Chapter 28
- Morgan -
For several heartbeats nobody moves.
The battle seems to have exhausted itself all at once.
Tribesmen who aren't fleeing stand staring upward with open mouths.
The few surviving Plood stare upward too, their enormous black eyes fixed on the same point in the sky.
Beside me, Beth, Quinn and Abigail still clutch their makeshift weapons, breathing hard and covered in dirt and scratches.
And above us, Vyrathion climbs into the evening sky.
I have seen Praxigor fly before. Back then I thought I understood what a dragon looked like in the air.
Praxigor always seemed comfortable there, as though flying was simply another way of standing.
Watching Vyrathion now makes me realize there is a difference between being comfortable and being overwhelmed with joy.
He rises almost straight upward. The enormous, gold-accented black wings beat against the evening air, carrying him higher and higher until I find myself squinting against the sunlight.
For a moment I wonder whether he intends to keep going forever, climbing until he disappears into the clouds and leaves all of us behind.
Then he banks sharply. The dragon rolls sideways.
His wings fold partway against his body and his entire massive form twists through the air in a movement so graceful that my mind struggles to accept its size.
Nothing is chasing him. Nothing threatens him.
There isn't the slightest practical reason for what he's doing.
He's showing off. The great and terrible dragon is showing off because he's happy.
A laugh almost escapes me. For a moment I can picture exactly what is happening inside that giant head.
Vyrathion spent years dreaming about this.
Years obsessing over gold, talking about gold, arguing about gold and making everyone around him listen to endless speeches about gold.
Every plan eventually led back to it. Every frustration came from being separated from it.
And now he finally has enough.
I follow his flight as he climbs again. The setting sun catches his scales and turns them into streaks of gold and crimson. Against the orange sky he looks less like a being and more like some ancient force of nature. Beautiful. Dangerous. And now, completely free.
Free. The warmth drains from me almost immediately. Because what reason does he have to stay?
I lower my gaze and look around the hillside.
The battle is over. Tribesmen are disappearing into the jungle as fast as they can run.
The wounded drag themselves after the others.
The surviving Plood wander among the wreckage in apparent confusion, as though they aren't entirely certain how events reached this point. I distantly spot another great mass of Plood coming in from the jungle. Vyrathion’s entourage, coming too late to make a difference.
The danger has passed. The girls are safe. Vyrathion got what he wanted.
I stare back up at the dragon. For years that goal consumed him. The gold wasn't merely something he desired. It was the thing around which his entire existence revolved. He endured humiliation, captivity, weakness and injury because he believed that one day he would become whole again.
Now he is whole. What comes after that?
Beth steps closer and shields her eyes as she looks upward. "Is he leaving?"
The question twists something inside me. I don't answer. Partly because I don't know. Partly because I've been asking myself exactly the same thing ever since he took off.
The dragon is only a dark shape now, circling high above the jungle.
I remember him walking away from me. I remember him refusing to help the girls. I remember every argument about treasure, every ridiculous conversation about hoards and dragons. I remember standing in the jungle while he chose gold over me.
Then I remember him coming back.
The memory helps. Just not enough, because coming back isn't the same thing as staying.
Maybe he returned because dragons don't tolerate having their servants stolen by rival tribes. Maybe he returned because somebody threatened something he considered his. Maybe he came back because he wanted revenge.
Or maybe—
Morgan.
The voice appears inside my head. I gasp so violently that Beth flinches beside me. The sound doesn't arrive through my ears. It simply exists inside my thoughts, vast and unmistakable.
Praxigor speaks like that. Except his speech doesn’t have a warmth to it, like this does.
There is power in it now, a weight that wasn't there before. Beneath that power I detect something else.
I laugh under my breath.
Beth immediately notices. "Is he talking to you?"
I glance toward her and wipe a strand of hair out of my face. "Apparently becoming a dragon wasn't enough. Now he has to narrate the experience."
She looks up. “Is that… I mean, is he why…?”
“He’s the reason Sage caught me weeping my eyes out, yes,” I reply. “I’ve known him for a while.”
“But he’s a… a dragon?”
“That’s right.”
