Fragmented Flames [Portal Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy]

The dream came in ice.

Ember walked through corridors of frozen glass where walls showed reflections that moved wrong. Her sister0selves were there but distant, voices muffled by cold that pressed against thought like a physical thing.

Then the dragon.

Not flesh and scale but presence. Ancient weight that made the dream-space contract around her until breathing hurt. Eyes that held intelligence sharp as winter wind.

"We should talk." The words came from everywhere and nowhere. "Before the dying begins."

Ember woke gasping, flames erupting around her hands before conscious thought could stop them. The room flared with light that threw shadows across walls and ceiling.

"I saw her too." Cinder's voice cut through the darkness from her cot across the room. Already awake. Already processing.

"Same here." Kindle sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Creepy ice corridors and a dragon that felt like being crushed under a mountain."

Pyra groaned, rolling over. "Can ancient dragons not invade dreams at reasonable hours? Some of us were sleeping."

"I suspect that was the point." Ash swung her legs off her bedroll, flames flickering to life around her shoulders for light. "Catch us when mental defenses are lowest. Demonstrate her reach despite our supposed immunity."

Ember pushed herself upright, heart still hammering against ribs. The dream lingered—not images exactly, but sensation. Cold that reached past skin into something deeper. Intelligence that saw through her like she was glass.

"Same dream for all of us." Cinder stated it as fact rather than question. "Shared consciousness means shared vulnerabilities."

"Or she's just that powerful." Kindle wrapped a blanket around her shoulders despite the heat their bodies generated. "Could be reaching into everyone's dreams. We're just the only ones she bothered with a personal message."

"Should we tell Theron?" Pyra stretched, working kinks from muscles that had tensed during sleep. "Seems like the kind of thing command would want to know about."

Ember considered. The dream had felt invasive, but not threatening. An announcement rather than an attack. "In the morning. Let everyone get what sleep they can."

They lay back down but none of them slept. The dream's weight pressed against them until dawn bled through shutters.

"Psychological warfare." Theron's assessment came flat when they reported the dream over breakfast. "She's trying to rattle you before the assault."

"Or she genuinely wants to talk." Ember pushed oats around her bowl without eating. "The message was clear enough."

"Dragons don't negotiate." Valerian spoke from across the table, his morning tea steaming in the cold air. "They dominate. This is manipulation dressed as diplomacy."

"Maybe." Cinder shrugged. "But there's intelligence value in listening. See what she wants, what she's willing to reveal."

Kaelin Reed appeared in the doorway, her mechanical arm catching morning light. "You're considering responding to a dream-message from an ancient dragon who's already proven she can reach into your heads while you sleep."

"When you say it like that, it sounds stupid." Pyra admitted.

"It is stupid." Kaelin pulled up a chair, her expression carrying that particular mix of exasperation and resignation that had become familiar. "But you're going to do it anyway because you're curious and because turning down potential intelligence goes against every instinct you have."

Ember met her eyes. Read understanding there beneath the criticism.

"If she contacts again, hear her out." Kaelin's pronouncement carried Guild authority. "But carefully. Don't promise anything. Don't give away information. And for all the gods' sake, don't agree to meet her anywhere alone."

"Understood." Ember meant it. Mostly.

Theron made a note on his ever-present parchment. "Keep us informed of any further contact. We need to know what she's planning."

They scattered to morning duties—training, meetings, the endless preparation that filled days before battle. But the dream's weight followed Ember through every task, cold fingers pressed against the back of her mind.

Night fell like a held breath. Sentries walked the walls, their footsteps muffled by fresh snow. In the barracks, soldiers played dice or wrote letters home or sharpened blades that were already sharp.

The five sat together near the window, watching stars emerge through gaps in cloud cover. None of them spoke. Words felt unnecessary when thought flowed easier.

The knock came just after midnight.

Not on their door, but echoing through shared consciousness—a presence that pressed against mental boundaries they hadn't known they'd built. Not invasive. More like someone standing outside a house, waiting for invitation.

Ember stood. Her sisters rose with her, moving as one toward the barracks door.

The corridor outside held shadows and a single figure in borrowed nightclothes. One of the freed defenders—woman maybe forty, with gray threading through brown hair and eyes that showed too much white.

"She wants to speak." The woman's voice came clear but wrong, like someone reading words without understanding their meaning. "At the eastern gate. Alone. No witnesses. No weapons that matter anyway."

"Who are you?" Kindle asked.

"Marta. From Millbrook. The grain merchant Corwin freed, though I don't remember asking for freedom." Her head tilted at an angle that didn't match human anatomy. "But right now I'm just a voice. Will you come?"

The five exchanged glances. Shared thought faster than speech.

This could be trap.

Probably is trap.

But she could kill us in our sleep if she wanted. The dream proved that.

Intelligence value.

And honestly? I want to hear what she has to say.

Agreement rippled through their connection.

"We'll come." Ember said. "Lead the way."

Marta turned without acknowledgment, walking with steps that barely touched stone. They followed her through corridors where sentries nodded but didn't question, past the common room where late-night stragglers hunched over dying fires, out into cold that bit exposed skin.

