Chapter 35 #2
We scramble behind a boulder, breathing hard. The wyrm advances, its serpentine body flowing over the terrain, unsettlingly fluid.
“Weapons would be useful,” Zeriel mutters, his gaze raking the ravine like a predator testing for weakness. “Unless, of course, you’d care to start coaxing the beast to heel right about now.”
The right head snakes around the boulder, jaws snapping. We dive in opposite directions, the teeth missing us by inches. The ground trembles as the massive body slithers closer, all three heads now focused on us.
Zeriel rolls to his feet, fists curling tight. His chest heaves, and then he shouts, raw, commanding:
“Distract it. I need a minute to… think.”
I don't question him. There's no time. I sprint toward a pile of loose rocks, scooping up a handful and hurling them at the wyrm's left head. The stones ping uselessly off its crystalline scales, but the act is enough. All three heads swivel toward me, eyes narrowing.
I look its middle head dead in the eyes and try to force a connection with it, but something feels wrong.
The three-headed wyrm's mind isn't like other dragons I've encountered.
It's fragmented, chaotic, like trying to grasp smoke with bare hands.
The moment I push into its consciousness, I'm assaulted by competing instincts: hunger, curiosity, territorial rage, all warring for dominance.
“I can't connect properly!” I shout to Zeriel, diving behind another rock as the right head spits a stream of viscous liquid that sizzles against stone. “Its mind is too fractured!”
Zeriel stands about thirty feet away. His body is rigid, eyes closed, hands gripping a boulder as if for support.
He’s looking inward, trying to find what’s instinctively there…
what he must have already felt at least once before, even if subconsciously, when the sconces trembled during his fight with Blaise.
The air suddenly feels… wrong. Charged, as if the whole ravine is drawing in a breath.
“Whatever you're doing, do it faster!” I yell as the wyrm's tail whips around, smashing into the boulder I'm using for cover. The impact sends me sprawling across the ravine floor, my void-drake suit tearing at the knee. Instinct claws at me: pull up the hood, vanish, survive. Maybe the beast hunts by sight alone. But this is training. Selen’s order is iron in my mind: You don’t hide. Not from this.
The central head looms over me, crystalline teeth gleaming. I roll desperately, feeling the heat of its breath as I scramble backward on hands and feet. My back hits the ravine wall. Nowhere left to run.
“Zeriel!” My voice cracks with urgency.
Something jolts through him. His eyes snap open, and for an instant they’re not his usual dark brown. They seem to flicker with subtle fissures of light, as though something ancient has split the surface. His breath rasps, caught between agony and release.
Suddenly the air hums. Something that feels like a low vibration rolls outward, rattling stones, rattling me. My teeth ache, my ribs shiver, the marrow of my bones seems to quake as if they’re resonating with his heartbeat.
The wyrm shrieks, jerking back, all three heads thrashing in confusion. Zeriel’s attention fixes on it with merciless precision, as if he’s trying to tunnel-focus the brunt of whatever it is he’s doing. The dragon’s crystalline plates tremble, fine cracks webbing across a stretch of scales.
Zeriel staggers, almost folding in on himself. Sweat glistens at his temple, and I realize his nose is bleeding. He stares at his hands like they’ve turned traitor.
“What… did I just—”
The wyrm recovers, the left head spitting a stream of acid while the right launches a barrage of crystalline shards. Zeriel flinches, bracing while he ducks, and again the hum rolls out toward the dragon, but I feel its side-waves.
It vibrates through me. Gods, I can feel it—him?—inside me, his power humming through bone and blood, terrifyingly intrusive, intimate, inescapable. It leaves me breathless, clutching at my sides.
“I can’t—control it,” he snarls, voice rough, as if vibrating with the same resonance tearing through the air.
I struggle to his side just as he drops on one knee.
The wyrm circles us, all three heads weaving hypnotically. I feel another attempt to push into its mind, but instead of forcing a connection, I try something different.
