No fucking way.
So I puffed out my chest and squared my shoulders, the wind whipping around, causing my robes to billow. I looked badass. I was badass. I was a godsdamn wizard. I had a destiny of motherfucking dragons. The gods themselves had chosen me to take on the most evil of all the villains. I was going to kick so much ass and take so many names. I had this. I had this.
Something large growled in the cave.
I didn’t have this. “There’s more meat on Randall’s bones than mine!” I cried, voice echoing around the cave as I cowered behind Randall, peering over his shoulder. “If you need to eat someone, start with him so it gives me time to run away!”
Randall sighed like everything wrong with the world was somehow my fault. “Really, Sam?”
“Sorry,” I said, hastily brushing off his shoulders for reasons I didn’t quite understand. “Fear response. It could happen to anyone.”
He wasn’t amused. “You told them to eat me first so you could run.”
“If it helps, I’m not very proud about that.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“We’re on the same page, then.”
“Should we continue on?”
“Maybe we could wait right here and not go farther into the spooky ice cave—aaaaand you’re walking farther into the spooky ice cave.”
I thought about letting him go on his own, but I wasn’t that big of a dick, so I hurried after him, gaze darting around the cave, sure I was going to see dragons with large teeth barreling toward us.
“Lesbians love me,” I muttered. “Lesbians love me. Lesbians love me.”
The light grew dimmer the farther we went into the cave. The fact that the cave kept going was not something I was too fond of. I would have appreciated if the lesbian feather dragons had decided to nest some place far less… this place.
WizardWizardWizard
He is here
I can hear him breathing
I can hear him walking
He’s close
Closer
“Wow,” I said without meaning to. “You have to realize that’s just making things worse, right?”
Randall looked back at me, massive eyebrow arched.
“Sorry,” I said, gesturing toward my head. “Dragons talking to me. They’re being creepy. I didn’t know lesbians could be creepy. That kind of alters my whole worldview. It’s also rude.” I raised my voice on the last word, hearing it echo around us.
Randall looked as if he thought I was an idiot. Which is to say how he normally looked. But then something else crossed his face, and his eyes widened.
“What?” I asked nervously. “Please don’t tell me this is the point where you say it’s standing right behind me, because, dude. That would just totally suck my balls.”
“Your eyes,” he said.
“Uh. Yes? I have them?”
“They’re glowing blue.”
I blinked. “Oh. Shit. Yeah, that’s apparently a thing that happens. They glowed red when we were in the desert approaching Zero.”
“Did they change with Kevin?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The first time I saw him, I was getting knocked through an equipment shed after he said he wanted to fuck me. The second time, I was chained up by the Cult of Truth Corn Assholes in the middle of a field as a sacrifice. I really didn’t have time to find out if my eyes were changing colors.”
He stared at me.
“What?”
“Your life is very strange.”
“Why do you say that like it’s my fault?”
“Can you feel the change? In your eyes.”
I started to shake my head but stopped. “Not… not like you think. It’s more—I just know the dragons are here. They know I’m here. We can feel each other.”
“You are an odd one, Sam of Wilds,” he said before continuing farther into the cave.
It was only minutes later that it became difficult to see. The light had faded, casting the area around us in shadows. I bumped into a large column of ice, cursing under my breath as pain blossomed in my knee. Randall stopped in front of me, and I could barely make out when he brought his hands to his face, cupping them over his mouth and nose. He whispered something into his palms, and a surge of magic beyond that of the dragons burst around us. A light flashed brightly in Randall’s palms, illuminating the cave around us. Randall opened his hands and the light rose, flapping like it had… wings.
“Is that a butterfly?” I said, unable to keep the wonder from my voice. The light flitted around us, leaving little trails of sparks that hissed when they landed upon the ice.
“It is,” Randall said. But he wouldn’t say anything more about it, no matter how much I prodded.
We followed the butterfly farther into the cave. The light crawled along the ice, making it look like the crystals were glowing. We were heading up a slight incline and the air was growing warmer. I could hear the soft drip of water sliding down the columns and walls. It was eerie, hearing it echo around us.
“How deep does this cave go?” I asked after what felt like forever. “It can’t be that big.”
“I suppose we’ll find out,” Randall said.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“Partly.”
“What the hell does that mean? How can you have partly been in a cave before?”
“When I came to Castle Freesias, I made an offering to the dragons here.”
“During your self-imposed exile,” I said without thinking. Then, “Uh. Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”
“You’re not wrong,” he said.
“Wow. That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I feel tingly. That might also be hypothermia and frostbite, but I’ll take it. Why did you leave an offering?”
“So they’d know I wasn’t here to hurt them.”
“Because you were Randall of Dragons.”
He said nothing. Like a jerk.
“What did you leave them?”
“A gift.”
He was the most infuriating man alive. “When people are purposefully vague, it doesn’t make them enigmatic. It makes them assholes.”
“I wouldn’t know. People aren’t purposefully vague toward me.”
I had to remind myself that strangling Randall in a cave in the mountains wasn’t the best course of action. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. I won’t push.”
He snorted.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t push too much.”
“It was a token of goodwill,” he said. “From a friend.”
“Who?”
He didn’t respond.
“Did they accept?” I asked, trying a different tack.
“They did.”
“Did you see them?”
“Briefly. They knew…. Well. They knew why I’d come to Castle Freesias. They understood wanting to be left alone.”
I hesitated at that. Kevin and Zero had both said something similar. “Have they been…. Have people tried to hurt them before?”
Randall sighed. “Sometimes humanity forgets how to be human. Dragons were the unfortunate victims of that.”
“I wouldn’t hurt them. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
The butterfly flared briefly.
Randall said, “I know.”
“But I’m going to have to. One day.”
“I know that too.”
“There isn’t—”
You say you wouldn’t hurt us
But we have heard false promises from your kind before You think yourself different