Chapter 2 – Baelen
CHAPTER 2
BAELEN
C harlie’s birth mother bore the wounds of a lost battle. As I pulled the broken wood off her body, her eyes flashed open, her brow furrowed, and a low moan escaped her. Yet when I lifted her to her feet, she said nothing.
Standing on wobbly legs, a surprising amount of fury poured off her in waves. She clenched her red, raw fists and gritted her teeth as she hobbled clear of the wreckage.
“Are you all right?” I asked as I ambled out of the wreckage after her.
Her voice was hoarse as she growled, “I’m fine.” But she didn’t look at me or Clawdia, who circled my legs. She was concentrating on brushing herself off with aggressive strokes, which only managed to further pull the misshapen material off her clothes and remove none of the dirt.
“We just pulled you out of a pile of wood. I’m not sure that is fine.” I crossed my arms.
She assessed herself for injuries. She bled from cuts all over her body, red blooming under her tattered and dirty shirt, enticing my senses. I looked down at Clawdia, and we exchanged a glance. I wished she were human. I wasn’t good at communication, which was why I only rescued titans and didn’t train or rehabilitate them. Knowing how to proceed here wasn’t in my skill set.
Elizabeth huffed and repeated, “I’m fine.”
“I can heal you. If you’d like,” I offered. Clawdia wouldn’t mind if I used her power to help her witch’s birth mother.
Elizabeth glared, meeting my gaze for the first time. “You’re possessed.”
Ahh, that’s why she isn’t talking to me. It was understandable, her assumption, considering the last time she saw me, I was in a cage Charlie had conjured. But a lot had happened since.
“Not anymore,” I assured her.
She sneered. “You would say that.”
“I would because it is true. The shadow is gone. He wouldn’t let me speak of this if he were not.”
She paused for a moment as she assessed me with searching eyes, then said, “A lot has happened, it seems.”
“It has.” I stepped closer. “Allow me to heal you, and we can discuss it.”
She swallowed thickly and reluctantly said, “If you could heal me, I would be most appreciative.”
“Say no more.” I picked Clawdia up and placed her on my shoulder before I touched the skin of Elizabeth’s torn-up shoulder and pulled on the titan magic Clawdia still retained despite being a cat.
Elizabeth gasped as her threads turned from orange to green and her wounds closed as though they’d never been there.
She rubbed her arm as I stepped away and asked, “Better?”
“Much. Thank you. Both of you.” She frowned at Clawdia. “Although I can’t imagine why Clawdia would believe now is a good time to stay in her familiar form.”
“It’s a long story. What happened? How did you escape the hunters?” I asked.
“Hunters? Here? When?” she asked, wide-eyed and breathless.
“Last evening. That’s why no one found you. Everyone seems to be gone. Taken.”
“Taken,” she repeated, her mouth agape as she looked over at the remains of the building. “He destroyed the wards.”
“Who?” I asked. Someone on the island sabotaged the wards and jeopardized all the people hiding here?
She ignored me in favor of her own question, and suspicion glinted in her narrowed eyes. “But you are here. How did you escape the hunters?”
“We weren’t here last night.” She opened her mouth to ask another question, but I continued, frustrated. “I will explain, but our priority is finding Charlie. Do you know what happened to him?”
She huffed a derisive laugh and, with a curled lip, growled, “Charlie is what happened to me.”
Clawdia meowed, probably in disagreement or surprise at Elizabeth’s words. I petted her and calmly asked, “So he’s alive?”
“Alive?” That surprised her enough that her previous ugly expression fell from her face. “You think he’s dead?”
I tilted my head at Clawdia. “Her bond with him is gone.”
“What?” She stared at Clawdia, then shook her head and blinked before refocusing on me. “Last I saw him, he was alive. He’s a dragon, though. He’ll be susceptible to Fafnir’s influence and will turn against us, so it would be better if he were dead.”
Clawdia hissed and dug her claws painfully into my shoulder.
“A dragon? He turned into a dragon?” I asked, confused why that would break his bond with Clawdia.
