Rise of the Alphas

by Alexis Davie

  For a few, intense moments, Ajax and Sebastian glared at each other. Teneha took a smart step back, and Ellie wished she’d taken a seat a little further away in case something went down. Finally, though, Ajax broke away the eye contact and turned his attention to her. “It’s the fuckin’ witch. I told you, she’s nothing but trouble.”

  Sebastian shook his head in disbelief, grabbing Ellie’s hand and pulling her to her feet. “Let’s get moving.”

  Ajax stayed behind for a pause before following them, falling in behind Teneha. Ellie thanked her lucky stars that she wasn’t stuck in the back with him. She stayed as close to Sebastian as she could. Even though she could feel the buffer of Teneha walking between her and Ajax, she was smart enough to figure out that the argument between Ajax and Sebastian now included her. She was now a pawn in their fight. Ajax might want to do something to her to piss off Sebastian. The further away from the huge dragon she stayed, the better. She tried to remind herself that, theoretically, after this nightmare was over, she’d get to go back to her normal life and never have to see Ajax again. Hopefully, she could see Sebastian again, but who was she kidding? The dragon king would have better things to do than pursue her. It had been a delicious surprise to have caught his affections on the trip, but the pessimist in her wondered whether things would change if they got off the island.

  Of course, there was also the potential that something would kill her before she even would have to worry about it, and if that happened, she wouldn’t care anymore. Then again, she’d also be dead, so it wasn’t exactly a “win-win,” but it was enough to keep her delirious, recovering mind busy thinking about for a few minutes. More to the point, the headache started to overcome everything else. She thought the initial waking up and feeling it was the worst, but she was quickly proved quite wrong. Every step seemed to make it worse, every jostling of her head seemed to provoke it, the simple act of existing seemed to offend it in every way. With a steady pounding in her skull that grew incrementally, everything else mattered less and less as the headache became her god. There was nothing else anymore. Just the all-knowing, all-powerful headache. As though it was not content just making her life miserable inside her mind, it started pulsing the blood vessels right behind her right eye, making her want to rub it, but when she tried to, she instantly realized that she would only anger the headache.

  They kept going through the tunnel, which twisted right and left in a seemingly random pattern. Based off the rubble and the occasional trolley and tools stacked against the rough wall, they were walking through an excavation shaft. Hopefully, it would open up to the outside world, but for all they knew, they were headed deeper into the mountain and away from freedom. The one, sparing good bit of news was that they didn’t need to worry about lighting thanks to the glowing red rocks that appeared to be nearly everywhere.

  And then, without warning, they found her.

  The tunnel randomly opened up into an enormous cavern big enough to swallow up a football field, with three sides seeming natural. The last wall, which was a shimmering wall of what looked like glass but what really had to be some sort of ancient spell, covered up a hundred-foot opening that led out into the sea. On the other side of the mostly clear wall they saw greenish, murky water that stretched all the way out in every direction, as though someone had put an enormous porthole from the base of the mountain straight into the ocean itself.

  Sebastian, the first one to see it, paused in amazement before Ellie caught a glimpse of it. Even from far away, it gave off an enormous magical aura. Someone extremely gifted had created it, probably hundreds of years ago, and yet the spell was somehow, inexplicably, still holding back the weight of all that water on the other side, not letting it flood into the chamber.

  Teneha came up beside Ellie, exhaling with wide eyes. “Holy shit…”

  Ellie stared, dumbfounded for one of the very few times in her life. She’d seen some terrific acts of magic, but nothing came even close to what she saw there. The sheer weight of the water would have pushed through nearly any spell, and the fact that it was still up and running hundreds of years later was nothing short of a miracle. She even saw the occasional fish, some quite large, drift through the water on the other side of the thin barrier. The water must not have been too deep, because the light rays from the surface somewhere out of sight cast enough illumination to see the body suspended in chains in the water.

