Draka

Knowing that I had revealed myself to a bunch of people made me more than a little paranoid. Even knowing that they couldn’t actually track me, I still took a long route back to my cave, first heading north and then turning west to fly among the mountains and valleys as I returned south. Even then I settled down by the spring near my cave to wait for full dark before I actually returned home.

I’d transferred the bag to my hands shortly after getting airborne. It was lumpy and jangly and wonderfully heavy. Flying with it had been torture. Not because of the weight, but because I could smell silver and gold and I longed to open it but I didn’t dare to, not yet, in case I couldn’t get it closed again. As I curled up around it, waiting for the sun to set, I inhaled the wonderful scent and I felt a rumble roll from my chest and through my body. I was full on purring with pleasure, and if anyone had been there to hear I might have died of embarrassment.

When the sun set on my resting place I didn’t waste any time. I flew through the darkness, landing hard with only my legs to take the shock. It didn’t matter. My body still ached terribly from crashing into a man at high-way speeds and the following fight. I was sure that my chest and neck would be a mess of bruises if I didn’t have scales covering them. That damned woman was strong. But I didn’t care. Nothing was broken, and nothing was preventing me from picking the bag up in my mouth and rushing down into the depths of my cave. I was going to my hoard, and it was going to grow substantially.

Getting through the crevice this time was a squeeze. I had always needed to sidle, but now I was actually having to work for it, sucking in my gut and spreading my wings to the sides to get through. It took a while. I thought back to what Herald had said, that I was bigger. Was I getting fat? I didn’t know how to feel about that. I didn’t think that I had ever cared about my figure, but then, I had never really needed to think about it. I’d alway been active as a kid, and after I took up climbing as a personality the problem was getting enough calories, rather than the other way around. But I had also eaten, like, 70 or 80 kilos of meat in the last few weeks. That was probably more calories than I needed, and they had to go somewhere.

When I finally plopped out on the other side I briefly considered moving my hoard, but this was the safest place I could think of, so that was out. I’d just have to watch my figure. It was a weird and disturbing idea, but at least I had a good reason for it. And that reason was about to get even better.

Finally, after so many hours of delayed gratification, I could open the bag. I could barely see, but I didn’t need to. Smell and touch were all I needed. The top of the bag was simply tied closed with thick string, and I cut that easily with my claws. Then I opened the top, and started taking things out.

One by one I removed items from the bag, touching them, smelling them, looking at their contours and their barely-there gleams in the light of the lichen. There were silver candlesticks, plates, and cutlery, gold and silver rings, earrings and necklaces, plain or set with precious stones. I could tell a precious stone from a semi-precious one by smell and taste alone. So, I licked the loot. It wasn’t the first time or the last. Hell, I’d been carrying a silver earring in my mouth for the last few days. It was comforting, but I dropped that on the pile as well.

I did feel a little bad about keeping things that were clearly precious valuables looted from people’s homes, but I deserved a reward, right? Of course I did. Anyway, they were in my hoard now, and they weren't going anywhere.

Then there were the coins. Adding Paak’s pouch there were dozens of them, mostly silver but a few gold, and hundreds of lesser ones that did nothing for me. I guessed those must be the Peacocks. It seemed like a waste to have dragged them here, but then I had a thought. Spending my gold and silver coins was unthinkable. It was not going to happen. If someone had kidnapped my best friend and roomie Andrea and demanded a single silver Eagle as ransom I would have thanked Andrea for her years of friendship and hoped to meet her in the next life. But Peacocks? I could spend those! As long as Herald–

Shit. I hoped that Herald wasn’t in trouble because of me. She had sounded convinced that she was safe, but I hoped that she would get in touch very soon. I’d have to check the tree. Otherwise I might have to go into the city, and I was not looking forward to that. Anyway, her little family would be back by now, and they'd look after her. Makanna would be unhappy, of course. I wondered what Herald had told them. Had she said anything about me?

Then it happened. I’d been expecting it, but it still brought a shiver of pleasure up my spine. The first time had hurt, but the two times after that had been wonderful.

“Our hoard has grown!” The voice purred. It was a tone that had just never been in my repertoire, and hearing my own voice like that, well, embarrassing didn't begin to cover it. If I could have blushed, I would have done so, furiously.

Wait. “Our” hoard?

“By gathering a hoard worthy of a young dragon, a major threshold has been reached,” the voice continued, heavy with contentment. “We will embrace the shadow!”

That surprised me. What, I didn't get a choice? Had the dragon chosen for me, or was this just how it was for dragons?

“The dark will hold no fear for us, for we are what others fear in the dark! The shadows will be our allies, and they will do as we command! We are a dragon of shadow. We are the darkness! We are the night!”

Oh, great. My dragon was some kind of scaly goth girl.

Then the dragon began to purr in a long, luxuriating rumble, and I felt a change wash over me and through me, mind and body. Not only instinct, but the barest understanding of what the dragon’s words meant. My vision blurred, which didn’t make sense since I could barely see anyway, but when everything came back into focus, everything came back into focus! Like the brightness had been inverted, what had been nearly pitch black now shone in bright tones of grey. Edges were the clearest, and colour was right out, but I could see every single individual item in the cave, and even some details on them. I could see every coin, every chunk of silver, and every string and stone. When I turned around I could see the bottom of the pit I had fallen into all those weeks ago, and for the first time I could actually make out what was down there.

For a moment I actually hoped that I might find some of my gear, but no. No flashlight or smartphone for me. The flashlight wasn’t any use to me anymore, but it would have been nice to listen to some music. I’d been on a major Sia trip before my fall, and I hadn’t been close to wearing her hits out yet.

