Draka

One hundred days. I had been a dragon for one hundred days, and the last week of those had been the most stressful of either of my lives.

In the beginning of that week I’d terrified the living crap out of two fairly innocent academics and their guards, who’d invaded the mountain where I made my lair. Though invaded might be too harsh of a term. They were scholars, after all, and all they’d wanted to do was to look at some ruins. Either way, that was hopefully the last I'd see of them, but somehow I doubted it.

Soon after I had been lured into an ambush by Makanna, one of my few friends, where I had been beaten, poisoned, and imprisoned. I had escaped, terrified Mak into becoming my unquestioning follower, and had rescued Herald, her sister, who was the most important person in the world to me. I'd left a trail of corpses in my wake, taking one of my captor’s minions and a considerable stash of silver and gold with me. I’d capped this off by imposing myself on my only other allies, forcing the minion over to my side, and then dragging all three of my humans off into the forest, where I’d pretty much stuck them in a hole for safe keeping.

Also, I’d been forced to accept that I wasn’t quite who I’d thought I was. Or who I’d been, at least. The best I could tell, I was a blend, a gestalt consciousness created from the merger of an immature dragon and a marginally more mature human, but I was letting that work itself out in my subconscious. It was a little too much to really sit down and think about, especially since part of me was constantly on the edge of freaking out while the rest simply didn’t care. I was in flux, in a way, swinging from one extreme to the other depending on mood and circumstance. I hadn't heard my dragon speak, but I felt her, that side of me, when the human was strong. Especially when me or mine were threatened. When the dragon was strong, though, I could hear the human like an angel on my shoulder, reining me in when I needed it. Mostly. I would probably make a fascinating case study for some shrink, but in the absence of a decent therapist it was not something I was ready to really explore yet. At least I had admitted it to myself and to Herald, which was a step in the right direction.

But I had indeed been a busy girl. I had also made a lot of snap decisions, and I was now trying to fix the things I had handled poorly, which was most of them.

The biggest reason why I knew what a mess I’d made was my newest advancement, Command. I hadn’t been completely certain what it would do, but it sounded like just the thing I needed. And while I was sure that it would help me order people around, one thing that I hadn’t expected was that it made it clear to me just how much damage I had potentially done to my relationships with my humans by forcing them out of the city and into the forest, where I’d hidden them, deep and dark, inside my mountain.

My first step to improving things had been a morale-boosting barbeque, meaning that I brought them a bunch of firewood and goat meat. It was an attempted quick fix which I’d expected to go over as well as an office pizza party, but it had been surprisingly effective. Most people in Karakan, including my friends until very recently, simply couldn’t afford to gorge themselves on meat whenever they wanted, so ‘all the goat you can eat’ had been a nice surprise. Once everybody started eating the mood turned much more cheerful, and I was becoming more and more convinced that I would not need to terrorise or harm either Ardek or Mak any more than I already had. That was a relief. I could, if I had to, but I’d prefer not to. Especially with me having promised Herald that I wouldn’t.

I honestly couldn’t see Mak pushing me to do anything unpleasant unless it involved Herald. The only thing I could see putting her against me would be if she got it into her head that she needed to ‘rescue’ Herald from me, in which case nothing would stop her. But even if the worst happened, and I was completely justified and forced to hurt Mak, I was terrified of how that would affect Herald and my relationship with her. Herald and I both knew that her relationship with me was not rational. We’d talked about it. She had openly acknowledged that she was simply unable to feel anger or outrage towards me, even when she knew that she should. Yet she still tried to slap a veneer of rationality on it, as though a single argument for her to not be mad at me outweighed every single reason she should.

My biggest concern was that if I did something to Mak, Herald would simply accept it outwardly, justifying it to herself while it would break her on the inside. The emotions were there. I could literally smell her rage when I had first told her what I’d done to Mak, and yet she’d never been conscious of it. She knew, rationally, that I had wronged her and her sister, intentionally or not, and she had threatened to withdraw her friendship if I didn’t try to do better, but I didn’t know if she could follow through. I had no desire to test her, though. I had no way of knowing what the breaking point might be, and I hoped to never find out.

