15
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There was no way that the creatures we were visiting were the ones that we ended up halting in front of.
Raegan had led me, wordlessly, the rest of the walk towards Cluaineach’s own little barnyard, which was filled with many of the same animals of Choilltean.
After pausing and chatting with a pink-hued pixie, Raegan motioned for me to follow him back behind the barn. Feeling nothing but utter disdain for him, I huffed and obliged, only to release all of the tension in my body as I looked upon the animals hiding out behind the barn.
Foxes.
A gathering of them, four or five creatures with thin spindly legs and long, stretched bodies that ended in impressive bushes of tails swinging behind them.
Each of them had coats resembling the orange of a bright sunrise, patterns of white as clear as snow.
Their sharp, triangular ears flicked to us immediately as we approached, all of them just as tall as large horses from where they stood several feet away.
I guess I knew where Raegan got his fox-like stare from.
With a gentle smile on his face, the Prince approached the first of the group. Reaching a hand out to the pointed face of the creature, Raegan stroked at his fur as he let his forehead near the nose of the fox.
It was odd to see royalty not only so gentle with an animal, but to also mutter the same questioned request of partnership that the other pixies resorted to. It was hardly a whisper, yet I picked up on every letter as it poured from his mouth.
“Caraid?”
The elongated muzzle of the fox pressed against Raegan’s torso before he let out a shrill bark, the noise sounding like a woman screaming as he tipped his snout to the sky.
I approached the second of their group, reaching out a shaking hand that grazed against the sharp whiskers on his black snout. The fox regarded me, sly eyes monitoring every move as I pulled in a deep breath.
“Caraid?”
That same scream came from the second fox, except instead of greeting me the same way the other had greeted Raegan, he turned on his haunches and leapt through the field, gathering with the others and taking off before I could so much as blink.
“How unfortunate,” Raegan beamed as he pulled himself up onto his fox’s back.
“Bite me, Raegan.”
Something flashed over his face, his pupils expanding and his nostrils flaring. Within a breath he had managed to conceal that, resorting to lifting his brows suggestively before he rolled his eyes and nudged gently at the sides of his mount, taking the lead where I would have to follow behind.
~
I walked for three and a half hours.
There were about a thousand stitches in my sides, I could no longer feel my thighs, and my lungs had ruptured about ten miles back.
My hair was back to how it looked in Choilltean, though it wasn’t of my own design this time but because of the several times that I had hit a rock and stumbled down to the earth, only to hear both Raegan and his fox chirping laughter into the vast beyond.
Things only got worse as the grass beneath me gave away, the earth in front of us being replaced with violent, ragged grey rocks that stretched into the sky.
Raegan pushed on, maneuvering his way through a tight path of gravel and pebbles that I had no choice but to follow, taking extra care to not allow my ankles to roll.
I knew, deep down, that if that happened and I was unable to move — Raegan would just leave me there.
The ground began to slant upwards, the first stretch of several where at times I needed to resort to crawling my way up the rocky climbs, only for them to level out and allow me to catch a breath before it started all over again.
“Where are we?” I panted on the third landing, where Raegan slid down from the fox and muttered something in its ear. The creature wasted no time, spinning around and sprinting down the treacherous slopes that we had been climbing for half an hour.
“Shush,” Raegan said as he pressed a pointer finger to his lips, then pointed to what was in front of him.
We were on a flat stretch of rock, tucked against a small rocky alcove along one of the beaches.
Where we were, I had no idea, only that the flat slate beneath us was not the only thing in our vicinity.
Tucked into the wall itself was an opening, the beginning to a moist, dark cave that reflected absolute darkness in all directions.
I’m not going in there.
Raegan looked far too calm, considering when I stole a glance over the edge of the clearing of rock, we looked to be hundreds of feet in the air. Gulping, I resorted to watching Raegan as he leant against the opening of the cave, cupped his hands over his mouth, and hollered out, “Gliocas?”
Silence followed his call, until the rock that felt like a mountain started to rumble. Pebbles at my feet skittered across the slab beneath us, each one dancing to the same rhythm that the world shook at.
Two red, beady eyes appeared within the blackness of the cave mouth.
Stumbling backwards, I gasped before I could throw my hand over my mouth.
Following the red eyes was a large serpentine head, ridges of small horns that spiked from the tip of his flaring nostrils to the peak of his scaly skull.
