32. Jerrid
JERRID
Dying was louder than he thought it would be…and it sounded like Dragon.
Jerrid blinked up at the mist and shadow, unable to move, barely able to breathe. The thoughts that barreled into him tasted of spice and dragon fire, bitter with pain he didn’t understand. If this was a shadow, why was he masquerading as a dragon?
Panic flared through his body.
“Why are you back?” he rasped as Dragon landed soundlessly beside him, scattering the mist.
Dragon bared his teeth at him and shook so hard that his scales creaked. She sent me back.
Shades, no.
That meant she was out there unprotected…
“I gave you one job to do.” He struggled to make his frozen limbs move, but they were bound to the ground, to the mist. “How could you leave her out there?”
Dragon snarled and snapped his jaws around Jerrid’s shoulder, yanking hard. Jerrid’s body slid through the mist.
I already cut the connection to her. We need to shift, Dragon hissed as steam and smoke leaked between his teeth, heating Jerrid’s bare shoulder. One last time. And we need to do it properly this time, or Meat Pasty is going to die. Do you understand?
Jerrid’s fingers twitched. Yes! If he could just move his arm, he’d punch Dragon in the snout…
That won’t be helpful. Dragon’s teeth sank a little deeper into his flesh, not piercing but pressed so hard they would slice through his skin at the slightest provocation. If you want to save Ava, you need to shift. We need to fix this. For her.
The thought rolled through his mind until it tumbled from between his cracked lips. “For her.”
Was this how he would save her? Not by dying…but by putting himself back together?
By stitching the shards of his soul together?
Yes, Dragon thought as he released his hold on Jerrid’s shoulder. It’s time.
Jerrid blinked up at the mist and darkness. This was his final chance.
He could feel that in his bones, the inevitability of this moment. And strangely, his body relaxed, his muscles uncoiling as the mist began to slide away from him as if they could no longer touch him.
“I’m ready,” he whispered.
Dragon slipped between the cracks in his armor, his thoughts warm and eager and somehow older.
He tore through Jerrid’s mind, touching a thought here, another one there, spiraling in an ecstatic loop as he spun to see everything there was to see.
And yet his joy was tinged with something bittersweet, with the biting tang that came with age.
With knowing things.
But this didn’t feel like an invasion at all. It was like saying hello to an old friend you’d nearly forgotten.
The memories he explored at first were pleasant ones. Jerrid smiled as they sat around the campfire with his family, laughing and eating venison from the spit. Scales slid over his knuckles and up the back of his hand as they shifted to a training session with his father, Carr.
Then he remembered his first dragon ride, how he’d fallen off and broken his arm.
He winced as the scales crawled over his elbow, but the memory of the pain vanished as Dragon frisked away to see other memories. His first steps. His first fight with his father. His first kiss.
It had been a golden-haired lass with freckles who sat on him and stole a kiss after lessons one day. He’d been furious and embarrassed. Scrubbed his mouth with soap and wouldn’t speak to her for weeks. He’d sworn off kissing for life.
Dragon laughed at this memory, a deep, thundering bellow that reverberated down to Jerrid’s toes as they sprouted into clawed feet.
It’s not so bad when you kiss the right lass, is it?
Thoughts of Ava flooded his mind. The first time he’d seen her back in Eroth, a thin-lipped healer who didn’t seem to know he existed.
He remembered her huddling in the forest trying to rescue flowers as myrk hounds prepared to attack, and his anger that she would put her life at risk for stupid plants.
The feel of her lips against his ignited fire in his blood and a longing in his soul that he had never known he wanted. As if a piece of himself had always been missing, and she somehow filled it.
No. No, it certainly wasn’t bad with the right lass.
But how did he make that work with Dragon in the way? The thought halted the shift, his wings only partially extended from his shoulders. Stabs of pain dug into his back, and he gritted his teeth, tensing to fight.
I’m not in the way. I’m not trying to get between you.
“So you say, and yet you’re always there! Always in our thoughts!” The pain intensified and dragged a cry from his lips.
I’m not in the way, and I’m not trying to get between you, Dragon insisted. Jerrid. I AM YOU.
The thought ripped open a barrier to some place Jerrid had never dared look, into a cavern he’d never dared open, too afraid of what he would find in the darkness at the center of his soul.
I AM YOU.
What was it Brynja had said? That he’d fractured his soul, and he needed to put it back together? How the shades did he mend a soul?
You’re already doing it, Dragon whispered. Can’t you feel it? The togetherness? The oneness?
Jerrid strained to find that feeling his dragon described. Togetherness. That sounded rather nice. He thought about the way he felt when he and Echo sailed the skies. The joy of a unified flight, a unified purpose, and unified goals.
We aren’t so different, you know. We want the same things. We want to fly. To protect. To save.
“And Ava,” Jerrid whispered as his body shifted shape and grew, expanding in all the right places to make room for stronger shoulders, a longer spine, a sinewy tail…
Yes.
They needed to save and protect Ava. That’s why they were doing this. That was their goal, their singleness of mind, the shining star in their night sky.
In my night sky.
“My night sky,” Jerrid repeated.
