THE FINAL HAPTER
I looked up at the grey door flush with the mountain wall. My body was still sore from my goodbye with the Prince, but it still didn’t seem like enough. I wanted a hundred more nights with my golden dragon, not a slavery sentence with a manipulative advisor.
And yet, here I was.
At least the Queen trusted me to deliver myself to his custody of my own volition. I thought briefly of running, but then what hope would Avros and those trapped in the pens have? No. I had to endure and survive if I wanted to save them. Besides, that’s what heroes did, right? Lived through terrible tortures and tribulations to do the right thing? This was mine, and I would not shirk from my responsibilities.
I took another deep breath and slowly walked forward. Despite my resolution to follow my path, I was still somewhat hesitant as I wrapped my knuckles against the strange material of the door.
It took several moments for it to swing open, but when it did, it was Myrik himself who greeted me. Instead of his ornate robes I was used to seeing him in, he wore only a grey tunic, which hung loosely from his frame, and black trousers tucked into his boots. I was taken aback by his appearance for a moment, but I recovered quickly enough.
“You’re late,” he said flatly.
“No, I’m not.” I countered. “You never gave me a specific hour, and I would have no way to track that as it is. You’re merely stating that to try to establish power over me by making me feel like I violated a rule I couldn’t possibly know about.”
I was surprised when it was a crooked smile that he responded with. “Good. You’re not as naïve as you present yourself.” He stepped aside and gestured for me to step in. I complied, and saw basically just a tube of stone stretching forward, barely lit by weak glow stones.
“Who decorated your place? The local executioner?”
“Cute attempt at humor, but dragons have not had death as a penalty in thousands of years.”
Huh, well that was ahead of even my time.
“This way,” he said, striding forward.
I had to walk double time to keep up. The narrow tunnel was just barely large enough for Myrik to fit through, so I knew that this couldn’t be the layout of his whole abode.
Sure enough, after about five minutes or so, the tube suddenly widened and we stepped out into what looked like a cross between a military base and the world’s most well-stocked library.
There were books and scrolls everywhere. On shelves. On desks. On displays. On weapon racks. If there was a space, it was loaded with parchment. It was ironically a pretty big fire hazard when you considered a dragon lived here.
“Wow…” I murmured in appreciation before I could stop myself. At least if I was going to be imprisoned here, I wouldn’t run out of any entertainment.
“I’m glad you approve,” Myrik said, striding over to the largest desk in the room and pouring some sort of liquid from a pitcher into his tankard and taking a long drink. My stomach felt sick, already imagining the disgusting, degrading things he might have me do. He had already betrayed his Prince, and showed once again how underhanded he was.
“For your time here I expect you to read at least one book a day. You’ll find parchment and ink, I want you to write your learnings there. You need not detail everything down, just anything you might find important.” He took another deep drink, and then he sat. “Your room is on the upper floors, I will show that to you later. I don’t care much of what you do, but I do expect you to be up at a reasonable hour for your self-study.”
To say I was confused was an understatement. I stood there dumbly for several long moments, trying to figure out exactly what he was saying.
“What?” he asked after I stood there gawking for an awkward amount of time. “Don’t tell me the Prince’s precious spit fire is finally out of inane retorts?”
My voice was small when I answered, but I felt so turned around and uncertain. “Do you mean you aren’t going to…to uh…”
“Rape you?” he asked bitterly. “No. Of course not. This may come as a shock to you, but I am of the old tradition that I like all my partners in bed to be enthusiastic about their time there.” Another drink. What was going on? “Despite what you think of me, I’m quite a catch around here, you know. There was a time that ladies would compete for my affection.” He slammed the tankard down and I jumped. “But now those ladies are all dead.”
What in the hell was I supposed to say to that?!
Apparently nothing, because he kept talking. Was he drunk? I felt like he was drunk, but there was still that piercing intelligence to him. The only thing that seemed to change was an almost palpable type of hurt simmering just below his surface. “But that’s why you’re here. Like the Prince, I believe you are going to save my people. But unlike him, I won’t let the ideas of nobility, honor and protocol get in my way. You are a force, girl, and I intend to fully unleash you. Starting with these.”
He tossed something at me, and I reacted before I could think, catching my knapsack that I had long forgotten in some corner of the Prince’s home.
“My books!” I gasped, hugging them to me.
“Yes, I imagine you haven’t had much time to look them over, so I want you to read them now. In full. And unlike the other reports I want you to write down everything that could possibly be important about them.”
My brow furrowed. “Why? Can’t you read them yourself?”
His mouth hardened into a thin line. “No, actually. I can’t even open them.”
I looked from my messenger bag, to him, and back to my bag. “You can’t open them?”
He let out a sigh. “Your training is going to be truly tedious if you insist on repeating everything I say like a parrot. No, I cannot open them. It’s as if the cover weighs more than a mountain, and burns to the touch.” He laughed drily. “A dragon getting burned, can you imagine?”