“He is of Fafnir’s line. It was only a matter of time.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “You did this to him?”
“What?” She scoffed. “I did nothing to him. I saw him turn. He cornered Karin. I think he killed her.”
Clawdia hissed again and hopped down from my back, landing harshly on a board and instantly set off, searching for something among the wreckage.
“Clawdia, be careful.” I called after her, my heart lurching as she crawled through the wreckage, her fur getting filthier and her tail getting matted as she darted between boards and jumped over glass, presumably looking for Karin.
“Do you know why she hissed?” Elizabeth asked in a low voice.
“We, the shadow and I, found her passed out on Karin’s sofa last night.” I watched Elizabeth’s blank expression for a moment before saying, “I have not known Charlie long, but he is a good male. He wouldn’t hurt someone unless they did something to him first.”
“Perhaps that was true when he was human.”
“Drakorians aren’t intrinsically evil people. They are like Mestoclocan people. They have two souls and two bodies. They shift into an animal, but that animal follows its nature.”
She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“You believe he has changed into something evil, but Charlie, in any form, is still Charlie.”
Her jaw was tense as she spat, “He attacked me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“You think I provoked him?” Her voice was almost a screech, and I winced.
From the rubble, Clawdia growled and interrupted any further conversation. Clambering over the broken boards, I followed her path to reach her and saw a pale hand peeking out from under a board. The lack of blood lines had already confirmed no other survivors were here.
She’d found a body.
I picked Clawdia up and tried to brush the filth out of her fur while Elizabeth sighed behind me. “That must be Karin.”
“She’s dead.”
Clawdia hissed and hopped out of my arms and back onto the board, covering the body.
I shouted, “Clawdia, what are you doing?”
I tried to stop her, but she continued to avoid my arms as she danced across the board and then jumped, repetitively, while she growled and hissed, her fur on ends.
The kind and respectful person I knew Clawdia to be didn’t align with the feline that jumped on a body. Either Karin had done something deserving of this behavior, or Clawdia was desperately trying to tell me something.
“Do you want me to pick up the board?”
She hissed at me, and I took a step back, allowing her to do as she wished.
“That guess is incorrect,” Elizabeth remarked dryly as she watched Clawdia. Her gaze met mine, and she asked, “She can’t turn?”
“Not so far.”
“What happened?”
I rubbed my eyes since the sunlight was bothering them and sighed. “The shadow possessing me, Kaatu, wanted to heal the portal to Ombra because his world was dying without the connection to all the dimensions. It was his last chance to save his trapped people and realm. He didn’t trust me or our situation enough to prioritize his people and realm, so he possessed me and waited for the right opportunity to take Zaide or Clawdia so he could heal the portal.”
“The Ombra portal is active?” Elizabeth asked, her voice pitched high.
“Yes.”
While she contemplated this news, I turned my attention back to my soul mate, who was now kicking rubble over Karin’s hand. I shook my head, surprised at her fierce anger and equally impressed at her determination. Whatever her grievance with Karin, it must have been great for her to act so.
If only Clawdia could tell me what happened.
“Clawdia hasn’t shifted since the portal reactivated?” Elizabeth stated.
“No.” I looked over at her. “But her connection to Charlie broke before we healed the portal.”
“When he turned?” she asked.
But I shook my head. “I don’t think him reclaiming his birth power would break the bond. And if it was broken, shouldn’t Clawdia be dead?”
“It’s a mystery for certain.” She rubbed her head and sighed. “I need to find my phone.”
“It’s under the rubble?” I asked. I didn’t need to know why she needed it. I assumed it was to get help for this very messy situation.
“I think it’s back at the cabin.”
I started walking in the direction without a second thought. Elizabeth called after me. “What about Karin? We need to bury her.”
“I think Clawdia has done a good enough job of burying her,” I replied, trusting my soul mate’s treatment of the dead.