Each step that he planted against the earth continued to send tremors across the mountain, until his slithering neck emerged next, followed by a tremendous body of scarlet hide and intricate scales that spanned his whole length, ending only at the end of his spiked tail.
This was no reptile that I had seen in my life, at least not with my eyes. Because instead of two forelegs, he rested on the clawed ends of two sweeping, leathery wings.
A dragon. A wyvern, if we’re going to get technical, but a dragon.
I pinched myself. Twice. Three times, just for good measure.
A side of Raegan that I had yet to see took form on his face, his whole body unfurling as tension rippled off of him and faded into the sky. His smile stretched wide and true, his eyes brightening as he stepped towards the beast. “Gliocas, how glad I am to see you.”
The dragon — Gliocas, apparently — lowered his ginormous head and rested his muzzle against Raegan’s chest. The head was the size of Raegan, let alone the rest of him.
A puff of steam blew from Gliocas’ snout just as his carmine eyes latched onto me, a hidden transparent eyelid glossing over them before he let out a low grumble.
“It’s alright, old friend. She’s… she’s fine.”
That might have been the one and only nice thing Raegan would ever say about me — or do for me. Because the dragon’s eyes settled once more, his spine relaxing as he slumped down to the rock.
A slithering noise came from Gliocas and Raegan nodded.
“We know. They attacked Choilltean a few nights back.”
They were talking, which shouldn’t have been odd to me at this point. Yet it was.
“That's why I’m here. No — why I’m in Cluaineach. I need no reason to see you.” Raegan smiled. It was so strange on his brash face.
The integrity of Raegan’s promise to protect me was about to be challenged, because a third voice, not belonging to either myself or Raegan, cut through the air.
“Outsiders do not visit us.” His voice was hoarse and deep, the type of noise that you just knew contained age and a dash of exhaustion.
Raegan hadn’t moved.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, my body snapping straight as I nervously began to turn on my heel.
“What is it, Olivia?” Raegan went rigid, his hand moving for the sword at his waist.
“There’s someone–”
Not someone.
Something.
A pair of silver, molten eyes took to the cave opening that Gliocas had emerged from only seconds prior.
They were larger than his, slanted more at the ends, and more creased.
Two twisting horns stretched from the top of his head as he moved forward, his body balanced against slate-grey wings on his shoulders.
Gliocas whipped his head in the direction of the cave as he watched the second dragon emerge, this one taller at the withers and wider through his chest. The metallic sheen of his scales glistened beneath the sun as he blew out a puff of smoke, the small scales stretching down the length of his face shifting and settling with every movement of his lips.
They parted ever so slightly, revealing daggers of pearl-white.
“Y-you…” I muttered, my body feeling far too similar to jelly as my mind dizzied and my vision blurred.
“I,” the dragon said.
Raegan narrowed his eyes, his focus shifting from the dragon to me, and back again.
“Is he talking to her?” he asked Gliocas, who huffed out an answer in the form of decaying-flesh-smoke.
Raegan didn’t look impressed — he looked angry when he found my eyes again. “That is not possible.”
My whole body was shaking as the second dragon continued forwards, his snout halting several inches from me where he drew in several large breathes of air.
His head tilted to the side as that glassy eyelid swiped at his eyes. “Caraid?”
Raegan’s whole body tensed further. “Not possible…”
“W-what is going on?” I shot my question to anyone who would answer, dragon or prince. Raegan only continued to stare at the two of us, his face stretched into confusion.
The dragon blinked at me again. “Caraid?”
“Answer him, Olivia,” Raegan snarled.
“How?” I whimpered back.
“Fear not, Little.” The dragon folded his rear legs, his wings hovering at his sides as he took to laying on the ground. “I am Urram, and I mean you no harm.”
I finally found the courage to look him directly in the eyes, ignoring the slitted pupil that resided there. “C-caraid?”
“Caraid,” he purred back, his snout nudging my shaking body. Trying my best not to stumble and fall in front of a dragon, I grew rigid at his contact.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” a fourth voice huffed, drawing my attention in the direction of it only to see Gliocas, right as he released another fishy breath.
“I… I can hear you both?”
Raegan looked even more furious as he scoffed at me. “Once one accepts you into the clan, they all do. It’s a dragon thing.”