Whatever it is, it is coming this way.
For one stupid second I stay there, hoping it fucks off and leaves me alone. But it doesn't. I can hear it branches crack in the distance, heavy and slow but definitely not weak.
It is hurt.
I can hear it in the way it moves, the way it barrels through the undergrowth instead of gliding through it. Something big and angry the magic wafting off of it is unique but it's definitely the thing that killed the Dragon.
My fingers tighten around the egg.
No time to grieve.
Whatever killed her is coming back.
If it finds this egg, then my promise and my word mean nothing.
And I refuse to let this creature kill another dragon.
"…right," I mutter. I forced myself to move and cradle the egg to my chest and the warmth seeps through me and it pulsed against my chest.
Mine.
No.
My responsibility.
I look around fast, mind racing. The nest is ruined. The mother is dead. The clearing is open enough that whatever is coming will see everything the second it breaks through the tree line.
Not happening.
I crouch and set the egg down as carefully as I can in the deepest part of the shattered nest. My hands hover for a second longer than they need to. I do not want to let go.
"Just… keep tight," I whisper, then immediately grimace. "I'll be back soon."
Another crack through the trees.
Closer.
I look around the clearing and force myself to think. Broken roots. Torn earth. Chunks of blackened stone. Pieces of the dragon's ruined wing. If I can't move the egg far, then I'll hide it.
My magic comes easier than it should. I reach my hand out and picture what I need. Roots rise higher. Stone shifts. The nest disappears under shadow and wreckage. I make sure to leave small gaps for air. I am not trying to bury it alive, just hide it.
I close my eyes and latch onto the eggs magic and I mark it in my head even if I lose sight of it I'll be able to find it.
I stand and turn back to the dragon mother and I want to stop she's still there half curled around the the ruin of her nest and I realise I cant leave her like this but I cant bury her either she's too big I don't have the time.
But I can do something.
"I'm sorry," I mutter, and this time I know exactly who I'm saying it to.
I lift my hand and imagine the clearing folding inward. Earth rising. Roots covering. Stone shielding what matters. Not to hide her from me. From it.
The magic answers roughly and immediately.
The dirt near her flank lifts in clumps and slides against her side. Roots drag across the ground and coil over the ruined edge of the nest, helping cover the crushed eggs and what remains of them. I pull one thicker root across the front of the nest entirely, leaving only shadow behind it. It is not much, but it is the closest thing to a burial I can give them right now.
The mother's body I leave partly exposed. And I feel horrible for doing it but I'm also not stupid. Whatever is on the way here is coming for a reason if I can make it focus on her and not her egg.
The thought makes me feel sick.
Then another crash through the trees.
Much closer.
I straighten slowly and step away from the nest, putting myself between the hidden egg and the direction of the sound. My heart is hammering now, magic already prickling under my skin. Every wound I've got suddenly remembers it exists. My shoulders ache. My side throbs. And my back hurts.
And none of it matters. Something huge is moving toward me, and I can feel the pressure of it building with every step. I already know what I have to do.
I roll my shoulders once, flex my fingers, and stare into the trees.
"Come on then," I mutter.
The branches ahead of me explode outward.
A blur of white crashes through the clearing. It tears out of the trees like it was thrown by a god.
Ow, fuck. it smashes into the floor hard enough to shake the ground before slamming head first into a shattered root.
And it stays there breathing so heavily I thought it knocked itself out.
Then it rises.
It is beautiful. If it had not killed the dragon, I might have just stood there and admired it.
It has the body of a great lion, all pale muscle and torn hide, but its shoulders are too broad, its limbs too long, its claws too curved to be anything natural. White feathers spill from its back and shoulders in ragged clusters, many of them stained pink and red with blood. One of its wings hangs wrong, half-broken and dragging, feathers torn out in clumps. Golden fur is matted dark where blood has dried into it. There are deep rents down one side of its ribs, and chunks of flesh look like they have been ripped.
And its eyes—
Its eyes are gone.
The sockets are torn and wet and ruined, black blood crusted down the front of its face, but that does not slow it for even a second.
It lifts its head and sniffs.
Once.
Twice.
Then its whole body goes still.
It has found the corpse.
Not me. Or the egg.
Her.
The thing lets out a low sound, not quite a roar, not quite a growl, something deeper and uglier than both, and lurches forward with sudden purpose. It does not move like it is blind. It moves like it knows exactly where the dragon lies and means to reach her.
I freeze for half a second, watching it stagger and then correct itself, claws ripping trenches into the ground as it hauls its damaged body toward the mother dragon.
The beast reaches her and lowers its head to her flank, sniffing hard, frantic now, almost desperate. Then it starts tearing.
I hear the wet rip before I fully understand what I am seeing.
It digs its claws into her side and bites into the wound already there, trying to wrench flesh free, trying to force its way deeper into the cavity where the whatever power remains in her maybe eat her heart.
