Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Valdier Palace
Early morning
Mandra Reykill stepped inside the conference room, his powerful frame filling the doorway.
The air was still and heavy, thick with silence and shadows.
The large viewing screen mounted on the wall remained blank, a cold, dark void reflecting nothing but his uncertainty.
His boots thudded softly on the floor as he crossed the room, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of worry he could no longer pretend wasn’t there.
Jabir smart. He be alright, his dragon whispered through his mind.
“I know he’s smart—but why haven’t we seen him? How do we know that he’s alright? He’s by himself,” he retorted in a low, harsh voice.
He rubbed a hand down his face, the rough scrape of his palm catching on a day’s worth of stubble.
He hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. Not when his son—his tender hearted, na?ve son—was missing in an unfamiliar world crawling with unknown dangers.
Jabir might be a teenage dragonling, but he was still just a boy. His boy. His and Ariel’s.
He stopped in front of the wide window overlooking the palace gardens.
Dew sparkled across the hedges like shattered starlight.
Flowers stirred in the morning breeze, oblivious to the storm churning in his chest. His reflection in the glass stared back at him—haunted, tired, afraid.
He opened his hand and stared at the callused palm, then slowly curled his fingers into a fist.
What good is strength if you can’t protect the ones you love? he thought.
The silence broke with a soft crackle. Mandra turned, frowning as the dark screen behind him flickered to life. The conference room was still empty. He hadn’t touched the console. Yet the image blooming on the screen froze him in place, his heart clenching painfully.
“Jabir?” The name rasped from his throat.
His son stood on the edge of a quiet lake, his dark hair tousled by a breeze that rippled across the silver-blue surface.
Amber eyes stared out across the water, filled with thought instead of laughter.
His hands were tucked into his front pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched—not from cold, but from something heavier. Sadness. Loneliness.
Mandra stepped closer, one hand reaching out instinctively, as if he could cross the distance between them. “What are you looking at, son?”
He scanned the tree line that rose in tangled knots near Jabir, searching for danger. A shadow moved from the left.
Mandra’s blood ran cold.
A massive beast lumbered into view: lion-bodied, with thick bronze fur dusted with sand and salt; leathery wings folded tight to its back; and a long, scorpion tail arching lazily behind it.
Its eyes glowed a deep forest green, not unkind, but otherworldly.
Mandra opened his mouth to shout a warning—
“JABIR, LOOK OUT!”
—only to choke on the words as the manticore sauntered up beside his son and… rested a heavy paw on Jabir’s shoulder.
Mandra stood frozen, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
He fumbled for the remote. His fingers shook as he aimed and pressed the volume up.
“…I don’t know,” Jabir said softly, kicking at the sand. “It just feels like… like I belong here. For once.”
The words hit Mandra like a fist.
“You didn’t feel like that back home?” the manticore asked in a voice as rough as gravel and surprisingly warm.
Jabir shrugged. “Not really. I mean, everyone’s great, it’s just…” He trailed off, biting his lip. “I’m small—for a Valdier warrior. I’m also slower. Half the girls could whip my butt if they wanted to. I’m-I’m just not like the others. I’m not a warrior.”
Mandra sank onto the couch like the air had been punched from his lungs.
“Back home, I always felt like… like maybe I was a disappointment. My dad’s this big, strong, powerful dragon-shifter. Whereas, I’d rather be up in the mountains with the animals than practicing hand-to-hand or training on a warship. I don’t like hurting other people.”
The manticore chuckled, shaking its mane. “Kid, I know a dozen females in the village who could whip me if they tried.”
Jabir glanced up, surprised, then smiled—a faint, genuine thing.
“Yeah, I think Cory could totally take you. She’s pretty badass,” Jabir chuckled.
“Why do you think I love her? I need to bring in the fishing lines. You wanna help me?” the manticore asked.
Jabir nodded, and the two turned, walking along the shoreline toward a quaint village nestled among the trees.
Smoke curled from huts with curved thatched roofs, and fishing nets swayed in the breeze on long poles.
Children with furry skin and wide paws chased each other through the shallows.
Older villagers waved from beneath colorful awnings.
The screen dimmed as the pair disappeared down the beach. The creature’s laughter mixed with Jabir’s quiet voice, and the sound floated back like wind through leaves.
