Cassandra Pendragon
The first glimpse was nothing more than a reflective speck of silver in an endless expanse of blue. The cliffs of Free Land had long since vanished behind the horizon and we were hovering between the emerald green, fathomless sea and the infinite sky, a no man's land where even Sera's incomparable bulk meant nothing. The silence, only broken by the dragons' wing beats, was daunting and for the first time since we had taken off I was truly glad that Kana hadn't let go of my hand. The sheer vastness, filled with nothing but water and air, made me feel tiny, inconsequential, almost like the starry night sky, except there were no sparkling lights to adore. Most sailors I had talked to appreciated the loneliness between heaven and earth but to me it felt disquieting… bleak. At least without the noisy ruckus of a ship to keep me occupied.
"They're coming," I said, my voice weak and almost lost in the empty void despite the power, coursing through my veins, "and they're fast. You'll be able to see them any minute now." I blinked in surprise when my vision was blocked by a wall of glittering gold. Instinctively, Viyara and Sera had herded Aurelia, Kana and me into a single spot and had begun circling us. If they had been human I would have felt flattered but the protectiveness I felt in Viyara's mind was tinged with more than just a streak of possessiveness, clamouring to keep the intruders away from what was hers. I could only assume it was the same with Sera. Oh boy, dragons really had their issues but now was hardly the time to confront them. Also, deep down I was decently confident that they already knew I was nobody's toy. Well, not theirs, at least.
"You can see them," Sera rumbled, her voice distorted by the magic she used to speak. "Your senses must be phenomenal. I can't discern a thing."
"I'm cheating," I replied with a shrug. "Trust me, they're there."
"I can see them as well," Viyara sent while her mind was already busy creating links between all of us. "And they aren't small, by any stretch of the imagination," she added, almost as an afterthought. She had shared her chat with Ignus on the flight here, so I knew what she meant.
"He said their mother was small," Sera corrected her. "Size is not purely hereditary. If she invested enough during their first years, they were bound to overtake her." When she turned around and faced us again I felt her thoughts, old and jagged like a broken mountain ridge, brush against mine. "Can you already… ah, there they are. Hells, what has she fed…" I couldn't quite follow the rest since an explosion of light, accompanied by a slightly delayed, earth shattering roar, seized my attention. Twin torrents of silver, almost the same colour as my tails, thundered through the air like intertwined lightning bolts and for a split second I entirely forgot who I was and that I didn't have much to fear. My jaws dropped as the scintillating flames crested and turned into a glowing, rolling wave that almost touched the horizon. I heard Kana's sharp intake of breath as she drifted closer, almost like a frightened puppy, and pressed herself into my side.
"It's going to be alright," I mumbled, as much for her benefit as mine, "it's not the first time I had to face a flying lizard," but they sure took me by surprise, every time I met a new one.
Quenda and Narros shared the inherent grace, the dangerous beauty of their race. They almost looked like the stereotypical dragon, with four sturdy legs, huge, bat like wings and long, slender necks, supporting triangular, serpentine heads with glowing eyes, shimmering like pools of molten silver, and much too impressive fangs. One of them had a row of horns, jutting from a ridge along its back, while the other's head was adorned with sleek, reddish protrusions, like the prongs of a crown, most likely a gift from its sire. Their scales weren't as reflective as Viyara's or even Sera's. They looked less like gems and more like a silvery alloy, polished steel or maybe even mithril, and radiated a cold, dangerous glow, palpable even from the distance. Their fangs had a silvery sheen to them, which made them look like chunks of ivory dipped in metal, and their bright eyes with slitted, catlike pupils were narrowed as they scrutinised our group with curiosity and respect. At least as far as our dragonesses were concerned. The rest of us they barely spared a glance.
When the flames had petered out, they spread their wings wide, a cloud of mana gushed form their bodies, the gentle breeze turned into a raging gust and they allowed the storm to carry them along, their bodies stiff, their long tails rigid like arrows. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Kana whispered at my side, her gaze glued to the approaching thunderstorm.
I squeezed her hand before I replied with more bravado than I felt: "Too late to chicken out. Let's just hope Ignus exaggerated when he called them confrontative. I'm so not looking forward to a squabble." Seriously. You'd expect I had become quite used to facing worse things, but there just was something bone rattling about a gargantuan, winged snake, heading your way, with teeth larger than your body. Especially if you didn't know the snake in question.