Something in me snaps.
"No."
The word leaves me so hard it burns my throat.
My hand is already lifting before I think. I do not know any spells. I do not know any chants or whatnot all I have is my imagination.
Fire.
I picture it.
A sphere of it. Hot, violent, primordial fury.
I do not shape it carefully.
Heat surges down my arm so violently I almost scream. Red-purple magic floods from somewhere deep in my chest and out through my palm, gathering in front of me in a crackling, unstable orb. It is too bright, too hot, too wild, and for one split second I am convinced it is going to explode in my face.
Then I throw it.
The fireball tears across the clearing in a streak of red and molten orange and slams into the beast's side.
The impact is brutal, which is great for me and very much not for it.
Flame bursts over white feathers and ruined hide. The beast shrieks an awful, tearing sound and stumbles sideways off the mother dragon's body, smoke rolling off it as it claws at the burning patch across its ribs.
It works.
Holy shit, it actually works.
Then it turns its ruined face toward me.
And just like that, whatever tiny burst of triumph I think I had vanished.
Because even blind, even burned, even half-torn apart, I'm not sure I could beat it.
Its jaws peel back and it lunges towards me.
I throw myself to the side just before it hits where I was standing, and it tears the ground apart, I hit the floor hard and somehow do a roll and onto a knee just to see the thing twist fast.
Way too fast for something that looks like its barely hanging on.
It comes again.
This time I do not try to outrun it. I jerk my hand up and, because apparently I actually say the line.
"FIRE BALL!"
The beast recoils, shrieking, but only for a second.
"Right," I pant, staggering backward. "Should've put more power into that."
It prowls now, head low, wings twitching, ruined sockets fixed in my direction even though there is nothing there to see with. That is when Expert Taming kicks in, because somehow it sees something.
Posture, weight and aggression.
It is favoring the burned side.
Its broken wing throws off its balance when it pivots left.
Its head keeps angling for sound and scent.
And underneath all of that there is something else.
Its energy.
I can feel it now that I am focused on it. Taste it almost. Holy in the same way the battlefield arrows were a clean power the magic wrapped around an animal's desperation.
And the second it tastes me back because that is what this feels like, it tasting me through the air it straightens.
Like I just somehow became the answer to all of its problems.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
It launches.
I barely get my arm up in time. One claw tears across my forearm instead of my throat, and pain explodes all the way to my shoulder. I shout and slam my other hand into its chest on instinct. Magic flares. Not fire this time, just force, pure force. The beast is shoved off me far enough for me to stumble away, blood already running down my arm.
It hurts.
Bad.
I look down once, see torn flesh, and immediately regret it.
"Fantastic," I hiss.
The beast circles. I circle with it.
Every step I take is careful now, measured around the hidden nest. I cannot let it get past me. I cannot let it smell where the egg is. I cannot let it tear into her again.
The beast feints right, then surges left, exactly where Expert Taming told me it would overcommit because of the broken wing. I move before I think, pivot, and hurl another fireball. It clips the side of its neck. Not enough. And it slams into me.
The world becomes white.
I hit the ground hard enough to see Its paw crushes down on my shoulder. Its breath pours over my face, hot and foul and wet with blood. One claw digs into my side and I choke on the pain.
Up close it smells wrong.
I jam my good hand against its jaw and force a burst of heat up through my palm. It jerks back, snarling, and I wrench myself free by pure luck.
I roll beneath the broken edge of one shattered root and come up half behind it, breathing heavily.
The beast tears the root apart with one strike.
So much for cover.
I throw rock this time instead of flame. Or try to. My magic catches the thought and rips a cracked slab of blackened stone from the ground, hurling it into the beast's shoulder. It staggers, and before it can recover I sprint in and aim for what is left of the right eye socket with a jagged root shard.
It lands.
The shard sinks deep.
The beast then loses it's mind.
Not like it was as calm and placid like a baby but now its thrasing so violently and slams one wing into me and sends me flying again you know it would be nice if I had wings too all this flying kinda hurts when you land, I end up near the mother dragon's chest and all I can do Is curl and try not to black out.
Everything is pain my everything hurts. I can't feel my arm and my head is ringing my head falls to the side and it's moving fuuuuuuuck I hear it ripping free and it snarling.
And I ....
No.
No, no, no.
I force myself up and almost fall straight back down. The world sways. Blood drips from my arm to the dirt. My magic crackles under my skin, but it is slipping now, turning ragged. I am strong, sure, but I woke up half-dead not that long ago. I am still patched together more than healed.
The beast knows it too.
It comes at me slower this time like I'm already done for and perhaps I am and I go still.
I am kneeling beside the mother dragon's body, palm braced against torn scales slick with blood. Beneath all that ruin, beneath the cooling flesh and the heavy smell of death, there is one place where the magic still burns like a forge.
