk?” I asked.
“Would I let you be at risk?” he scoffed. “You might feel a little sick breathing the air in here, but it can’t hurt you and since you’re able to build up a resistance to it, I think it’ll actually help you.”
“How do you know we can build up a resistance?”
“Because you already have. So, I assume the boy wasn’t given all of the poison, so Isera’s pack can still be a threat. You need an antidote.”
“My family physician, Mokomo, has created one.” I put my hand on Emiko’s shoulder. “Send your most trusted dragon to my father’s kingdom for the antidote.”
She glanced from me to Dylan suspiciously. “Do not leave without me. Wait right here for my return.” She then turned and walked out of the room.
“Let’s get going,” Dylan said. We have to get the lotus wand now and I worry where it might be.”
“Why? What’s wrong with the lotus wand?”
“So far, each of the artifacts have been predictable; the water cup in the water city, the fire wand with the dragons… the lotus wand is spirit. I can’t help but worry that the spirit artifact will be in the spirit world.”
“Are we taking Emiko with us? If we do, you have to be careful. Emiko is not family. You must treat her like every other Sago that would have you hung for being of another world.”
“If she goes with us, she will find out about me. So either we leave her behind or you explain to her who and what we are. If you trust her. If not, I can wipe her memories. Decide now because we have to go.”
* * *
The bright light cleared to reveal Dylan’s cabin. Emiko was shaking slightly; however, her outward expression was unaffected. Ron and Sammy nearly knocked me over with the force of their hugs. Then they turned as one to Emiko.
“Boys, this is Kaori-mor Emiko. Emiko, this is Ron and Sammy,” Dylan said.
“Your children?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have demon powers like you?”
“Daddy, I don’t like her. She smells like a bad person,” Ron said. Edward stood from his seat at the table and I pushed Emiko behind me.
We took her with us because we thought it was unfair to leave her without answers. Although we thought a dragon would be open-minded to the truth about the gods, especially a young one, neither of us trusted her. I could smell that she was devious and wicked, yet there was more to her than that. When the dragon breathed ice-fog, it could have killed me, but she pushed me out of the way. Most people wouldn’t do that, let alone a dragon.
Even though she was resistant to the cold, unlike me, she was still as susceptible as a sago. She could have died.
Dylan was watching me with a deep and thoughtful expression, as if he was reading my mind and weighing my feelings against the fears of his sons. Then he nodded to himself, not looking happy about his decision. “Don’t worry about it, Ron.”
The boys looked at each other. Whatever it was between Dylan and I, the boys were the same. Dylan and I didn’t grow up together, so we were still discovering the things we could do, whereas the boys seemed to know exactly who they were and what they could do together. Like their father, they always figured out what was going on before anyone else, and like their mother, they knew when to share and when not to.
I went into Dylan’s room to borrow some of his clothes. We had given Emiko time to dress, but my clothes had been torn and there was nothing on the island I could use. I couldn’t fight with a blanket wrapped around me.
When I returned, Dylan was rifling over the table, clearing a space for the map and crystal ball. The fire wand tried to roll off the table, but I caught it. My fire soared as if I was being attacked and a ball of flames burst from the tip of the wand. I dropped it, but when Dylan caught it, nothing happened.
“What did you do?” he asked as Edward frowned thoughtfully at the charred wall.
“Doesn’t Divina have a fireguard spell over the cabin?” Edward asked.
“Yes. It prevents any unplanned fires. She’s going to be mad. I’m not covering for you.”
“I didn’t do anything, though. I just grabbed the wand and my fire reacted. And besides, your wife would kill me; you can’t tell her I nearly burned her living room. She already wants me to stay outside.” I examined the wooden wand in his hand closely for the first time, without touching it.
It looked to be the perfect sized wand for me, like it would reach from my elbow to my fingertips. There were four evenly-spaced, gold rings, the first making up the base of the wand. Between the rings it was bright red with sigils and foreign letters, not English, written in green paint. The flame-shaped tip was mostly red with a few twisting, wavy bands of gold. In the gold paint on the flame were the same letters and sigils. On the very tip of the flame was a very small, flat piece of metal.
“It was nice knowing you,” he said. He went the door and opened it. “Now get.”
“Daddy!” Sammy cried with astonishment. He would understand when he was older that his father just had a facetious sense of humor.
I went to the door where Dylan handed me the wand, careful to point it outside. Once again, as wood touched my hand, my fire burst through it. This time, instead of a ball, it came in the form on a thin, continuous stream of fire all the way to the trees.
“Can you stop it?” he asked.
I tried to pull back my fire; however, it wouldn’t stop, and my fingers refused to loosen. My fire was acting as if to defend me. “I can’t stop it and I can’t let go,” I said. Dylan pried my hand off the wood and the fire finally settled down.
“Well, we know what that does, now,” he said. He started for the table when he paused and turned to Emiko. “You have fire inside you like Mordon does, right?”
“Dragon fire, yes.”
He returned to the door and waited for a moment. Emiko looked at me as if for assurance, but she knew what Dylan wanted. I moved out of the doorway and she came forward to take the wand. Nothing happened.