“No, not really.”
He gave me another intense look. “Go. Read, and report. I expect you to finish with those before the week has finished and the new moon arrives.”
“Uh, where do you want me to go? I’ve never been here before.”
He gestured. “Just somewhere else. Explore, be nosy. I have things to attend to and I don’t have time to hold your hand.”
Despite having ‘things to do’ he simply took another long drink and sat back in his chair.
“Oh, and mortal, if you do well enough, I might let you visit your precious Prince.” He paused, and sniffed a few times. “But for the spirits’ sake, wash yourself before you sit on any of my furniture.”
Still a bit in shock, I edged past him into the sprawling mansion of the written word. My eyes glanced to the covers I could see, and surprisingly I was able to read a fair amount of them. Honestly, I had not been expecting them to be in any sort of discernable English.
I picked my way through the organized chaos, trying to comprehend all the revelations that had just piled on.
Myrik wasn’t going to try to breed me. In fact, he seemed to have no interest in my body at all. His goals were actually the same as the Prince’s, but his methodology was obviously completely different. How could two people on the same side still be so intrinsically opposed?
Although it wasn’t the best situation, and I was still locked in residence with an absurdly handsome yet insulting bastard, I felt so relieved. For the first time since this whole Dragonfire situation began, I felt like I didn’t have to worry. Myrik had no desire to hurt me. The Prince was well. I was still moving forward on my quest.
I would live through this arrangement, with significant less trauma than I had expected.
I floated on that realization for the next hour as I wandered the entire layout of the carved in home. There was a staircase not far from where Myrik was still sitting, drinking, and reviewing his scrolls, and up it I found two rooms. One had a massive bed, piled high with pillows, heated stones, and other finery. That was a master room if I ever saw one.
The next one was much more practical, with a simple bed and wardrobe in the corner. That had to be mine. I dropped my knapsack there, but still fished my Abuela’s book out. My fingers traced lovingly along the aged binding. I knew I was probably foolish for not having read it in full yet, but I had had a lot on my plate. Maybe some of my persistent questions could have been answered already, but soon I would be able to rectify that.
But some questions it couldn’t answer. Like if Abuela was here now, would she be proud of me? Would she see how much I had done, how hard I had fought, and smile at me with that specific grandma smile that every young child loved? Or would she be frustrated that I had yet to read her instructions that she had taken so much time to create for me. Would she be angry?
I supposed worrying about such things was a pointless endeavor. Abuela was dead. The best I could do by her was to keep moving forward, always learning, always growing. Setting the book on my pillow, I murmured a quick prayer to her favorite patron saint, then went back to wandering.
I found what looked like a study, another trove of books, and an armory. From there, I returned to the bottom floor and poked a bit. It took me a while, but eventually I found what had to be the washroom in the very back of the cave.
The door was otherwise unmarked, but when I stepped inside, there was a few feet of smooth stone, and then a carefully hewn circle of mildly bubbling water. This had to be somehow siphoned off of the same stream that Gael had showed me—although I thought I remembered him mentioning that they kept their sewage water completely separated from their drinking supply, but the memory was fuzzy.
I shook my head in disbelief. That seemed so long ago, but it had to be less than a month. Once more I was struck about how much time I was spending in a place that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
I set those thoughts to the side. They wouldn’t do anyone any good right now. Instead, I focused on loosening the ties of my dress, then pulling it from my form. Bites and bruises dotted my body, and I ran my fingers along them lovingly. Each tiny little blip of pain was a pleasant reminder of the send-off the Prince and I had enjoyed in each other. Now that I knew that I would be able to see him again, there was much less melancholy staining that particular memory.
Sighing, I slipped into the water. It was warm, and almost deliciously sinful against my exhausted form. I had been going for so long, always training, or having an impassioned romp, that it was amazing to just slow down and enjoy something that I had taken for granted so often in my own timeline.
I floated there for ages, feeling my mind slipping off into a relaxed state of no thoughts or worry. Something I hadn’t been able to achieve in years. I closed my eyes, but instead of seeing blankness, I was yanked to a fully colored scene.
I was at the top of the mountain again, hovering, formless and all seeing. I dropped to the ground in less than the blink of the eye, and I was standing before the shimmering entrance of a massive cave. Somehow, I knew that shimmering was a glamour, appearing as a rock wall to all those who did not know of its existence. What I didn’t know was where the knowledge came from, or why I was so certain of it.
But my attention was pulled from the hidden entrance by the sound of quiet thunder. It wasn’t booming, or roiling, but steadily persistent and growing louder by the moment.
Wait. That wasn’t thunder. That was—
“Footsteps,” I whispered to myself.