  A female form, tall enough to qualify as a skyscraper, loomed in the murky water a hundred paces out, like the glass was there so people could see her. Though the muck in the water kept Ellie from being able to make out much, the form of the woman drifted listlessly in the water, her hair the size of a small house fanned out and filtering through light in a nightmarish yet beautiful way. Impossibly thick chains clung to her ankles and wrists, secured somehow to the ocean floor, still unbroken. Against all odds, the colossal body was still in perfect shape, not rotted away or eaten by the fish. If not for the grime and algae coating the massive chains, she could have been put there yesterday.

  Ajax was the first to speak, letting out a stunned, “What in the fuck is that thing?”

  Nobody responded for several seconds. Then Teneha slowly raised her arm to show a pedestal at the glass near the base of the figure’s feet. “Maybe that?”

  They slowly crept into the cavern, curiosity bringing them forward. The logic behind realizing that breaking the glass would drown them all made them hesitant. Ellie was the first one to get close to the stubby little stone pedestal, where some writing in an ancient language was carved into the stone.

  “What’s it say?” Teneha asked.

  “Just a second.” Ellie ran her fingers over it, headache still very much up and running and almost staggered by the magical energy coming off the clear wall. She recognized it, somewhat. “It’s kind of hard to make out, but… I think it says, ‘The sea witch, for her crimes.’ And then it gets kind of muddled, but I see the word ‘lesson’ and ‘betrayal’ in here. I think. Don’t quote me on that.”

  A moment of awed silence passed before Sebastian spoke up. “God only knows what she did now. Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

  Their tiny group kept going into the hallway leading out the other way, but before she went, Ellie looked back at the floating, enormous body and wondered what the hell someone could have done to deserve that. Maybe she was part of the reason the island had fallen. Maybe it had nothing to do with it. But Sebastian was right: there was no way to know, not anymore.

  Just another mystery, another thing they’d never solve.

  10

  After hiking through the narrow, dusty tunnels for what seemed like forever, Ellie was starting to think that she would never see the outside again. This was her new life now. To be one with the rock. To stay in relative darkness, hearing little somethings skitter away, maybe rats, maybe bugs, maybe giant monsters, just out of sight. To never get to live her life and instead spend the rest of what was going to surely be a shitty experience treading around the seemingly never-ending caves and tunnels like a rat in a cage. She didn’t quite call herself claustrophobic, but any reasonable person would feel the same thing she did: every wall started to look the same, just a little bit narrower with every step as it felt like it was all closing in around her.

  So when the spark of daylight peered in through the very end of a tunnel, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Warm, glowing sunlight shined outside the half-finished tunnel, bringing in a comfortable breeze and a reminder that there was, in fact, a world outside the caves.

  “Hell yeah!” she cheered at the same time that Ajax growled, “About fuckin' time,” and Sebastian let out a relieved, “Finally.” Teneha, in her same silent style, elected to only exhale softly, but the truth was, however the individuals reacted to it, a collective wave of relief washed over them.

  Emerging from the caves, Ellie caught a ray of sunshine straight to the eyes, bringing back the mostly faded headache of death. She groaned, wincing and massa
ging her temples. Really? It had to stick around after all that? Didn’t she get a pass because she’d had to go through so much stuff? No, having to walk miles through an underground tunnel wasn’t enough. Getting kidnapped wasn’t enough. Getting recruited to go on a death mission and getting attacked by giant spiders wasn’t enough. Now her body had to get in on the act and bully her, too.

  They emerged out into a large stone courtyard overlooking an orchard and garden that stretched on and on for a surprisingly long distance. Though the trees were no longer tended to by their gardeners, they’d mostly thrived, growing tall and massive with old, dried fruit everywhere beneath them. The hedges had gotten wildly out of control, going from neat, cut rectangular structures to how they must look in the wild, twisted and unpredictable. A few statues and fountains were covered in mossy material and broken down as only a reminder of how beautiful the garden and orchard must have been at one point. The grass had grown up around everything, waving gently in the breeze drifting in though the hollow. Overall, it was a tranquil, peaceful place with a throwback to a time where the island was probably run by a thriving civilization.

