Page 10 of Emergence of Fire
“Listen, you are going through something that should have happened to you almost fifteen years ago. Your Dragon and your magic have been suppressed all this time and I just don’t know how it will affect you. There are obviously bigger things at play here. Something is happening in Arcadia for your Dragon to push forth like this. She pushed your magic out of you in a Realm that doesn’t naturally have it. It’s extraordinary, and a sign of desperation. She feels the pull to home and needs you to feel it too.
“This is my home!” I yell at her and I quickly regret it because this not how I usually behave. Not toward someone I consider to be my mother. “I don’t want to solve anything.” I shout as I stumble out of my chair. My breathing is labored, and I am so hot in this damn onesie, I start to take it off, I manage to get the upper half pulled down exposing my undershirt underneath. I yank at the sleeves and tie them tight around my waist. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I would have rather remained blissfully ignorant about Realms, Druids, Shifters, and Fairies. I just want to be me, Aunt Twyla. Why can’t I just be me?” I know that this is my fear riding me hard. I don’t like change; I like to control everything. My control is being snatched away and that makes me feel like a caged, wounded animal.
“Breathe, Cordelia.” My aunt stands and tries to come toward me but as soon as I raise my hand to try to stop her—fire blasts out of my outstretched hand! The force is so strong that the fire engulfs her and I scream.
“Aunt Twyla!” I scream again. I back away but the fire is not going out. I start to panic; I don’t know what to do. Everything is on fire around me. As I move, so does the fire, and it begins to spread.
“Cordelia!” I hear Aunt Twyla’s voice as the fire clears around her. She stands tall with her hands outstretched in front of her—somehow, she is blocking the fire with an invisible force! I sigh in relief, but it’s short lived. The fire has spread around the kitchen and my first instinct is to get out of the house before I burn it down on top of us. I run toward the back door and straight out into the middle of the backyard. I can’t breathe. I don’t know how to stop any of this. I look down at my arms, bright red shiny scales appear from my elbow to my wrist. I scream as fire erupts from my other hand. I feel like I am about to explode. I feel so much rage, fear, and grief. I don’t know where all of this emotion is coming from. Is this me? Or is it my Dragon? My body is on fire and I’m about to start a forest fire if I don’t stop this from happening. I hold my hands in the air, away from the grass that is already on fire around me. I can hear my name being called but I don’t answer. I need my aunt to stay away from me so I walk further away from the house. I could have killed her. I am practically hyperventilating,
“Cordelia! Don’t run! Let me help you!” My aunt screams from behind me.
“Just stay back, Aunt Twyla. Please! I can’t control myself!” I shout back as pain like I’ve never felt before blooms in my chest, my arms, and legs. I collapse to the ground, my hands bracing my fall. The fire from my hands spreads out into the grass and forms a circle around me. The flames climb high into the sky, forming a barrier. It reminded me of the smoke in my dreams as it just burns around me. The fire from my hands finally extinguishes itself, and I lay in the circle of flames writhing on the ground. I can hear voices that I don’t recognize, as well as my aunt’s voice. They are all yelling but I can’t focus enough to hear them, I’m in so much pain. I just want it to stop.
“Just help her!” I hear my aunt scream. She sounds so afraid and I just want to reassure her but I can’t. I feel like I’m dying. Suddenly, large arms wrap around my waist and pick me up off the ground. I look up and find beautiful bronze-gold eyes staring down at me in concern. I think back to where I saw those eyes as the pain begins to ease. Is he doing this? Then my brain catches up, and I know where I remember him from.
“Torin?” I whisper, my voice sounds hoarse is my last thought as my body shuts down and I pass out.
CHAPTEREIGHT
GALE
Thank you, Ms. Banks, I say to myself as the three of us find ourselves in the back of a taxi two hours after we left Cordelia’s very helpful neighbor. The sun rose, shyly peeking out from behind the clouds about an hour ago. Of course, Torin and Adrian have me sandwiched between the two of them and every time I move to get comfortable, I’m the one getting filthy looks.
“So, who’s glad I followed the advice of the Alpha Wolf Shifter a year ago and opened a bank account here on Earth for emergencies?” I keep my voice low, so the taxi driver doesn’t overhear me. Torin and Adrian don’t reply, and I shrug. It was a smart choice and we have managed to do this on Earth and Celestia. Always have a contingency plan my mother used to tell me, it was the best advice, and it has stuck with me.
“You know, you two need a personality lift. Do you think surly and sullen is attractive?” I look at Adrian who huffs and turns his head away from me to stare out of the window. I turn my attention to Torin whose teeth are worrying his bottom lip, his elbow propped up against the window as he too looks longingly out of it. What the hell am I going to do with them? I can’t be the only one holding us together. It may have worked before Cordelia but no longer.
“Do you think closed off and unreachable is attractive?” I nudge Torin, trying to get his attention but he just bumps me back, knocking me into Adrian, who of course pushes me back into Torin. I look up into the review mirror and see the taxi driver smirking at the pushing match happening in the backseat and I think about how ridiculous we must look. Two grown ass Dragons, well, men to him, knocking little ole me around. Ha. I’m by no means weak, and I let these two assholes be shitty to me because I know what they’ve been through.
