by Travis Kerr
After only a few seconds the dragon ended its attack, perhaps believing that its target had already been incinerated. As Raine watched in awe the last of the dragonfire was drawn into the blade, until the bright red of its magical heat disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the bright blue glow of Drom's power.
“I will not allow you to harm her!” Drom screamed at the massive beast. The dragon looked on with its unblinking gaze. As Raine watched in amazement, the magical aura surrounding Drom began to change. The bright blue light shifted, swirling around him like a caged beast, struggling to break free. All at once the color of his magic, which had always glowed a bright blue, shifted, turning a deep, angry red.
“I will not allow anyone to harm her!” Drom bellowed, his voice so loud and powerful that it seemed to shake the trees around them with its sound. Raine instinctively put her arms up in front of her face, as Drom's power exploded from him. She felt as if the force of it would rip the skin from her bones.
Drom had never felt so powerful. He felt the pain in his side, and with only a thought, made almost absently, he felt the skin, the muscles, and the bones underneath the injury shift, knitting together and healing him completely in less than a second. Anger, as burning hot and searing as the dragonfire that seemed to fuel it, burned within him. He struggled to keep it contained, for some reason his conscious mind rebelling against the violent rage that filled him.
The dragon sensed that its enemy had once again risen, somehow more powerful than ever before. It lowered its head and roared a challenge. It moved forward, though what attack it intended Raine would never know.
Drom, who had stood in front of her only a fraction of a second before, disappeared right before her eyes! One second he was there, the next, gone! She looked up at the beast in front of her, now posed for the kill.
Its head lowered as if to attack, or so she had thought, but that was not what happened. Not at all. The monster wasn’t attacking. In fact it would never attack anyone again.
The dragon’s head rolled across the ground in front of her to land at her feet, completely cut through halfway down the neck. Its tremendous jaws opened and closed once, as if to speak, saying the first and last words it would ever say. No sound, however, issued from those reptilian lips. Instead, its thick, forked tongue lolled out of its mouth, and it ceased to move.
After several seconds the beast started to disappear, fading away as if it had never been. It had not been a true dragon. It was nothing more than a shadow, given life by powerful magic. Once that imitation of life was destroyed, its magic dissipated, and the creation ceased to be. It didn’t have a body to leave behind.
As the body disappeared Raine saw something else behind it, what had once been hidden from her sight now revealed. Drom stood, bathed in an intense red glow. The power thrashed around him, as wild and volatile as a forest fire.
“Drom!” Raine cried out. The sorvinian man turned to look at her, a clear look of anger burning behind his wild eyes. He glared about, as if looking for another opponent, then turned his eyes back to her. His lips turned back in a vicious snarl. He stared at her as he would an enemy; as he would a stranger.
“Drom it’s me! It’s Raine! Don’t you recognize me?”
“Raine?” Drom snarled, his voice barely recognizable as the man she had known. He tilted his head back and screamed, long and loudly, the thunderous sound hurting her ears. The scream turned into a wail, almost mournful in its sound, and as she watched the red glow of magic that surrounded him shifted. The lashing slowed and, as quickly as it had started, the color shifted back to the blue she had come to know. As even that faded, Drom dropped to his knees.
Raine left Raiste's unconscious body on the ground where it was and ran to Drom's side, catching him just as he fell to the ground completely. A quick glance told her that he didn’t have any obvious injuries, which surprised her. She thought for certain that, as hard as the dragon had hit him, he would have had a few broken ribs at the very least, yet he didn’t even seem to have been bruised by the blow. He must have just fainted from the use of the powerful magic that had filled him.
Wonderful, she said to herself.
Both Drom and Raiste were unconscious at the moment, though only Raiste seemed injured. Even in the best of times she would have had trouble moving Raiste, and Drom was far too heavy for her to lift. She certainly wasn’t going to risk straining herself just to try to move them inside. It wasn’t herself that worried her. Had it been she would have ignored any risk and moved them anyway. She was not, however, willing to risk the health of her unborn children.
She heard a questioning chirp from somewhere in the trees above her. Apparently deciding that the danger was gone for the moment, the small dragonling flew down next to Raiste. Sniffing the man tentatively, the creature seemed to decide that the man was all right, or at the very least that there was nothing that a little dragonling would be able to do for him. The little creature hopped over to Drom, repeating the process.
Trick must have come to a similar conclusion about the sorvinian as well. Instead of waiting next to either of the men, it hopped over to Raine. He stepped up on to her leg, sniffing her belly. After several seconds the dragonling changed its tactics, putting its small head against her slightly swelling stomach.
There’s no question that Trick knows what happened while they were gone, Raine thought with mild amusement.
Sitting on the ground with the small dragonling resting its head on her belly, she waited for her friends to wake up. They would have a lot to talk about once they were both up again, she knew. Much had happened in the months since Raiste had seen them, both to him and to them.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Please tell me you’re joking Raine,” Drom heard as he woke. He recognized that voice. He opened his eyes and looked around.
