Before #2
Nyraxis only recently took a rider after choosing to stay unbonded for over a century.
She did not choose lightly. He’s an Earth Elemental named Alaxon, and he is one of the few I call friend—my best friend, if I’m being honest.
We said our official goodbyes the night before, taking the pair out for one last ride beneath the glittering stars.
We soared over the deep oceans and thick forests.
We let the dragons play, nipping at each other’s tails.
They chased each other through clouds and dove through valleys like gods given flesh.
Just before dawn broke, we returned to the mountain and parted ways shortly after, at a quiet forest pond surrounded by nature.
Cradled by his element and mine—water and earth.
I wonder if he’s upstairs now, celebrating this final night with the others, pretending he doesn’t know what I’m about to do just as we planned.
Or perhaps he is alone, mourning me already.
Vharax lifts her head, wings curled tight to her body, sapphire eyes assessing me. She glances over my shoulder, toward her parents, who watch on in stoic silence.
Kneeling before her, I retrieve the tools hidden in the deepest folds of my dress. A vial of water from the eye of a storm, an obsidian dagger, a satchel of kindling from a three-hundred-year-old Rowan tree, tied with a length of my own hair.
Extending my arm, I hold the kindling in front of her.
“Sryvìk,” I command. Fire.
Vharax’s head rears back, her body tensing and recoiling, before releasing a thin ribbon of flame from her maw. The kindling bursts alight in a shower of sparks.
She trills and looks toward me, searching for approval. I incline my head in thanks, rewarding her with a soft smile.
Carefully, I pick up the burning kindling and use the soot and ash to draw a circle around her. She follows curiously, spinning as I move, eyes bright with interest.
I uncork the vial of water and sprinkle it along the path I’ve drawn, using my magic to encourage the flow to extend until the circle is sealed.
Then I pick up the Obsidian blade—
And hesitate.
Holding the point to the skin of my palm, my hands start to shake so badly that I nearly drop the blade. I can’t stop the trembling. Can’t seem to push back the fear.
This is it. The final choice. After this, there will be no going back. There will be no changing my mind, or rescue by Alaxon or my parents. It will be just me and my choices.
In a few hours, I’ll be dead.
Vharax pays me no mind, curling into herself and closing her eyes. Behind me, Vharon huffs. I whip around to find him stretching his massive blue-scaled head over the still water, angling it until one glowing eye can meet mine.
We gaze at each other, dragon and rider, bathing in the weight of the moment. Slowly, something inside of me steadies. He blinks once, his second eyelid following on the heels of his first. He looks to his hatchling, then back to me, and I know what he’s saying.
Give one of us a chance.
I exhale, incline my head, and square my shoulders. I return my attention to Vharax, whose large blue eyes are open and focused on her sire. Vharon rumbles in approval, the sound like distant thunder on a rainy day. Slinking back to his mate, he resumes shielding the chamber entrance once more.
I don’t let myself hesitate again. The sharp point of the blade cuts into my palm, and quickly, before I lose my courage, I slice a clean arc down the center. Shimmering blood spills down my hand and over my wrist.
I have to hurry before it heals.
Dipping two fingers into my wound, I follow the same circular path around the sleeping hatchling, anointing the ash in crimson.
Water.
Fire.
Earth.
Only one element left. Air.
I shake my hands out at my sides, uncaring of the shimmering droplets of blood painting the obsidian stone. There is no coming back from this. Not for me.
There’s no coming back for any of us. When the sun rises, the Royals will perform a much more difficult ritual sacrifice on a much grander scale.
I’m simply choosing the meaning of my sacrifice.
Life. A chance. For her. For both of them.
Vharax…
And the Last Daughter.
I place my shaking hands on the edge of the circle and bow my head, letting the warm air dance over me, as well as the sleeping Dragon. The revelry will still be going on upstairs. My kind always chooses joy in the face of death.
The rest of our kind—the ones without Royal blood—will be preparing for their own ritual. To complete the sealing of the Between, and honor our side of the pact.
I inhale another breath, concentrating on the magic deep inside of me—that place where it lives deep under my ribs, nestled beside my soul.
Next to my heart.
It’s a strange thing, giving your life for another.
I never thought this would be how things would end.
These last hundred years, especially, I was sure I’d die in battle.