"Don't," I hissed scathingly. "It won't change a thing if you fight my battles." A deep, reverberating sound, like grinding rocks, tore through the air, as the two sparkling, winged bats circled around me like sharks in the water and started laughing. I was standing still, my wings spread wide, while Aurelia was hovering near Viyara's head, the fire, surrounding her, becoming hotter by the second, guarding Kana who had slumped on the dragoness' back in a daze. As you might imagine Ignus hadn't exaggerated, they really were a handful, and I… oh well, judge for yourselves…
The draconic duo made their way towards us, but the closer they came, the less they seemed like the stately, imposing figures I had expected. They were… frolicking, rising and diving through the air like playful dolphins and my anxiety dissipated. How bad could they be when they were acting like kids? My question was answered almost immediately, their voices resounding in the back of my mind, courtesy of Viyara's telepathy. Without it I would have been entirely oblivious to their entire conversation, which, in hindsight, might not have been the worst thing to happen.
As soon as they had come close enough for their thoughts to cover the distance, without an unreasonable expenditure of energy, they greeted Sera demurely, even reverently, and bombarded Viyara with an unending stream of questions. The poor girl couldn't even answer properly before they interrupted her again. At first I was amused and entirely content with leaving the dragons to figure everything out on their own. I even felt a lazy smile spread across my face as I pulled Kana closer to Viyara, planning on finding a comfortable seat near the base of her neck… and that was pretty much when everything went downhill, fast. Again, in hindsight, I probably should have known, considering Barzuk's insistence that his mistress shouldn't carry me, but in all honesty, I had simply forgotten.
When I attempted to settle down and pulled the winged hybrid along, the buzzing at the edge of my thoughts stopped immediately, only to be replaced by an icy silence that made Viyara's last reply wither in her mind. Perplexed I looked up, blinking owlishly, only to find myself as the new centre of the lizards' attention. And then, a deep, decidedly masculine voice, I still couldn't tell to whom it belonged, thundered through the telepathic connection, filled with outrage and a growing, flaming hot fury I simply couldn't understand. Kana froze and toppled over, the strength of the assault too much for her to bear directly. Even Aurelia hissed I surprise, her feathers ruffled, as she drifted closer to Viyara, her entire body tense.
"You dare," Narros rumbled, while another tongue of silvery fire spilled from his opened maw, this time close enough for me to feel the heat. On the plus side, I now knew he was the one with the crown like protrusions on his head, on the other, I didn't have the foggiest what I had done. "You dare ride your mistress?" His smouldering eyes turned to Viyara as he continued indignantly: "even if you value your slaves, you can't ever allow them to…"
"Excuse me," I growled, immediately pulling away from the dragoness and the gaping girl on her back. "What did you just call me?" A heavy silence descended, broken a heartbeat later when my grandmother roared and sent a pillar of golden fire through the sky, easily twice as large as the previous outburst of heat and flame. "Don't," I hissed, "it won't change a thing if you fight my battles." Reluctantly she obliged and flew out of the way, exposing me to the two dragons, who weren't further than a hundred metres away by now.
Their laughter set my teeth on edge and made my tails curl up, but it only served to make me madder. If I had been rested and relaxed I probably wouldn't have cared that much, but with Ahri gone, the shadow of the battle I had witnessed still looming above me and the general state of tension I was in, I just about had had enough with a single sentence. And if I had to beat some sense into them, I'd rather do so with nothing breakable around. Before, I had felt a bit like a rabbit, when the wolfs were breathing down its hole, a most natural reaction when face to face with a winged furnace, but as soon as my temper stirred, my faint anxiety turned into anger, my muted nervousness into a burning desire to knock them down peg or two. And this time I didn't have to worry about collateral damage, hurting my friends or simply screwing up. It might even turn out to be quite fun.
As much as I had been taken by surprise by their words, it was nothing compared to their reaction when Sera erupted on my behalf and I reigned her back in with nothing more than a few words. A tiny, bite sized morsel advancing on them with a rigid expression and not a spark of fear in her eyes also gave them reason to pause. I'd have wagered that they weren't used to humanoids challenging them openly but in this particular instance they'd have to learn.
"What did you just call me," I repeated while I quickly closed the distance between us. Surprisingly I didn't mind their fangs, which became larger with every inch I moved, nor their looming bulk, which was close to covering my entire field of vision. Over the weeks I had gotten used to Viyara and up close the two of them couldn't match her. Neither did they possess her arcane aura, nor her nigh transcendent presence. They really were just overgrown lizards.