I listen. I let the chaotic fragments of its consciousness wash over me, seeking to understand instead of to control.
And there, beneath the cacophony, I finally sense it: three distinct personalities, like three separate consciousnesses forced to share one body. They're not fighting us. They're fighting each other, trapped in an endless struggle for dominance.
“It's not one dragon,” I tell Zeriel, my voice unsteady as the realization hits me. “It's three minds in one body. They're confused, frightened—”
The beast lunges again, shards erupting from its central maw. Zeriel staggers upright, fists clenched, his whole frame trembling. The hum bursts raw and jagged, shattering half the shards in midair. The rest we duck. He sways, veins stark, breath ragged.
“You don’t need to fight it,” I say quickly. “We need to steady it.” I grab his shoulder.
The contact between us jolts through me like a spark.
Instantly, I feel an external energy coursing through me.
His energy. It’s amplifying, shifting. I gasp as something new stirs within the connection, like a bridge forming between his power and mine.
A result of the spell Selen performed with us?
His jaw locks. His eyes blaze faintly. He nods—once.
“Trust me,” I whisper, and step forward.
“Veyra.” His voice rips out, raw with warning, but he follows, close enough that his breath grazes my neck.
I raise my hands, palms outward, and close my eyes. Still feeling a boost of Zeriel's energy humming through me, I try to project emotions instead of words: peace, calm, understanding. I visualize the three minds as separate entities, acknowledging each one individually.
The wyrm halts. All three heads cock in eerie unison. The central lowers, nostrils flaring as though tasting the air.
“That's it,” I murmur, taking another step forward. “You're safe. No one's going to hurt you.”
Zeriel’s presence is hot and magnetic at my back, but his energy feels like it’s grounding me.
The left head dips lower, eyes fixed on me. I sense curiosity replacing fear, a willingness to listen. The right head remains wary, but its aggression dulls.
“They respond to different emotions,” I tell Zeriel softly. “The left head to curiosity, the right to caution, the center to strength. We need to show them all three.”
“How?” Zeriel’s voice is taut, hoarse.
“Follow my lead.”
I take another step forward, then kneel, making myself smaller, non-threatening to the cautious right head. At the same time, I maintain eye contact with the central head, projecting confidence and strength without aggression.
“Now,” I whisper to Zeriel, “try to show the left head something interesting. Can you use your… energy, but gently?”
Zeriel hesitates, then chest heaving, lifts a crystal shard from the ground. He simply holds it for a moment, as if he himself wonders what he’s going to do. It vibrates faintly in his grip, as if singing, the energy causing it to shift from amber to emerald to sapphire to crimson.
The left head stretches forward, captivated by the swirling colors. Its pupils dilate with fascination.
The central head watches us with newfound respect, sensing Zeriel's power but also our restraint. The right head remains cautious but has stopped its threatening posture, settling into watchful alertness.
Slowly, deliberately, I rise to my feet, maintaining the delicate balance we've created. The wyrm's body relaxes, its segmented length no longer coiled to strike.
“Now what?” Zeriel asks, voice low, rough.
“We show it we're not a threat, but we're not prey either.” I step closer, my hand extended.
Together, we hold. Me with calm recognition, him with that quiet, pulsing rhythm in his hand. For a breathless moment, all three heads still. Balanced.
When I'm within arm's reach of the central head, I stop. The massive dragon studies me, its crystalline eyes reflecting my image back at me. I hold its gaze, projecting calm confidence. Then, slowly, I bow my head, not in submission, but in acknowledgment. One predator recognizing another.
To my amazement, the central head dips in return, a gesture so deliberate it can't be mistaken for anything but reciprocation. The left head continues watching Zeriel's energy display with childlike wonder, while the right head maintains its vigilant guard.
“It's accepting us,” I breathe.