“But… that’s a real dragon. A real one!” Her mind clearly can’t accept what she’s seeing.
“Very real. Except he’s just an alien. But what a spectacular alien!”
“But…” She gives up and shakes her head as though deciding there are some subjects too strange to investigate.
Around us, the Plood mill around, arranging their dead in strange five-pointed stars. Some of them are only injured.
I spot Clyde and hurry over. “Here. Use this to heal, if you can.” I hand him the little pot with the not-Vicks lotion.
Then I look back up.
High above us the dark speck suddenly plunges toward the earth. My stomach clenches even though he's far away. A heartbeat later he levels out and races across the sky so quickly that I almost lose sight of him. “You’re showing off.”
His amusement brushes against my thoughts. Of course I'm showing off. Why would I become magnificent and then keep it secret?
I laugh again. I think this might work out right. For a while I simply stand there and watch him.
The sky grows darker. The clouds deepen from gold to crimson.
Vyrathion circles above it all like a creature that has finally escaped a prison.
Every pass carries him farther across the horizon before he swings back again.
He seems incapable of deciding where to go because everywhere is suddenly available to him.
Then something changes. I feel it before I see it. The wild delight remains, but another emotion slowly rises beneath it. Something calmer. More thoughtful. The sensation reminds me of watching a river settle after a storm. The current still runs strong, yet the chaos begins to disappear.
The dark shape turns toward us. This time he doesn't climb again. He descends.
The girls notice it too. Their conversation dies away as the dragon drops lower and lower through the evening sky. By the time he reaches the hillside opposite us, nobody is speaking anymore. The girls are tensing up, the way I would around Praxigor.
His landing shakes the ground. Loose stones tumble down the slope. Nearby tribesmen throw themselves flat and cover their heads. Even after everything we've seen today, the sight of a dragon settling onto the earth remains almost impossible to comprehend.
Vyrathion folds his wings. Then he begins walking toward me on all four legs, somehow even more beautiful and perfect than before.
Each step carries an effortless confidence that wasn't there before.
The half-dragon always seemed constrained somehow, forced into a shape that never quite fit him.
This creature looks complete. Every movement carries the certainty of something that finally occupies its proper form.
I find myself walking toward him as well. The distance closes quickly.
When we finally stop, his head lowers until one enormous silver eye is level with mine. I place a hand against the scales of his snout without really thinking about it. They're warm.
For several moments neither of us speaks.
Then his voice enters my thoughts. Morgan, I was wrong.
The statement catches me so completely off guard that I almost laugh. Of all the things I expected to hear from a fully restored dragon, an admission of error wasn't among them.
"About what?"
The great head shifts slightly beneath my hand. About Praxigor.
I stare at him. "About the gold? The hoard?"
For the first time since landing, Vyrathion hesitates. The pause lasts only a few seconds, but with him it feels remarkable. About everything. I thought he was hiding his treasure. I thought he was deceiving me. His gaze remains fixed on me. I understand now.
"What do you understand?"
The answer arrives immediately. I understand why he laughed at me.
I frown. That isn't where I expected this conversation to go. "You mean when he said Astrid was his hoard?"
Yes. The dragon's tail moves slowly behind him. At the time I believed he was hiding something. I thought he was speaking in riddles. I thought he was protecting his hoard from another dragon. His great head lowers. It never crossed my mind that he was simply telling the truth.
At the time Vyrathion dismissed it completely. Now he sounds almost awed by it.
"You believe him now?"
The silver eye remains fixed on mine. I know he was right. Because it is the same with me.
For several heartbeats I simply stare at him. Then a possibility begins to form. A dangerous possibility. One that makes my pulse quicken. "Vyrathion..."
The dragon studies me for a moment. Then warmth flows through the connection between us. Morgan, I finally understand what my hoard is. It’s you.
A hundred questions crowd together in my mind. Most of them disappear almost immediately. One remains.
"If I'm your hoard," I ask, "then why did you leave?"
Part of me wants to believe him immediately. The other part remembers standing alone in the jungle while he walked away. That part is harder to silence.
The great dragon becomes very still. For a moment I wonder if I've somehow offended him. Then I realize he's actually considering the question.