Chapter Twenty-One
Theo
We were on the edge of falling when we found ourselves tied to the castle walls. Everything was falling, and this time it was for real. I looked beside me, and there was the body of my father, right next to the many bodies of the king’s army that had died from starvation.
It was a hell that burst on the whole of us, and I guess it was the impulsivity of my rage that caused all of that—and the king’s malice and dark need to have everything perish.
It had started when we were on the way to the king’s castle. From far away, I could feel the heat in the air getting hotter the closer we were to the castle. Usually, when we got closer to the castle on wings, we would see the high walls. This time, we saw fire coming out of a dragon’s breath. And it wasn’t my father’s breath that was fiery but rather the king’s.
I flew as fast as I could, shooting my whole body through the air and toward the coal-black dragon. Elise was behind me, fueled with a rage similar to mine and with the need to save her mother. We had decided to split up once we reached the castle, and so she went through the back to find her mother.
I pushed myself toward the king, and from afar I could see my father’s dragon body staggering. Something was wrong. He wasn’t as strong as he was back at the village. Suddenly, the sharp teeth of the king plunged into my father’s neck. He fell back on the walls, breaking them, and his body disappeared from view. He had shrunk, turning back into his human form.
I thought he died, and so I let the anger flow through me. I attacked the king, lifting him off the ground and away from the castle. I had to get him as far away from there so as to distract him from Elise.
He struggled to escape my grip, and he managed to slip from my grasp after flapping his wings hard. I found myself falling into the forests and saw him descend toward me, like a meteor falling from the sky. The fire from his breath burned the trees that were around me.
His face leaped toward my neck with his jaw wide open. A dark red liquid was dripping from his sharp teeth, but it wasn’t blood. As I dodged his attacks on the muddy grass of the forests, some of that red liquid fell on my arms and burned. Not only did the liquid burn, but when I glanced at my burning shoulders, my scaly red skin was turning to the same color it is in my human form.
I rolled on the ground again as his fiery breath was drawing close to my body. I shot a blaze of fire on the tall trees behind him. They fell on his back, and for a moment, I had a leeway to fly above him.
It didn’t stop him for long. Seconds after I started flying, I heard his wings flapping and him shooting fire behind me. He was very close and much faster than me in flight. I had to maneuver my way through the skies, rocketing upwards when he was inches from me. With all the power in me, I flapped my wings and sped up. I looked behind me, and he wasn’t there. He had left the chase.
I immediately looked at the castle, afraid that he might have started going for Elise, but he wasn’t there. Instead, they were both high above me, two blurs. Elise’s golden wings shone in the skies, and the king was behind her, chasing her as she flew away with her mother on her back. I shot up to meet them.
Just before his teeth plunged into Elise’s body, I blocked the king’s way, and we both fell as she fled away. He was stronger than I remembered and I was much weaker than I thought I’d be. And so the fight between us continued.
I expected Elise to be there any moment. We would be able to take him down. I waited and waited, stalling as my whole body began to give up on me. I was hurt, every limb of my body.
When we both fell, the king hooked his claws in my left wing, tearing it halfway from my back. I couldn’t fly anymore, and so there was no way I could extend the fight or escape.
I needed to summon every bit of bravery from within me and face him with whatever strength I had left, and there was very little left. We fell very close to the castle walls. He was still trying to pierce through my body with his teeth.
The thought came to my mind, and I remembered how my father returned to his human form upon being bit by the king. It definitely had to do something with the dark red liquid that was on his teeth. I knew I had to do my best to avoid being bitten. Whenever he would get closer, I would shoot as much fire as I could to keep him away.
The power of my mind was intensely higher than that of my body, so much that it backfired on me. Something went wrong with my thoughts, something unexpected. I saw a bright light flashing before my eyes. It lingered for some time, I feared that it would stop me from seeing him. I expected him to take me down any moment, and so I just began flailing my arms and shooting fiery breath everywhere until the flash ceased and I saw my mother.
She was smiling and coming close to my face. Her face was whiter, and her eyes were glowing like the fierce morning sunshine. I knew it was some sort of illusion, a trick my mind was playing on me. I shook my head, trying to kick the thought out of my brain but in vain.
Things began to grow bigger once the image of my mother went away, and I was growing smaller. I saw his dark face retreat from my neck, the dark red liquid dripping on my body along with some of my blood. A blur rushed to conquer my mind, growing thicker by the second.
The blur stayed for a long time. I was barely able to hear or see. I saw a glimmer of golden wings and the dark red liquid again. Elise, in her dragon form, fell from above. I crawled to clear away so as to not be crushed by her. I was in my human form, and when she fell, she was in her human form, too. She drew a deep breath from the depths of her lungs, and her eyes met mine as we both lay on the grass of the forests, her mother’s dead, broken body crumpled nearby.
I could comprehend only little of what was happening, and that little wasn’t pleasant to my mind. He had defeated us again, and this time it was the end. I reached with my hand to touch Elise’s hands one last time. She crawled toward me, holding my hands, not tightly, for the strength in her was fading faster than mine was. Our fingers intertwined, our eyes locked, and finally they closed.