My eyebrows furrowed at that, because that wasn’t information people simply shared as gossip, and I didn’t know how he was aware of it. Savant Gadith paid no attention to my surprise, and when he reached his hand out to the side, the female master gave him the bowl. He brought it into his lap, holding it there for a silent moment and contemplating again.
Then he motioned to the bowl. “We can reacquaint you with memories, but in those memories you are a captive to their will. You return to us only when your blood is ready.”
“Is it dangerous?” I asked, thinking it could be something like my dreams with Ava, something where I had the potential to be trapped forever. But Savant Gadith gave the slightest shake of his head. “I’ve got time.”
“Very well,” he said, and motioned to the nearest cot.
I took the prompt and moved to the cot, stretching out on it to lie down. Each of the masters came to stand around me, while Rhien sat down on the closest cot to mine to observe.
“Do not fear,” Savant Gadith said, setting one warm hand on my forehead. “The body knows what the blood wants it to know.” I nodded, and he held the bowl in his other hand above my face. “Breathe,” he instructed.
It made me nervous when he began to tilt the bowl, because I didn’t want to breathe in all that liquid and choke. As the bowl sloped, however, its contents spilled, transforming halfway to my face into a heavy purple smoke. It was thick enough that it fell to my nose with the same weight as water, but when I breathed it in, it was smooth, and calming. The more of it I inhaled, the more my eyes drifted shut and the more I felt disconnected from my body, until my eyes closed completely and I felt and heard nothing.
It was almost like I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in the caves. I was in a forest, crouching behind bushes as a nearby screaming pierced the air. It was an animal’s screaming, but no animal I’d ever heard before. Its desperate cries were gravelly and low, like the deep wail of a forest cat, only from something so much larger. I tightened my grip on the weapon I was holding in my hand, and involuntarily glanced down at it as I turned it around, so I had the stone dagger in a reverse grip. And they weren’t my hands. They were large, and rough, fingers thicker and palms heavier. They were male. I was in the body, or the memory, of one of my male ancestors.
There was the low crack of a stick from somewhere nearby, and I glanced toward the noise, locking eyes with another man. He nodded behind me, and I turned to find a woman. Both of them were armed like I was, creeping through the bush toward the animal. We tiptoed slowly, keeping our eyes peeled for threats as the screaming got louder, until eventually we came upon it. At first I couldn’t tell what kind of animal this massive creature was. It was caught in a net made of thick, heavy rope, and its struggling was obscured in the leaves and pine needles that had also been caught. What I did know is that it was larger than a horse.
“Go,” whispered one of my companions, Zoren, and when I looked at her, she nodded toward the animal. “Quickly.”
I snuck out of cover, hurrying to the front of the animal so it could see me. The creature and I locked gazes. Its eyes were as big as my palm, a mix of soft golds and yellows, and its pupil a thin black slit down the center. It was a dragon, its scaled flesh a mixture of blacks and dark blues that made its eyes seem to glow, and with wings trapped at its sides. And when it recognized the knife in my hand, it roared at me in a shrill, intimidating howl, and it snapped its long jaws. I jumped back, but the dragon was too subdued to reach me, and I knew this creature wasn’t developed enough yet to escape on its own. It was a young dragon, a baby, no doubt, even though it was already terrifying in size.
“Easy,” I said in a deep voice, holding my hand out palm first, and I felt a pinch at the forefront of my mind. “Be still.”
The dragon calmed down, its golden eyes watching me as I inched closer. It didn’t roar at me or try to bite again. It let me get close enough to stick my large hand through the rope, and rest it on the wide space between the beast’s eyes. I motioned that it was safe for my companions to come out, and as they hurried over to begin cutting the weights holding the net down, my fingers ran along the bridge of the dragon’s nose.
It wasn’t anything like I imagined it’d feel. I thought it would be rough. Thought I’d have to be gentle, and careful, lest the rigid scales prick and cut my fingers. But they weren’t sharp at all, not here anyway. There were sharp spikes two inches long beneath its eyes, thick barbs down the ridge of its spine that had been sticking straight up when I arrived, but now that the dragon was calm were tucked in flat to its back. Then there were its teeth. Every single one of them was more honed than my knife, gleaming white and longer than my hand. The dragon was sharp, and dangerous to be sure, but when I ran my fingers down the length of its snout, its eyes shut contentedly. It nudged up against my touch like a dog does when it wants you to scratch its ears harder.
“How’d you get caught here?” my low voice asked the dragon. “You’re not a yearling anymore, got to get smarter.” I leaned sideways to see where my friends were at with the ropes. They had two of the eight weights cut away. “I should name you,” I suggested. “You’ve got eyes like stars, flesh like the coming night. Like midnight.”
From the side of the dragon, my friend, Hog, teased, “What kind of a name is Midnight for a dragon?” Though I still had my mind’s hold on the creature, it turned its head, snapping its teeth toward Hog. It didn’t reach him, but he still jumped back with a yelp. “Oy!” he laughed, “you want out of this net or not?”
I chuckled at that, giving Midnight an amused pat on the snout. “I like you.”
My companions had just managed to cut away two more of the weights when there was a loud shout, and six large men burst out of the woods around us. “That’s our dragon!” one of them yelled, jabbing his long spear toward us.
“It’s nobody’s dragon,” muttered Zoren. In response to that, Hog shapeshifted into an enormous brown bear, rising to his hind legs and letting out a rumbling roar in support.
The six men took challenging steps forward. Three of them were equipped with spears, another with a bow, and two, I sensed, had dark magic. Good, I thought, I can work with that. And as that very thought occurred to me, one of the unarmed men circled his palms one above the other, creating a black sphere of magic that he then hurled at me. I caught it halfway, but instead of deflecting it, I latched on to the darkness in it. I couldn’t create darkness or corruption all on my own, but to me they were like fuel for a fire. I could control dark magic, or even rust and rot, like I could control a mind; feed it, grow it, shape it. My hands motioned upward as I molded that dark magic into my own creation—a dragon that resembled the one caught in the net behind us. Once I’d forged that dragon with the magic the hunter had thrown at me, I set it loose on two of them.
Zoren turned her entire body into a cloud of smoke that could be as solid or indefinite as she wanted, and rushed forward at the man with the bow. Bear-shaped Hog did the same, and charged at a man with a spear. I could be certain the dragon hunters with magic wouldn’t attempt using it against me anymore, so I gripped my dagger firmly in my hand, sprinting forward to meet them as they drew their own knives.
I dodged the fist of the first one, rolling past him and springing up at the feet of the second. Leading with my dagger, I swiped, slashing a shallow cut across his chest, but there wasn’t time to finish the job. The first man dashed at me, leading with his knife, and I gripped him with my mind out of instinct, controlled him and made him freeze on the spot, mid-stab. He was fighting it though, and the sharp bite at the front of my skull was excruciating. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever. So I threw myself at him, avoiding his knife and colliding into him with my shoulder to take him to the ground. I wrestled him onto his stomach and sat over his back, preparing to stab my dagger through him when I noticed the other was coming at me. I threw my weapon straight into his chest, and as he collapsed, I reached down to snap the neck of the man beneath me.