The first morning I’d woken them up an hour or so before dawn. My goal was to turn their days around completely, so that they’d be up and able to be outside all night. I figured that, between Herald’s excellent eyes and Mak’s spell that let them see even in the pitch black of the tunnels, they should be fine. They could even get some daylight if they wanted, but the most important thing was that they would be a lot safer despite not being trapped inside the mountain.

My initial idea had been to just keep them in there until it was safe to return to the city, but that had been my dragon thinking for me, and it obviously wouldn’t work. She didn't consider how the needs of the humans differed from ours much, if at all. For one there was no natural light in there, and for the other they needed something to do. I needed to keep them busy. Otherwise they’d go crazy in there, and sooner or later they would turn on me. That would hopefully not happen if I was not literally keeping them prisoner in the dark.

It didn’t do any wonders for how much sleep they were getting. The sisters were already sleeping poorly because of their frequent nightmares, which were sometimes bad enough to wake them. Naps during their waking hours were frequent, but it wasn’t like they were on a strict schedule.

That first morning I showed them around the area, and they were all clearly relieved to go outside. There was a stream nearby where they could wash and get fresh water. Herald noted some signs of game by the water and suggested they could go hunting once they’d finished off the goat, which I thought sounded like a great team-building exercise. That was, as long as Ardek didn’t screw everything up and get throttled by the two sisters. He’d been a street kid and insisted that he was stealth itself in the city, but in the forest he made more noise than a whole family of wild pigs.

In the worst case, I supposed, Ardek would learn a lesson about woodcraft and they would go home empty handed. I could always bring them something, but they had plenty of dry food and I liked the idea of them providing for themselves, together.

Ardek. I wasn’t sure what the sisters saw in him. Maybe it was just sympathy and pity, but Herald had done her best to convince me to spare him, twice, when I was not at all inclined to do so. And now Mak had apparently adopted him, or at least taken responsibility for him. Maybe it was just her role as Team Mom kicking in. Maybe she felt guilty for the way I’d used her to scare the crap out of him. Or maybe she just felt bad for him. Whatever the case might be she was making sure that his knee healed properly, had been teaching him how to take care of the various gear they’d brought with them, and once they got outside it didn’t take long before she’d cut two straight sticks, each a little less than a yard long, and was starting him on sword drills. She’d apparently taken it personally when he told her that despite being nineteen years old and having gotten himself a sword when he joined the Night Blossom’s organisation, he did not actually know how to use one.

Herald mostly tolerated him. She wasn’t openly unfriendly, and they made small talk occasionally, but she’d seen him in the Blossom’s estate, guarding the prison when she was brought in and out, her agony used to force Mak to cooperate. She’d been constantly drunk on healing potions at the time, but maybe she still recognised him and resented him on some level. Or maybe she was just wary and uncomfortable around a man two years older than her, a confessed lifelong criminal who she didn’t know and who she was now forced to share a camp with.

She’d still convinced me to spare his life. Once while drunk, and once while sober. That had to count for something.

Come to think of it, why hadn’t I just killed him the first time I saw him? I went past him to kill the woman he was with, but I only injured him. Sure, shredding someone’s knee isn’t nothing, but it would have been so easy to just tear his belly open instead, or to finish him off once he was down. But instead I decided that he’d surrendered and kept him around. I’d folded pretty much instantly when Herald argued for keeping him around. That could be because I wanted to make her happy. It could also be because this was a world where magic was very real, and Herald and I were living proof that it could mess with your head.

It was in the afternoon. The kid was just sitting down, totally wrung out and trying to catch his breath during a break in Mak’s ‘lessons.’ “Ardek,” I said, walking up to him, and he twitched and half turned, raising his stick until he saw that it was me. I stared him down until he put the stick away.