The eastern gate stood open despite the hour. Snow had piled against its timbers, creating drifts that caught starlight and threw it back wrong. Beyond, the landscape stretched flat and white toward distant mountains.

A figure waited in the snow beyond the gate.

Not dragon-sized. Human-shaped. But presence radiated from it like heat from forge-worked metal, pressing against thought and sense until reality bent around the edges.

Nethysara wore human form the way someone might wear ill-fitting clothes—technically correct but fundamentally wrong. Too tall, proportions slightly off, movements that suggested muscles and joints that didn't exist. Her skin held the blue-white color of deep ice, and her eyes glowed with cold fire.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"You came." The dragon's voice matched the dream—ancient, patient, carrying weight that had nothing to do with volume. "I wasn't certain you would."

"Curiosity." Ember stopped twenty feet away, her sisters spreading into loose formation around her. "You went to effort reaching into our dreams. Seemed rude not to respond."

"Polite humans. How refreshing." Nethysara's smile showed too many teeth. "Most of your kind come screaming defiance or weeping surrender. You offer curiosity. I appreciate that."

Cinder's flames flickered brighter. "You wanted to talk. So talk."

"Direct. Also refreshing." The dragon's gaze fixed on Cinder with attention that felt like being dissected. "Very well. I killed Cryax for you. Or rather, you killed him with my blessing. He was cruel, impulsive, younger than he pretended. His death removes a liability from my domain."

"You're welcome?" Pyra's sarcasm carried across the snow.

"I don't thank you. I simply acknowledge tactical convergence." Nethysara moved closer, and the snow beneath her feet froze solid with each step. "But his death revealed something interesting. You're not human. Not anymore. Something new that generates its own heat, moves faster than wind, shares consciousness across multiple vessels. What are you?"

"Cursed." Ash's answer came flat.

"Blessed, perhaps. Perspective matters." The dragon tilted her head, studying them with eyes that held millennia. "You think yourselves broken. I see evolution. Adaptation. Proof that humanity can transcend its limitations given sufficient pressure."

"We're not here for philosophy." Ember kept her voice level. "You said we should talk before the dying begins. So talk about that."

"The coalition marches north in days." Nethysara stated it as fact rather than guess. "Five thousand soldiers carrying mental wards that will protect them from my influence for approximately four hours before exhaustion makes them vulnerable. Your enchanter friend did impressive work. Not enough, but impressive."

She gestured toward the distant mountains. "You'll advance through territory where twelve of my children patrol. Where forty thousand servitors maintain infrastructure and follow orders without hesitation. Where the land itself has been transformed into extension of my will. The mathematics favor me overwhelmingly."

"Math changes." Cinder's smile held edges. "We killed one dragon. We can kill more."

"At what cost?" Nethysara's question carried genuine curiosity. "Your integration burns through you like fever. You were in agony for hours after Cryax died. Could you do that twelve more times? Could you maintain effectiveness while your curse tears at you? Could you survive if two of my children found you mid-integration when you're most vulnerable?"

Silence stretched. Snow fell in lazy spirals.

"That's why you're talking to us." Kindle's voice broke the quiet. "You're worried. Not about winning—you probably think you'll win regardless. But about cost. How many dragons you'll lose before we fall."

"Perceptive." The dragon's approval felt worse than contempt. "Yes. You represent unknown variables. I could simply crush you—surround you with overwhelming force until even your abilities prove insufficient. But that costs dragons. Costs servitors. Costs resources I'd prefer to preserve."

She moved closer, and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. "So I offer alternative. Join my domain. Not as servitors but as equals. Guards. Hunters. You would have purpose, power, protection. And I could stabilize your curse—five bodies, one consciousness, living indefinitely without pain or fear of dissolution."

"You're serious." Ember heard the disbelief in her own voice.

"Completely. Your abilities fascinate me. Your nature suggests possibilities I hadn't considered. Why destroy something unique when I could preserve it?"

Pyra laughed, bright and sharp. "You're asking us to join the villain? That's your pitch?"

"Villain?" Nethysara's head tilted again, that wrong angle that suggested neck bones that bent differently. "I offer humans escape from suffering they didn't choose. From bodies that betray them with age. From societies that grind them beneath arbitrary hierarchies. The coalition wants to drag them back into that chaos. Which of us is truly villainous?"

"The one taking away choice." Ember spoke before thinking.

"Did they choose to be born mortal? To feel pain? To watch loved ones die?" The dragon's voice held no heat, just cold logic. "Choice is illusion. Nature determines most of existence. Society constrains the rest. I simply remove the worst constraints and offer stability in exchange."

"They don't want stability." Kindle protested. "They want lives."

"Do they? Ask the mother who buried three children before age thirty if she wouldn't trade her capacity for grief for peaceful service. Ask the farmer who broke his back feeding nobles who despised him if he wouldn't prefer purpose without suffering. Ask the merchant who watched plague take her family if memory without pain isn't mercy."

