Draka

I padded as quickly as I could through the long, straight tunnel that led to the valkin’s complex. We had won the fight against the slavers and rescued the captured villagers. We even had captives of our own. But the violence had been nowhere near enough to calm the fury raging inside me.

The slavers had intended to sell those kids and their barely adult siblings into a life of misery. They had discarded the older prisoners to be disposed of, like they were defective or damaged. That was what drove me alone into the darkness, together with my anger at myself that I hadn’t been able to rescue the ‘desirable’ prisoners from the first group we’d found. Not to mention the miners, who were surely long gone by the time we even knew what was happening.

On top of that was the lingering outrage at how that slaver had been planning to take Herald away as a hostage. My friend. My Herald. I knew how possessive those thoughts were. I could be honest with myself. In the heat of the moment I had called the man ‘thief.’ Not ‘slaving bastard’ or ‘piece of shit’ or anything else that was certainly true about him, but ‘thief.’ He had tried to take something, someone, that was mine.

I knew how I felt, and I had denied it to myself for weeks now. I would never agree with the dragon’s view of her as a ‘servant.’ That was insulting and ridiculous. But I certainly did treasure her. I would never coddle her or try to tell her where and when she could or couldn’t go. I would never try to hold her back. But I would never let anyone keep her from me, or me from her. It was time that I accepted that.

For the moment, though, all my murderous rage had to go somewhere. There were still around a dozen prisoners in here, guarded by somewhere around ten to a dozen valkin, and I was not going to lose another group of prisoners just because Rallon wanted to be cautious.

I could move at about the speed of a human jogging while making hardly any sound. It was far from the gate to the complex, and when I saw the guard post up ahead it became clear that the guard had heard nothing of the battle outside. With the light-ball beside it and the darkness behind me, the guard didn’t spot me until I was close enough to forget about stealth and break into a sprint. Even then it barely had time to scream before I was on it, tearing it to shreds.

Killing the guard didn’t help. My anger didn’t cool. It just became more focused.

I picked up the light-ball and threw it back the way I’d come, watching it bounce and roll down the slight incline. As darkness filled the tunnel I approached the door a little ways up the tunnel, and waited.

Twenty or thirty seconds later I heard steps and voices approaching. The door was flung open, and the three valkin on the other side, spears at the ready, were greeted with a spray of venom. Their choking screams echoed through the tunnels as I barreled into them, ripping and tearing at anything in front of me.

I found the two long boxes in the hall where the tunnel met the complex. They’d been opened, showing that they were filled with swords, spears, knives, and more mundane metal tools like hammers and small axes. That was the worth of two dozen human lives to these creatures: a few tools. Some weapons.

Perhaps that was fair. The lives of the valkin were worth less than nothing to me, especially at that moment.

I couldn’t say in detail what happened after that. I’ve heard about seeing red, and I’ve been blackout drunk, and the next several minutes were a bit of both. I stalked through the corridors like a monster out of a horror movie, hiding in the shadows, picking off valkin in ones and twos as they desperately tried to figure out what was attacking them. They finally rubbed their two shared brain cells together and gathered in one room in an attempt to protect their leader, and some measure of clarity returned to me as I burst in. They had flipped some tables to cower behind, but they never saw me until I was among them. I drove the shadows before me, crashing through their makeshift barricade and scattering them throughout the room as the leader raised his staff. I saw magic gather and flow into the staff, and pain like someone driving their thumbs through my eyes shot from my head and down my spine.

The dragon whined with fear inside my mind, but it couldn’t reach me through the pain and the rage. I rushed the leader who, wild-eyed and still screaming, swung its staff at me with desperate strength. It caught me on the right hip like a sledgehammer, and the pain shooting from my head throughout my body was joined by one shooting from my hip down my leg.

With a roar I grabbed the staff, trying to wrestle it from the valkin. Its grip was strong, but its body was light, and instead of wrenching the staff free I threw the creature sideways and into the floor. It let go when it bounced off the stone.

Like a raging ape I lifted the staff in both hands and tried to bash the valkin’s brains out with it. It was a stupid, useless, human thing to do. Swinging anything was extremely awkward for me, and the valkin rolled to the side at the last moment, the staff smashing hard into the stone instead. There was a loud crack and then a blinding flash as the bone staff snapped and fang at the top shattered, throwing fragments around the room.

The pain in my head vanished, and the valkin leader gave off a long, mournful moan, reaching out and trying to gather the shattered pieces of the staff as I tried to blink away the yellow and purple flashes in front of my eyes. I tried shadowsight, and it was no better, but when had I ever needed to see properly to fight? In this room there was only me and my enemies, and half blind or not I threw myself at them, clawing and biting wildly, focusing on whatever my claws found until it stopped moving. It was a bloodbath. The valkin had spears and shoddy daggers, while I had scales like armour, razor sharp teeth, and claws that cut through meat like paper.

