A few nights later I was winging my way to my little radar site cum aerie, Pasqual on my mind and a terrible loneliness in my heart. I sighed for the umpteenth time; a human named Richard Bach once said that a person gets used to being alone, but break it just for a day and you have to get used to it again, all over from the beginning. He was right. But damn it, it was too soon after my little couatl. . . .
My mind churning, I didn't recognize the scent of human presence until I'd landed in the site's dusty clearing. Instantly I hurled myself back aloft, but too late--a complicated pattern of thin, actinic lines of light suddenly decorated the dusty ground about me, and I smashed against something hard.
I fell back with a grunt of astonishment. What the HELL??? I lunged forward, slamming against an unseen barrier yet again. For several wild moments panic threatened to overwhelm me as I clawed ineffectually at . . . whatever it was, but slowly, doggedly, reason fought its way to the fore.
A long moment to catch my breath and get my bearings, then I was probing frantically at whatever enclosed me. Something was there, yet not--curving up over my head to enclose me in a dome-like structure, anchoring at the bottom in a complex pattern scratched into the dirt.
It was some sort of bizarre trap, and the strange, glowing lines were evidently the key. I tried to touch them, but the edge of the dome blocked me. I studied the lines; every time my eyes attempted to trace their pattern they seemed to blur and shift sickeningly, but I kept at it, finally managing to get a sense of some sort of giant . . . pentagram? The pentacle seemed to become a little easier to look at after I'd grasped its shape. The light, the patterns, they wormed their way into portions of my draconic mind I'd never used before, and I began to see things within it all. Lines of--juncture, I suppose . . . planes of interlocking forces. It was almost like some enormous circuitry diagram. The more I looked into it, the more I began to comprehend its strange logic, and the more I saw of the structure of what held me.
But it didn't do me any good; the arcane structure was set so it couldn't be taken down from the inside, and someone was approaching.
It was almost a disappointment, what finally came laboring up the rise. The thin old woman wore an equally thin grey dress of indeterminate shape that hung on her like rags on a scarecrow. Her dark, weather-beaten hands gripped that bulky, ugly kind of cane that Medicaid recipients get stuck with. She leaned upon it heavily as she struggled her way up the last few feet of slope to my prison.
Finally the ancient woman looked up. I stared into her worn face, into dark, burning eyes that stabbed at me like knives. All doubts as to the identity of my captor vanished in that instant.
For long minutes she stared at me as I crouched within my prison of nothingness. Then she spoke--harsh, demanding words in a language I did not understand. Haitian? Possibly. I didn't react, and she repeated her demand, only louder. When I remained motionless, she lifted the tip of her battered cane and did something to my cage.
The lines flared in response, and pain suddenly tore into me like a thousand enraged hornets. I flinched, then yowled like a scalded cat. It felt as if the scales were being torn from my body. Abruptly the pain stopped. Again she made her demand, and I snarled back.
The old Haitian woman was lifting her cane again when something seemed to occur to her. Her eyes narrowed and she asked another question, but more quietly. I growled in response.
She nodded, apparently satisfied, then busied herself with the tip of her cane, scraping more lines into the chalky dirt, adding to the pentagram. Minutes dragged past and I watched, helplessly, as the cane's tip scratched, drew, altered, each line filling with that same eye-hurting brilliance. Abruptly, the cane lifted and the point stabbed at me like a spear.
Again pain assailed me, but this time centered in my throat. I gagged, spittle drooling from my jaws as I strangled around the lump of agony suddenly lodged in my throat.
Slowly, grudgingly, the pain subsided into a dull discomfort. I coughed, then shook my head dazedly as I heard the crone once again ask her damnable question. My back arched as the lash was applied once more, and I spun to face her. That odd ache in the back of my throat surged. "GO TO--!" I jerked my head back with a gasp. I hesitated, then tried again. "Go to Hell!"
I could speak? Something my tormentor had done to the pentacle? The old woman blinked, seemingly almost as confused as myself. "English?" she muttered to herself with a heavy accent, but her words were perfectly clear. "Why English?"
I stared at her warily, and began to wonder at the limits of what this dried-out scrap of old meat was capable of. She seemed to shake herself out of something then, and looked at me again with those burning eyes. "I will have your name, demon."
I stared at her. All this merely for my name? Then she would not have it. She must have read my decision, somehow, because in the next instant another wave of searing pain slammed into me. "Your NAME, demon! What is your NAME?"
One moment it felt as if I were being flayed alive; the next as if I was boiling in oil. It went on and on. . . . Finally I couldn't take any more and I again raised my head to look into the witch's eyes. "My name is Hasai, meat, and I am a DRAGON!"