Mandra stood, one hand lifted as if to hold the image in place, but it faded to black, leaving only his reflection staring back at him from the dark screen.
He stood for a long time, his eyes damp and his throat tight. Jabir was alive. He was safe.
And yet somehow, he had missed something far more dangerous than any monster—his son’s quiet ache to be seen… not as a warrior, but as who he truly was.
Grief filled him as he turned back to the window.
Had he been too busy lately to see that Jabir needed him?
How many times in recent months had Jabir come up to him, wanting to talk, only for him to turn him away?
Mandra had prioritized the upgrading of weapons on his warship rather than his son.
Memories of his own father doing that rose in his mind, nearly choking him.
He remembered wishing so much that he could just talk to his dad, ask him questions—share his fears.
He stared blindly out at the morning light now fully illuminating the garden. The light picked up the delicate colors he had missed earlier. He remembered not fitting in. As a teenager, others had avoided him, afraid because of his size.
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. I’ve become my father, he thought, bowing his head.
“Ariel,” he whispered. “I need you.”
He needed her gentle, calming touch. Her advice. He lifted his head and swallowed past the lump in his throat.
His son didn’t need a protector right now.
He needed a father who understood.
Isle of the Monsters: A day earlier
The first thing Jabir noticed when he hit the ground was how surprisingly soft it was. The glowing blue tube that had formed as he fell through the opening in the portal threads had turned out to be a safe slide—albeit a very long and exciting one.
Now, he blinked up at the canopy of lush green above him, watching the tube vanish as quickly as it had appeared.
A shaft of sunlight pierced through the trees and warmed his face.
He was lying in the center of a wide forest clearing, the grass soft, the air fresh…
and the crushed bag of potato chips under his back crinkling in protest.
“Well, that’s new,” he muttered, brushing a lazy hand across his shirt. Golden crumbs scattered like stardust across the ground. He licked the salt from his fingers and sat up, reaching for his worn leather tote bag—stuffed with snacks, spare clothes, and a pair of socks he was 70% sure were clean.
His dragon stirred in the back of his mind, snorting with interest.
Shift. I want to sniff the air. This place smells… wild.
“Yeah, yeah. In a minute,” Jabir mumbled. “Let me look around first. Do you know where we landed?”
Do I look like tour guide? his dragon snapped. No. I no been here, which mean you no been here. We be careful. We no have others to help us.
“Pfft. It’s fine,” Jabir said with casual bravado as he slung the bag over one shoulder. “Look at it—sunshine, birds, grass, no acid fog or scary stuff in sight. This place has total vacation vibes.”
The words had no sooner left his mouth when the ground shuddered. Jabir swallowed nervously and glanced around.
Birds quiet.
I know the birds are quiet now.
Leaves shaking.
You are not helping! he growled to his dragon.
I say we hide. Now! his dragon hissed.
“Yeah. Right. I think that’s a great idea,” he muttered as the cracking noise and the ground-shaking grew closer.
Jabir spun in a slow circle, scanning the clearing until he spotted a cluster of large mossy boulders near the edge. He bolted for them, scrambling up and ducking into the shadows between two stones just as something massive crashed through the underbrush.
Correction: Three somethings.
His breath caught as he peeked through the gap in the rocks.
They were enormous—easily twelve feet tall and built like someone crossed a linebacker with a walking mountain.
One had skin like cracked river stone. Another had shaggy green hair and a nose like a mushroom.
The third was a towering slab of muscle with knobby knees and a gut that bounced with every step.
Jabir’s eyes widened. Trolls?!
His mind raced back to the bedtime stories from Earth that his mom used to read to him when he was little. Sometimes they ate goats and guarded bridges. Sometimes they sang songs and made friends with princesses.
He hoped these were the friendly kind.
The female troll stopped in the center of the clearing, her thick arms crossed over a patchwork leather vest. “I’m telling you, this is where I saw the blue tunnel open,” she grumbled. “Right above this clearing.”
The second troll, with shaggy brown hair and an oversized club slung across his back, frowned at her. “You sure, Gabby? What if it was over by the lake? Or the ravine? What did you see, Williston?”
“It was here, Mikey!” she snapped. “I’m the best troll tracker in our entire village! Everyone says so—except your mother, but she doesn’t count.”
Williston sniffed the air suspiciously. “I don’t know, Mikey. I think Gabby is right.”