I felt an incoherent stream of thoughts travel between the two of them, as their gaze flickered from Sera to Viyara to me and back again. Before they had a chance to figure out what was going on, though, I continued: "I'm sure I must have misheard. You didn't call me a slave, did you?" I wasn't yet allowing any trace of my power to escape my grasp, even though I was decently sure I could have put an end to this whole charade, if I had. Unfortunately it wouldn't do me any good. For one, they wouldn't see me as a normal creature anymore and thus would treat every other being they came across the same way, no matter what I was going to do now. So much for rationalisations. To be honest, I also felt like picking a fight.
When neither golden dragoness interrupted, the newcomers stilled and I felt their magic brush against me, searching, prodding for the reason why I was confident enough to face them. When they came up blank they shared a single glance and spread out, making sure that one was always behind me, no matter where I turned. I couldn't have cared less, their billowing breath, the scent of smouldering silver and the gusts, created by their wings, more than enough to know when they would close in. Instead of making a fool of myself and trying to keep them in my line of sight I focused on Narros and waited for an explanation. I didn't have to wait for long.
"I did. What else could you be? Your wings don't make you special. You're still just an earthbound, tiny creature and if Viyara has failed to put you in your place, I'll gladly teach you how to address us properly."
"By all means," I smirked, "don't hold back. But don't go tattling to mommy when your tail's in a twist. Although… from what I've heard, she's probably not much taller than me and wouldn't be of much help." I had struck a chord, proven by his enraged roar. They truly were young. Still, to their credit, they didn't rush in blindly. While the male tried to distract me with another boisterous display of fire and sound his sister rushed at me from behind, claws extended. She didn't try to kill me and consequentially didn't attempt to bite off my head but the impact would still have broken my bones and properly turned me into a groaning doll in her grasp. Unfortunately I wasn't that easy to get a hold of. The much larger, much older and rather more terrifying specimen I had danced with could have told them a thing or two about it, if he had still been around.
A flash of light, a wave of magic enveloped me and I was gone, only to reappear behind Quenda, my wings a scintillating curtain behind me. Disoriented the dragons swerved, searching for me. With a broadening grin I spoke up again: "put me in my place, you say. Why not? You might just be surprised where it actually is. Watch, watch and learn. Some ponds are deeper than you can imagine and it's not always healthy to stick your nose in." Before my last words had reached them I moved. With a twist of my mind I allowed the power from my core to surge forth, to dance across my skin and turn me into a spectre of light and magic. "It might just get bitten off."
I felt the hidden streams of mana in the air, tasted their presence, their life on the wind and heard the flickering, inconsequential swirls their wills caused in the lattice of the world as my vision turned into a reflective landscape of silver and blue. With another thought my own will expanded and clamped down on the weave, shutting them off completely, as if a vice was squashing their carbuncles. They froze, they froze and they fell, the magic they needed to keep their gargantuan bodies aloft nothing but a memory they still clung to frantically, while the crushing waves below came ever closer.
Arrogance, curiosity and pride turned into confusion, quickly followed by fear when they realised that they couldn't even move properly, their tails swaying sluggishly from left to right. The distance they gained by the second didn't help either. My will simply wouldn't weaken as they tumbled away from me, a pitiful roar the only trace they left behind. I counted silently in my head, watching with satisfaction a they grew smaller and smaller, almost like sparkling coins, vanishing into a well.
"You're not going to let them die," Sera asked. The others knew me well enough to already know.
"No… but it's a good 25 seconds until they reach the ocean and that's without the resistance their wings provide. I reckon we have a minute. Plenty of time to think I would."
"They'll tear their wings off if they're forced to break the fall without much space to navigate." 17,18,19..
"Don't worry, they'll still have a few hundred metres… I just want them to remember that feeling. Helplessness. That's how most of us feel when they're faced with a dragon, especially when they act like this, and it sucks. A few more seconds will do wonders for their character." 36,37,38…
"Are you sure? Don't you think they're going to hold a grudge?" I shrugged.
"No… do you? Dragons respect power and I'm not going to hurt them."
"I don't know them. Not all dragons act like Viyara and her family. Some are downright nasty and cowardly."
"Ignus wouldn't have sent them here, if that had been the case. But I guess we'll know soon enough. I just released them. Let's see what's going to happen."