  A quick glance further past their immediate surroundings showed a much more interesting story: they’d gone through the core of the mountain and had made it roughly to the top of the mountain somehow, giving them a perfect view of all the surrounding areas. The clear blue water stretched around the base of the island in every direction, making the island seem simultaneously massive and diminutive. More importantly, a while off-shore on the other side of the orchard, down a good part of the mountainside, waited the still-functioning portal.

  Teneha, surprisingly, was the first to speak. “What now?”

  “We fly and get the hell out of here,” Ajax declared.

  “We get to the boat,” Sebastian said, matter-of-factly, at the same time.

  Ajax turned to the smaller dragon, looking fed up. “We’re dragons! Give me one good reason we shouldn’t fly—”

  “Because the last thing we need to do is go up high and attract predators,” Sebastian said without a second of hesitation. “You want everything in this island to come for us? Be my guest. Get up there and see what happens.”

  “We are the alpha predators!”

  “Did we not almost die an hour ago? Were we still alpha predators back then?” Sebastian paused for a second to let everyone think. “We aren’t risking it. There are things here that we know nothing about, and I’m not going to get in front of all of them and challenge them to come after us. It’ll take a little longer, but we’re walking, and we are going to keep a low profile.” He ended his sentence with a sense of finality, like there would be no more discussion on the matter.

  Ajax stepped forward until their chests were almost touching in an almost animalistic declaration of a challenge. “You’re going soft.”

  Sebastian, too, stepped forward. Though physically a smaller body than the hulking Ajax, he did not back down. “Pick your next words carefully.”

  Ajax curled his lip up, exposing the long fangs. “I think it’s time for a change in leadership.”

  Before anyone could do anything, he lunged at Sebastian and tackled him with enough force to jettison both of them into the orchard. They slammed into one of the thick trees, cracking the black trunk and shaking free leaves and dried fruit. Sebastian didn’t stay down. As soon as they landed, he rocked Ajax with a punch that sent his huge opponent flying like a ragdoll.

  “Sebastian!” Ellie hustled down towards their fight. What the hell was she going to do if she got there? She hadn’t the faintest idea, but sitting there and watching it go down wasn’t an option. Heart pounding in her chest, knowing inherently that it was a stupid idea to get anywhere near them and that the smart thing to do would be to stay as far away as possible, she scrambled down the courtyard steps and towards the rumble as flames, fists, and roars emerged from the full-on brawl.

  Ellie made it two feet before Teneha grabbed her arm and jerked her back, stopping her momentum in a split second and giving her the sort of look that someone might get for declaring that they’d just decided to start a juggling routine with running chainsaws. “Are you insane? Stay away from them! They’ll kill you!”

  Ellie ripped her arm free, ran down to Sebastian, and helped keep Ajax from winning, saving the day. That, at least, was the plan. What actually happened was that Ellie tried to pull her arm free and discovered that Teneha packed a much better grip than she’d anticipated, so she ended up accomplishing nothing other than giving herself a bruise.

  “Let go!”

  “No!” Teneha tightened her grip. “I’m not going to let you kill yourself!”

  “It’s my choice!”

  “Not if that portal closes and you can’t reopen it!” was Teneha’s response. “Then we’ll be stuck here!”

  The wind picked up, whipping their hair about wildly as Ellie unsuccessfully tried to break free. “If Ajax wins, I’m dead anyway! Let me go, dammit!”

  Teneha clearly wasn’t in the mood to be letting go of anything, and despite Ellie’s best attempts, she wasn’t making any progress. A quick, cursory glance back towards the fight showed the two dragons tearing into each other at lightning speed, almost too fast for her to see what was going on, bringing down trees in the process. Ellie gave another mighty tug, followed by another pull for each word she shouted.

  “Let! Me! Go!” On the fourth pull, when she was once again putting her entire effort into it, Teneha’s hand suddenly let go, and Ellie tumbled out of her grasp to the floor. When she got back up, rather amazed that she’d slipped out of Teneha’s dragon grip, she saw Teneha’s face, ashen and pale, staring with horror at something behind Ellie.

