Chapter 11
- Vyrathion -
The rain shows no intention of stopping.
It hammers the island we’re on from every direction, turning the small patch of ground into a miserable collection of mud, roots and dripping vegetation.
The river surges around us in a brown wall of water, carrying entire trees downstream.
Every so often another section of riverbank collapses somewhere beyond the curtain of rain, followed by a distant crash.
I stand beneath the largest tree on the island and glare at the storm. “The insolence of this planet!”
“You said it.” Morgan sits nearby with her arms wrapped around her knees. She has finally stopped coughing, though she still looks pale and she breathes hard. Clyde the deformed Plood is curled up beside her, radiating what appears to be satisfaction.
I find that suspicious as well. "Explain yourself," I tell the creature.
Morgan lifts her head. "Who are you talking to?"
"The spy."
She follows my gaze toward Clyde. "Clyde isn't a spy. He just wants to help."
The Plood immediately looks guilty.
I point at him. "Observe that expression! He knows exactly what he's done."
Morgan wipes rainwater from her face and wrings her long hair. "He's a Plood. They always look the same."
I snort. "Precisely what one would expect from a spy."
She glances at me. “You think he’s spying for Praxigor?”
“Of course,” I scoff. “He admitted as much. They all spy for him. But it won’t help him one bit.”
“What did he say?” Morgan asks. “When he admitted it?”
“He said nothing. It was the way he looked. Perfectly guilty.”
She shakes her head. "I don't think that's evidence."
"A dragon needs no evidence. And that is what I would expect a witch to say."
She sighs in a clear sign of disrespect.
"Vyrathion, if I were a witch with half the powers you seem to think I have, do you think I would sit here, in the middle of a flooded river, half-drowned and more miserable than I thought it was possible to get? On an island that I’m sure will soon be taken by the water, so I’ll drown for good? "
"I don’t know how witches think. And the power to confuse me and pretend to be my servant is much more impressive than calling up this weather and the flood.
” I speak with confidence, but her words do make me think.
It’s hard to imagine what she would profit from this.
Well, perhaps she wanted to keep me from that village.
Perhaps she knows that they do have gold, and she doesn’t want me to have it!
But then, why go to this trouble? Why not simply tell Praxigor about the gold, so he could take it? In his dragon form, that would be easy.
I did save her from the river. I’ve been around creatures in the fear of death before, and they were very similar to Morgan.
Panicked and grabbing at anything. When I dived into the muddy mass, was that really some magical spell?
Is that how that would feel? Annoyed and exasperated at the folly of certain females?
“Vyrathion,” Morgan says, pulling me out of my lofty considerations.
“I’m right here,” I remind her.
She gets to her feet and unsteadily makes her way over to me with a strange look on her face.
For a moment I wonder if she’s about to attack me. Then she puts her thin arms around my chest and leans into me.
I stiffen. What witchcraft is this?
“Thank you for saving me,” she says into my chest, her thin voice raspy with muddy water. “I thought I was going to die.”
We stand there like that for a moment, me with my arms out from my body and she with hers around it. The awkwardness of that strikes me, and I do what she least expects - I embrace her right back. Two can play the magic game.
To my astonishment, instead of withdrawing and admitting defeat, her shoulders start shaking and remarkable sounds emanate from her.
I don’t know what to do. Her magic makes me want to put my face closer to her hair and mutter certain words that she must have implanted in my mind with her spells.
I’m able to resist, but only barely. She’s so small and thin and unguarded in my arms! And she’s both cold from the water and warm from the jungle.
I clear my throat. “Hmm. It would be a waste to have you taken by a simple river. Only I decide when you may leave my service.”
She sniffs. “Are you going to decide that?”
“Well… now… circumstances have changed somewhat,” is all I manage as her spells take hold of me again.
Across the river, lightning flashes through the clouds. The brief light illuminates the jungle for miles in every direction before darkness swallows everything again.
Morgan stays with her arms around me, but she turns her head to look at the rain. “This is terrible weather. I’ve never seen it like this.”
“Ah. You’ve never been to Carc. It rains just like this, except sulfuric acid. It’s refreshing, in its own way. Not for long, of course. But my scales have never been cleaner.”
“Where is that?” she asks. “On the other side of the jungle?”
“What?” I have to laugh. “No, of course not. It’s another planet.”
“Oh. Let’s not go there.”
“I’m not planning to. And in this form, I can’t go anywhere worth going.”
The storm continues raging around the island while Clyde busies himself arranging wet leaves into patterns only he understands.
Then movement catches my eye. Far downstream, something breaks the surface of the water.
At first I assume it's another fallen tree. Then lightning flashes again, and it becomes clear that the shape is moving against the current, slowly and deliberately.
I narrow my eyes. That’s not an innocent creature.
Morgan notices immediately. "What is it?"
"It would be smart of that thing to not make us find out,” I growl, annoyed at the disturbance.
The shape vanishes beneath the muddy water. Several seconds pass before it surfaces again, much closer this time.
It’s large, even larger than me in my true dragon form.
Morgan follows my gaze, then looks up at me, watching my reaction.
The thing disappears once more and the river keeps roaring around the island.
Eventually Morgan clears her throat. "That's probably nothing."
"A ‘nothing’ in the jungle of planet Xren," I muse. “That would be a first.”
"You don't sound convinced."
"Possibly this is because I am sincerely not."
The water churns past us. Somewhere beneath its surface, something is approaching. And for the first time since reaching the island, the storm no longer seems like the most immediate problem.