Dangerous, Diabolical

There were a thousand and one things I thought to say, but nothing seemed to fit. Glad we’re alive? Close call! Surprise! You’re welcome It didn’t matter.

Leo grunted in pain, rolling his shoulders stiffly. “All this time?” He whispered, his silhouette starting to sloppily stand, obscured through the dusty haze. “I trusted you!” He staggered, catching himself on his knees.

I jolted up at the anguish in his words. Oh no.

“Was this all just a joke to you?” Leofstan ended with a shout.

Desperately I fought to catch my breath.

“You’re a dragon.” He stated.

Obviously. To hear him say it made it more real. There goes hiding from trouble.

I had thought he appeared calm, but as the dust settled, despite his posture, his face was thunderous.

Reflectively, protective scales jumped to the surface, my true form was lingering too close under the skin after changing to keep it in check. Leofstan jolted, and similarly to how he’d pulled a staff from the ground to command, he seemed to snatch a sword from mid-air. Its hilt crackled in a sheet of static to solidify in his hand. Steadily, as it formed, he brandished the long blade to point down towards me like an extension of his arm.

“Leo, Listen, it’s not like…” I moved slightly, but he followed easily with the blade, the point kissing my throat.

“Stop,” he intruded, tilting his head to look down his chin, “under the dangerous species law.” His speech cracked. “You’re under arrest to be brought to trial - ”

“And death?” I ended for him. A coldness began to pool in me. For some reason, a small part of me had hoped he’d accept what I was. But Leo hated dragons and evidently, he wasn’t ready for an exception. “You did say it yourself, did you not?” Venom dripped into my words. “Doesn’t the council want to kill all dragons?” Or, him in particular.

His arm didn’t waiver.

“Well, go ahead. I’m right here.” I taunted.

He pushed the blade closer. “You and I both know I can’t!” He shouted, a slight shake in his arm. “Wait,” he questioned himself, “that was a lie, too, wasn’t it? You knew what you were doing with that crystal when you bound us!”

I didn’t. I really didn’t. But how was I meant to tell him that? I understood how bad this was starting to look.

He inhaled sharply. “You’ve masterminded it that if I were to kill you, it would mean my death.”

“Please, just listen a second!”

He cut me off, “All that time pretending you had limited knowledge of magic. You used me. You saw an opportunity to get into the SPCC and you took it.”

I didn’t even want to go near that place! “That’s not true!” I shot back.

“Liar!” He yelled. “Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie!”

“I have never lied to you!”

Much.

Maybe a little bit.

It was nothing important.

I needed him to understand. “You have no idea what it feels like. Magic is always coiled under my skin with nowhere to go. There’s all these things I wish I knew how to do…” I rose to a shout. With a deep breath, I tried to calm down. “I have never been taught magic. Every waking thought is about it. When I find spells I must investigate into what makes it that way. It’s like an itch that doesn’t leave. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Which is why this…” I pointed to the diamond in my hand “happened. It was an accident.” I begged for him to understand. “I wanted to know how you did your super fancy spell, so I pulled it apart and bam! That’s it.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, please listen!” I implored him. “Everything I’ve said about my control and magic was true!” My voice cracked.

But he grimaced. “Then why do I feel like this was your plan all along?”

I winced. If only.

“And I walked you right into the headquarters. And you you…” He gasps, grasping at straws. “You infiltrated us!” He added.

“You mean I went to the SPCC headquarters, fell asleep, drank coffee, had a takeout, and then left? Last time I checked your headquarters were still standing.”

He pressed the sword harder against my throat, clinking against the scales that grew there.

“Leofstan, if I wanted you dead, I could’ve done it at any point! Do you think I’d mastermind this? I just saved your life!”

“After you almost took it!” he shot back. “I wouldn’t have even entered there unprepared - without backup - I should add if you had simply listened and stayed put in the first place!” He resumed a steady arm, the colour draining from his face. “Were you working with him?”

I scoffed, trying to comprehend where he’d dragged that from. “That’s your conclusion?” The undercurrent of laughter bubbling through. “I’m working with the guy I just ate?”

Leofstan looked as though I’d slapped him. “You ate somebody.” He whispered.

I could’ve groaned. “After he’d made it clear he was going to kill me first! I argued back. “What’s the difference? He was going to kill you! He killed all those people!”

“As the law states he should have been arrested, to face trial for his crimes!”

Seriously? The anger began to bubble back to the surface again. “Oh, and you,” I accused “were doing such a good job of that. Congratulations on arresting him by the way. Because the last time I checked, you were next in line to be sacrificed, that is unless you’d managed to find a way out of that trap.”

I threw scales into my hand, grasping the blade, ranting far from over. “You had no access to your magic, and you were serving yourself on a platter to become another personal battery for the man. Well done Leofstan Ortwin. I salute you. Great job!” A feeling I didn’t recognise swept over me, making my chest feel heavier than it had ever felt before as the last of the anger fled with my words. I clutched the sword’s edge as a burning in my eyes pricked. I hadn’t meant to say all of that. It wasn’t how I wanted to say it at all.

I swallowed back my next words, the fight seemed to fall from me in a rush as I processed what I could ever say to make it better.

Leo’s face contorted. “Grah!” He shouted into the sky, pulling the blade up, his knuckles tightening around the hilt. The heavens opened rain landing in a heavy sheet. Streaks quickly snaked over our skin as they washed away the accumulated dirt.

