Chapter Four

I'm falling. Falling, falling, falling. I can't feel a thing. Everything is black. My body is weightless. I must be falling; if I'm not… I don't know where I am or how I got here. Those things I don't know, but I do know something.

I'm not alone.

Wherever I am, I am not alone. I can feel something clawing at me, something trying to get in. Something dark, something intangible, tendrils of the unknown frantically pulling at me from all directions, trying to distract me, unnerve me.

Whatever it is, it wants to come inside, but I don't let it. I refuse. I might not know what it is or why it wants me, but I know I don't want it inside, so I push back. I push back mentally with all my might.

And that's how I spend my dream, in a constant state of a tug-of-war with an unknown entity trying to pry me open.

When I wake, I wake with a start, and I moan and roll over to my side, wanting to sleep more. Whatever that weird dream was, it didn't help me feel well-rested. It's like I need a second sleep after my first sleep.

"My." Rune's voice barges in where it doesn't belong, and I moan, not wanting to get up yet. "You certainly enjoy your sleep, don't you?"

"Shut up," I whisper. If Rune was a person, I'd hit him. Push him out of the room. Do something so I can get some nice, uninterrupted sleep.

"There is nothing for me to close," Rune says, clearly not understanding what shut up means. "Regardless, Rey, don't you think you should get up now? It's the dawn of a new day—"

Now, when he says that, I jerk up to a sitting position. "It's dawn?" I ask. "As in, I slept the entire day and night away?" I rub the sides of my face, still feeling groggy. As if to reinforce that fact, a yawn surfaces. It's a very vocal yawn, let's just say. I'm a little whiny when I'm tired.

Which is to say, about all the time.

"How very ladylike," Rune muses as I swing my legs off the side of the bed.

"You're a freaking tattoo on my wrist," I tell him. "How would you know what's ladylike and what's not?"

He mutters a noncommittal, "True enough, though I am a rune, not a tattoo," but I've already tuned him out. I return to the water barrel in the kitchen of the house and fill my stomach up again—and then I realize I have to pee something fierce.

I take care of business outside. Even though my stomach is full of water, I'm starving. I need to eat, need to find something. With the state of the place, I don't know if there will be anything edible left in any of these houses.

It's as I leave the yard of the house I slept in that Rune tells me, "Laconia should be another five days' walk, if you keep up a good pace and don't oversleep."

Five days? Oh, my God.

"Dude," I whine. "I can't last five days without food."

"Well, then we will have to watch for something you can eat, then. If I were you I would look for a satchel of some kind to take some of that water with you."

As much as I hate to admit it, he's right. If I need to, I can go longer without food than I can without water. I go back in the house and search for something that could pass for a canteen. In the room with the small fire pit, AKA what I call a kitchen, I find something that would work. Made of leather, it smells old, and it's no longer than my forearm, but it has a strap attached to it, along with a carved lid of sorts to keep the contents inside. The water might taste weird coming out, but it's better than nothing.

I dunk the old leather flask into the water barrel and fill it up. Once it's capped, I'm ready to get this show on the road. I step outside as I adjust the strap around my shoulder, carrying it like I would a single-strap backpack or side bag and resting it on my hip.

Rune lights up a trail, and I follow it. The glowing trail leads me right through the charred bones, and I do my best not to look at them, but when you're walking by a mound of bones you know belonged to people…

I glance at the bone pile as I walk by it, careful not to step on any stray bones or kick any with my feet. I see, at a quick glance, maybe fifteen skulls? Nowhere near enough to be everyone here.

Rune must know what I'm thinking, because he says, "Perhaps some managed to escape. It very well could be some made it to the center of Laconia." But as he says it, it's obvious he doesn't quite believe it himself.

I don't say anything, but I think it: no parent would ever leave their children behind. And odds are there are more skeletons scattered in the town. It isn't like I went through every dirt path and searched every single house.

This village was a massacre. Something came and decimated them all.

Could it have been the empresses?

The path I'm walking has another stone archway separating the boundaries of the village to the neighboring field. I step under it and ask Rune, "Do you really think the empresses' magic could do something like this?"

None of that was natural. Not a single thing. If, say, bodies were tossed into a burn pile, the whole village would be nothing but dust and old ash. It's like whatever it was attacked only the humans there.

The humans and their pets, maybe.

"We are in Magnysia, which is ruled by Empress Krotas. It is a land whose justice system is an eye for an eye, a land where strength and power are respected, a land of fables and forests. The magic Empress Krotas used has always been the magic of destructive, brute power."

