Authors: Rain Oxford
“I wanted a little girl with your eyes, but I’ll be
just as happy with a little girl that calls you ‘mommy.’ Or we could have a
boy. We’d have to name him---”
“No, you dork.” She wrapped her arms around my neck
and held me close, but turned her head when I tried to kiss her. “Give him a
chance to prove his loyalty to us,” she said to Regivus. “He has already saved
Vaigda and Malta from the damage done, so let him show you how much of an asset
he is. He would never betray me. I am more likely to turn against you than he
is.”
Mordon made a soft choking sound as he tried
desperately to hold his tongue. More than likely, his prince and advisor
training was kicking in and telling him to stop the woman from condemning
herself.
“I am not convinced. He could decide that you would
take his side against us as you are now, and his betrayal would be unpredicted.
Now is the time to kill him.”
“I have to disagree.” This new voice was unfamiliar.
The god who stood before me was older looking than
Regivus, with short black hair, sharp facial features, and a heavily muscled
frame. Other than the muscles, he looked a lot like Regivus. While the voice
was unfamiliar, I knew the magical aura surrounding him; Duran. He was the god
Erono, extremely fierce and perpetually cross by reputation. Surely he came to
watch me be put to death.
“He has lived on Duran for some time now with no
malicious intentions. I believe if he did have any such intentions, our sister
would set him right. If she does not, it will be her to blame. I agree that we
should reserve judgment until we see if he can prove himself to be loyal to
us.”
“There is enough damage done to our worlds, do not
add blood to the waters,” Divina said softly.
That struck something in my memory, but it passed
within a few seconds.
The god considered this for a few minutes before
finally nodding at Erono. “I will allow him a chance to prove himself if you
insist.”
Erono turned to me. “Take this opportunity to live;
give up the book, go back to Earth, never travel between worlds again, and forget
about Tiamat.”
Somehow I was not surprised that this was my
ultimatum.
“First, I will never give up my book unless Tiamat
asked me to. Second, not unless Tiamat moved to Earth with me. Third, I don’t
even know how to travel worlds. And finally, there is no forgetting about her.”
“If you will not give up the book willingly, you will
die.”
“But I will die a Guardian loyal to my goddess and
unwilling to abandon her.”
“And you, sago, will you return to Duran to live
peacefully or will you die with this human?” Erono asked Mordon.
I could have lip-synced what he said next.
“Dylan is just as much sago as he is human. Tiamat
may not be my goddess, and Dylan may not be my Guardian, but they are my
friends. I will stand by them.”
“Even against your own god?”
This put Mordon in a no-win situation; Erono is the
god of his world, but he already said he would stand by Tiamat. He wisely took
a few minutes to think about this.
“My mother died when I was born, my father tried to
make me into something I didn’t want to be, and I was always kept alone as a
child. Dylan is the closest thing I have to family. As he is like my brother, I
have to accept his goddess as mine. In this case I would say I owe my loyalty
equally to you and Tiamat. That being said, she’s not the one threatening to
kill my brother.
“I can protect you both from them if you never give
up on me,” Divina whispered to me.
I knew that look in her eyes. If enough of her
brothers decided to kill me, there would be nothing she could do about it. But
I would never say that, and I was willing to die a Guardian over living as a
human. It wasn’t the power that I needed; it was her. What was the point of
breathing when the woman I breathed for was gone? “Of course you can,” I lied.
She smiled. “Then show them what you can do.”
I felt a pulse before everything went black. When I
opened my eyes, Mordon, Sammy, and I were standing in the Aradlin forest, right
in front of Blood’s cave.
* * *
“We are back where we started,” Mordon said.
I nodded. “Well, we can heal Duran while we’re here.”
“How? Just heal the whole world at once? Where are
the pressure points? No, I’m not going to sniff them out.”
This was going to take some getting used to. I could
only assume that his dragon had said something. Honestly, I was happy for my
friend, but he needed to learn how to multitask quickly. If another person
heard him answer a question that was never asked or stare blankly into space,
someone they may think something is wrong with him.
