Page 31 of The Dragon’s Captive

“Kate, this is my wife, Aria. Aria, this is Kate,” Vyktor said. “She opened the portal and woke the world eater.”

“All by yourself, very impressive,” Aria noted with a smile.

“Um… thank you?” Kate was confused not only by the fact that a human seemed to have been living here for a very long time, but that she was the mother of the man she had seen take flight in the form of a dragon. How could a human mother a dragon? And how similar must the essential structure of dragons and humans be to allow such a DNA synthesis? Vilka had said that it was possible, but she had assumed that he was wrong.

“She’s looking at me like I’m a ghost,” Aria said to Vyktor. “Is she alright?”

“I think she assumed she was the first human here,” Vyktor said.

“Second,” Aria corrected Kate. “Well, third, but the first one did not last very long unfortunately. How are you managing? Are you already pregnant?”

“No!” Kate blushed bright red. “I certainly am not…”

“But you are not suffering the effects of the radiation?”

“I made a formula which protects human cells from the radiation present in this realm. It’s quite a different form than the kinds which are so dangerous on Earth. The particles are larger and don’t tend to penetrate the DNA, so it’s really a matter of shielding the cell proper and…” She was babbling and she knew it. Aria and Vyktor exchanged amused looks.

“You must be very smart,” Aria said kindly.

“Not smart enough to be able to get out of here.”

“Well, when a dragon takes a prisoner, he tends to do a thorough job of it,” Aria said with another smile at her husband. “Don’t be too down on yourself for failing to escape. I had little success myself.”

“How did you come to be here? Were you taken through a portal? How long have you been here?” Kate was full of questions, fired at rapid pace.

Aria smiled indulgently and answered them without hesitation. “It was at the very end of the dragon war. I was a rookie fighter pilot. I tangled with this lizard,” she said, nudging Vyktor affectionately, “and got more than I bargained for,” she laughed.

“The dragon war? But that was only three years ago. And you’re… well…” Kate’s voice trailed off. “More mature than I would have expected for a rookie fighter pilot.”

“Three years on Earth, yes, but I have lived thirty years here in this realm,” Aria said. “I have not left it, not even for a day, so I have aged in this world, not the one I came from.”

“That is incredible,” Kate said. “You have more knowledge of this place than any human, decades of research potential in a few short years.”

“Earth years, yes,” Aria agreed. “But as you see, time passes just the same.”

Kate nodded. There was a price to be paid for living in the dragon realm, and that price was to miss much of human history, for so little of it passed compared to dragon years.

“Mathematics aside, we have greater problems to worry about,” Aria changed the subject. “Like closing the portal. Can you do that?”

“The portal I made, the first one, it was a small one which needed continuous power. That’s how I made something stable. These huge portals, they’re self-sustaining, but they’re also unstable. A significant electrical charge can destabilize and evaporate them, but I can’t really figure out how to generate one of those over here. I probably could with time, but the elements are sort of out of phase and electricity doesn’t seem popular, so there’s no infrastructure, and besides, that massive dragon is still on the wrong side…” She trailed off. “You know you’re the first person to even bother to ask me if I know how to close the portal?”

“Dragons tend to act first and ask questions later,” Aria said. “I’m surprised Vilka is still in this realm at all and hasn’t flown through to deal with Avastias himself.”

“He’s worried I’ll escape if he takes his eyes off me,” Kate shrugged.

“Which you probably would.”

“Of course,” Kate agreed. “Though I have no idea how I’d get that high into the sky. Maybe you could drop me off through it?”

“And who is going to stop you from falling to your death on the other side?” Aria shook her head. “I think that plan may need a little more thought.”

“That plan will have no more thought given to it,” Vyktor interjected. “Do not give her ideas. We did not come here to create more trouble for Vilka.”

“Yes, dear,” Aria said. “Best behavior, I promise.” She flickered a little wink at Kate, who couldn’t help but smile.

Aria made Kate feel as if perhaps she were not such a terrible person. Vilka had never said that she was, of course, but the sense of guilt had been building for quite some time and as much as she had tried to resist it, it had crept up inside her soul. This was all her fault, and she knew it. She just couldn’t bear to admit it, any more than she could bear to think what was going on back in New York with a dragon on the loose that made the Empire State Building look like a toothpick.

It occurred to Kate that out of all those who had come to the fortress, only Vyktor and Aria were real elders. They were the only ones who had spoken to her directly, and they were certainly the only ones who had made the situation feel containable and who seemed to be prepared to offer some assistance, even if it was only of the moral kind—quite unlike the others who seemed to have made an appearance to leer at the misfortune of the unfavored son.