Chapter 8
The following days and weeks were filled with conversations, or verbal sparring sessions to be more precise.
Vilka’s assessment of Kate remained as it had initially been, that she was beautiful, bright, and a great deal of trouble.
He watched her like a hawk and kept her on her leash and collar even though she whined and complained about them incessantly.
One concession he did make was a woven wrap dress.
She was prone to chills. Little bumps would lift on the skin all over her body and she would shiver and huddle into the blankets to avoid the cold.
He did not like to see her uncomfortable, though it was difficult to make her entirely comfortable while also keeping her under the kind of confinement she had shown was necessary.
Unfortunately, the fortress did not run itself. After a few days, Erias gave him a respectful reminder that his presence was necessary for several matters and perhaps the human could be left chained up for a few hours at a time without the world crashing and burning.
He was right, of course. Vilka knew he was probably being paranoid.
Kate had no way to escape now, even if she did get loose again, there were no portals and she had no way of making one.
She was a woman adrift in a world of unfamiliar technology.
And yet he had an unsettling feeling that simply would not abate that she was capable of almost anything.
Those two impulses warred, distracting him in the carrying out of his duties, much to Erias’ hyper-respectful chagrin.
“Sir…”
“Sir…?”
“Sir!”
“What is it, Erias?” Vilka broke from his reverie and turned to his second in command who was standing next to him with an armful of papers and a concerned expression.
“Sir,” Erias said. “I know you have been preoccupied with the human situation, but there is another you must attend to. I have been detecting movement below the mountain. It began when the portal first opened, and it appears to be growing stronger by the day. The movements are very small, but they are registering on the scales and they continue to do so in greater numbers.”
Vilka rubbed his hands over his face. There must be a reason for what Erias was telling him, but he could not imagine why some practically undetectable tremors should be of such concern. “What does that mean?”
“I am concerned that the world eater may be awakening. Avastias may breach the surface sooner than expected.”
Vilka stared at his second in command. What Erias had just said was literally impossible.
It was like saying that the sun and the moon had decided to switch places.
World eaters did not just wake up and look for a snack.
They were ancient entities responding to rhythms many centuries in duration.
He would have said that Kate was more likely to grow wings and start spitting fire than the world eater was to awaken.
“This is not… it is not his time.”
“I believe he determines that, sir,” Erias said.
“There have been many disturbances of late. The world eater could simply be stirring, but it is essential that we maintain clearance of that area—and that no more portals are opened. There is no doubt in my mind that he is reacting to the fields generated by them. It is probably the equivalent of having someone come into your bedchamber with two pot lids and smashing them together. It is imperative that there are no more disruptions, if you pardon my bold speech, sir.”
“There should not be any more such disruptions,” Vilka said. “Unless there is some other human waiting in the wings to arrive in our lands, we have closed the portal and there should be no further disturbance.”
“The young woman,” Erias said. “She is quite determined to return to her realm, and I believe she could potentially create a new portal if she were to get loose. She is uniquely inventive.”
“I have her chained to my bed, quite literally, Erias,” Vilka said. “She cannot build anything whatsoever.” He threw open the door to his chamber. “You see?”
Erias looked into the room, then at Vilka’s face. “Sir?”
Vilka turned to see the chain broken upon the floor, his room empty.
“Not again,” he groaned. “How does she do this?”
* * *
How she had done it was taking the sheer forces of the metal he’d used in the chain into account.
It had incredible impact resistance, but it had not taken repetitive torque well—which was to say that she had wound a loop of the chain around a bedpost and used a separate piece of metal scavenged from the long pins that kept Vilka’s bed together to twist the chain upon itself until the link popped open.
It had not taken long to do, but it had taken her longer than she liked to get enough time alone to put her plan into action.
She had picked her way through the fortress at meal time.
There were no dragons on guard, which she thought was strange.
What kind of fortress required no guard?
What exactly was the fortress supposed to be a defense against?
Perhaps the dragons had once been invaded from the ocean.
She didn’t know, and for the moment, she didn’t care.
Escape was at the forefront of her mind. It had become an obsession, even though she was falling for the one who kept her captive, she still had to make it out of there. It was a point of honor, if nothing else.
Her time with Vilka had been intoxicating.
He had changed her life and her body. Of course, she wasn’t planning on leaving him forever.
She was hoping that once he realized that she really couldn’t be contained, he would stop trying to imprison her and simply allow her to travel back and forth between the worlds.
Kate had no intention of telling others what she was doing, not yet anyway.
Her research could take years, decades even.
Plenty of time for them to have a relationship, and plenty of time for the relationship between the dragon realm and the human world to change.
It didn’t have to be adversarial. She’d tried to tell him that so many times, but he thought she was naive.
Vilka was the most headstrong, stubborn, commanding, domineering man she had ever encountered in her existence.
Of course, he wasn’t a man. He was a dragon, and maybe her judgment was clouded because his form was so human, and when he touched her, kissed her, held her, joined with her and slid inside her he always felt human to her.
Now that she was free of the fortress, Kate headed toward the mountain.
She needed to open another portal, and in a world without electricity running through every wall, that meant generating power.
There weren’t too many ways to generate electricity in a world without so much of modern infrastructure, but the wind blew here—and that would work.
The idea had struck her several days earlier, and she had immediately set to work scavenging little bits and pieces from Vilka’s rooms, putting them together in the moments she got to herself.
Fortunately, Vilka had not confiscated her backpack.
He really should have, but he didn’t know what she had in there or what it could be used for.
Dragons interacted with the world very differently from humans.
Coils of copper wire were not of concern to creatures that could spin ore out of rock and create fire at the tips of their fingers.
There was definitely some kind of innate molecular manipulation happening, a mystery Kate was eager to solve in the future.
For the moment, getting home was the priority.
She had picked out the tall mountain as the ideal spot to locate a couple of small electromagnetic generators that would operate simply by spinning little fans fashioned from bits of stick and cloth, attached through a shaft and turning fragments of the magnets she had brought with her inside coiled wire, thereby creating enough of a field to begin to power the necessary reaction.
It was going to be a mucky, rough field solution, and there was every chance that it would not work but she had to try.
Staying in the shadow of a ridge had protected her from being spotted as she made her way out toward the mountain.
She knew her time was limited. Sooner or later her absence would be noted and then the dragons would start searching for her.
The prevailing wind seemed to be on the fortress side of the mountain, which was a pity.
She was going to have to risk being spotted in setting up her mini windmills.
Kate ascended the mountain as quickly as she could.
She wasn’t heading for the top of it, that wasn’t necessary.
The lower slopes would work, exposed as they were to the prevailing winds.
But it was still hard physical work getting there, and she was grimy with sweat by the time she got to a place where she felt comfortable setting up her gear.
Hours had passed since her escape and she could feel an impending sense of doom.
Vilka would almost certainly have figured that she was missing by now.
With any luck he was searching the fortress first. It was a big place with a lot of little nooks and crannies and a full search wouldn’t be over in a hurry.
She wound the wires around one another, connecting the generators to the little samples of material that powered the portal reactors.
Almost immediately the fans began to spin, generating current.
Perfect. She smiled to herself as she set up several more of the little stations, linking them all together.
By themselves they didn’t generate much power, but together they might just make enough.