On the back of my dragon, sword in hand, blood in my hair, praying Vharon would live.
That he would choose to bind his soul to another rider before my death claimed his life as well.
I never considered it would end deep underground, with my friend at my back, watching on from the shadows as his hatchling rests at my head—soft, warm puffs of breath shimmering in the air.
I close my eyes and exhale steadily.
Then, I cut everything off. My thoughts, the sound of the world around me. Until even the deep rumble of the dragons’ breaths fades to nothing. Until all I hear is my own heartbeat, and the pounding pulse of the Breath still tightening the edges of the world around me.
The Breath lives in everything. Every current and tide. Every droplet of water that touches the sky or the land. It sits deep in our chest and in the back of our throat during rituals.
It is the pulse of the world. It is life, death, and rebirth.
It is alive in all of us—even the dragons. Especially the dragons.
No songs will be sung of my sacrifice, no laments chanted, no stories told around the hearth. No fables or tales or rhymes sung by children.
It is only me, my Breath, and Vharax.
I summon it now. A gift. One final offering.
I inhale. Exhale. My hands press harder into the stone in front of me.
Water, fire, earth… air.
My lifeforce pulses. Once… again… again. The magic responds to my offering and accepts it without reservation.
An even exchange.
My life for hers.
For Vharax. For the hatchling who’s never tasted the cold winter air or felt the heat of battle. The dragon with enough power to take on a rider not yet born.
The last unbonded hope for our line.
The rest of our kind will have no knowledge of the dragon’s existence. The Between will seal, leaving this liminal space in the mortal realm. I’ll be forgotten here, my body turning to dust over time.
They will wait, and this cavern will sit in secret.
Until she comes.
Magic pours out of me in waves. Raw and ancient, full of life and love and hope.
It streams from my lungs like vapor. Pieces of myself unspool—my dreams, my strengths and weaknesses, my loves and regrets and betrayals.
Hundreds of years of laughter and tears and fear and pain.
Hundreds of flights through the sky. The heat of Vharon’s scales beneath my body, a counter to the cold air slicing at my face as we soar.
The sound of my little sister’s laughter as she runs through the field behind our home, flowers in her hair and the sun kissing her golden skin.
My first flight with Vharon, soaring through clouds so thick I can’t see the ground beneath us.
My mother’s laugh.
My father’s pride.
The taste of summer wine on my tongue.
The sound of my grandfather singing old songs by the fire.
Everything I’m fighting for.
My past. My present. My future. All my potential—everything I could have been but will never have the chance to be.
All of it flashes before me as if to say, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure you’re willing to give all of this up for nothing more than a chance?’
“Yes,” I breathe as my tears fall freely. I let them fall. Let them splash into the circle and mingle with my magic.
It fractures and splits, flowing out of my hands and wrapping around Vharax in a perfect circle of shimmering coils.
My chest aches, then burns, then turns numb. My blood slowly stops pumping. I feel it trying to push through my veins sluggishly, barely more than a hope.
I slump to the side, my body suddenly too heavy to hold upright anymore. My limbs are somehow both hollow and dense, weightless and impossible to lift. I watch through blurred vision as the magic wraps around Vharax in shimmering coils.
A great pillar of ice, eight feet in diameter, forms around the sleeping dragon. Rock and Ice coalesce, shooting all the way to the ceiling, sealing in stone and frost.
Vharax will sleep, and most importantly, she will survive. Until her rider finds her. And she will find her. It’s only a matter of time.
One final thread slips from deep within my chest and floats toward the pillar, winding around it, protecting the hatchling. Protecting the future.
I’ll go, and Vharon will follow shortly after. Nyraxis and the other dozens of dragons will live until the dawn, when the rest of the Royals sacrifice their lives, funneling every drop of their magic into the last bloodline.
The last hope.
The ice flares brightly, then dulls.
Behind me, Vharon cries out. A sound full of grief so deep the mountains shake, and pieces of earth fall, scattering around us. I want to tell him it’ll be alright, but I’m unsure if I’m actually here any longer.
Fire surges from the dragon’s mouth toward the mountain’s opening. It bathes the cavern in brilliant golden light, peaceful and overflowing with love. The heat lights the mountain’s heart and swirls around the pillar of ice and stone.
A final gift from a dying girl.