THREE
Time continued to pass strangely under the layers and layers of rock that made up my new home. Every day seemed to drag on in endless absorbing of facts, theories and reading, but at the same time speed by too fast to get anything done.
I wanted to visit the other humans, see how they were and if they found comfort in the momentary reprieve I had earned them. I was still determined to get the Queen to dismiss them once and for all, but it was clear that she was currently in a rocky place with her Court, and would be focusing more on the survival of her people than what to do with some lowly humans cowering in a field of the dragons’ making.
But still, occasionally I found myself wondering how Avros was doing, and the others. I just hoped they knew I wasn’t dead, and that I was doing everything I could.
It had been so simple when I had been reading the books. The dragons clearly had the moral high ground and were the characters to root for. But now, the narrative had been changed and I found myself torn between the peasants, who were clearly mistreated by both the dragons and the royals, and the shapeshifters that were on the verge of extinction. Whoever it was who had undone my Abuela’s work clearly enjoyed murky grey areas and imperfect heroes.
I personally, was not a fan.
“Now, which two of these would you combine to make someone sleep?”
I looked dubiously up at Dwyllverys. She had come to visit Myrik’s abode, and instead of the two of them discussing the many new preparations the Queen was ordering, she was taking the time to teach me herbology. Which was…strange to say the least.
“Do we really think this is the best use of my time?” I tried to say as politely as possible.
But the albino dragon’s face didn’t even flicker. “Do you think either of us would bother if it wasn’t?”
I wanted to object, and even opened my mouth to do so, but realized she was right.
“That’s better,” she continued. “But perhaps a little bit of explanation would help.” She sat down across from me, but still was so incredibly tall, and elegant, that it was easy to think she was a doll, each and every detail of her hand carved to perfection. “Do you know why I am the only woman of the Queen’s Court?”
“No,” I answered honestly. In the book I had read, there had been several. In fact, as I tried to think back on it, I don’t remember gender being all that important to the story before. And definitely it was nothing like it was now.
“It was a slow transition. A few generations ago, the Queen had just as many men as women. We worked together, side by side, as equals. But as the years passed, we lost more and more of our numbers, and the women Champions became too valuable to risk. So they stayed within our holds. We became the guardians of hatcheries and nesting grounds and nurseries, until eventually the Court was filled with only men.” She smiled, and her teeth were as sharp as they were blindingly white. “Then I came along. At first, they argued that I was too great a resource to risk, just like my predecessors. They denied me training, even the trial by Dragonfire. Nothing I could do could change their vote. In fact,” her smile grew a bit softer, “only Myrik and the Prince argued my side. Eventually, the Queen offered me a compromise. She said she would allow me into her Court, but I would have to apprentice under the herbalist, to study his art before he could pass and all of it could be lost.
“And I took it. It was better than nothing, I figured. And I wanted more than anything to serve my Queen and my people to my full ability. But I could tell the others did not take me as an equal. They saw me as some sort of charity case; the Queen picking a new favorite now that her children had all died.”
I frowned, and tried to compare that kind of disrespect with the same expressions I had seen on the Court when she had arrived. “Something had to change then,” I guessed. “Because when they look at you now, I see fear.”
“How perceptive!” she said after a peal of melodic laughter. “Yes, something did indeed change. We were not always the last of the fey. There was another race holding on at the edges of survival. You’ve probably heard of them in your legends on the Ilse, men who grow as tall as houses and can throw a man across an entire forest?”
“You mean Giants?” I supplied.
“Ah yes, that is the colloquial term for them. Giants. We had never much gotten along, but it was in our best interest to form an alliance, so that is exactly what our Queen did. But, just when we were ready to move them into our homes and protect them from the threat of the ever-more-violent royals, our Advisor’s scouts informed us that they had sold us out.
“There was mass panic, as you can imagine. And much shouting from the men that surrounded me. They knew that if we refused the Giants, we would tip our hand and they would attack us full force. There was no way we could survive an onslaught from both the humans and our distant fey kin. So, we let them in.
