Chapter 3:
Athena
Don’t come back.
This phrase was never said to me, but it kept rushing through my head as my feet hit the sandy earth below. From the outside world, Dobromia was nothing like I remembered it to be. The soil below was all sandy and dirty: crisped a warm red from the double sun’s rays. Spires of rock stretched on into the vast field outside The Tower.
The heat was immense in my lungs, like swallowing scalding water. Because of this, it wasn’t long before I grew tired.
I’d had such an itch to leave The Tower that I hadn’t made a plan for what to do once it happened. Part of me wondered if I should have bit the bullet and cozied up to one of the shifters after all. Flirted and pressed my breasts together to get their attention; become a breeder or a caretaker for their dragonlings like the rest of my crew had done.
I reached into the satchel Aurlauc had given me and referenced his makeshift map. He had highlighted some landmarks to let me know I was going the right way. Head north.
My legs marched until the sun rose and fell and then I came upon a wall of stone. I tried my best to walk around it, but the cliffside was immense and I knew I had to scale it. It was probably a cinch for the dragon’s, considering the wings and all. But I just looked like an idiot.
I attempted to scale the mountain and continually alarmed myself as my screams of, “Whoa!” and “Gah!” echoed through the rocky field every time I lost my footing.
As daylight cast over the sky I grew exhausted from the immense scaling. I took shelter on the side of the mountain. There was no way I would risk sleeping and falling to my doom on the side of the cliff, but there were enough crevices that I figured I could protect myself from any creatures that might be lurking nearby.
The cave I crawled into was only tall enough for me to sit in. I stretched out against the wall behind me and opened my bag of supplies with a loud sigh. I picked at the grain to fill my empty stomach and it groaned and bubbled as the solids hit the acid in my body.
I was already running low on everything.
My ears perked up without my will and my eyes quickly darted to the distance below the mountain. I searched the sky for any sign of a shifter and couldn’t see anything. Just a deep aqua sky.
I grit my teeth together and stood from the crevice. Obviously, this was a bad resting place. I stepped out from the deep red rock and set a slippery hand on an outcropping rock.
“What are you doing?” came a voice that was so sudden and jarring, it nearly knocked me off the mountainside.
I pressed my eyes shut and took a moment for myself. Just one moment where I was still free. Where no shifter had come to return me to The Tower. Then I opened my eyes and looked immediately to my right where a shifter was flapping his wings, floating next to my body.
“Climbing,” I snapped my answer and the shifter tilted his head back with a smile.
“I can see that,” he said slowly, his eyes casting over my actions as I climbed up a step higher.
“Lost?” he asked, a hint of something smug in his breath.
“I am obviously from here,” I said with little enthusiasm, barely acknowledging the shifter.
The sarcasm was as thick as a fog.
I must have looked strange to him, I thought. Out of place. Like seeing a bird land on a motorcycle.
“Where’s your wings, then?” he asked with a laugh as his brow cocked skyward.
“Retracted,” I said as though it were entirely true. “Problem?”
“Just that you’re lying,” he said casually.
I looked over at him and watched the irritating smile creep up his thin lips. He had short blond hair, a strong face, and deep-set blue eyes. He would have been handsome, I thought, if it weren’t for his eyes. They unsettled me by looking so out of place to the rest of his body. Like there was a darkness behind them.
“Think what you like,” I dismissed and focused on my task. I took another climb upward and grunted with the effort.
The broad-shouldered shifter had yellow scales that traveled down his body and bare chest and I stole a simple glance. He squished his lips to the side of his square jaw and casually informed me, “If you were a Weredragon, you’d be able to sense the tentacle coming out to grab you.”
My eyes went wide as saucers as I looked down and watched as a slithering orange tentacle emerged from the wall and grabbed me hard around the calf.
I screamed as I lost my grip and whipped my gun out from the band of my pants, aiming it fiercely at the creature wrapped around my leg. I hesitated as it pulsed it suckers against my skin, a hot white pain rushing through my body in a panic. If I shot the stupid thing, it’d drop me and in the best case, I’d have a couple broken limbs. Worst case, death.
I continued letting out embarrassing exclamations as the creature began sucking me toward the mountainside.
The yellow shifter flapped his thick, bony wings so they shimmered against the light and he reached down to grab my arm.
“Hold on,” he said with little emotion as he pulled my body up toward him, his free hand grabbing the tentacle and ripping it from the wall. Thick, white goo spewed from the flailing limb of the creature and the shifter tossed it to the far ground below. The blood, or whatever it was, burned against my leg and I breathed in through clenched teeth.
“That hurt!” I screamed and slapped the dragon across the face.
He blinked in surprise and then busted out into laughter as he hoisted me across his shoulder, flying us both up to the top of the mountain at terrifying speeds.
