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“The dungeon?” the Goddess asked. “Why?”
“There are infected dragons there," he answered. “They started acting strangely about half an hour ago.”
The Goddess and I followed him out of the room. "You think this is Cedric's doing?" I asked, and Armen nodded.
“It has to be,” Morana grumbled. "And whatever's going on, it can't be good."
* * *
Natalie
The dungeon wasn’t what I imagined. Instead of cold, dark cells and musk, the walls were white, with doors lining both sides of a clean, bright-lit hallway. It looked more like a lab.
But even before I entered the dungeon, I could feel the virus. There was a lot of it here. And that was puzzling. Why hadn’t I sensed it before.
Had Cedric cloaked the virus’s presence from me?
Yelena and I stood in front of the cell she said Armen had been trapped in, waiting for him to return with Lucian and the Goddess. Unlike the other cells, his had been made of glass, allowing him to be seen as if he was a trophy. All of the other cells were solid white, with doors.
When the Goddess, Lucian, and Armen joined us, we all stood back while Armen opened the door to the left of his old confining home. Inside, a woman stood in the middle of the room, her light brown hair tangled and knotted to her waist, curtaining her face.
Her head was down, and her arms were covered by red veins.
We watched her for a second, and nothing happened.
"What should we be looking for?" Lucian asked, and Armen held his hand up.
The woman looked up then, only enough to stare at us under her lashes. Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and I stepped forward. She was staring right at me.
Her eyes were red, the color of her pupils blending into the white only a little. Then her body suddenly jerked, and I frowned. I could feel the virus in her, but something wasn't right. The virus seemed more volatile.
The virus induced rage and a thirst for blood, but that wasn’t what I was sensing from this dragon. Instead, the virus seemed to be attacking her body. I could feel it. It was like an animal clawing at a locked door to be released.
The lines on her body started pulsing, and her body jerked again.
She groaned and hung her head, and Yelena yelped when the woman's arm suddenly broke, leaving her elbow at an odd angle.
"What's happening to her?" Yelena whispered.
We all looked around as the sound of breaking bones filled the air, and I didn't need to see anything else to know the same thing was happening to the other infected dragons behind each closed door.
"What's happening to them?" the Goddess asked.
I turned back to the woman in the cell. Her head was up now, showing her face, and I watched as she lifted her hand to her mouth and bit into herself.
"It's changing. The virus is becoming more aggressive, even to its host," I said. Yelena covered her mouth as the woman began to rip herself apart, red mist rising from her body. "The virus is attacking her, attacking all of them. It wants out."
"It wants out, as in out of their bodies?" Yelena asked, and I nodded.
I raised a hand, and I snapped the woman's neck with a flick of my wrist. It was a mercy compared to her chewing at herself like this. I closed my eyes, intending to do the same to the others, when my chaos stirred, overwhelming me, and my hands fell to my sides.
I ran to another cell and opened the door, only to see a man killing himself, ripping his heart out.
"No," I said with panic, but the man only smiled.
I held my head as a high-pitched screeching filled the space and hunched over.
“Natalie?” Lucian took my arm. “Natalie, what’s wrong?”
