7
____________________
I woke up surrounded by moisture.
I felt blindly in the space around me, seeking the puddle that I must have been sitting in.
The air that lingered in all directions smelled moist, while it was thick enough to coat the inside of my lungs with some sort of sludge.
The only reasonable explanation was that I had been set in a sewer and left to rot.
On first inspection of the space, I wasn’t too far off. I was in a dungeon. A pixie dungeon.
I groaned as I rose to my feet, padding my way across the compacted mulch and whatever fluid was causing it to squish beneath my feet.
There were bars all around me, save for the far wall which was the wall of the castle itself – a familiar clay-like stone that I recognized as the Cluaineach castle.
Rubbing at the sore-spot of my neck where Raegan had pinched me, I shuffled to the border of the bars and pressed my face between them.
There wasn’t much to see outside of my little square cage. Only an aisle-way that continued from my cell to the next, a very faint, flickering sconce several feet past the farthest cage from me, and that overwhelming drip of something from the ceiling.
Grunting to myself, I paced back and forth in that space. Over and over, ignoring the horrid texture beneath me, and focusing instead on the darkest corners of the cell as if I could imagine an ally in them.
That kept me occupied for all of thirty minutes. After that, I stood in the corner of the cell and stared at the wall.
That lasted an hour. Then I was back to pacing, to stepping repeatedly in the same footprints with the challenge of trying to create a permanent path of my stay.
That lasted another thirty minutes. Back to the wall, staring at the stone and trying to decipher little images out of the cracks and stains.
One hour of that.
With a sigh, rotating my body until my back was against that stone, I slipped down and cared little for how far the mulch sank as I sat in it. Hope was fluttering in my chest, hope for the possibility that Urram – any minute now – would acknowledge that I wasn’t home from work.
As I sat there, playing with some sprouted weeds in the corner of the cell, I tried to plot out how long it would take Urram to find me.
Ten minutes to fly to the clinic. Five minutes to realize I wasn’t there.
Perhaps an hour, maybe two, to track my scent down to that pub.
Five minutes for an outrage that I was with pixies – and Rachainn, of all possibilities.
A few more minutes for that to blossom into a literal explosive display.
Then another thirty minutes to track me to Cluaineach.
A few more hours. That’s all I had to endure.
So I rocked my head back, shut my eyes, and let sleep find me deep in the murky shadows of Saoghal.
~
I woke to raised voices. It felt like only hours had passed, yet the sconce that I had stared at for several minutes prior to my sleep had disappeared completely, now replaced with a new wax already well into its own cycle of melting.
Rubbing at two sore eyes, I pushed up to my feet and cocked my head in an attempt to listen to the voices.
“–this is outrageous! Unhand me, now–”
“Quit your bickering,” a low voice snapped, followed by the faint scuffling of bodies that suggested someone had been pushed. “If you expect a meal over the next two weeks, I suggest you keep the shouting to a minimum.”
A final shove, a thud as the prisoner hit the mulch, and then the low groan of a heavy gate.
The prisoner, who now resided in the cell next to mine, ushered a sharp word beneath his breath that I could only assume was a curse. Then, like me, he pushed his way through the thick muck until his back was against the wall.
Pity and boredom had my mouth opening in preparation to speak to said prisoner, until more voices carried down the length of the dungeon hall. I slammed my mouth shut and angled my head once more.
I didn’t have to guess that this next prisoner was swearing – the tone and hissed-like way that he was cursing at one of the guards was evidence enough. After an onslaught of serpent-like words, none of which I understood, even I shivered and took a small step away from the bars.
“Utter a single one of those words in my King’s castle again, and your tongue shall be fastened to a necklace for you to wear,” someone snapped back.
But that voice.
I’d know that voice in any lifetime.
I shot forward, nearly stumbling on some solid thing amongst all of the mud, and slid my way towards the bars.
Pressing my cheek against them with all of my might, as if I might slip my head between the clay-like surfaces, I squinted against the flickering torch light and tried to find him amongst the small group of guards that were pressing forward down the aisle-way.
“Put him in the fourth one there,” he said, then went to turn around and retreat.
With everything that was left in me, I called out, “Killian!”
One of the bodies halted, their backs to me and their heads hanging.
Then slowly, painfully slowly, Killian rotated his body.
I couldn’t see a single part of his face or his body, but I knew it was him.
From the way he carried himself to the gravelly tone of his voice, then in the way he charged towards my cell without thinking.
He gasped as he slammed to a stop in front of me. “It cannot be. Olivia?”
I nodded several times, not able to contain the tears that were suddenly streaming down my face.
His eyes roved over me several times, shifting from my feet to my head, my left arm to my right. “I don’t… What are you… Why…” His gaze slid to the cell itself, checking every inch of it as if looking for a reason for me to be there.
“Killian,” I mumbled, those tears falling faster as I flattened myself against the bars once more. Reaching a hand between them, I was only seconds away from being able to touch him once more, when one of the guards bellowed from afar.
“DRAGON!”
It took me far too long to understand what was happening.
First, it was Killian in front of me. A certain sort of heartbreak in his eyes as he looked at me, as his focus quickly moved to that of my cell door and his hand reached for it without question.
When his fellow guard roared out, though, Killian’s face shifted into something else.
Something not quite Killian, because it was laced with fear.
Dragon.
Killian, while reaching for his sword at his side, suddenly barked, “Get down!”
I didn’t have time to get down. Instead, the walls behind me were smashed into a thousand pieces of dust and debris – all scattering across the cell and knocking me down to my knees – and all I could do was bring my arms over my head and brace myself.