The pain cut off instantly to leave me panting in the dust as the witch stared at me, a look of almost-wonder coming to her face. "A dragon. A dragon? I had thought your kind to be no more." She stared at me silently for several long minutes, seeming to ponder something. Then she shrugged. "It does not matter. Put on the collar."
I blinked. The what? The witch responded to my obvious confusion by gesturing sharply at the ground at my feet. "The collar! Put it on. Now."
I looked down, and there was what seemed to be a length of old chain. I picked it up; it was a collar, just big enough to fit over my head at my present size, and made of what looked like links of black iron. But . . . but there was something wrong with it. Dull, barely visible lines of sullen crimson permeated the dark links. Using the scraps of insight I'd gleaned from the pentagram, I peered at the collar more closely. There was . . . something . . . in the links. Something sickening. Something . . . hungry. . . .
With a shudder of revulsion I flung it to the ground. The witch immediately reacted with another wave of agony. "Put it on, dragon! Or suffer!"
I gnashed my teeth beneath the torment. "N-no! That--that thing would destroy me!" I looked at her through watering eyes. "Why do you hate me so much that you would force such a thing on me?"
That actually seemed to strike home for some reason, and she responded viciously, sending surge after surge of pain through my frame. "Put it on, dragon! NOW!!"
I bent my head beneath the barrage and hung on grimly. No. If I did, all that which is me would cease to exist, devoured by the horror that abided in those dark links. My body, though, would live on . . . as a mindless puppet. I didn't know how I knew this, but I knew. I could feel the thing waiting for me, and I would die by inches before I would submit. . . .
What? I opened streaming eyes, and through a miasma of pain saw several of my little sand lizards at my forepaws, gazing up at me curiously. A moment to collect my thoughts, and then something hit me. How had they gotten in? They weren't in here when the trap was sprung. . . .
With a terrible effort I moved a forepaw, dragging my talons toward the little ones. Spot simply skittered over my paw and looked up at me again, confusion showing dimly in his eyes. Tiger, she simply sauntered out of the way and glared at me. Stripes, though, he took off running, heading straight for the lines that made up my prison. . . .
And crossing them.
As if they didn't exist.
Yessss. . . .
Slowly I raised my head against the onslaught and looked deep into the witch's eyes, baring all my teeth in a carnivore's grin. I took a step toward her.
Then another.
The next step, and I would hit the barrier. I closed my eyes and ignored the pain for the few seconds it took for me to concentrate--I'd never shifted from full-size before, and the witch's spells abruptly vanished, drowned by a far more familiar pain. At last I lifted my head, human, and grinned at the slack-jawed witch, who had frozen for a moment in stunned amazement. I took yet another step toward suddenly extinguished lines. . . .
And another. . . .
I was through.
I felt my body twisting, flowing, then my forepaws hit the ground with a thump as I rapidly swelled to full size, still grinning at the witch. The lines blazed again, but behind me now. With a flick of my tail, I raked across them, breaking them, and the entire structure shattered in a silent explosion of light.
But the witch had already recovered, and was busily scraping more lines into the dirt about her and muttering. As I crouched to pounce on her, I heard the name Hasai in her mumbled incantation, then the new lines flared crimson and something launched itself at me.
I felt that something blow past and through me like a hot wind, harmlessly, as I pounced. The old woman stumbled backwards as the first swipe of my talons reduced her defenses to churned earth, then the second scooped her up into a cage of her own.
For a moment she struggled in my grip with a strength that surprised me. Then she subsided, panting, and glared up at me defiantly with those burning eyes.
Waiting.
I settled back onto my haunches and studied what I held. The echoes of what she had dealt me still shuddered through my body, and every cell screamed at me to rend her, slowly, for her crimes. I began to close my hand, my talons slicing inwards--then I stopped.
Everything in me that was Dragon set up an immediate howl. Fool! You would once again show mercy, when such madness has already cost you so very dearly? Kill her! Kill her NOW! Still I hesitated, the needle points of my talons digging into her withered flesh in several places. The scent of fresh blood teased my nostrils, and those dark eyes burned into my own. With fear, but defiance as well. I tried to speak, but it came out as a coughing growl; that spell had also failed.
Are you INSANE? You lost your mate! You lost your FAMILY! What will you lose this time? Fool! FOOL!!! With a snarl, let her drop. The witch fell heavily and lay there, stunned for a moment. When she finally began to work her way back to her feet, it was to see me turning away, my tail lashing with the rage and self-loathing that washed through me.
I paused to use my fire breath to reduce that length of chain to a puddle of glowing slag, the thing residing within it dying a well-deserved death. I looked back into the witch's puzzled eyes for a moment, then jumped toward her, my jaw with it sword sized fangs wide and snapped them closed.
She fell backward again with a cry as my teeth missed her by only an inch or two. I then launched myself skyward, my backwash sending a wave of grit over her as the little clearing dwindled behind me, at last fading into the dark.