“We welcomed them with open arms, and threw a grand feast. I wish you could have seen it, it was truly a magnificent affair. There weren’t that many of them, less than fifty, so it was easy to make sure each one had enough to eat.
“And eat they did. And eat, and eat, and eat. If you thought a dragon’s intake was impressive, you should have seen how much they could shove down into their gullet. It would have been amazing if it was not so tragic.”
“What happened?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“They all died.” My eyes snapped wide and Dwyllverys’ face hardened into a stony mask. “Forty-four men, five women, and one pubescent.” I couldn’t describe the look on her face other than something that frightened me in its utter ruthlessness. “You see, I had learned much from the herbalist in my years as his apprentice, including what poisons were effective to each species. With one meal, I killed an entire species.
“From that moment, the men no longer cried that I was too valuable. They were fine with me going on missions, if only it meant they would not have to be near me.”
“They fear you,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“But what of your responsibility to have children?”
She smiled wanly at that. “I don’t have that anymore. Killing another fey is an incredible responsibility in our culture, and I single handedly destroyed the last of a people. As penance, my line ends with me as well. By wiping them out of existence, so too have I erased my own family’s future.
“You may look down on this as a woman’s weapon, compared to your fairly liberated Ilse. But these same plants that you are looking down upon freed me and saved my people.”
I stared openly at the albino dragon, trying to picture it. And the strange thing was, I could. I liked to think I wouldn’t make that decision, but if it came down to the survival of my family over those who had betrayed us…it was hard to say.
I sat quietly for a moment, ordering my thoughts, before leaning forward. “Which two did you say I would use for sleep?”
*
I collapsed face-first in my bed, mouth full of blanket but I couldn’t care less.
I never thought I could learn so much, but it was safe to say, I had truly run the dragon-academic gauntlet. After herbology, Myrik had decided I needed to learn the basics of hand-to-hand combat. And when he found out that I already knew a lot of the very beginner’s stuff—left over from self-defense courses and a brief stint in high school studying Judo—he quickly escalated me to tougher stuff.
So every night, I went to bed sore both in body and mind, and every morning Myrik would dictate to me what I had done in my sleep.
I had no idea how my body was running since apparently, I was spending all my non-waking hours trying to turn the Advisor’s house upside down, but I woke up each morning feeling like I had gotten a full night’s rest. Even Myrik was beginning to slow down, with dark circles etching themselves under his eyes. Maybe this was some of the gift that Abuela had written about?
Speaking of that, I should probably try to read at least a little bit of her before I drifted off and let my inner thrasher out. Groaning, I forced myself up onto my elbows and reached for where I had left it last on my nightstand.
I flipped through some pages, figuring I should find out what was in the gap between where I left off and the whole ‘gifts’ passage. But, just as before, I found myself getting distracted and narrowing in on a paragraph before I found my spot.
It is unfortunate that when you first find this, you will no doubt be alone. I didn’t find a Shepherd until a year or so after I had returned from my first story. It was then that they explained to me that I hadn’t binged out on some fever dream, and that everything had been real.
I still don’t quite understand how, but our world is not the only one darling. We’re all honeycombed together, related realities with utterly different rules. We’re in separate planes, divided by magic, or science, or whatever you want to call it, but each one is as real as the other.
Us Shepherds, we have the ability to travel through fixed points to these other realms, and help guide them along the way. I do not know why it is so easy for all of us to stray from our paths, but perhaps violence and warfare is an even easier addiction to fall into than we think.
That is something for a philosopher to worry about. For now, I just want you to know that there are hundreds of us out there, and they will find you even if you don’t know how to find them. There is a purpose, and a reason for everything. Remember that.
I wanted to keep reading. Every moment spent looking over this journal made me feel that much closer to my Abuela. But I also could feel it instantly tugging me down, a weight in a pool of exhaustion that I couldn’t fight. Sighing, I set the journal to the side and let myself sink into my next nightmare.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock. That’s the sound of the clock counting down how long you have until I take away your precious little dragons. Or…at least it would be if this backwards world had any clocks.”