He says that like I should automatically know, but all of this is still new to me, so I'm clueless. "What's that?"

"Fire."

"Oh." I get quiet after that. Could a magical fire do that? Could it stick to living people and avoid burning down houses? I don't know, but I'm done talking about it now. It's depressing and I need to focus on my own survival.

Besides, what's done is done. There's nothing I can do to turn back time and save those people.

I'm maybe twenty feet out of the village when the sky crackles and pops. A loud boom fills the sky, like thunder even though the blue sky is clear. My legs stop, and I look up to the sky just in time to see it shift.

"Uh, what's going on?" I ask.An uneasy feeling rises in my gut, an omen that, whatever this is, isn't good. I want to be sick.

The blue sky gives way to dull darkness and gray, clouds that seem to twist and curl down to the ground. The wind picks up, whipping my hair back and forth, so strong it nearly knocks me off my feet.

I close my eyes and turn my head away, but I can't escape the sudden storm. It licks at my face, practically burns my eyes and instantly dries my mouth. The air itself tastes wrong, like in the village, only twenty times worse.

"I don't know, but if I would hazard a guess," Rune says with growing urgency, "I'd say it's not a good sign! I'd run if I were you, try to get out of this!"

The sky cracks again, so loud it's damn near deafening. It sounds like it came directly behind me, so I lurch forward and pick up my pace. With how thick the storm is, I can't see more than five feet in front of me. It's like I'm walking blindly, hoping I'll magically come to the end of this storm.

It's not easy to go against the wind, but I think the wind is coming at me from every direction. There's no escaping it.

"Pick. Up. The. Pace," Rune hisses, the shining tattoo the only bit of light around. The storm is so dark it blocks out the sun, and the gray mist is more like a dense fog, so acidic it's choking. I can hardly breathe, but I do as Rune suggested and start running blindly.

"Where did this come from?" I yell.

"I don't know, but I think sticking around to find out would be a mistake!"

That is something we can both agree on, at least.

I sprint, frantically trying to find the end of the storm, but it's like the damned thing keeps going, infinite. On and on and on. Fuck. I don't want to die like this. If this is what got the village… no wonder no one could escape. This stuff is thick and nasty. If it can get worse, I don't doubt that it could kill.

A deep, bone-chilling sound explodes above my head, but it's different than the sounds of crackling thunder I heard before. This time it sounds like… like…

Like an animal. A growl. A growl so loud it overpowers the storm itself—and that means it must've come from something really freaking big. Whatever it is, I don't want to meet it, so I sprint faster. I run and run and run.

The growling sound rises over the storm again, only this time it's in front of me, accompanied by the shaking of the ground. The tremor is so great I trip and stumble, falling to my knees.

Whatever it is must be less than ten feet in front of me. The gray storm has another shadow, this one in the shape of a great beast. I can't see it, but given the general size of its silhouette, I'd say it's at least the size of a building—and I don't mean the tiny houses in that village. No, I mean a three-story building like on my college campus. Big enough to make me feel so immeasurably small.

Whatever it is, it growls, and through the storm, something lights up. Its chest. Orange and bright, it's enough to light up the entire beast, and my heart skips a beat when I angle my head back and stare at its head.

Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck. That's a fucking dragon.

They have dragons here? I'm fucked.

"Don't just stand there," Rune hisses. "Do something!"

The dragon's head cocks toward me, and flickers of fire escape its semi-open mouth. I can't see much of the dragon due to the thick storm around us, but I see enough. It's big, it's powerful, and it looks like it wants to eat me. Burn me to a crisp and eat me like a shish kabob, or maybe use me as a toothpick. Who could be sure?

I take a step back, frozen in fear. "What am I supposed to do? I've never faced a dragon before!" I try to look around, which is dumb, since the storm still rages and blocks my field of vision. The only thing I can see is the dragon—and that's only because its chest radiates orange.

"Move!" Rune shouts that at me the same moment the dragon opens its mouth and unleashes a blast of fire.

Directly at me, I might add. The dragon breathes fire right at me.

Somehow I manage to roll away using acrobatic skills I didn't know I possess. Maybe it's something from Rune, because I can't even do a somersault by myself. I dodge the fire, but I feel the heat.

Shit. What am I supposed to do? Fight a fucking dragon? I'm just a normal girl. A normal girl with no luck whatsoever. I can't fight a freaking dragon.

I'm dead. I'm so dead.

I'm so amazed at the dodge roll I just performed that I stop moving, and Rune reminds me, "Staying still right now would be a mistake. You have power now, Rey. Use it. Fight the dragon." My own personal cheerleader, a semi-grumpy ex-wizard who's been stuck in a soul gem for who knows how many years.