The shift completed, every part of him scale and claw. Every part of him Dragon…and yet every part was still himself. He threw back his head and roared, but not in pain or fury. Instead, his roar echoed with healing and regret.
And peace with his dragon, with himself.
For the first time, he remained in control of his dragon form, not shoved into the corner to watch from the sidelines.
He was the dragon.
He launched from the ground and flung himself through the clawing hands of mist trying to pull him back into this pit, this Helheim.
The world opened before him, the sun breaking over the mountains to the east in a blaze of golden glory.
And his heart sang the song of morning, of rebirth, of change.
But he wasn’t done yet. This was just the dreamworld. He needed to wake up. Because his body and soul might be unified at long last…
But he’d left his heart behind in the Shadewood.
A part of him was still missing, and she was going to die if he didn’t escape back to the realm of the living.
Roaring, he pierced through the sky, shredding it open, ripping a hole big enough to hurl himself through.
And then he opened his eyes as a giant spear of shadow descended straight toward him.
Hissing between his teeth, Jerrid hurled himself to the side, wrapping his arms around Ava and practically throwing her to the ground. The tentacle smashed down mere inches away, shooting powerful reverberations through his body. Ava scrambled to her feet, her body swaying as she stared at him.
Above their heads, the shadow began to laugh.
There you are, it whispered. I thought you’d given up. I left you cowering in the mist like an injured rabbit. But you’ve come back to play.
“No,” Jerrid said, clenching his teeth and widening his stance. “I’ve come back to destroy you.”
Pathetic human. Weak. Where is your dragon now? Dark laughter dug into his bones. I’ve devoured him.
“No,” Jerrid whispered with a glance toward Ava. “I am Dragon.”
Her eyes snapped wider, mouth opening.
He held out his hand, and scales exploded across his knuckles, rippling across his body in a wild clatter. He arched and roared as the shift took him, the pain brief but natural. He was struck by how easy it was.
How right.
Jerrid bared his teeth, shifting his weight as Ava crept alongside him, her hand against his side.
He spread his wing over her and tucked her close.
Above them, the shadow coiled into itself before shooting out half a dozen tentacles of darkness.
Jerrid knocked two aside and shoved Ava backward as the others slammed into the ground around them.
One tentacle scraped along his left side, ripping away scales, exposing raw, tender flesh.
The shadow laughed as it drew its limbs back into itself. Then the tentacles exploded through the air, rippling like ink in water. Jerrid spat a warning blast of fire at the attack. The shadow dissipated in the heat of his flame but coalesced again almost immediately.
Beside him, Ava lifted her hands and tried to summon her magic, but it sputtered and died before even catching fire.
“Stay down,” he snarled.
But she raised her head, eyes flashing. “We’ll do this together.”
A tentacle snapped toward her.
Jerrid whipped her aside with his wing and flattened himself against the ground as the shadow skittered across his back, clattering against his spine spikes.
It evaporated and recoiled into the central mass as another took its place.
Lumbering to his feet, Jerrid beat his wings violently. A shockwave of dust, embers, and leaves whipped toward the shadow and blew away the smoky trappings it surrounded itself in.
For just a few seconds, he glimpsed a roiling, solid mass at the center of the monster.
He focused his fire on that spot, on the heart of the darkness, roaring as he spat his fireball. But the shadow’s tentacles snapped forward, sealed the breach, and knocked aside the blast as if it were nothing more than a child’s ball.
A wicked laugh thundered across the clearing.
“Jerrid…” Ava’s voice held grim determination as she tossed one of her fireballs high into the air.
He inhaled, lava igniting in his chest, and then spat his fire toward hers. His crimson fire encased her blue. The twin fires grew in size and blasted through tentacles, shredding through the shadow’s defenses. But then, impossibly, the fireball began to turn.
It swung in a wide arc, a blazing ball on an invisible string, circling around the shadow, and then it flew straight back toward them.
Jerrid flung himself in one direction while Ava went another, both of them flattening themselves to the ground. Their own weapon sailed over their heads and then smashed into the tower behind them.
Stone screeched against stone, timbers exploding and shattering.
Someone screamed.
Jerrid rose, shaking himself as he growled, “Leave them alone!”
But the shadow merely laughed. Who are you to give me orders, dragon?
Half a dozen tentacles exploded out of the mass and streaked toward the tower.
Jerrid’s heart sputtered inside him. Ava screamed in horror. This thing had no soul. No compassion. It would kill the innocent just to spite them.
Jerrid rose into the air as the tentacles slammed into the tower, piercing through stone, rattling the foundation of the ruins. Ava flung a fireball toward the shadow, and it sizzled through the writhing darkness, clearing a path to the heart.
Jerrid inhaled and spewed his fire.
It sliced through the air and exploded on impact. The foul stench of burning flesh bowled over him as the shadow screamed in pain, its tentacles recoiling to protect itself. He inhaled again.
But before he could attack a second time, a tentacle wrapped around his wing and yanked him toward the ground. At the same moment, another tentacle struck Ava, coiling around her waist and ripping her away from the ground.
Jerrid roared, panic igniting in his breath. He thundered in the wrong direction as the shadow dragged Ava into the sky.
Her scream chased him as he plummeted to the ground.