I didn’t need to turn to know who that voice belonged to. It had been many days since the faceless man had anything new to see, but I could immediately tell that this was different from all the rehashed night terrors of what was lurking in the shadows.
This was another direct visit.
“For supposedly having an entire army at your whim, you certainly have plenty of time to taunt a twenty something nobody who has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Aw, trying to play stupid, are we? Well, stupider. That would be adorable if it wasn’t so predictable.” The form grew closer to me, and I took two generous steps away. We were in a cave, and it took me several moments to realize it was the entrance to Myrik’s house. Quickly, I snapped my eyes shut before the faceless man could see anything else and deduce where I was. “What’s this? You figured out that trick so soon? I’m impressed. Normally it takes more than that for someone to realize that I’m observing everything their dream sphere tells me.”
“Dream sphere?” I echoed.
“That’s my little name for it. It’s got all sorts of other ones though. The subconscious, the dream realm, le petit mort. Its name doesn’t matter as much as it is the means of how I’m able to visit all of you little Shepherds who try to visit this realm and ruin everything I’ve worked to set up.”
I frowned, realizing that this strange entity was giving me an awful lot of valuable information. There was no reason for him to do that, unless he was absolutely sure that I would never live long enough to use it against him.
“You’re here,” I gasped, panic flooding through me. “You’re distracting me.”
His response was only to whistle. “Aren’t you just full of surprises, little miss. I doubt you’ll survive this, but if you do, I’ll enjoy cooking up all the different ways I can crush the life out of you.”
My temper sparked at that. I felt like a twig that was under too much pressure, and his words snapped my last ounces of restraint. I stalked right to him, closing the distance that I had put so much care into cultivating, and grabbed the collar of his shirt. Teeth bared, I yanked him to my face, until his blurred, shifting visage was less than a breath away from mine.
“Stroke your own ego all you want, asshole. Because when I wake up, it’s me who’s going to be hunting you.”
And with that, I shoved him back with all my might.
He went sailing, through walls, through time, through perception, and I fell right back into my body. I didn’t give myself a single second to recover. Instead, I bolted straight to Myrik’s room and kicked open his door.
“What!?” he cried, sitting bolt upright like someone had shot him. He blinked blearily when he realized it was only me, and checked the hourglass at his bed. “It’s empty. You slept?”
“Not quite,” I answered, my face hardening. The moment we had known was coming, the dark cloud that had been hovering over me ever since that disastrous night when the temple collapsed, everything I had feared for what felt like forever, was finally here. “It’s time.”
He was out of bed, throwing robes and clothes on faster than I had ever seen him. It was only belatedly that I realized he was dressed in only his underclothes, and while normally I would have enjoyed the show, my mind was hundreds of miles away. Or more accurately, hundreds of miles up.
Myrik strode past me, crossing to another room that I hadn’t visited before. I heard the faint beating of wings, and saw him remove a crow from a cage and whisper in its ear. Once he was done, he opened one of the few windows in the strange place he lived, and let the bird fly away.
“Dress yourself. The raven will make it to the Queen within minutes. It is paramount we gather at least some of our forces as quickly as possible. I have no doubt that those opposed to you will object to all this until the first soldier is spotted, and by then it’ll be too late.”
“What are we trying to convince them to do?” I called as I rushed back to my room and threw on the most uncomplicated dress I had been given. “So much has changed from when we first sat at the planning table.”
“Simple,” Myrik answered, arriving at my door just in time to yank the strings at the back of my clothing tight enough to keep the top up, and then tying them into a hasty knot. “We see exactly what kind of protections our extra precautions provide, and if for one moment it seems like it won’t be enough, we’ll retreat.”
I swallowed hard, but nodded as he picked me up and whisked out the door, jumping down the stairwell to land squarely on the floor below. To battle, it seemed. I found myself praying internally that we all survived.
But I just couldn’t see how that was possible.