“D-doesn’t hahh... hurt,” he growled, trying again to take a few shaky steps. “Too many—too many legs.”
His tail swished anxiously, curling tight around his body, before lashing back out in a wide arc. Pollux looked at it suspiciously, as if trying to control it.
“Maybe it would be easier if you got used to your smaller form first,” Adrissu said, slowly coming up alongside him. This time, Pollux leaned up against him, instead of shrinking away. Adrissu could feel his warm, scaled skin trembling. “Try and turn yourself into—well, your elven self. Focus on what you looked like and shrink yourself down into it.”
Pollux’s brows furrowed, his yellow eyes narrowing into barely visible slits. “Hhh-how?”
Adrissu had to think about that for a moment—his elven form was second nature, and he could describe how he changed shape no more accurately than he might describe how he breathed. It took little effort and even less thought, but still he had to try to put it into words that Pollux could understand.
“Think of it like casting an illusion of yourself,” he said. “When you’re casting it, you’ll feel this... sort of urge, to push yourself into it. Just let go and do that, and you’ll shrink down into the illusory form.”
Pollux grunted, his eyes closing in concentration. A warm glow suffused his body, and his form flickered for a moment as he struggled.
“Watch me,” Adrissu urged, and when Pollux’s eyes opened, Adrissu condensed himself down into his elven form. “Just like that. You can do it.” Pollux nodded and closed his eyes again. This time when his form flickered, it shrank down slowly, his features morphing, until finally his familiar elven visage was standing beside Adrissu—naked and trembling, his eyes still screwed shut in concentration.
“There you are. You did it,” Adrissu said softly. Pollux’s eyes snapped open, still a too-bright yellow. Adrissu hesitated, but decided not to point it out—they could fix that later. Pollux tried to reach for Adrissu, but stumbled, swaying in place as if he were drunk.
“Everything feels—feels strange,” Pollux said, his voice now the same as it had always been. “I feel... dizzy, I think.”
“That’s alright,” Adrissu said. “You’ll get used to it. It will just take some time. Here, you’ll be more comfortable if you put these back on.”
He held Pollux by the arm, and slowly they walked back toward his neatly folded pile of clothes. Adrissu helped him dress, minus the heavy chain shirt, then braided his hair the way he had done a hundred times before, which seemed to help ground Pollux a bit. But the other man still trembled when Adrissu was done, running his hands up and down the sleeves of his robe.
“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Adrissu said, and Pollux winced. He was silent for a long moment, struggling to speak.
“I feel too... too big,” he finally said, still unconsciously rubbing his arms. “But like I’m being squeezed all at once. I don’t like being shrunk down like this. It feels like I’m going to—to rip apart at the seams.”
“It will just take time,” Adrissu repeated. When he thought back to it, he didn’t much like being in his elven form in the past, either, but the feeling had faded with time. “I promise. Give it a few days, and then you’ll feel much better. Alright? We’ll just rest for a few days until you’re used to it, and then it will feel like nothing happened at all.”
Pollux nodded, but the same frown lingered on his face.
“I want to go home,” he said. Adrissu hesitated; it was true that they probably should not linger here too long, but he wasn’t sure that Pollux could make the journey. He seemed barely able to walk as a dragon, much less fly, but neither did he seem stable enough to make the whole trip riding on Adrissu’s back.
“We can’t leave yet,” he said, though the words stabbed him with guilt, as Pollux’s face twisted with a miserable expression. “It will be mid-morning now. We have to wait until the sun goes down, at least if we’re going to fly home. Plus, you should practice flying for a bit before making such a long trip.”
Pollux frowned, but nodded. “All right. I’ll practice.”
“Try to rest first,” Adrissu said. “You’ll feel better if you sleep a little bit. I’ll clean everything up here. We’ll both get some rest, and in the afternoon, we can practice flying. Then we’ll head home tonight. Sounds good?”
“I don’t know if I can sleep and stay like this,” Pollux said, shaking his head and gesturing at his body. “I feel like I really have to... to concentrate, to keep myself this small.”
“Try it for now, and if you have to rest in your draconic form, that’s alright,” he replied. Pollux sighed, his face falling with resignation.
“Let’s at least get somewhere more comfortable than this,” he said, glancing around. “I saw where he sleeps. It’s down this way.”
He took a few careful steps, leading Adrissu through the lair, albeit slowly. The sleeping chamber was down a long, downward-sloping tunnel that eventually opened up into a room that was oval-shaped, a nest of furs and cloth and straw at the far end. Briefly, Adrissu wondered if Pollux saw where his hoard was as well, but that would be a question for later. For now, he helped Pollux get settled and as comfortable as possible, though a troubled expression remained on his face even when he closed his eyes.
Adrissu watched him for a little while as he tried to fall asleep, tension lining his brow and his eyelids flickering restlessly. He too felt restless, a heady rush of adrenaline washing over him every time he remembered: they haddone it.All the decades of waiting and wondering, of not knowing who his mate would be the next time fate pulled them together, the years of anticipation that he would watch his mate die all over again—they were over. He would never suffer through them again.
And even beyond that, he was probably the only one to have ever successfully performed such a ritual—it might be that no one in the world could have accomplished what Adrissu had just done. He did not think it would be wise to share the ritual, but a small part of him thought it would be quite a thing to be able to brag about.
But he was getting ahead of himself. Shaking himself from his reverie, Adrissu made sure Pollux was sleeping—he was, but fitfully—before heading back to the first chamber. He gathered up their things from the floor, put them into the sack that Pollux had carried, and brought them to the sleeping chamber. Then he went back and cleaned all the chalk and blood off the floor, easily magicking away the runes to leave no evidence of what they had done.
Then there was still Pollux’s elven body, empty and soulless, and the raw emerald that held Tyrsun’s soul. He would leave the emerald here, he thought, hidden in plain sight amongst whatever they left of his hoard. Doubtless in a decade or a century, some scout would come to see why Tyrsun no longer troubled Wintergrove and the surrounding lands, only to find the remnants of his lair and hoard: the emerald would only be another precious rock amongst gems and gold. Even if they could tell it was magical, there was no indication that a dragon’s soul was contained within.
But they had not really discussed what to do with Pollux’s body once the transfer was complete, a rather morbid oversight now that the deed was done. Would they take it with them? Leave it behind? Either option seemed unsatisfactory, so Adrissu simply left the body where it was laying for now, until Pollux woke and could decide for himself.
When he came back into the sleeping chamber, he was briefly surprised to see that Pollux had, indeed, lost control of his illusory form. Still asleep, the red dragon was sprawled out—his breathing a deep, low rumble that filled the room.