  Ellie turned to see a nightmarish female figure, long since destroyed by the elements but surviving through probably magical means, shuffling out of the close part of the orchard as though to see who had disturbed her. A cloudy film of white fog billowed up behind the spectral, disturbing woman, whose elegant clothes and expensive jewelry indicated that they were probably looking at someone of extreme wealth. Somehow, even while staring at the creature from afar and how nature itself seemed to manifest around the corpse-like creature, Ellie assumed that she was a princess. That or a queen, but the corpse appeared surprisingly young. A princess.

  Teneha braced her back and spewed fire at the creature, who, when the fire receded, proved to be just fine, without so much of a scratch on her.

  Ellie backpedaled from the figure that crawled her bony way up the stairs to get close to them with the majority of the orchard at their backs. The sounds of Ajax and Sebastian fighting still echoed behind them, but Ellie’s attention was focused on the skeletal figure in front of her.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” she yelped.

  Teneha didn’t have a good answer for her as the wind started to really whip up in almost tornado-like fashion.

  “Run!”

  11

  The torrential wind tore through the branches of the black-bark trees littering the eerie orchard, whipping up leaves and pushing some of the ancient trees to their very limits.

  Ellie’s feet caught on a root as she scrambled with her companions through the once well-kept orchard. She grabbed for something to hold onto, but her hand found only air, and she flopped to the ground awkwardly, like the super athlete she always dreamed she could be. She shoved her hands into the rich black dirt and pushed herself to a running position again. The powerful winds slammed her from the side with enough force to make her trip again as she tried to get her feet under her, followed by a swarm of the reddish, beaten old leaves that pelted her like she'd accidentally cut in front of them in traffic and they were pissed about it.

  She wildly swiped at them, her eyes frantically scanning for her companions. Where had they gone? There was no way they'd already ran out of her sight, but all she could see was the rolling white fog, which turned to dew on her exposed pale skin. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she scrambled up ag
ain. Which way was she even running from? In the tumble, she’d lost her sense of direction more than the time she’d gone into Ikea to buy a nightstand.

  “Sebastian!” she shouted into the unnatural whirlwind that seemed to be everywhere. A leaf took advantage of the moment to go rocketing into her throat, coaxing her to start coughing. She spit out the now wet leaf onto the ground, struggling to keep her balance in the winds that battered her around like a ping pong game from hell.

  Then, she saw it. The princess.

  Her thin, malnourished form slithered out of the fog a few dozen feet away from Ellie. A strange sort of cold emanated from her, so freezing, that Ellie could feel it where she was, and the winds cradled her small form like she was the origin. Though the winds furiously blew around her, so much so that a nearby old branch snapped off and was whipped off into the thick milky fog in a quarter second, her dried black hair hung about her sunken shoulders like she was on a perfectly calm day.

  Time to run.

  Everything indicated that getting the ever-living hell out of there was the best option, but Ellie stood there, stunned, too startled to move. She was real. Of course they'd known something was after them, but seeing the husk of a woman in front of her made it real. All signs pointed to the princess being dead, from the jaunty, broken-hip limp that she used to the grime that had collected on her once polished and beautiful jewelry. If there was any doubt left, the thick black spike that was firmly implanted in her forehead from being rammed there centuries ago finished the look. This was not a living creature. No soul rested in the emaciated form of the princess. Whoever she’d been was long gone. Now she was the creature that the curse had turned her into, just like everything else on this God forsaken island. Just another freak, another tragic story from long ago, another thing that Ellie wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

  Ellie stumbled backward, feeling the long grass whip around her calves. Her eyes remained locked on the monster in front of her. Her breath came fast and hard until she was half worried she might pass out before she got horribly killed. Suddenly, the leaves and the grasses and the roar of the winds weren’t so bad. She’d spend hours in them if it meant she didn’t have to deal with the figure coming towards her. Sweat and water ran down Ellie’s legs and into her shoes from the storm coming from the milky hide of the princess, who shiftily stuck one bare, bony foot into the black earth before another in a terrifying stalk towards Ellie.