A white furred face and vacant eyes stared back at him. He nearly jumped to his feet before he realized that he was not looking at a living being, but at the bearskin rug that sat on the living room floor. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he had gotten there.
“No, I’m not joking Raiste,” he heard Raine say in her most patient voice.
Raiste. Had he returned while Drom had been asleep? Why hadn’t Raine woke him up?
“I’ll be honest with you Raine, I really thought you were smart enough to keep that sort of thing from happening,” he heard Raiste say. He quickly closed his eyes again, hoping that his friends didn’t notice that he had woken up. He had planned on having this conversation with the assassin together with her, but of course Raine knew the man much better than he did. If she thought it better for her to talk to their friend first, than he would take her advice.
Still, that doesn’t mean that I won’t listen in.
“Well, it did happen,” she replied. “I didn’t notice when it was coming on me, and he didn’t know anything about it. Now it happened, it has been continuing to happen, and will continue to happen from here on out. At first we didn’t have a choice, but we do now. We had a choice when he asked me to marry him, and I had a choice when I said yes.”
“So now you’re pregnant with his child, knowing full well what will be coming after us. You know this is a complication that we didn’t really need right now. From what you told me, he barely survived against that dragon. I’m amazed that he succeeded in doing that much. Now Bloodheart is likely to send something even worse. He won’t be able to fight against something like that if he’s worried about protecting you and a baby on top of it all.”
Fight a dragon? What on earth were they talking about?
There was something to this, he knew, but for some reason he couldn’t remember what it was. He felt completely drained. Had he overused his magic again? He couldn’t remember.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. When he thought that we were in danger, or at least when he thought that I was in danger, something within his magic changed. I’ve been watching him practice with his m
agic almost every day in the few months that you’ve been gone. His power always glows blue, and his magic always seems to calm him, as if it detaches him from his emotions.”
“Yes, he said as much to me when we were discussing how his power affected him that first time.”
“Well, what I saw last night was nothing at all like that. His emotions, at least his anger, was so strong he could barely contain it. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure if he knew who I was anymore. I’m not sure if he gained control in the end, or if he had simply used so much of his magic at once that he passed out from it. I can say that I’ve never seen anything move that fast before, not even him. When he killed that beast he was so fast, I couldn’t even see him. He wasn’t even a blur of movement. One moment he was in front of me, the next he was behind the dragon and its head was falling free from its body.
“I’m just hoping that when he wakes up he’s back to being himself. I don’t want him to know this, but it scared the hell out of me. For a brief moment, at the end there, I thought he was going to attack me, and I know that there wasn’t anything I would have been able to do to defend myself against him.”
“You don’t really think he would have hurt you, do you?”
“I don’t honestly know,” Raine admitted. “I don’t think he would have hurt me on purpose, but I don’t think he knew who I was either. I think that whatever had happened to his magic was out of a desire to protect me, but it was so powerful that he had no control over what he was doing. I think at the last minute he might have realized who I was, but I just can’t be sure. I guess the only answer I have is that I don’t think he wanted to hurt me, he wanted to protect me, but if he didn’t know who I was anymore he could have hurt me accidentally. I don’t want to believe that, but that’s how it felt at the time.”
Drom stayed silent, unable to believe what he was hearing. If what Raine said was true, he could have killed her and his unborn children, and wouldn’t have known he had done it! He couldn’t take that sort of risk again. If he ever did anything to harm her, he didn’t think he could live with himself.
“His magic was not like it had been either,” she continued. “It didn’t glow blue anymore. He was glowing red, like the light of a bright flame.”
“Well, at least when he wakes up we should know if he’s back to normal. It would be hard to miss if he’s glowing red like you said.”
“I’m not worried as much about when he wakes up as when he tries to use his magic again. Will his magic be back to the way it was, or will it take control of him again like it seemed to? We’ll need his magic if we are to survive. That dragon that he killed proved that, more than anything else possibly could have. We would all be dead now if he hadn’t been able to use his power.”
“From what you told me of that fight, he wouldn’t have won if his magic hadn’t changed like it had,” Raiste pointed out. “The dragon had him nearly defeated, and was about to burn the two of us alive. The increase in the power of his magic might not have been completely in his control, but it saved us all the same.
“There’s not really much we can do about that until he uses his magic again, and it would probably be best for him to wait at least a few days before trying to do that. Even if his magic is back to normal, it certainly weakened him to use that much of it at once. Instead of focusing on that, I think that we should concentrate our attention on the two of you and your upcoming childbirth. I’ve learned about many of the herbs used by midwives. I had to for my Malik persona. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the doses that they use are, or what exactly they are used for. I won’t be much help when your babies are ready to be born.”