“Does your fire feel agitated at all?” I asked.
“No. I feel nothing unusual.”
Dylan took the wand back to the table. “So it is something specific to Mordon.” He started to sit in the chair, then turned and leaned against the table instead. “How did you shift?” he asked.
“Your demon came to me,” I said. I saw in Dylan’s eyes that he knew exactly what I was talking about. “He said he made a deal with a devil and I assumed he was talking about you.”
“Yes, about that, maybe a little deal. Nothing serious. He just might drop in when you need him,” he said. “His name is Xul. Be careful to not use it where others can hear.”
“I never signed up for demons,” I grumbled. “Wizards, Guardians, gods, fish people, no problem. I don’t like demons.”
“Good ol’ Christian boy,” he laughed. “I don’t much like them myself, but he did help you when you needed him,” he said. I nodded, since he was right. “He gave you the ability to shift. Does that make up for him pulling you into the void?”
I thought about it. Had Dylan not tried to save me, Divina wouldn’t have helped, and I would have suffered for sure. Fortunately, the fact was that I had Dylan, so nothing that bad could ever happen to me. Dylan and I were close, but we did not see things the same way. The demon was reaching for Dylan, not me. Now Xul had given me the one thing that nobody else could; the most basic freedom that dragons had.
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br /> “Yes. I forgive him completely, but I want to know what he did to enable me to shift. I want to know if I always had the ability and just didn’t know how. Sometimes when I was furious or my adrenaline was pumping, I felt something in my back.”
“We will ask him when we see him again. Unless we’re dying at the time. Now, I think we should get back to work.” He set the crystal on top of the map and filled it with his magic. I joined it with my fire and the energy formed a star map.
“Oh, damn,” Sammy said in English.
“Don’t let your mother hear you talk like that,” Dylan said.
“She does it all the time,” Sammy said. “And that reminds me… Daddy, before you two go…” He glanced at his brother and got a sad, but encouraging smile. “Ron and I made a very important decision.”
“You spoke with Vivian and Nano?” I asked.
“Yes. Vivian said she would give him up, but I wanted Sammy to make his own decision about who he would live with.”
Both of them looked sad and I could sense Dylan having trouble breathing. He got on his knees in front of Sammy. He always wanted serious discussions with his sons to be eye-to-eye. Whatever he said, I knew my friend couldn’t bare it if Sammy chose to leave.
“Ron and I have been talking and we decided… I’m sorry, Daddy, but I’m too old to be your little Sammy.” Dylan stopped breathing and Sammy rushed on to get his words out, as if that would help. “We decided Samhail was too long, too, and I don’t like the name Sam…. so we decided that I need to be called Hail from now on. Don’t be mad, Daddy, you knew I was too old for a baby name.”
Dylan hugged him, cutting off further explanation. “Oh, honey. I’ll call you Hell if that’s what you really want. Just don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“Scare you? What did you think I wanted you to call me that would scare you?” He looked honestly bewildered.
I saw realization dawn in Ron’s eyes before he started laughing. Dylan and Sammy frowned at him, but he just continued laughing. “You are both stupid,” he said.
Dylan’s jaw dropped. “Don’t talk like your mother.”
Ron was still laughing as he walked out of the room. Sammy glanced at Dylan once more before following his brother out. “Okay, so Sammy wants to be called Hell. That’s not a big deal. That means he wants to stay, right?” he asked, looking from me to Edward.
“Hail, not Hell, and it didn’t even occur to him to leave. I think he made his decision the moment Ron was born,” Edward said.
The boys returned and Ron was no longer laughing. “The sky in the map is Lore,” he said with a seriousness beyond his age.
“But Lore isn’t inhabited yet. It isn’t even a fully-formed planet,” Dylan argued.
“Not yet, but it will be. Be careful, Daddy. Seeing the future is easy, but there are so many futures; some that will never come to pass and some that must never. By actually using magic to transport yourself in time, you are creating fixed points. Things that you experience will come to pass whether it was meant to be or not.”
“Seeing it in a vision is fine,” Sammy said. “Actually being there ensures that it will happen. This is bad if you don’t know how to manipulate time. You could see something that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Time is messy, even for the gods,” Ron added. “We don’t know what decision we will make; therefore, if you go to Lore, you must avoid us at all costs. You will be experiencing events that haven’t been decided yet. If we are there or if we are not, you must not know, so you cannot scan the world for our power.”
“That sounds really difficult,” I said. Dylan nodded.
“Even more difficult is that if we are there in the future and felt you there, we would not know better than to find you,” Sammy said. “You have to hide your presence.”
“Hide us? From the two of you? By then you will be so powerful I doubt even a god could hide himself.”
“It is possible, at least for one of the gods. You need Vretial’s help.”
Dylan sighed. “Of course we do. We’re going to owe him one by the end of this.”
“Owe him what?” I asked. What would a god want from us?
“I don’t know. I may have to go back to Earth and get him another chocolate bar.” He looked at me with mock horror. “How do you two know so much about time travel?” Dylan asked his boys.