When the queen was assassinated, the region of Kaeluma, my home, was spared. It was easier for my people to hide away from what was happening down below. Air Dragons live so high up in the mountains, with our large wings and our elemental affinity we can fly higher than the other Dragons, especially the Black Barons. As long as we sent a male representative to the Black Barons in Saphir, our females remained untouched by the strict laws put in place by the new patriarchal society.
Cresceria and Panlongia weren’t so lucky. Torin’s mother was Queen Thana’s top advisor, and if she hadn’t fled with Torin when she did, they would have killed her and possibly him as well. She was placed under house arrest, and Cresceria was occupied by the Barons’ guards for years to squash any rebellion. Those were dark times; Torin doesn’t speak much about what went down. Adrian’s region, Panlongia, lost half of its female population due to rebellion. They were strong supporters of Queen Thana, and a lot of them died the night of her death. All were made gruesome examples of and put to death in the most horrific ways imaginable. The leaders were either hanged, or crucified, but the majority were put into a pit, and crushed under heavy slabs of rock. If they weren’t killed by the rocks, they surely died when they flooded the pit. No vegetation grows on the site, and animals won’t go near the area.
Talk about archaic but that was the Barons’ modus operandi. Everything about them and what they stand for screams ass backward, especially their ideologies about what makes the perfect society. Suppression of one gender over the other is not it. Adrian’s own mother and sister were murdered right in front of him years later because they dared to speak up against the Barons. I wouldn’t have the best disposition either if I went through what they did but they both need to bury their pain for now. I extend my arms out to the side with just enough strength to stop them from pushing me. They don’t resist what I’m doing as I hold them both in place.
“I guess I am going to have to be the one to give you both the ‘get your shit together’ speech before we meet our girl. We can’t go wherever we are going divided by our emotional baggage. So, for the rest of the car ride think about how you want her to see you for the first time. She doesn’t know us. She could just as easily reject you dicks.” I let them go and cross my arms over my chest. I said what I said and now we will see if they will listen to me or not. If not, I have no problem keeping her to myself because I, for one, will be winning her over.
“I’m not sullen,” Adrian says as he goes back to staring out of the window.
“Who said I was unreachable?” Torin grumbles next to me. Adrian and I both huff in unison.
At least we both agree on that. I will take it as a win.
It takes us another hour or so to reach our destination. We left the city behind and now we are somewhere in the suburbs. Is it considered the suburbs if it’s in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest on either side? The driver takes the extra money we paid him without question, and he left as fast as we arrived. I guess he felt it was his due after all the bitching he had to endure for hours.
Torin, Adrian and I stand in front of a picturesque two-story yellow house with a white trim. It has a large wraparound porch with windchimes of all sorts hanging from it. There is even a rocking chair out front. It is quiet as we approach the stairs leading up to the house. The garden out front looks suspiciously like something you would see in Celestia, like a cottage garden, but on a bigger scale. I don’t think anything of it until Adrian stops at the top step. It looks as if he is studying the air in front of him until he waves his hand in front of his face. A shimmering barrier becomes visible to us, we see it wraps around the entire property. All three of us take a step back.
“Protection spell?” Adrian turns to ask Torin.
“Definitely.” He says as he steps around Adrian and approaches the barrier.
“Well, whoever is protecting her knows what they are doing. How do they have this much magic though? It’s impossible, unless they are doing some nefarious shit to gain it.” I say to them both from the bottom of the step. I am wary, usually to gain this type of magic on earth there would be human sacrifice and blood magic involved. The last thing we need is to run into a rogue Druid or Mage here on Earth. I want to rush forward like I normally do but if that is the case, we need to be cautious. Torin reaches out his hand and touches the barrier. We all wait for something to happen, but his hand passes right through.
“Maybe it doesn’t deem us a threat.” Adrian says as he steps up beside Torin and sticks his hand through the barrier. Nothing happens. I don’t give them a chance to stop me, I walk around the steps and up the slope of the yard, passing straight through the barrier. I hear them calling my name but as soon as I pass through, I can’t hear them anymore. What I can hear are screams from somewhere. I turn and look at the house, it is the same house we saw on the outside of the barrier. So, there’s a concealment charm as well then. Definitely a Druid. I stand in shock for just a second. What the hell is happening here?
Black plumes of smoke are rising above the house. I can hear someone yelling, and someone else is screaming. It sounds like chaos, and I wonder if Cordelia shifted somehow. It’s not possible I think to myself. I take off running toward the back of the house knowing my brothers will catch up. Torin and Adrian are right on my heels in moments as the back of the house comes into view.
Two bright towers of fire shoot about fifty feet into the air, as one we stumble back in surprise. I can honestly say I have never witnessed anything like this in my life. A woman stands in the middle of a well-groomed garden with her hands raised in the air, fire shooting from them like two mini volcanoes. Suddenly, she takes off running, leaving fire patches in her wake, another woman comes running out of the house after her. She is so focused on the woman running away she doesn’t notice us at first.