I exhale, and as I do so a yellow bolt of energy appears before me, hovering. The added light helps me see in the storm a bit better. As the dragon readies another mouthful of flame, I launch the bolt toward its glowing chest. Don't ask me how I do it. I just do. It's like it's a part of me now, this weird crackling magic.

The bolt doesn't pierce the scales. It's not strong enough.

"Shit," I say, and I ready myself to dodge another flame attack, but the dragon turns its head to the sky and lets loose its fire. This blast is longer than the first, and it makes the entire storm flash in a bright orange hue. It's so bright it blinds me, and I have to close my eyes and take a step back as I summon another yellow bolt.

The dragon snaps its mouth closed, but before I can send the bolt flying its way, it reaches for me. Rune warns me, "Watch out," but it's too late. The dragon's claws wrap around me, and before my mind has time to register it, I'm being thrown.

As my body soars through the air, all I can think is that I'm going to splatter like a bug. Get squished by a giant dragon. I'm going to die in this weird place.

And the most depressing thing is I don't think anyone would miss me.

My body lands on the grass with a thud. I'm face-down. My eyes are still closed. I'm afraid to open them, frankly. I don't know if I want to see my death coming. I kind of wish it would just happen so it would all be over, you know? It's obvious I'm way out of my league here.

Magic. Dragons. Mysterious village-wide death. Weird dogs and soul gems with trapped wizards. It all sounds impossible.

But the dragon's foot never comes to squish me. Neither does its teeth or claws or flames. In fact, I don't hear it at all, nor do I hear the crackling thunder or the thick, choking wind. The air around me is silent.

"Uh, Rey?" Rune asks, sounding impatient. "How long exactly are you going to lay there?"

I roll over and open my eyes, and to my surprise I'm greeted by a brilliantly blue sky and a searing sun. Slowly, I work to sit, and I find the dragon is gone, along with that strange storm. I'm in a peaceful green field, small wildflowers growing amongst the grass, light yellows and pinks.

"What was that?" I ask, breathless, the adrenaline still pumping through my veins from the near-death experience.

"Are you talking about the dragon or the storm?"

"Both."

"Perhaps the dragon guards Magnysia? Impossible to say. I've never heard of a beast such as that before. Only in the old tales. And as for the storm… well, I'm no expert, but it seemed like it came out of nowhere. If it was magical in origin, it wouldn't surprise me."

It sounds like those storms are a relatively new phenomena for this place, same with that dragon. Could it all be connected, somehow?

I work to get to my feet, a little sore after being thrown, and I groan as I straighten myself out and crack my back. In good conscience, I cannot recommend getting thrown by a dragon. Zero out of zero.

"Did the dragon come with the storm? Where did it go?" Not that I want the dragon to come back. It's more so I don't want it to pop up anywhere and, you know, eat me.

Rune is quiet for a few moments. "It appears they're both gone. Or perhaps it is you who's gone. Look around, Rey. We're not where we were."

I'm about to ask him what he's talking about when it hits me. I make a full twirl, surveying all of the land around me. He's right. I'm not where I was. That village is not anywhere I can see; I'm alone in a field of grass and flowers, no dragon or storm in sight, a completely different area.

"How…" I can't finish the question, too stunned, and yet Rune knows exactly what I mean.

"I don't know, but we should move on. We don't want that dragon to find us again."

"You can say that again," I mutter.

"Why… why would I say it again? Did you not hear me, or—"

I groan. "It's a figure of speech. Something people say. Apparently not people around here, but whatever. Which way do I go, buddy?"

Rune seems to think. "I don't quite know where we are. Why don't you head up that hill to the east? Hopefully we can reacquaint ourselves with our destination there. With any luck, we're closer to Laconia."

I wipe some sweat off my brow, take a swig of water from my leather flask—yep, the water tastes a bit weird now. Great—and set off to the hill Rune mentioned. It's a mile or so away in the distance, and it's a bit steeper than the hill I climbed outside of the first village. Unlike the first hill, I don't need to reach the top to see something.

About halfway up the hill, I see a huge, stone structure in the distance, and the more I go, the more of the structure I see.

I almost hate to ask, but I do it anyway: "Is that Laconia?" Please be Laconia, please be Laconia, please be Laconia.

"Those are Laconia's walls, yes. The city of Laconia lies within. With any good fortune, someone can help us there."

No offense to Rune, but there's only one thing I care about, and now that I know it's Laconia, I have a new prayer: please have someone who can help me get home.