Dobromia was a planet that worked like a staircase. There seemed to be endless mountains that, once scaled, simply led to more flat grounds. The higher we went north, the more abandoned cities I spotted.
Setting me on the ground, the yellow shifter backed away from me and watched me like an insect.
“That was graceful,” he quipped and crossed his arms.
“Thanks for nothing,” I spat and fell to my knees, inspecting my leg with a bruised ego. The blood of the creature must have been acidic in nature, because it left a sweltering ring of bubbling burns across my calf.
I looked down at it with narrowed brows and then shot daggers at the shifter. “Look what you did!”
“Hey!” the shifter yelled defensively; angrily. “You’re lucky it didn’t eat you alive! What were you thinking, scaling those ridiculous mountains, anyway?”
I seethed. “Well, obviously I don’t have wings, so what else would you have me do?”
“Stay on the ground?” he snapped as though it were the simplest answer in the world. “What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be back at the palace underground with the rest of the slaves?”
I blinked and snapped my eyes open quickly at the sentiment. “We are humans. Not slaves.”
He shrugged playfully. “Not here.”
I shook my head and averted my gaze back to my leg before rifling through the satchel of supplies. Aurlauc was kind enough to include several salves and I immediately began spreading one over the burns, cursing and yelling as I did so.
The cream hit my wound like alcohol on a fresh cut and I let out a guttural cry.
The shifter watched me silently and must have wondered what the hell I was doing to myself.
“Where were you going, anyway?” he asked, his eyes never leaving my salve.
I didn’t look at him, nor did I answer his question. For whatever reason, this made him laugh. He walked circles around me and finally crouched down beside me to inspect my leg.
“You’ll live,” he said as though I were making too big of a deal out of the burn. “Wrap it up and you’ll be good as new.”
I breathed in deeply and let out a loud breath, indicating I would no longer be speaking to him. I wrapped my leg in a ripped piece of my cloak and tied it tight. I stood shakily and tried not to apply pressure to the wound, but even the weight of my small frame caused me to collapse back onto the ground.
“You can’t walk like that,” he said simply. “Make camp with me,” he offered as though it were nothing. “I’ll make sure nothing eats you.”
A wave of sick crawled through my stomach at his phrasing and I looked up at him as though to ask if he were being serious. He was.
“Absolutely not,” I scoffed and looked away from him.
“Ah, just make camp with me,” he laughed and scooped me up in his arms. “You have no idea what you’re doing. Let me help.”
“No!” I screamed and began pushing against him.
In a rude attempt to give me what I wanted, the yellow shifter dropped me to the ground and began to laugh. “Happy now?” he asked.
I steeled a gaze up at him with utter hatred and scooted on my butt across the scorched earth below so that I was several feet away from him.
“Oh, come on; I’m just trying to help you.”
“Why?” I said, narrowing my eyes scornfully at the man.
He raised a brow in surprise and watched me carefully. “Because I don’t desire you to die?”
“Look,” I said with a breath. “That’s super nice and all, but I’m not big on the whole Weredragon race, got it?”
Then he snapped his fingers, as though it was all coming to him. He ran a hand through his short blond hair and pointed my way. “You’re the girl from The Tower.”
“My reputation precedes me,” I snorted.
“We should come to an agreement, you and I,” he offered.
“Should we?” I repeated with disdain. “Well, obviously you are deaf. Because I don’t make deals with shifters.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because, by your very name it should be clear that you shouldn’t be trusted. You shift to whatever you have to in order to accomplish your goals and you don’t care who you’re taking advantage of in the meantime.”
“Actually,” he said emphatically, crouching down before me once more, “my name is Vaikrand, but I understand you’re embellishing for dramatic effect. That’s what humans do, isn’t it?”
I turned from him, pulling my legs up to my chest and then whipping around quickly to grab my belongings and hold them to my chest as well. “Go away,” I snarled.
“You might die here if I leave you,” he warned, fluttering with his wings so he now stood in front of me in the blink of an eye.
I turned my head to the side and said nothing.
“Don’t let a stubborn streak cost you your breath,” he said with a raised brow.
I stared off into the distance. This guy doesn’t give up. It was like being at a bar with a guy who kept insisting he buy me a drink. I remembered a time where my sister Marina and I had gone to a nightclub where a tall man with long brown hair kept trying to buy us drinks. I had rolled my eyes and declined, where Marina tried a more polite approach to send him away. Eventually we told him what we wanted to drink and then slipped into the bathroom and out the back door, laughing the whole way.
The memory of her made my stomach drop and I had the sudden feeling like I was falling.
“Suit yourself,” came the final words from Vaikrand before he brought his wings in tight to his body and flew off into the distance. I watched him stubbornly until his body became a spec in the distance and mustered the strength to stand once more.
“Now what?” I whispered to no one.