“We can find Edward. He’ll know where to go to heal
the world. First, though, I think we need to find Blood.”
“We don’t know he’s back. He disappeared from Dios.”
“But how did he get to Dios?” He paused. “Rojan said
he was probably attacked by a creature that belonged on Dios, from the past, present,
or future. He says that with damage like this, the universe struggles to repair
itself as quickly as possible. I guess that means that when two things or
people that should never have touched do, the universe splits them up.”
I caught on. “But it may not always send the right
person or creature to the right place. So say those cat things were from Dios.
A future creature, maybe… it somehow got stuck here, attacked Blood. Nothing
happened at first because the universe couldn’t keep up. Then the third time
they attacked him, after we left, the universe tried to right itself and sent
the dragon to Dios.”
“Then the creatures attacked something else and were
returned to Dios. Blood saved us but disappeared again. If we had touched
Blood, we could have disappeared because he was not meant to be there. That
must have been how the griffin got to Malta; it was somewhere it was not
supposed to be or exposed to something that was,” he said.
“But to what end? How many millions of people and
creatures have been misplaced this way? One misplaced creature could attack
thousands of people a day. People who would never see their families or even
world again, who are out there spreading it.”
“The universe cannot be that stupid; one or two
creatures here or there that are extinct or do not yet exist, likely, but
people certainly can’t be that confusing. People have homes, places, families…
Each person lives in the minds of hundreds if not thousands of people.”
I nodded. “I suppose. But Shiloh… he was misplaced.”
“He was a Guardian. Not a regular person.”
“You’re so racist,” I argued.
“Hey, I’ll have you know my best friend is a
Guardian,” he returned.
“Yeah, well, my best friend isn’t a regular person. I
mean, who tells his god that he would stand by another god?”
“I had a valid excuse. And if you are going to say
I’m not a regular person, at least be referring to my dragon, and not my poor
choices in life.”
“Apple!” Sammy demanded.
We looked at him. “We don’t have any apple-juice,”
Mordon said.
“No, I think he’s associating our arguing with
apples. I don’t get it, but he said that when we were bickering on Malta. He
has learned so many languages in such a short period of time that I think he’s
having trouble keeping it straight what language to speak. Somehow, apple must
relate to arguing to him, and that is the only English word he could think of.”
“Sleep,” Sammy said.
“What?” I asked.
He hid his face. “No sleep.”
I didn’t understand.
“I can smell he’s really upset and embarrassed,”
Mordon said.
“How come? He has nothing to be embarrassed about.
In fact, he should be proud of his vocabulary; boys usually develop speech
slower than girls.”
Then I switched to speaking out loud. “Can Rojan hear
me speaking telepathically to you?”
“Yeah. Rojan and I can speak the same way, but he can
also hear my thoughts and feel my feelings, and I can do the same. Well, not so
much hear his thoughts as I have a really good idea of what he’s thinking. He
can hear what you say to me and I say to you, but he can’t talk directly to
you. Yeah, Rojan, I’m getting to it.”
“Getting to what?” I asked.
“When the demon attacked, I had a dream. It was
really weird, because you were there, but I wasn’t.”
“You had a dream you weren’t in?” I asked. He nodded.
“I had a dream, too, but I can’t remember it. All I know is it had something to
do with the demon and the void. I think it was a Guardian warning dream, but I
don’t know why I can’t remember it. What do you remember?”
He thought for a few seconds. “Rojan remembers it
better than me. It was something about Earth being in danger. You had your
book, and I remember a blinding, cold light. And the really weird thing was
that there was a---”
He was interrupted by a creepy howl. We both froze-
not because we were scared, but because we were confused. Nothing that lived in
this forest would howl like that, because it would be eaten immediately. This
forest was full of predators that hunted by ambush. A howling creature was a
dead creature. A moment later, it started again, but was cut off mid-howl with
a miserable yelp.
“I think we should get inside the cave. I want to
find Blood, but we need to get Sammy somewhere safe,” I said quietly.