“I need to know what advancements you have,” I told him once he’d calmed down a little. He hesitated, which actually impressed me. I’d have thought that he’d just tell me anything without hesitation.

“You don’t keep secrets from me, Ardek. I’ll give you privacy, but if I ask you for something, you tell me. And I won’t ask unless I need to know. If I don’t know what you can do, I can’t use you.”

I could see the gears turning in his head as he hesitated again, and the result he came up with under my stare was ‘Be useful. Don’t be useless.’

“And don’t bother trying to lie,” I added. Mak was sitting by a tree about twenty yards away. I looked at her and she nodded to me.

“Alright,” Ardek said finally. “I’m really healthy. I don’t get sick, ever.”

“Anything else? You’re about nineteen, right? You must have at least another one.”

“Ah…”

“You don’t want to tell me. You think it will piss me off.”

“Well…”

“Ardek. If you won’t tell me this, I can’t trust you, and if I can’t trust you, I can’t keep you around. And I can’t let you go, either. That leaves me with no options. Do you understand?”

I could almost see his mouth go dry. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely after a moment.

“So?”

“People just… like me, right?” he blurted out. “It’s not anything I do, just, people who I talk to and spend time with start to like me.”

“And?”

“And, nothing. I’ve got three, and I took the second one twice. It seemed to be keeping me alive after the first time so doubling down felt right, right?”

That might explain why Herald wanted him alive at least, no matter what she’d told herself. I couldn’t say that I liked him much, but I had spared him, so perhaps I was being affected. Not that it mattered that much. I still felt fully capable of getting rid of him if it came to that.

I nodded. The trick to nodding with a long neck, I’d found, was to make sure to only bend the last bit, otherwise you looked weird. “That’s about what I thought,” I said, turning to walk away. “Thanks for telling me.”

“That’s it?” he asked. “You’re not, uh, ‘pissed’?”

I stopped and turned my head back towards him. “Nah. Now that I know for sure, I can keep it in mind. And having someone on hand that just naturally gets along with people sounds useful.” Then I jerked my head towards Mak, who was getting up. “Looks like the break’s over. Your taskmaster is getting ready.”

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon lying just inside the gate with Herald sitting in the sun outside. She was treating it like just any day off. She’d done her sword forms and some sparring in the morning and some archery practice in the afternoon, and then she spent the rest of the day reading, napping, and talking to me or Mak during her breaks. Mak was taking her training of Ardek surprisingly seriously, and the sounds of sticks clacking together, Ardek's yelps and groans, and Mak's instructions were a constant background.

“Did you ever hear back from Maglan?” I asked after she’d closed her book and put it aside, closing her eyes and relaxing in the sun. Her mouth flattened a bit from the relaxed smile she’d had.

“No, I have not. But it is too early to be disappointed, I think. I sent my letter before we went north. If he can even send a reply, it may not have had time to arrive yet.” She sighed. “And there is this whole mess. It might have arrived since we were… you know.”

“Would it not be delivered to your inn or something?”

“Most mail would, but this I would need to get directly from my contact. I have no doubt that he would hold on to it. I just need to have the time and occasion to meet him.”

“Then we will arrange something as soon as we can.”

“Thank you.” She opened her eyes and looked at the patch of sky visible between the mountainside and the tree. “At least there has been no news of fighting, which is the most important thing. As long as there are no skirmishes Mag should be safe.”

“I am sure that he is fine,” I said. “Do you think that I can meet him once he is back?”

“If I am to keep seeing him, that will be unavoidable, I think. You are too large a part of my life to hide you from him. Only…”

“Hmm?”

“There is the issue of secrecy.”

“Right,” I said and paused. “Is it him or me that you are not sure about?”

She turned her face to me, meeting my eyes sadly. “Him, for keeping the secret. And you, if he does not.”