Fur flashed in front of me as Clawdia dashed ahead, then paused for me to greet her. She stretched so her front paws reached up my legs, and I picked her up. Her purrs were loud and comforting against my chest as she rubbed her head against the stubble on my chin.
Elizabeth didn’t push to bury Karin and quickly caught up with me, guiding us the rest of the way to her small cabin. She gasped as she saw the empty ruins of the other cabins and trembled when she saw that, just like all the others, her temporary home had not been spared from the hunter’s search and destruction.
“Why would they do this?” she asked in horror as she searched the wreckage and upended furniture for clothes scattered across the room.
I set Clawdia down and began righting items. “I assume they were looking for people hiding and anything they could use against you.”
Elizabeth snapped up rod-straight from where she’d been bent over picking up a shirt. “The library.”
“Gone.” At her gasp, I clarified, “The words from the books. They’ve disappeared.”
Her shoulders fell as she sighed her relief. “Thank the Goddess.”
Clawdia meowed and nudged the phone she found out from under the bed. Elizabeth patted her head as she scooped up the device. “Thank you, Clawdia.”
Elizabeth immediately pressed on the screen a few times before holding it to her ear and saying, “Gemma, where are you? … Yes, I’m fine, but things here are worse than you know.” She paced and ran a hand through her tangled hair while I continued to clean up around the cabin and listened. “When I have more time to explain, I will call everyone, but for the moment, I need you to go to the Ombra portal and guard it … Yes, it’s back. I can’t explain right now … Yes, as soon as you can, please. Love you. Bye.”
After plugging in her phone, she caught my questioning gaze and said, “My daughter.”
Clawdia meowed and then huffed and folded her front legs under body, a glare on her face. She apparently wanted to say something but forgot she was still feline. My lips quirked at her show of frustration.
“You think the shadows will invade the human realm through the natural portal?” I asked Elizabeth as she bent to pick up scattered clothes.
“I certainly hope they do not.” She raised her eyebrow and sighed before continuing, “This is the same precautionary measure we take with all natural portals, but we don’t know how this will affect the shadow magic that has been free-floating in this realm and Clawdia is still a familiar.” She tilted her head toward the fluffy cat licking a considerable amount of dirt from her paw and listening to our conversation from the bedside table.
“Yes,” I agreed but didn’t understand the relevance.
“Which suggests the shadow magic used in the creation and tethering of familiars has not returned to its motherland from beings currently in existence.”
“Pardon?” I asked calmly, but cold trickled through me at the implication.
“Any shadow people that were trapped in this realm wouldn’t have their magic taken back since it would kill them. Therefore, it suggests that Clawdia and the other familiars in existence also haven’t lost that magic. They were essentially born with it through the spell.”
“But the shadow magic in this realm will have returned to Ombra,” I continued. “Witches can no longer create familiars?”
“That’s what I believe. Yes.” She grimaced, and we both looked at Clawdia.
She is one of the last familiars in the human realm.
“But it might not be enough for the shadow realm to fully heal?” I asked. “You believe the shadow people will come here to kill the familiars?”
“Who’s to know?” She shrugged, but her eyes were hard and wary. “But I’d rather be prepared than not.”
I nodded my understanding. My experience with the shadows had taught me they acted first and asked questions later. I dreaded to think what they’d do if they thought familiars were keeping magic from their realm.
“Why do you think she’s still a cat?” I asked Elizabeth as I patted Clawdia’s soft head.
“She would be dead if her bond with her witch snapped,” Elizabeth replied confidently, “so perhaps it is a trauma response. She’s not sick or dying, so it may take a little while for her power to come back.”
Clawdia meowed, and we looked over to see her tapping at a silver square. Elizabeth huffed out a laugh as she walked over, opened the square, and pressed a button that lit up a screen.
I squatted to get a closer look as Clawdia began pressing buttons and making words on the bright screen, and after a while of her tapping, a complete paragraph was visible.
It read: “Karin drugged me because she wanted to kill Charlie and make me her familiar. I think she drained him of his magic using the wards. She was using them to get more power. Maybe he died but then his dragon took over?”