Mordon frowned at cave, unsure. “Rojan says that cave
is marked by another dragon and to enter it would be a challenge to Blood. He’s
not worried about being injured by the dragon, but he knows we’re friends and
thinks we shouldn’t ruin that alliance.”
“But since we’re friends with Blood, shouldn’t he be
okay with us being in his cave?” I asked.
“Rojan is a stronger dragon, and apparently that is
always a challenge. Blood would see it as a stronger dragon moving in on his
territory. He was okay with me before because Rojan was sleeping. I don’t like
the idea of scaring off Blood. Rojan can introduce himself, but let’s take it
slowly.”
“You’re right. He helped us. There has to be
somewhere else we can… What?” I asked when his eyes glazed a little.
He blinked at me. “Rojan said that dragons can never
be lost and that he can find our way out easily.”
“Wonderful. We have to find Shinobu, and then we can
go,” I said.
He frowned. “I forgot all about her. She should have
run out to you as soon as you arrived.” He sniffed around a little bit,
particularly towards the cave. “Rojan and I can’t smell her anywhere. I mean,
she was here, but not for days. Let’s get Sammy to safety and then we can
return. Shinobu can take care of herself.”
It took a few minutes, but he convinced me in the
end. Sammy was most important. I grabbed Mordon’s bag that he had left in the
cave when we went to Earth, and then we took off through the forest, following
Mordon’s lead. He seemed to have faith in this direction. The funny thing was
that Mordon only seemed to be acting unusual when the dragon was suppressed by
the girl’s magic. Even when Rojan woke for the first time, Mordon had always
had the same tendencies that made him unique. Instead of feeling like my friend
had changed, it was more like I just found out that he had always been a
dragon. Everything about him just made more sense. What I was a little distressed
about was that he had figured out on his own that Divina was Tiamat. “How did
you figure it out?” I asked.
Mordon knew exactly what I was thinking, because we
were like that. “You didn’t give it away. Honestly, I always knew she wasn’t
sago. She smelled sago, not human, but her magic smelled more like yours. I
knew she had a secret because I could smell it on her. She was suspicious of
me, probably because she knows exactly what I am, which is unfair, because I
still don’t know what I am. A big hint was that she spoke English fluently,
better than me. You said that Ronez taught her, I know, but she was just too
fluent. She spoke differently than Edward, and she understands all the weird
references you make. She said one time, while I was visiting, that she had
never been to Earth, but I could tell she was lying. I only knew for sure,
though, when I met Enki.”
“Why did you never say anything? I was always so
worried about breaking her secret.”
“I did say something; I wanted to know what she was.
You would trust me enough to tell me that you and Edward are Guardians, but you
wouldn’t tell me what Divina was, so I knew it had to have been a bigger
secret. Obviously, the only thing bigger than being a Guardian was being a
god.”
“Or a dragon.”
“Yes, well, you should’ve told me I was a dragon,” he
said to me. Then he rolled his eyes. “Yes, Rojan, I know I’m not a dragon, I’m
just teasing Dylan.”
“And talking to yourself.”
“I’m talking to my dragon out loud. I have that
right.”
“And attracting monsters in the Aradlin forest by
doing so,” I responded.
He made a scoffing sound I had never heard him make
before. “There is nothing in this forest bigger than me.”
“Really? I think I’m actually a bit taller than you
myself.”
He stopped walking and looked a little confused. “I
didn’t mean to say that. Actually, I think Rojan said that. I mean, I felt it,
I thought it, but I think it was him. He’s very vain about how big and bad he
is, but when you said that, I felt…”
“Like you were the dragon. Don’t stress it. You two
will balance it out eventually. There are worse things to be than part dragon.”
“That’s just it, though. I have no idea what I am.
Other than explaining to me there is no such thing as a dragon shifter, Rojan
cannot tell me what I am. I can’t be part dragon, because both of my parents
were completely sago. He said he was always there, so I can’t be possessed by
the dragon. So how do I have a dragon in me who says he is a part of me, and
how do I have dragon magic? Hey, we’re being followed by a draxuni pack.”