What I did see, though, was not anything I’d expected. The pit was roughly circular. I’d known that already. And there was an opening that slanted slightly down, deeper into the mountain. What I hadn’t expected was that the opening was an archway of cut stone, or that the pit was lined with regularly placed bricks, about the size and shape of milk boxes. There were twelve of the things, spaced about a metre apart. It looked like there might be some kind of carvings on them, and I wondered what the point of them was. Still, I didn’t feel like going down there to explore right then. I was going to, at some point. That was a forgone conclusion. But I’d had some bad times after the last time. The thought of going down there felt plain bad, and I needed to build up some nerve first.

The dragon was still purring lazily, but I was getting a little hungry. I tried to count backwards, and realised it had been well over a week since I ate anything. There had been the deer, and then I’d had my little tantrum about the fire, and I’d found the magical gate in the mountain – which I had completely forgotten to tell Herald about – and then there were the bandits and all that. I hadn’t thought about food in all that time. It was incredible how easy it was to break a habit of three square meals per day plus snacks when you didn’t get hungry every day.

I knew that I should eat before I got too hungry, but I also didn’t have time to go into a meat coma for two or three days. I was pretty sure that, no matter what I killed, once I started eating I would just keep going, so I’d have to go for something small. That probably meant rabbits. Or hares. There was some kind of animal here that looked like a large version of one or the other, though I didn’t know which and couldn’t have told them apart back home anyway. I wasn’t sure how to catch the things, but I’d figure it out. I’d start by hanging out in a tree by a meadow and take it from there.

After giving my hoard a loving cuddle I got up on two legs, sucked in my gut, and flattened my wings to the sides. I started sidling through the crevice and got perhaps a few metres before, to my great surprise, I got stuck. That couldn’t happen. Or rather, the fact that it had happened made me very upset. I had gotten in here less than an hour ago, and while I’d had to squeeze a little to get in it hadn’t been a real problem.

Grumbling a little I wriggled and pushed, the rock pressing my scales into my bruised flesh painfully. I tried to change the angle. No dice. I tried changing the height, first getting up on my tiptoes, which was horrible with these feet, and then bending my legs a little. Nothing worked. I could go back, carefully, but I could not go forward. I pushed harder, my frustration growing, and felt some pain as my leading wing pushed into the rock and the skin threatened to tear.

I had a very real problem. I had never suffered from claustrophobia, but neither had I ever truly felt physically trapped anywhere. I pushed harder with my feet until the pain in my wing and chest got so bad that I had to stop. Shit. I had to go back. I’d try the passage down. Maybe it led to another exit. Maybe –

This time, when I tried to move back nothing happened. I couldn’t go back. I’d wedged myself stuck in a way where I couldn’t push myself back with my legs. I started to breathe fast and hard, and every breath was agony.

“No,” I whispered in disbelief into the silence of the cave. “No, no, no, no! C’mon!”

I scrabbled at the stone with my feet but got nowhere. This couldn’t be happening! This wasn’t right! I couldn’t die here! After surviving for a goddamn month I was not going to die wedged in a rock because my arse decided to inexplicably become fatter in half an hour! I tried to help myself along with my hands, but nothing. I tried using my claws, hoping they’d catch on something and give me some extra leverage, but they only skittered across the stone. No, no, no, no, NO!

The dragon stirred. “Fool,” it muttered contemptuously. “Just go!”

“I can’t!” I cried, arms and legs working uselessly. “I’m stuck!”

“Just go!” it said again, annoyed now. “We are darkness! Know where we need to be and go!”

“I just want to get out!” I shouted. I could see the end of the crevice, limned in silver, and beyond it the shining beacon of freedom that was the lichen, black stars in my new mode of seeing. I could imagine standing there, taking deep breaths and flexing all my limbs, free to move around as I wanted, to go anywhere.

And I melted.

I don’t know exactly how to describe the sensation. It took a few seconds, and then it was like my body wasn’t fully solid anymore, like if you let ice cream get too warm. It wasn’t just that I was no longer painfully wedged in, unable to move. My skin didn’t slide harmlessly over the rock as I moved. It was more like my skin didn’t touch the rock at all, like I was there but I wasn’t, the way you can walk through mist and see it and feel it but it’s like you’re not really touching it. It just moves around you.

I was the mist.

I moved through the crevice. All my senses were distorted, as though they weren’t coming to me through my eyes and ears and nose and skin anymore. I didn’t walk or sidle or fly. I flowed or poured or drifted past and over the stone with no effort, and then I was out in the open air of the cave tunnel. There was a momentary sense of wrongness, of being thin, spread out in a horribly inappropriate way, and then I, I don’t know, condensed, I guess. I felt myself gather in one place and become solid, and the first thing I did was to drop to all fours and throw up whatever water remained in my stomach.

“What the hell?” I groaned. “What was that?”

“We are darkness,” the dragon said with unconcealed scorn. “We are shadow.”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense!” I complained.

“Yet here we stand,” the dragon said, with finality.

There we stood. I looked at the crevice where I’d been stuck only moments before. I steeled myself and tried to go back through. I got barely a metre before I felt myself getting stuck again, and backpedalled as fast as I could. I had just come through there, even though it was too narrow, or I was too wide. I had… what? Teleported? No. I had drifted. I had become a mist, or a cloud. Or shadow.

That made absolutely no sense, but there I was. And this was a world of dragons and magic. My other half had called us a shadow dragon, and claimed that the shadows would be our allies. I was beginning, just barely, to understand what that meant.