The dragon's eyes found each of them in turn. "I've lived over two millennia. Watched your civilizations rise and fall in cycles that promise change but deliver stagnation. Every generation thinks they'll build something better. Every generation repeats the same mistakes. I offer escape from that wheel."

"By turning them into puppets." Cinder's flames burned white.

"By removing the parts that hurt. They maintain memory, consciousness, function. Just without the anguish that makes existence torment." Nethysara spread hands that ended in claws disguised as fingers. "Is that truly worse than what they had?"

Ash stepped forward, her analytical mind visible in the way she studied the dragon. "You're not offering salvation. You're offering stasis. No growth. No change. Just endless service to your vision of order."

"Stasis implies something static. I offer sustainable equilibrium. Growth without the chaos that destroys everything beautiful." The dragon's smile returned. "But I don't expect you to understand. Not yet. You're young. Even with your many selves and strange nature, you haven't watched centuries pass. Haven't seen empires crumble. Haven't learned that change and suffering are synonyms."

"Change means possibility." Ember found her voice again. "Means people can become something better than they were."

"Or something worse. Usually worse." Nethysara's dismissal carried the weight of experience. "Your coalition includes nobles who treat this war as opportunity for advancement. Quartermasters who calculate how many soldiers can die before supply lines collapse. Researchers who see suffering as acceptable cost for knowledge. And you think that's preferable to peaceful service?"

The words hit harder because they held truth. Ember had seen Lysander jockeying for position, heard Grehm's cold mathematics, watched Valerian view everything through research value.

"They're not perfect." She said it anyway. "But they're trying. They're choosing to fight for something they believe matters."

"And when they fail? When the dragons tear through their lines and the servitors convert their comrades and the wards collapse from exhaustion? What will their choices have purchased except additional suffering?"

No answer came easily.

"Think about it." Nethysara turned, her human shape already beginning to blur at the edges. "You have days before the assault. Before the dying begins in earnest. My offer remains open until then. Join me, and you'll never hurt again. Fight me, and I'll preserve what remains after you fall. Either way, you'll exist beyond your brief human span."

"We're not joining you." Pyra said it with absolute certainty.

"We'll see." The dragon's form dissolved into mist and cold, dispersing on wind that shouldn't exist. "Perspective changes when you watch those you protect die screaming. When the mathematics become unavoidable. When heroism proves insufficient against inevitability."

Her voice faded but the final words carried clear across the snow. "I wanted you to understand before it happens. Wanted you to know I offered mercy before necessity forced cruelty."

Then nothing. Just wind and snow and cold that slowly retreated as her presence withdrew.

Marta collapsed. Kindle caught her before she hit the ground, flames warming flesh that had gone blue-white from proximity to the dragon. The woman's eyes cleared, confusion replacing the void that had occupied them.

"What... where am I?"

"Safe." Kindle helped her stand. "Come on. Let's get you back inside."

They returned through the gate, past sentries who'd somehow failed to notice anything unusual, back into warmth that felt artificial after standing in winter's heart.

In their barracks, with door closed and wards Corwin had taught them activated against casual listening, they finally spoke.

"She's not wrong about everything." Ash broke the silence. "The coalition has problems. Politics, self-interest, cold calculations that treat people as numbers."

"But she's not offering better." Ember sank onto her cot. "Just different problems. Eternal service versus messy freedom. Perfect order versus chaotic choice."

"She's playing long game." Cinder stared at nothing. "Knows we'll see horrors during the assault. Knows we'll watch people die. Trying to make us doubt before we even begin fighting."

"Is it working?" Kindle asked quietly.

Silence stretched between them, thought flowing without words.

Pyra finally spoke. "No. Because she's missing something important. Yeah, people suffer. Yeah, the coalition isn't perfect. But they chose to be here. Chose to fight. She'd take that choice away and call it mercy."

"Even if some of them would choose her offer." Ash observed.

"Then they can choose it." Ember felt certainty settling into place. "But taking away the option to refuse? That's where she crosses from salvation into slavery."

Agreement rippled through their connection. Not perfect consensus—Ash's analytical mind still turned the problem over, Cinder's pragmatism acknowledged the dragon's logic—but unified decision.

They'd fight. They'd probably lose people they cared about. They'd definitely see horrors that would haunt them.

But they'd do it anyway because the alternative meant accepting that some ancient intelligence knew better than humans what humans needed.

"Do we tell command?" Kindle asked.

"Tomorrow." Ember lay back, exhaustion pulling at bones. "Let them sleep. We'll brief them at dawn about everything she said."

"They won't be happy we went alone." Pyra pointed out.

"Probably not." Cinder smiled without warmth. "But at least we got intelligence they'll find useful."

They settled into sleep that came easier than expected, despite the dragon's words echoing through shared consciousness. Outside, sentries walked walls and snow continued falling and somewhere north, Nethysara waited in her frozen city.

Ember closed her eyes and let exhaustion claim her. Tomorrow's problems could wait for tomorrow.

Tonight, she'd take what rest she could before the dying began.