“Drom doesn’t plan on staying here,” Raine announced. “I don’t know yet where he plans on taking us. I don’t even know if he’s thought much about that part yet. From what I could gather talking to him, I think he was more concerned about how he was going to convince you that we should leave.”
“He’s certainly right in thinking that I wouldn’t want us to leave. With the dragon gone, Bloodheart shouldn’t know where we are. He will have to send someone or something to start looking for us all over again, and won’t have any real place to start. The cities won’t be safe right now, that’s for sure. That dragon was waiting for me right outside of Miani. Bloodheart probably has people watching for us in every city and town under his control. This is probably the safest place for us to be.”
“I’m in complete agreement with him actually. You said yourself that you don’t know much about childbirth. Drom wants a skilled midwife with me when our children come, and I agree with that too. I’m not worried about myself so much, though I’m sure that he’s worried enough about me for the both of us, but I do worry for my children. I’ve never heard of a feral having children with a sorvinian. There could be complications that I wouldn’t know how to watch for or deal with.”
“I’m sure that there are books in my library that could teach me everything I would need to know,” Raiste pointed out. “Your children would be in much more danger elsewhere than they would be here, regardless of the complications. Like a hunted animal, our best chance of surviving right now is to find a place to hide where our hunters will have trouble finding us. I can’t think of any place better than here.”
Drom slowly opened one eyeball again, hoping to get a better look at his friends without them noticing it. If he moved at all, Raiste would certainly notice, he knew. By listening in on their conversation now, he would have a better chance of convincing Raiste of their need to go elsewhere, assuming Raine wasn’t able to convince him on her own. He would already know all of Raiste's arguments ahead of time.
He heard a light, inquisitive chirp, and looked up carefully to find Trick staring down at him, looking right into his now open eye. The small dragonling flew off and starting chirping again in the distance. It sounded as if the dragonling had gone in the direction of his friend’s voices, though his companions were still too far away for him to see without moving.
“It would seem that our friend is awake now,” he heard Raiste say.
So much for listening in for a bit longer, Drom thought irritably.
As much as he liked the little dragonling, and had even missed the small creature during the time that Raiste had been gone, it could be a nuisance at times, especially when Trick’s intentions differed from his own.
Without any reason to hide that he was awake any longer, Drom sat up and looked around the room. Raine was still dressed in the clothing he last remembered her in the night before, though now the mint green color was dotted in places with dark green and brown mud. Thankfully he could see no wounds on her body, much of which was plainly revealed through the nearly transparent cloth.
Raiste, on the other hand, was completely covered in mud, so much so that the assassin was almost unrecognizable. Most of the mud that covered the man appeared to be dry already, crusted and cracking in some places. The cloth underneath it, or what Drom could see of it anyway, was tattered and torn. Drom had never seen the assassin in such a state of disrepair before.
Perhaps he should use this look as a new disguise, Drom thought with mild amusement. He could pass for a beggar in any city in the world.
“Hi Raiste, welcome back,” Drom said, trying his best to pretend that he hadn’t been awake and listening in on his two friends for the past several minutes. “When did you get back?”
“Last night,” Raiste replied. “Don’t you remember anything that happened?”
“I don’t remember a thing about last night,” he replied. That part at least wasn’t a lie. He might have already learned everything that had happened from listening to his friend’s discussion, but he didn’t actually remember it. If he hadn’t known that they were talking about him they could have been discussing someone else entirely, as far as his memory of the events were concerned. “Why, what happened?”
“I was chased all the way here by that shadow dragon that was hunting us before. You fought against it, and
in the end somehow you managed to kill the thing. Afterward, you passed out. I’m guessing that you must have overused your magic when you fought it, like you did the first time you practiced using your power. I was knocked unconscious, so I missed most of it. Raine had to wait for me to come around before the two of us brought you inside. You’re not exactly a light-weight.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll try to be more careful when I use my magic. I thought I had a pretty good handle on holding it, and fighting while using it, for long periods of time. I guess I must not be as good as I thought yet.”
“Don’t concern yourself with it. I barely managed to scratch it when I fought against it. You defeated it, and that’s no small feat. Anyway, that’s something that we can talk about again later. Raine's been telling me that congratulations are in order.”
Drom didn’t miss the fact that Raiste had completely glossed over his battle with the dragon, nor did he mention the fears that Raine had expressed in the conversation he had overheard.
He probably doesn’t want to worry me, he thought.
He decided that he would keep that knowledge to himself for the moment. If his friends, particularly Raine, didn’t want him to know about it, he wouldn’t tell her that he already did.
“I’m glad to hear that you’re taking it so well.” Drom stated honestly. “I was more than a little worried that you wouldn’t approve.”
“You’re both adults,” the assassin replied with a shrug. “What the two of you do is entirely your own choice. I will say that, considering everything that is going on right now, your timing could have been a little better, but then again there might not ever really be a good time for that, at least not for a while. If the two of you can find happiness together, who am I to say anything against it?”