“Karin attacked Charlie?” Elizabeth asked. “Killed him?”
Clawdia nodded.
Elizabeth swallowed audibly, and her eyes widened. She muttered, “Even if that is true, it still doesn’t change that he is a danger to us all.”
Clawdia’s eyes narrowed, and her body dropped into a low crouch, her ears flat to her head. I caught her as she launched herself off the table to attack Elizabeth and held her tightly against my body so she couldn’t squirm. She tried to nibble at my neck, however.
“I suggest you stop making comments like that. We are going to find him and help him. He is not a danger, nor should he be dead.” I flashed my fangs, and Clawdia’s nibbling turned to long licks with a prickly tongue as she purred. Elizabeth gritted her teeth but nodded once. With a more diplomatic tone, I asked, “Do you have any idea where he might have gone when he flew off?”
“There are many islands around here,” she replied in a sullen mumble that made me grit my teeth. “He could have flown to any number of them.”
“His wings are new, so I don’t imagine he went too far before he had to rest.” I placed Clawdia back on the bed and gave her a warning look, which she willfully avoided before returning to groom herself.
“I will help you look for him. He’s my blood,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll be able to use it to find him.”
I assessed her. She wanted to help find Charlie because she believed she would be the only one able to kill him if he was the great evil she feared, but using her was also the quickest way to reach him. “How much time will that take?”
“I need to rest before I attempt the spell.” She sat in her chair, her eyes heavily blinking, and silence descended until she asked, “What about the other witches? The council? It hasn’t escaped my notice that you are missing your titan.”
It pained me to say it. “We don’t know where they are. Until we have more information on how to find them, getting Charlie back is our priority.”
Clawdia headbutted my arm, and I offered her a reassuring stroke. She probably felt even worse than I did about it, since choosing to find Charlie first was like picking her heart before her soul. But it was the right decision.
Elizabeth pursed her lips and asked hesitantly, “What happens when we find Charlie?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “We try to get him to turn back. If he doesn’t listen to us, drakorians are easily bribed.”
But above all, we don’t allow his birth mother to murder him.
We left Elizabeth to rest and staggered toward the cabin Clawdia had shared with Zaide and Charlie, the exhaustion setting in. I couldn’t believe how much had changed since we were there just yesterday, and as I looked around the living space and watched the sky darken outside the window, I tried to be thankful that at least I was no longer possessed and fighting my own body.
Clawdia purred as she settled on to the sofa, and I frowned at her. “You’re going to sleep there?”
She opened one eye. She didn’t have a voice, but her expressions spoke volumes.
“You should at least clean up first. You’re filthy, and your fur is matting,” I told her.
She’d tried to clean herself, but only her paws were cream. The rest of her coat was black. She huffed, turned her back on me, and settled back down, facing the cushions.
“No. Let’s go.” I scooped her up, and she grumbled and squirmed as I took her into the bathroom.
I got into the shower and turned the water on, getting her and my clothes wet so she had to commit to getting clean. I laughed as her wet fur clung to her tiny body and revealed the angriest face on the smallest head. Even her ears looked giant on her. She huffed, probably knowing how ridiculous she looked, and I set her on the floor of the shower while I stripped out of my clothes.
“Not exactly how I imagined you seeing me naked for the first time, but life is full of surprises,” I said wryly as she watched with a twinkle in her violet eyes.
What I wouldn’t give to hear her thoughts.
I used the shampoo and then soaped Clawdia, washing her until the water pouring from her turned clear instead of dirt brown. I turned off the water and wrapped myself in a towel before scooping up Clawdia and hugging her close to me. I found a comb, which I used on both of us, and when I climbed into the bed, exhausted, Clawdia snuggled into my side, purring.
I didn’t have the energy to summon a dreamscape, despite wanting to check Zaide was safe. It would have been a futile exercise anyway.
The hunters had him. And hunters kill their prey.
Unless, of course, the prey had a vengeful soul mate with a lot to make up for.