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Akoni stole me away, twirling me neatly in the sand. “I expect you to return promptly.”
“What is this talk ofpromptly? Today is today.”
“Exactly. And a day without you is unending. So if we could get past this last foray, excellent. You cannot leave me alone with these two.”
“Akoni. Are you saying you actually would stay with them?” I teased.
“He will be insufferable without you,” Auryn said darkly.
Keon made a disgusted noise.
“Where else would I go? These two are the best I can do.” Akoni winked his blue eye at me.
“The besthecan do,” Auryn told Keon.
Keon snorted.
“I am Prime in an infinite number of ways.”
“Infinite,” Keon told Auryn. “Infinite, he says. I don’t think he understands math.”
“Perhaps infinite is hyperbole. But at leastnine.”
I tugged Akoni by his hair. “I will not force them to endure you without me for long.”
“Exce—wait.”
I gave him a quick kiss and backed away before I lost my nerve.
I flappedout onto the ledge as the storms shaped themselves into the face from before.
Being in dragon form in the portal meantallmy wits were on edge as my scales took in an almost overwhelming amount of sensation and data. This was the firmament, but a different sort of firmament. Compressed, and under constant, slowly rotating pressure.
Don’t get distracted.
K’Dol’s face swirled and swept low, ominous. Maybe a bit deranged.
The storm pulled and tore at my scales, and the empty silence I had heard as a distant conch-shell roar now felt like a cacophony.
Such lovely scales.
The voice spoke in a language I didn’tknow, but I understood, as before. My scales perceived it (her) as a separate entity, distinct from the firmament. “Do you know why I’m here?”
I didn’t speak, because I hadn’t figured that out yet, and somehow… I did speak, even if I wasn’t speaking.
I can guess, little geode. Can you?
Right. So smug. Time to play it cool with the evil portal entity. “I’m not going to waste my time. I’m going to attempt to have a civil conversation with you instead.”
So bold. Do you think because you’ve managed to molt and master your three forms that you are safe here?
I would not call my flappy-flappy abilities asmasteringmuch of anything, but K’Dol didn’t need to know that. I settled myself onto the not-stones and slicked my wings down my spine. “You know about Chaos dragons.”
And you wish to know about them, I presume.
“Yes.” I shivered my scales, gathering more sensations from this strange place to inventory at a later time. Ifwanthad been humidity, this place was at a hundred percent and about to become a nice southern storm. There were tinges of pain, aching, and rage. But the fist-shaking-at-the-sky variety, not the seething must-live-for-revenge variety.
And mingled with all that, a bitter, intense, aching grief that I knew a bit too well on a personal level.