“I see things that haven’t happened yet, and I can feel what should and shouldn’t happen. I can see what the consequences are for the decisions we make,” Sammy said. “Ron helps me make sense of it. Vretial cannot read my mind, so Ron interprets it.”
“Why do you go to Vretial and not the other gods?” I asked.
“Because the other gods treat us like children. We’re not fully Iadnah, so we are seen as incompetent. Even Mommy thinks we’re not ready,” Ron said. “We’re powerful enough that if we don’t learn now, bad things will happen.”
“I saw it,” Sammy agreed. “Vretial understands that and is willing to teach us. He teaches us like you do; like he is showing us because he knows we will understand.”
Dylan grabbed my arm and the room filled with light. We were once again in the forest with the apple tree, but we were alone. Dylan sat on the boulder with a sigh. “I can’t…”
“I know. You have to find out what changed Vretial. Until then, you may have to trust the god. If the boys are right, they may need him. You didn’t grow up with your power, so imagine being their age with the power to destroy the universe. You have a natural talent to use your magic for good, but they need to be taught how to control it.”
“I had a hard enough time with my natural wizard abilities, but I didn’t know what it was growing up. I think Sammy is more than we know.” He explained everything that happened up until the part where Xul said that Sammy was the son of a god.
“Is that really unbelievable? Ronez suspected he was part Iadnah.”
“Vivian swore his father is Nano. So either Xul or Vivian is lying and I want to trust Vivian, but it does make sense. It makes so much sense that he is part god… except that I do believe Nano is his father. Sammy has dile strength, yet he can swim…”
“If Nano is for sure his father, then Vivian may not be the mother.”
“Divina is the only female god left and I know Ron is her first child. Gods can manipulate a person’s mind, even make Vivian think Sammy was her son if he were not, but Divina cannot be his mother.”
“And you are sure Divina is the only female god? You are sure there are only the twelve?”
“In this universe, yes.”
“Then don’t worry about it. Who cares who Sammy’s biological parents are? You and Divina will raise him as your own and he will be fine.”
“Well said,” Vretial’s voice sounded behind me. He stood there in dark red robes, looking more like a wizard than a god. “You have a request?” he asked.
“It seems we need to go to Lore and hide ourselves from the future Sammy and Ron.”
“That would be difficult. You see, you are very powerful,” he said, spreading his hands wide as if explaining something we didn’t already know. “And such power is easy to detect. In order to make you invisible to Ronez and Samhail, you must dampen your powers until you are practically mortal.”
“And you can do that?” Dylan asked.
“I might be able to think of something,” the god said, smirking as he pulled two metal bracelets out of the folds of his robe. “Do you remember this?” he asked my friend. Dylan stood and came to a stop in front of the god.
“Good times,” he said sarcastically, holding out his wrist.
“When enemies and friends were black and white,” the god agreed with a nod as he fitted it around Dylan’s wrist. “Maybe when you can see in color, you will see that I was never your enemy.” He grabbed my arm, pulled me closer, and put the second bracelet on my wrist.
“You tried to kill me,” Dylan said.
“Are you sure?”
The forest filled with light and we were back in Dylan’s home. “Why did you bring us back?” I asked. “He was giving you answers.”
“No, he was trying to make me ask the right questions. I can’t tell if he’s more wise or irritating. And I didn’t bring us back, he did.” He went to the globe, still showing the star map. I tried to take the bracelet off, but it was stuck. When I reached for my fire to burn it, my fire ignored me. What’s happening?
The bracelet is blocking your magic, Rojan answered. You should be undetectable by anyone looking for power.
But I am defenseless. And worse, how can I protect Dylan?
You have a sword.
“Mordon, hurry, before the magic fades,” Dylan said. I could tell by the irritation in his voice that he was worried sick. He should have had more faith in me to protect him.
“Here, Daddy.” Ron took Sammy’s hand and reached out for Dylan with his small hand flat. Dylan put his hand against Ron’s and their eyes both glowed green. It was eerie until my mind was flooded with images of a world, which was like a mixture of Earth, Duran, and Vaigda to me.
The sphere immediately changed to show a bedroom. This was no guest chamber, either; the space I could see, including the bed, was lavished with silks and jewels. Edward handed Dylan a card, showing the lotus wand on it. It was taller than everything else was, the handle was striped with many colors, and the top of the wand included green petals.
Focusing on the lotus wand took some work after everything we learned, but we managed. Soon the wand appeared across the bed and the sense of time came to my mind.
It is about a hundred years in the future, Rojan said.
I know this is dangerous, but no more than what would happen if we do nothing. “Ready?” I asked. Dylan picked up the apple, but Emiko grabbed my arm.
“I am going with you.”
“No,” I said.
Ron caught Sammy as the older child’s eyes glowed purple and his legs gave out. Dylan tried to take him, but Ron waved him away. “He does this sometimes, it’s okay.” The words were barely out of Ron’s mouth before Sammy’s eyes returned to normal and he stood.