Guards thundered into the dungeon, spreading themselves out along the aisle-way with bows and arrows primed and pulled taut, swords glistening beneath the sudden natural light, and panic in their eyes as they stared behind me.
There, where I had been sleeping only moments prior, was a dragon-sized hole that slowly revealed itself as the dust began to settle. Within it, the creature that I had forgotten was anything other than a parrot, let out a low and damning growl that caused my bones to shudder.
Urram snapped his silver, leathery wings out and reared up onto his back legs as he let out a horrendous roar from deep within that scaled chest of his.
As he landed back down again, the whole castle shaking, an ember built at the back of his throat where he lowered his head in front of me, latching his molten eyes on anyone who dared to come near us.
“Come, Little,” he growled. “We are leaving.”
I was torn.
Paralyzed by indecision.
Killian to my left. Urram to my right.
Saoghal in one direction. The human world in the other.
In that position of frozen confusion, I vaguely recalled hearing another noise. Another roar, yet it did not come from Urram’s mouth.
I forgot there was more than one dragon in Saoghal.
Urram tucked his forelegs in tight as he quickly pivoted around, the full extent of his attention now caught by something else outside. The sun was prominent behind him, where it was momentarily blocked by a figure.
A figure with two wide wings.
The earth shook as that figure descended, as two powerful haunches slammed into the grass and two winged forelimbs followed suit.
“Gliocas,” Urram hissed, in no way a happy greeting.
After not seeing his companion for over a year, I was expecting a grand reunion.
Instead, I watched as that flame flickered stronger in Urram’s throat, his whole body sliding out of the hole he had crafted and appearing in the meadow just outside the castle.
I shot an apologetic look at Killian before I turned on my heel and sprinted out of that cell. Most of the sight was blocked by Urram, who had his back arched and that fanned mane spread wide down his neck.
But I managed to get a good enough sight of Gliocas as he matched Urram’s posture.
His own body, covered in that cherry-red hide, curled in preparation to launch at Urram.
His mouth, equally as impressive and hosting dozens upon dozens of razor-sharp fangs, parted ever so slightly to reveal an equal flame at the back of his throat.
They continued to hiss at one another, the noise jarring and heart-breaking as I flicked my attention to two friends.
“Enough of this!” I bellowed, trying to slide past Urram and step between them. But my caraid spread his closest wing, causing a shield of his own flesh that I nearly rebounded against.
“You destroyed the castle,” Gliocas growled.
“You took my caraid,” Urram spat.
Hands were on my shoulders, gripping to me and trying to pull me backwards, but I just kept rolling my way out of them, clawing against this mass behind me in an attempt to get to Urram.
Both reptilian maws ripped open.
One breath of fire met the other, a grand show of spitting embers that sparked at the contact.
Each of them let out a low warning as they pulled back their flame, resorting to a slow prowl that took a circular shape. All the while, I was still being pulled at by someone. A quick glimpse in their direction as I shoved their hand off of my shoulder confirmed my suspicion – it was Killian.
“Olivia, we must go. Dragon fights… They do not end well,” he muttered as he continued to fight for a good grip on me. Finally, with a roar of my own, I slipped away from him for good and thundered my way across what was soon to become a battlefield.
Urram was too busy lurching away from a snap meant for his neck, his whole body leaping to the side just as Gliocas slammed his jaw shut. Urram, furious and insulted, parted his own lips and charged at his old friend.
That was where they both saw me. Stood between them both, staring back and forth at two mighty forces of nature.
“Move, Little!” Urram’s voice shook my skull as he made to move towards me, but Gliocas was just as fast.
The last thing I saw before I silently accepted my fate was two red lips and a whole set of pearl-knives between them. Shutting my eyes and preparing myself to be shredded – or swallowed whole – I heard Raegan’s voice.
His very real voice.
“Enough!” he shouted, somehow louder and more fierce than both of the dragons together. “Gliocas, you will not touch a single hair on her head!”
I ripped my eyes open only to see Raegan, just as I saw him when he had knocked me out. Except there was wrath in his eyes instead of paranoia as he strode out of one of the castle doors.
“I will melt your bones from your flesh, young King,” Urram growled, swivelling his long neck towards Raegan. Gliocas refuted that threat immediately, the scales on his head twitching as his lips peeled back once more.
“You will not threaten my caraid, old friend,” Gliocas hissed as he stepped towards Urram, a desire for a fight flashing in those dark eyes.
“Neither of you will do anything,” Raegan said, arriving at my side and refusing to look at me. Instead, he glared up at those two beasts, their heads lingering far above our own. “You will both stand down at once.”
I couldn’t stop staring at Raegan. He stood there, caring very little for the audience that had gathered, and continued to stare a threat at those two dragons.
Even more damning was that they listened to him. Both Urram and Gliocas let their lips relax, the flame dying from their throat, and hung their heads.
“Little, come,” Urram huffed, a cloud of smoke slipping through his nostrils. “We are leaving.”
“No,” Raegan snapped. “She is going nowhere until she answers some questions.”
Urram, as if a button had been pressed within him, turned on Raegan just as quickly as he had shut himself off.
This time, it was me that stood in front of Raegan like a shield. “Urram, stop it! Calm down, I will answer Raegan’s questions, then we shall go.”
Those eyes of metal glared at me for a few seconds. I already knew exactly what type of conversation we would be having later that day, when he was a parrot once more and I was a human in a human world.
After testing my ability to hold my ground for far too long, Urram rolled his shoulders back and shifted into the grey avian, his feathers ruffling from where he perched himself on my shoulder.
Gliocas did the same.
Which left Raegan and I, with a whole meadow full of witnesses, to stare at one another. Yet again I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like my whole body was shutting down as I found myself completely speechless in front of him.
“We meet again, little human.”