Ever so slowly he lowered his arm. “I will use force. I truly thought I killed the last of your kind years ago.” And his eyes, which had been so full of warmth when I’d met him completely shifted. It felt as though I were looking at a stranger.

Truthfully, he was. I hadn’t known him long, and right now it felt like I truly never knew him at all. “If you think I’m just going to go with you to walk to my death, you’re mistaken,” I told him.

Lightning sped across the sky, clouds rolling and the telltale signs of his magic shimmered over his skin. So he wanted to play gathering magic? Fine. Two of us could compete in that game. I began pulling mine faster than ever before. He noticed, of course, pushing out a layer of protective spelling as a shield.

“It’s futile Celandine!” He moved the sword up in a sharp motion towards me, and I took that as my opportunity to leap at him instead. Tackling him to the ground, and sending his weapon spiralling away. Keeping the human form I gathered mass. Just a portion of my true weight, clamping his hands to the ground and making sure his body couldn’t move.

“Dammit!” He panicked, and the hairs along my spine stood on end as he gathered magic ready to cast. The fine coating of scales over my human skin rose out fully to negate any effects.

“Make no mistake, Leofstan Ortwin, you could have died today.” I squeezed my hands, the claws grew from my fingertips slowly to nip his skin. “I could have let you be crushed in that circle. I could have eaten you. And right now I could slit your throat. Consequences be damned.” He paused from his struggles, the glare cutting deep.

And he threw a spell anyway.

Whatever the intended result was bypassed as it washed over my scales, but the force knocked me clean off of him. Leo staggered up, grabbing his sword and swinging it towards my head.

On reflex I ducked, and drew in a deep breath, turning just in time to explode a jet of flames. He recoiled, flinging his magical shield towards me to stop the expulsion of heat. The protective wall shattered like glass before me, sending my flames dispersing.

Immediately I tensed, expecting another attack. Instead, a harsh tug on my magic caught me unaware and froze me on the spot. Leofstan’s expression was unreadable as he continued to steal my magic from within me. My first reaction was to try to stop it; like before once he’d grabbed hold I couldn’t figure out how to seal the flow.

My second reaction was to let him have it. “You want to know what magic I hold?” I yelled at him over his storm. “You think you can handle it and deplete me?” And I opened the floodgates, sending it through our link as fast as I could, at the same time absorbing everything in reach.

Leo grew pale, his dusty green tinge becoming incandescently corrupted with the bright glow of mine. The wind speed doubled, trees billowing in an angry gust. Debris caught in the pathways as angry droplets of rain fell in humongous blobs. Thunder wave after wave rippled across the bed of clouds as they flickered in the lightning storm.

The floor below him began to glow, and visible static left his skin in bursts as the power began to build, multiplying his own. I felt a push as he tried to stop the onslaught; and control it to a level at which he could process. “I thought you wanted to drain me?” I yelled over the howling wind.

Leofstan tried to expel the magic he was accumulating as quickly as possible, pushing it into the ground below him that began to singe, the dirt shifting to black. I sent more, gathering it quicker.

“You must stop this at once!” He ordered, the ground beginning to shake. My hand began to throb as the magic coursed into me.

“Getting scared?” I taunted. “Don’t think you’ll win?”

“Look around!” He screamed. “You’re destabilising the realm!”

He was right.

I hadn’t heard the noise over the lashings of rain. There was a high-pitched keening that I now only associated with one thing.

A portal opening.

Immediately I slowed the surge I was sending. But instead of helping the situation, the burning in my hand began to spread.

“It’s too much! You must diffuse it!” Leo shouted at me, in what I could only describe as an unfortunate case of deja vu.

“You know I can’t,” I screamed back.

“You’re a dragon!” He argued.

“I. Don’t. Know. Magic!” I returned, stressing every syllable in a panicked state.

“You weren’t lying?”

In answer, tides of power started to ripple out uncontrolled, the closest trees beginning to creak. Leo ran towards me, grabbing my hand in a finger-crushing grasp.

“Send it as slowly as you can!”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. I started trickling it towards him again. Teeth clenched he began feeding it into the ground; his storm continued to be influenced by the growing power.

The pitch continued to increase, the heat grew between our hands. It was building quicker than even he could siphon it. And it still wasn’t enough. Between us, the air began to distort, and compared to the portal that took Leo before, this one trying to form was double the size.

Without another thought, and for a reason I really can’t explain; I shoved Leofstan away.

Caught off guard he landed far enough away that the portal ripped open between us, taking the last of the magic. He was far enough away to miss being pulled into its world as pure Fae magic flooded through, pooling around us.

It called to me. I gasped, before us was the biggest portal I’d ever seen in my life. Leo crawled forward against the wind, jamming his feet on the ground.

“Celandine.” He begged, “Please come to the SPCC. Don’t cross!”

I looked between him, and back to the world beyond in Fae.

“You can’t hide in another world forever! I will find you.” He yelled over the top of the warbling portal.

Both of our magics were spent and the link between us was lying dormant.

It was clear there’d be no winner, not this time.

“I’ll take my chances,” I told him, stepping towards the portal.

“No, Celandine! This is your only chance. The next time I see you, I will not spare mercy! I will kill you!”

I took one look into the portal that I’d made. Its edges grew more opaque by the second. So, I may be able to open portals, but I sure as hell didn’t know how to keep them open. Yet.

I didn’t have long. Luckily, I already knew where I wanted to go.

“Goodbye, Leofstan Ortwin,” I whispered over the wind, striding through the portal just in time for it to close behind with a faded hiss.

* * *