Zeriel moves to my side, his shoulder brushing mine. The contact jolts through me—heat, awareness, a surge in the energy flowing between us. The wyrm senses it too, all three heads pulling back slightly in surprise.
“Easy,” I murmur, to both Zeriel and the dragon. “We're finding balance.”
The wyrm settles again, its massive body sinking lower to the ground in a posture that's almost relaxed. The threat has passed. We've established an understanding.
Zeriel lets the shard fall from his fingers, his hands lowering to his sides.
For a moment, we stand there in silence.
Two figures facing an extraordinary creature, bound not by strength of steel but by something far older.
Three minds in one body… and us. Two fae whose blood has answered a call it should no longer remember.
Fae whose gifts have connected in ways neither of us yet understands.
Selen did something to us in her office. Something to stir our magic, she said, and apparently, she used us like sounding boards for each other, like an echo chamber meant to sharpen the effect.
With surprising grace, the wyrm turns, its segmented body flowing like water over stone. It ascends the ravine wall with effortless strength, pauses at the top to look back at us—all three heads in perfect alignment for once—and then disappears over the ridge.
Silence crashes down, heavy and electric. I’m still reeling when a slow, deliberate clap cuts the air. Selen steps from shadow, her expression unreadable.
“Quite impressive for a first attempt,” she says.
The others follow—Lira and Nyx’s sharp grins, Ellis wide-eyed.
“You sent a prismatic wyrm after us,” Zeriel growls. He brushes away the blood from his nose. “Do you realize what could have happened?”
Selen tilts her head, calm. “I had complete confidence. And I was right.”
The group murmurs, half awe, half disbelief. Ellis blurts, “The way you—controlled it—” and can’t finish.
Byron lingers back. He doesn’t speak, but his gaze is locked on me with an intensity I can’t decipher. I wonder if he ever speaks for anyone.
My legs still feel unsteady as Selen approaches closer. “You worked well together,” she says. “But there's an obvious problem.”
“Besides nearly dying?” Zeriel snaps.
“Your magic,” she says simply. “It was far too visible. You might as well have rung a bell across the ravine.”
Zeriel's jaw hardens. “Yes, obviously. So what was the point?”
“The point,” Selen says, “was to get you to access your abilities under pressure. To acknowledge what you are.” She steps closer, her voice dropping.
“I see my little ignition accelerated the process for you in that regard. But this is only the beginning. With practice, you can learn to channel your gifts more subtly. Comfortably. To use them without detection.”
“In three days?” I ask skeptically.
Selen’s sigh is sharp. “Probably not. But possibly.”
Zeriel scrubs a hand through his hair, storm-dark. “Then what—”
“But what’s really the point of all this?
” Selen cuts him off. Her gaze pins Zeriel, holding him motionless.
“Regain the empire’s favor? The same empire that executed your family?
That stripped you of everything?” Her voice sharpens.
“Is that truly justice, Zeriel? Or is it just another form of submission?”
The words strike like hammer blows. Zeriel goes still, jaw tightening, a muscle ticking hard in his cheek.
The air around him feels heavier, as if a storm gathers just beneath his skin.
His eyes flick away for a heartbeat—toward the others, toward me—before snapping back to Selen, darker than I’ve ever seen them.
When he speaks, his voice is low, rough, edged with restrained violence.
“Don’t presume to know what I want.”
“Oh, but I think I do,” Selen replies, voice lower but unflinching. “You want justice. Restoration. To reclaim what was stolen. To make your name mean something again.” She steps closer, undeterred by the danger in his eyes. “But you're looking in the wrong direction.”
“The tournament is my path,” Zeriel says coldly.
“I don’t believe it’s the one you truly want,” Selen replies. “It's the path they've allowed you to see. The one that keeps you exactly where they want you. Fighting for scraps of their approval.”
The others have gone quiet, watching this exchange with varying degrees of discomfort and curiosity.
“What exactly are you suggesting?” Zeriel asks, his voice razor-sharp.