Just as my dragon descended, talons out and aimed at the block surrounding the undine elemental, the ice shattered. Kaida’s wings quickly expanded, in a likely attempt to shield me from the onslaught just before my eyes slammed shut, preparing myself for impact.
The ground shook and my eyes flew back open. Doing a quick mental sweep, I was relieved to feel no injuries to myself. When my eyes dropped lower, a scream ripped from my throat at the sight before me. Kaida was pinned to the ground with a large taloned foot on his throat and chest. A pure white dragon with sapphire eyes stood in place of the human form we’d seen from the god. He was, without a doubt, the most fearsome and intimidating beast I’d ever laid eyes on. Each of his glittering scales was tipped with shards of ice, covering him like a second layer of armor. His tail swept behind him, the ball of fearsome spikes at the end belying the fact that he would easily skewer a person with one easy swing of it.
In that moment, as I watched Kaida struggle and cry out in pain, I knew true terror for the first time. The tip of one of his gleaming black claws pulled back from its dangerously close position at the smaller dragon’s heart.
“I do not wish to harm you, little one.” The god seemed to speak without moving his mouth, though he was not infiltratingmy mind. It was as if the wind itself was his messenger. His large, scaled face descended toward Kaida’s thrashing body, letting loose a billowing cloud of steam from his nostrils that engulfed the smaller dragon. “Stop squirming or I might harm you, accidentally, of course.”
I tugged at the ice trapping me, thrashing around wildly as I yelled, “You’re going to crush him!”
Those sapphire eyes lifted, trained on me as his taloned foot lifted ever-so-slightly. “I would never harm such a perfect creation, one born from my own power.”
The sheer offense in his tone as he admitted to creating the very dragon he was nearly crushing had my mouth clamping tightly shut.
Call me dense or naive, but never before had I wondered how the dragons had come into existence. For as long as our texts could recall, the dragons had simply lived alongside humans. I’d known of drackya and witches being of the elementals’ creation, but they hadn’t started to appear in our texts until the more recent centuries. Dragons had simply always been there, part of our prehistory that had never been questioned.
I didn’t intervene as he freely offered more information, instead letting him rant as I checked on Kaida.
“The dragons were the very first of our creations to occupy the human’s realm, offering a foothold into their world, as we cannot stay there ourselves. The dragons have served their purpose beautifully, cementing our tie to the human realm. It isourmagic that runs through your world as ley lies. It is the very same magic we used to sustain the first dragons, creating ecosystems in which our creations could thrive. Over the span of their first millennia in your lands, the dragons and their connection to our magic through the ley lines changed the human realm, irrevocably.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I…I think so,”he answered, his voice trembling even mentally.“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough. Theo will be mad. I was supposed to protect you if he wasn’t here.”
I couldn’t stop the few stray tears from leaking from my eyes to hear the warbling admission from my dragon.“Theo will be so proud of you. You flew in to protect me, against someone much more powerful than both of us, despite me telling you not to.”
Fuck, wherewasTheo? We needed him.
Still the elemental droned on as Kaida continued to wiggle beneath his claws. “Life grew boring, as the humans and dragons continued to live separately. There was nothing for us to observe from our realm through their eyes, thus the drackya and witches were created and sent to the topside. We watched new civilizations rise and flourish until the drackya and witches became natural enemies, fighting for the energy from where the ley lines occupied in the central areas of each kingdom. With the dragons naturally taking the side of drackya and forming alliances, the witches were hunted to near extinction.”
“So, the elementals created these beings because you were dissatisfied with your lives in your own realm,” I mused, keeping up the conversation to try to buy time to figure out some type of plan. There had to besomethingI could do. Perishing without first putting up a fight simply was not an option. “If company and entertainment was what you wanted, you should have just kept your creations here.”
The ground vibrated as he stepped back, lifting his foot from Kaida’s wriggling form. My dragon shot into the air, flapping his wings one, twice, before pulling them tightly against his sides and skidding to a stop next to me. Through it all, Kaida never stopped growling at the massive beast.
“What entertainment can truly be found in observing creatures that you can easily control, easily bend to your willat your own whim?” he rebutted before collapsing back into his human form in the span of seconds. The sudden change in his appearance and size was jarring, my brain taking a second too long to catch up. His tone was flippant and full of arrogance as he continued, “We needed the unknown variable provided by the humans to truly keep us entertained. Though many of your kind are the same—selfish, greedy, and cruel–there are a few, like you, who manage to surprise us.”
The ice holding me captive melted away as he drew closer to us. It didn’t seem like he actually wanted to kill either of us, at least not yet. But why? What was the point in keeping us here, gloating about the creation of dragons, drackya, and witches?
It was like being splashed in the face with ice-cold water, the way the obvious truth hit me.
The curse was a way of providing him that entertainment he craved. If the undine god were to help us break that curse, ending his current tantalizing form of entertainment, he would want something in return. But what did I have to offer him that he would find more amusing than the unnecessary anger and grief felt by those most affected by the curse? That remained unclear.
“You told me to choose between Theo and myself,” I said, bringing us back to the very beginning of this fight. “I choose to offer myself.”
I kept my voice as even and confident as I could manage, but inside I was shaking, fear searing through my veins. I was gambling here, taking a huge leap of faith based on the little information I had gleaned from our conversation thus far. If humans were the key to his entertainment, would he simply kill me here? I was beginning to think not.
The cold lingered in my bones as I watched him, arms wrapping around my shaking body as he drew to a stop in his tracks. A bone-deep shiver passed over me as his eyes took in mybody, from the hair atop my head to the tips of my toes and all the way back again.
“Well,” he started, that same slow, sinister smile from before returning to his face, “since you have both offered yourselves, it seems I must find a way to encourage one of you to…forfeit.”
He’d taken the bait.
“I don’t like this,”Kaida murmured while shuffling closer to me and extending a wing protectively over me.
I took a few small steps forward, refusing to cower behind him. I couldn’t allow him to pull the god’s focus from me. Not when I had him hooked. “Then what would you have me do?”
“Trust me, Kaida. We will all leave here together.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a promise I would actually be able to keep, but saying the words felt like the first step in manifesting my desired outcome. If I said it enough, I would eventually start to believe it too.
