Chapter 6
*** TOREN ***
Flying with Marina pressed against his body was a problem Toren had not anticipated.
He'd carried passengers before. Auren, once, when a training accident had left his friend with a torn wing membrane.
Khrelan, twice, during storm evacuations on Dobromia's surface.
Carrying another person in flight was a mechanical challenge.
Adjust for the extra weight, compensate for the shifted center of gravity, fly slower and lower than instinct preferred. He'd trained for it. He was good at it.
He had not trained for the sensation of Marina's arms around his neck and her body against his back and her breath warm against his shoulder.
He had not trained for the way her thighs tightened around his torso when they hit a thermal updraft, or the way she pressed her face into the space between his wing joints when the wind picked up, or the way her fingers found the gaps between his scales and held on with a grip that was both trusting and terrified.
She was terrified. He could feel it in the tension of her body, in the quick rhythm of her breathing, in the way she held herself rigid against the unfamiliar motion of flight.
She was also exhilarated. He could feel that too; in the moments when the fear loosened and she lifted her head to look at the landscape below, and her grip shifted from desperate to curious, and she made a sound that was half gasp and half laugh.
"You okay up there?" he called over his shoulder.
"Define okay!" she shouted back. The wind tore the words apart, but he caught them. "I'm clinging to a dragon over an alien desert at approximately two hundred yards! My definition of okay has expanded significantly in the last ten minutes!"
"We can go higher if you want."
"Absolutely not!"
Behind them, Auren carried Peter and Dr. Patel with considerably less grace.
Patel had her eyes closed and was muttering what sounded like scientific observations into a recording device, which was either incredibly brave or incredibly nerdy.
Peter looked like he was trying very hard not to scream.
Athena flew with Khrelan, and from the rigid silence between them, Toren guessed neither was enjoying the arrangement.
The journey from Ceylara to Dobromia took four hours.
They flew through the space between the two planets which was technically impossible without life support, but the Weredragons' partial-shift form generated a protective thermal envelope that extended to anyone in physical contact with them.
Marina had asked approximately nine hundred questions about how this worked.
Toren had answered all of them and enjoyed every one.
*** Marina ***
Dobromia appeared below them as a dark sphere against the star field.
No oceans, no green continents, no cloud formations.
Just rock and heat and the faint amber glow of the twin suns reflected off the barren surface.
From space, it looked dead. Toren had always known his planet wasn't beautiful by anyone's standards.
Seeing it through Marina's eyes made the knowing sharper.
"That's home?" Marina asked. Her voice was quieter now. The exhilaration of flight had given way to something more complicated.
"That's home."
"It looks..."
"I know."
They descended through the atmosphere. The heat hit immediately.
There was a wall of dry, sulfuric warmth that made Marina cough and press her face into his shoulder.
He angled them toward the Colony's main entrance; a massive cave mouth carved into the base of the capital volcano.
The entrance was flanked by carved stone pillars that rose a hundred feet high, covered in the geometric patterns that Weredragon artisans had been cutting into rock for centuries.
"Oh," Marina breathed when she saw them. "Those are beautiful."
"They tell the history of the Colony. Each pattern represents a generation. The oldest are at the bottom." He pointed to the base of the left pillar, where the carvings were worn almost smooth by time. "Those were carved before we had written language. The stories were in the stone."
They landed on the entrance platform. Marina's legs were shaking when she slid off his back, from the flight, the adrenaline and from the heat. She steadied herself against his arm, and the contact sent a pulse of warmth through his scales that had nothing to do with temperature.
"I'm fine," she said before he could ask. "Just getting my land legs back."
"Take your time. The Colony isn't going anywhere."
The rest of the team landed behind them.
Patel staggered off Auren's back, kissed the ground, and immediately pulled out her data tablet to record observations.
Peter stood beside Athena, looking pale but composed.
Athena looked exactly the same as she always looked; ready for a fight and vaguely annoyed that one hadn't started yet.
Khrelan moved to the front. "I'll go ahead and inform the guards," he said. It was the most cooperative thing he'd said since the mission began. Toren nodded, grateful for the gesture.