And just as I spoke the words, a wave of human soldiers crested the line of trees, coming in wave after wave. They walked past me as if I didn’t exist, and I supposed I didn’t. Not really. The sound of armor clinking against itself formed an almost hypnotic rhythm as the surreal amount of warriors marched past me.
I tried to focus on their faces, to tell whether they were scared, or excited, or resigned to their duty, but everyone seemed like blank canvases. They looked normal in my peripheral vision, but when I focused on them, there was nothing but featureless flesh. It was uncanny, and chilled me to the bone. Was this an illusion? Another vision? An after effect of the Dragonfire? I didn’t know. How could I know?
Then suddenly, I was zooming forward, through the caves, and down, down, down. Time seemed to be going faster than I traveled, and by the time I stopped, it was a scene of true chaos.
Everywhere was fire, bodies and blood. I saw dragons scattered in multiple forms, completely unprepared for battle in such close quarters with so many humans.
And the soldiers had their fair share of casualties. I saw thousands of bodies, ripped apart, burned, scored open like rabbits caught by a wolf’s claws. It was carnage. Pure and utter carnage.
I turned, a bit in shock, and took in the fiery tomb around me. That is when I laid eyes on the cruelest scene. I saw four forms, bloody, battered and violated. Dwyllverys’ body laid across the opening to the Court of Champions, her body in a mostly dragon form, but her very human severed head stuck on a pike not too far away.
Sprawled through the center of the circle was a black dragon that I was all too familiar with, dozens of slain humans around him. Then, on the steps leading up to the Queen’s throne, I saw my worst fear. A golden form, axes and swords buried in his side. There were strange, blackened marks all along his flank that almost looked like explosion marks, if I didn’t know better.
And finally, the crowning horror, the Queen sat in her throne. She would have been staring right at me, had she had eyes. But they seemed to have been violently scooped out. She was mostly human, her dark skin still stark against her white hair, but massive, bronze wings sprouted from her back, only to be cruelly nailed to two posts that had been erected on either side of her.
There were no words for the sickening, violent display. And yet I couldn’t look away. It was like an exhibit in torture, meant to draw attention. Like a serial killer posing his kills for the inevitable investigation. I had the feeling the mastermind of this ambush wanted me to see the devastation, the pain they were capable of.
It made me sick. It scared me. It filled me with a terrifying sort of bewilderment as just what people were capable of when greed was allowed to roam unchecked by decency, empathy or the like.
“So, what do you think of my handiwork?”
I whirled, only to see the same form that had been in my Dragonfire vision. He was clearly male, but that was about all I could discern. His features still looked like they had been run through dozens of filters, until there were only faint suggestions of a maybe human form.
“You!”
“Yes, me. Surprised?”
“Who are you?”
“That is unimportant.” He took a step towards me, and I felt fear clench at me. Every bit of me was warning me that this person, this being, was danger incarnate. “What’s important is who you are. I thought I erased every record there was of this world, and I don’t need you here to ruin all that effort. So be a good girl, and go.”
“How about not?” I countered. “I can’t say I’m a fan of your work here. I think I like the original ending much better.”
“Oh? So I take it you’re the original guide, then? Finally returning to see your handiwork. For as much as you all exposit to be above the Lust, you sure love revisiting your trophies.” I made no attempt to correct him. I had the feeling the less information I gave him, the better. But he kept walking towards me.
I held my ground, but it was a struggle not to shake. Perhaps if I had an actual body, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself still at all. “But rest assured. I don’t care if you’re the goddamn creator of this entire universe. I’m coming for these precious dragons, and you can get out of my way, or die with them.”
I knew he was trying to intimidate me, so I decided to that I was done being terrified. This time it was me who took a step forward and bared my teeth in a snarl. “Sounds like a challenge then.”
He laughed, and it was a cloying, awful sound that echoed through the carnage surrounding us. It spoke of damnation, bloodlust, and all those things that good people were supposed to abhor. I would have cringed away from it, but I was trying to be strong. I could be strong. I had survived too much to be cowed by this faceless, formless whatever the hell he was.
“A challenge would imply that you are of the remotest threat to me. Enjoy your time amongst the living while you can.” And with that, he reached out, and pushed his hand to the center of my chest.
I went flying backwards, and I snapped back into my own body, jerking out of the water. I coughed hard, not realizing that I had sank below the surface during my vision, or astral projection, or whatever the hell it was.
I clambered to the side, and frantically pulled my clothes on enough to be decent. Breathless, I ran back to the front of the dwelling. Something, or someone, was coming. Something terrible. Something that would spell the end of all the dragons that I was trying so hard to save.
I burst into the same room I had first entered, and Myrik gave me a baleful look. “You’re dripping all over my things.”
I struggled to catch my breath, between the fear, exertion and almost drowning. Scrambling for words, I said the only thing that my spinning brain could think of.
“I think you’re all going to die.”
To Be Continued.....
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