Her heart.
Half-remembered snippets of fanfiction and myths and some dumb late-night reading all pile together in my head at the worst possible moment, except now none of it feels dumb. Dragon hearts are power. Blood. Ritual. Strength.
Magician.
Adept Conceptualization.
Instinct.
Blood.
Something in me lines up all at once.
The beast lunges.
I react before I think. A crack of rough lightning jumps from my free hand into its shoulder—not a proper spell but it jerks hard enough to buy me one second.
One second is enough.
"I'm sorry," I rasp to the dragon mother.
My hand pushes deeper into the wound.
Heat.
So much heat.
Then I touch it.
For one impossible beat it feels like I have grabbed hold of a living furnace. My magic surges toward it and so many things flash through my head but I do nkt have the time for a chant or to draw a circle no elegance.
I do what instinct and I bite into my own wrist with my teeth, spit blood over my hand and her wound, and force my magic through both.
The world goes white-hot.
Something answers.
The heart convulses once beneath my hand, and power slams into me so hard I scream.
It feels like swallowing pure light.
Like fire was forced down my throat and into my lungs.
Like something hollowed me out and filled me back up.
I do not remember pulling the heart free, only that suddenly it is in my hand, huge and burning and far too heavy, still pulsing with impossible heat.
The beast is already recovering advancing.
No time.
I tear into it.
It is brutal and ugly and nothing about it feels clean, but the moment the blood hits my tongue I understand why dragons are the apex creatures in mythology and so cool.
Power detonates through me.
My wounds vanish. Heat floods my bones. My senses sharpen until the whole clearing is too bright, too loud, too alive. I can feel every ember of magic in the ground, in the hidden egg, in the corpse behind me, in the thing coming for me it's so much more than before.
Red and purple light spills over my skin in thin, shifting veins. My breath fogs, then smokes, then burns.
The beast hesitates.
For the first time since it burst into the clearing, it hesitates.
I rise slowly, blood running down my chin, heart gone. Every breath feels like I am feeding a furnace.
"What," I say, voice ruined and not entirely sounding like mine anymore, "now you're nervous?"
It roars and charges.
I meet it head-on.
The thing leaps and I drive my shoulder into its chest, one hand burying itself in the torn fur of its neck as we slam together. Claws rake across my back. Pain flashes white. I hold on anyway.
Then I open my mouth and the world burns, fire exits out of me
And the world burns.
A hungry, violent ancient fire erupts from my throat at point-blank blank range and it pours straight into the beasts ruined face and down its throat.
The lion-beast does not even get to scream properly.
The fire rips through flesh, fur, feathers. White feathers vanish in a burst of sparks. Bone blackens. The thing jerks once, claws tearing into me, then convulses as the fire hollows it from the inside out.
I keep going until there is nothing left.
By the time I finally stumble back, the beast collapses in a smoking heap.
The clearing falls silent again.
I stand there swaying.
Holy shit.
Holy actual shit.
Then my knees give out.
I hit the ground hard beside the mother dragon's foreleg and stay there for a second, one hand pressed to the dirt, the other over my chest like maybe I can hold whatever the hell is happening inside me in place.
Everything is too much.
The egg.
The castle.
The clearing smells like scorched meat and blood and wet ash. My whole body trembles though my wounds healed I feel horrible.
I drag in one careful breath and nearly set the air in front of me smoking again.
"Right," I wheeze.
I turn my head toward the hidden nest and immediately reach for it with my senses.
Relief hits so hard I nearly laugh.
Instead I push myself upright and crawl the first few feet before my I have the strength to walk. The roots and stone shift clumsily under my shaking hands as I uncover the nest again. The black-and-red egg sits where I left it, warm and steady and somehow untouched by all of this.
"Hey," I murmur, voice rough. "Told you I'd be back."
I lift it carefully against my chest.
Behind me, the mother dragon's body lies half-covered in earth and roots, and beyond her the smoking corpse of the thing that killed her is slowly collapsing in on itself.
The castle still looms above the trees.
And the pull is still there.
Stronger now, if anything.
Whatever I just did, whatever that heart woke up in me, it did not break the thread between me and that ruin.
I should go back to Delilah.
I know that.
I should.
But I look at the castle, then down at the egg in my arms, and the answer in my chest is immediate.
No.
Not yet.
I made a promise.
The beast is dead. The egg is safe. And whatever waits up there, in that broken black castle, feels tied to all of this to the dragon, to the body I'm wearing, to the sorrow that never felt fully mine.
If I turn back now, I will only come here again.
So I rise.
The egg clutched tight to my chest.
Smoke still curls from my lips when I breathe.
Blood still sticks to my hands.
But I am still standing.
I look once at the mother dragon and incline my head.
"I said I'd take care of it," I mutter, holding the black-and-red egg a little tighter. "So I guess that starts now.