“I see.” I looked away, suppressing a flash of annoyance and anger. It was a fair thing for her to say, I reminded myself. And this was Herald. I relied on her to be honest with me. I’d been aggressive and threatening lately.

It still hurt to hear it from her.

When I turned back I could see in her eyes that she knew what was going through my head. She waited with a patient smile.

“And if I promise not to hurt him?” I asked.

“I would love to hear such a promise, but if he tells his friends about you the damage will already be done. No, I will have to talk to him before introducing you, and then I will have to make a choice.”

The choice she meant was obvious. “Herald, I do not want to get between you and your…” I searched for a word. Tekereteki was surprisingly limited here, and I settled on, “consort.”

She snorted. “Consort. That is a massive overstatement of what we have so far. But believe me, Draka, I will not do anything lightly. The truth now is the same as when you asked me before, when we were travelling to rescue the others from the valkin tunnels. I love him, certainly, but I do not know if I am in love with him. I love you, as well, and I will not risk your safety. If I do not think I can trust him to meet you, then… I do not know. Perhaps I can try to keep you secret from him. Or perhaps not.”

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the stone. “I just do not know, right now.”

They had no complaints when I brought them back inside while the sun was setting, and the next morning I woke them even earlier. Mak had slept poorly, even waking Herald with her thrashing at one point, but I thought nothing of it. The day went much like the previous one, with Mak continuing her efforts to teach Ardek the sword, while I mostly lounged with Herald. I’d brought my bestiary down, and we leafed through it together, with me reading the descriptions out loud. We'd have to start doing something more useful soon, but I was too content to want to interrupt the moment.

Herald had been silent for a while when she said, "Do they sound more heated, to you?"

I listened, and it was like I could hear cracks forming in our little group.

Thwap!

"Faster! I told you to parry, didn't I?" Mak shouted. She sounded truly angry at this point. "I showed you exactly how I'd attack, and how to defend against it! Again!"

Thwap! The sound of a stick hitting flesh was loud enough that I could hear it even by the gate.

"Ow! I'm sorry!" Ardek called out.

"You're sorry?" Thwap! "What are you sorry for?" Thwap! "What–" Thwap! "Have–" Thwap! "You–" Crack!

At the sound of Mak's stick snapping Herald sat up straight, concern drawn on her face.

"Done–" Thud. "To–" Thud.

Herald rose and got moving in one motion. I followed.

"Be–" Thud. "SORRY–" Thud. "FOR?"

Mak was screaming as we crested the ramp up from the gate. Ardek was lying on the ground, his hands over his head, while Mak had discarded her broken stick and was kicking the ever living shit out of him.

"You didn't do anything!" Mak screamed as she assaulted the kid. "What do you have to be sorry for?"

Herald ran in, wrapped her arms around her sister, and broke the situation up by quite easily lifting her off the ground.

Mak barely noticed. "All you did was sit there!" she howled as she kicked and struggled in Herald's arms. "You didn't do anything!"

"Mak, stop!" I roared, and it was like I'd thrown a switch. She went silent and almost limp, breathing hard, and there were tears of rage streaming down her face.

"Herald, put her down," I said, and she did.

"Heal him," I told Mak, and her face fell in a look of utter dismay. "He was going to find out sooner or later. Now heal him!"

"Fine," Mak whispered. She turned her eyes from me, and walked up to Ardek. "Get your shirt off," she told him. He looked at her warily, then at me, then gingerly sat up and pulled his long tunic over his head.

Mak systematically went over every welt and bruise, channelling magic into them, and Ardek's eyes slowly went wide with understanding.

"That's what you did to my knee," he said, almost accusingly.

"The massage and the wrapping help," Mak said brusquely as she worked, not looking him in the face. "But I did this, too.” She stood and backed away. “There. Done."

"Herald, can you look after Ardek for a bit?" I asked, and she nodded. "Good. Mak, come with me. Let’s take a walk."