"Is he warming up to us?" Marina asked quietly.
"He saved your ship from a Drog and flew your sister across a solar system. For Khrelan, that's practically a marriage proposal."
*** Toren ***
The Colony was everything Toren had described and nothing Marina had imagined. He could see it in her face as they descended through the entrance tunnels into the inhabited levels. The wonder was hitting her in waves as each new cavern opened up around them.
The bioluminescent light came first. Not the harsh, artificial illumination she was used to on the Vulcana, but a living light that pulsed in slow rhythms along the cave walls.
There was a blue-green, amber, soft violet.
The organisms that produced it had evolved over millennia to fill the underground with a glow that was gentle enough to sleep by and bright enough to work by.
"The light is alive?" Marina whispered, reaching toward the wall but stopping short of touching it.
"Bioluminescent organisms. They feed on the minerals in the stone and produce light as a metabolic byproduct.
Every cavern has a different color depending on the mineral composition of the walls.
" Toren led her through a junction where three tunnels met, and the light shifted from blue to a warm amber that made the stone look like it was glowing from within.
"It's like being inside a sunset," Patel murmured behind them, and for once, the scientific language failed her and she just stared.
The waterfalls were next. Underground rivers fed by geothermal springs, cascading through carved channels into pools that generated power for the Colony's systems. The sound of falling water filled the caverns with a constant, soothing roar that Toren hadn't realized he'd missed until he heard it again.
The mist caught the bioluminescent light and scattered it into tiny rainbows that drifted through the air.
Marina stopped walking. She stood at the edge of a viewing platform and looked down at the main waterfall. It was a hundred-foot cascade that disappeared into the depths of the Colony, its mist rising in great clouds of light-scattered moisture.
"This is what you were trying to describe," she said. "When you talked about the crystal arrays and the waterfalls. I thought I understood. I didn't. I couldn't have."
"Words aren't enough for some things."
"No," she agreed. "They're not."
She looked at him, and her green eyes were bright with the reflected light of his world, and the expression on her face was the one he'd been hoping to see since he first imagined bringing a human to Dobromia.
Not pity for a dying planet. Not clinical interest in an alien ecosystem.
Wonder. Genuine wonder at something beautiful, offered by someone who wanted to share it.
The guards at the Colony's inner gate were not expecting them.
The first sign of trouble was the weapons. Four Weredragon soldiers stepped out of an alcove with energy staffs leveled and expressions that suggested they'd been given very specific instructions about aliens. Behind them, a fifth guard was already activating a comm panel.
"Halt," the lead guard commanded. His scales were dark green, and his voice carried the flat authority of someone following orders he didn't fully understand. "Identify yourselves and your purpose."
"I am Toren, son of Boradrith," Toren replied. He kept his voice calm. He'd known this moment was coming. "I've returned from the Ceylara expedition with guests. They're human. They're here under my protection and my invitation."
The guard's eyes flicked to Marina, then to Athena, then to Peter and Patel. The weapons didn't lower. "No aliens are permitted inside the Colony without the D'Karr's authorization."
"Which is why I'm requesting an audience with the D'Karr. Immediately."
"The D'Karr doesn't see anyone immediately."
"He'll see his son." Toren stepped forward.
He didn't use the height advantage, didn't spread his wings, didn't do anything that could be interpreted as a threat display.
But he held the guard's gaze with the quiet certainty of someone who knew exactly who he was and exactly how much authority that carried.
"Send the message. Tell my father that Toren has returned from Ceylara, and that he's brought something the D'Karr needs to see. "
The guard hesitated. Toren could see the calculation happening; protocol versus authority, instructions versus the son of the king standing ten feet away and not blinking.
The guard activated his comm. "Send word to the D'Karr. His son has returned. With humans."
The last word carried the weight of a world that was about to change.
Marina moved to Toren's side. She didn't touch him, but she stood close enough that the guards could see they were together; not romantically, not yet, but allied. Unified. Two people who'd made a decision and were standing behind it.