When the search party returned to help they found a room spattered with gore and a dragon growling at them, and they turned and ran. Even on three legs I was faster angry than they were scared. None of them got far.

I was in a small room, pacing back and forth, trying to get myself under control. I didn’t know how long I’d been there. It couldn’t have been that long. My hip hurt like hell and I limped with every step, but the pain was good. It helped me think. All my enemies were dead. I was sure of it, and the evidence was all around me, the floor, walls and even ceiling spattered with black in the pale blue light of the light-balls. I had turned this place into an abattoir, and the anger still wouldn’t abate. So I paced. There was, hopefully, a group of prisoners deeper in who needed to be brought outside, but I was angry at them too, now, for getting captured in the first place. It was cruel and irrational. I knew that. But that didn’t make my anger any less real. So I paced, because I didn’t trust myself to approach them, because I was afraid that the anger and the smell of blood that filled this place would be too much and I would do something terrible.

I stopped my pacing when I saw Valmik.

“Draka,” he said, “are you yourself again?”

His bald head shone with a thin layer of sweat in the pale light. He held his shield relaxed at his side, though his sword was sheathed, and he looked apprehensive. Not afraid exactly, but ready to run or defend himself if it became necessary.

I began pacing again, though slower this time, and never getting closer to him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, and when I saw the confusion on his face I realised that I had spoken to him in Tekereteki. “I told you not to follow me,” I said instead, in Karakani.

“I would have followed sooner. There were wounded, Tamor among them. They needed tending first.” He looked around the room, at the scattered remains of the last Valkin I had run down. “I arrived while you were still fighting.”

“Why didn’t you join me?” I asked, though I didn’t really care about the answer.

“Battle frenzy is well known among my people. I have seen it before. Friend and foe can become difficult to distinguish.”

“You think I would have killed you?” I asked him. Even suggesting it myself left me feeling insulted.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I thought it better not to test it.”

“So why are you here?”

“There was much worry, Draka!” he said, throwing his hands out in exasperation. “Fresh from battle, you threw yourself in here with an unknown number of enemies! We feared for you, and we were right to. You’re hurt! And if that means nothing to you, Herald feared for you! She was beside herself and wanted to go in herself!”

I kept limping, keeping my eyes on him as I turned. “She didn’t try to stop me.”

“She would no more try to stop you, that you her. She has spoken much to me of you. It seems clear that both of you would rather mourn the other than try to hold each other back.” He sighed. “It is admirable, I think, but it does not lead to helping each other make good choices.”

I thought about that. It sounded harsh, but he was probably right. If Herald wanted to fight a pond full of crocs I’d jump in with her, but I wouldn’t stop her. “So why you?”

“The others are injured, or exhausted, or they fear you. And there is the captured slaver. A great impression was made tonight by your display, though I do not now know what Rallon will think of it when he hears.”

I chuckled darkly to myself. “It got the last guy’s attention pretty good.”

“So it did. The battle is won. The prisoners are rescued. What of the remaining captives in here?”

“I don’t know. I thought it would be better if I didn’t see them.”

“You mean, if they did not see you?”

“No, I meant what I said,” I told him. He was silent for a moment, then nodded.

“If you wish, you can leave and I can lead them out. Though where they are is unknown to me.”

“That’s probably best,” I said, then after a pause. “How are the others? Herald, Tamor? I saw Med had a nasty cut in his leg.”

“They’ll be fine,” he answered, and I felt some relief. “Though I think Makanna’s magic is revealed to the others. She was not very covert when she healed her siblings.”

“It was going to come out sooner or later, if you keep working with Rallon.”

“You’re probably correct.”

I described how to get to the room where I’d found the prisoners and then left for the exit. I even felt magnanimous, or possibly ashamed, enough to recharge two light-balls for Valmik. It took some trial and error, but it was easy enough when I knew what to focus on, and he promised to bring me one when he got out.

To my great and undeserved surprise, talking had actually helped. I hadn’t even talked about what made me so angry. But simply talking, trying to put some rational thoughts into words, had cooled me off enough that I didn’t feel like I was a danger to people around me any more. And though I was still annoyed with the dragon, I’d been feeling her presence more and more in the short time since destroying the dragonbone staff. She felt more like her regular self, with subtle pulses of smug pride and satisfaction bleeding through whenever I thought about my short, decisive fight with the valkin leader. I had to admit to myself that having her back to her old self was a relief.

I limped my way down the straight, sloping tunnel, back towards the outside.