Chapter 12: Secrets
He needed help. It was time to bring Kael in on this new development, and tell him everything.
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The story so far in Chapters 1-11: Draven encounters mysterious Dawn Bringers who can walk unharmed in sunlight and learns that bonding with dragons is the key to unlocking ancient portals between distant regions of his world. Driven by grief and curiosity, he secretly works with his friend Kael to translate forbidden texts for lost knowledge while tensions rise in the hold. Draven risks his life to steal a dragon egg from a dragon’s (shadow-crawler) den. The mother crawler is furious and stalks their hold as he hatches the baby dragon. The baby dragon grows but food is running low.
Vi’s appetite grew as fast as she did, and soon he was out of meat for her or himself.
He needed to visit the market and buy more.
Walking to the the living unit’s main door, Vi scurried after him, wings flapping, her long serpentine purple body swaying along the floor.
He picked her up and put her back on his bed. He pressed a strong feeling down the bond to her that there was danger outside the door of his living unit, and she must not make loud sounds or leave.
He walked to the door, and Vi scurried after him, snorting and wining.
Goddesses of Light.
What was he going to do?
He needed to go buy her food, but if she was going to wail and make noise when he left that would be bad. And what about when he had to go back to boundary duty?
He finally snuck out the door quickly so she couldn’t follow.
And he felt her immediate distress and heard her scratching at the door and whimpering. Anyone walking down this passageway would hear it.
He rushed went back in, sighing heavily at her, trying again to press down the bond that she must stay and he would return with food for her. But she was just a baby and didn’t seem to really understand except that he was leaving her alone, and she didn’t like it.
He ran a hand down his face. “This will not do.”
It was time to bring Kael in on this new development, and tell him everything. His friend was going to lose it when he learned about the Dawn Bringers and saw the baby shadow-crawler. But there was nothing else to be done. Draven needed help.
He rang a bell for one of the hall monitors of the hold and sent a letter to his friend.
Later, the hold bells rang the time, and he knew the library would be closing. Soon after there was a soft rap at his door that had the style of Kael’s soft manner.
He let him in.
Kael came bustling in and over to the table in a rush, excitement rolling off the librarian like steam. “Oh I have some new translations, and these have medical remedies. Such as they made a special creme that protected Gloamer skin from the harmful sun. Isn’t that wonderful, yeah?”
Kael hadn’t noticed Vi yet, who watched the newcomer from Draven’s shoulder. She sent a feeling of curiosity down their bond.
The librarian dropped his satchel on the stone table and pulled out papers. Turning, he began to proffer them at Draven, and then his eyes met those of Vi.
Kael’s eye went wide and his face draine of color, he stumbled back, fell over a chair, and crashed to the floor.
Draven stepped forward to help him. He hadn’t expected him to fall. But before he could Kael jumped up with more agility than one might think the portly scholar had, and ran around behind the table, putting it between him and Draven. “Are ye completely sunsick, Drav? What are ye doing with that thing? So that’s why the mother is still here! This is bad, very bad, yeah.”
Draven gestured both palms down in a calming motion. “Look, please just relax, and give me a minute to explain.”
“Explain what?” He pointed a finger at Draven. “I tell ye true, it’s going to kill ye!”
Draven sat in a chair across the room to ease Kael’s stress. “Please, Kael, for all the years we’ve been friends, please, will ye let me tell ye some things?”
Kael began to pace behind the table, wringing his hands, one eye always trained on Vi. “Oh, this is bad, yeah, really bad Drav.” But he calmed a little, and then sat in a chair across the room near the ice wall, which cast a blue tint over his gray hair and skin. “I guess ye decided to do what those translations recommended.”
Draven smiled and nodded, chuckling to himself. “Just wait until ye hear my full tale, and please don’t be mad that I didn’t tell ye all before now. I wasn’t sure what would come of all this or who to trust.”
Kael sighed very deeply, one eye on Vi and one on Draven. “Okay, then, tell.”
So Draven did. He started from the beginning, about how he’d been certain he’d seen a real woman and not a sun shade, and how he’d searched for her again and met two. He shared about Solari, and Harmony, and Aurelia, and their continent, and the portal.
Kael nodded, eyes wide with wonder. “So that’s where ye got the book and bag. No wonder I didn’t recognize the weave and material of the sac, because it’s from another continent!”
Draven nodded. Then he shared his crazy attempt to steal the egg, and the mad dash back, and the care and hatching of the baby crawler.
Kael’s eyes were fixed on Vi the entire time, curiosity now overtaking horror in his features.
At the end of Draven’s tale, Kael’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody in the hold has been able to go out and get food supplies in nearly two spans because of that menace at our door.”
Vi’s head snapped to look at him, and she snorted.
Draven felt her dislike filter into him. “The mother isn’t the menace, Kael. I am. I took her baby.”
“But how can ye possibly care for it?”
“It’s all been new, that is the truth. And she’s eating so much now, I have to go to the market and get more food, or…” Now he looked apologetic at his friend. “well, what I need is for ye to stay with her so I can get food?”
Kael snorted in derision. “Not on yer life! I’ll get ye more meat, yeah, but I’m not babysitting yer baby monster.”
Again Vi’s head snapped to look at him, snorting.
“She doesn’t like ye saying those things about her.”
Kael blinked. “Wha… What? She doesn’t… like?”
“No.”
Kael’s brows rose. “So ye can speak to her? In yer mind?”
Draven shook his head. “Not in words so much as in emotions and feelings and pictures and memories. And I’m also now bonded to the mother, the angry one at the main doors.”
Kael’s head tipped to the side. “By the Goddesses, ye’ve changed.”
“How could I not after all that? Kael, ye cannot imagine how it feels to be bonded to them, how much I know now.”
“But what are ye gonna do as she grows bigger? She won’t fit here, Drav.”
“I know. I’m thinking a lot about what to do.”
His friend shook his head in wonder. “Meat at the market is running very low. I’ll see what I can get ye, but ye can’t keep wasting Gloamer food on this creature if the mother doesn’t leave. We have to think of our own first.”
A chill ran over Draven. “She is part of my own now.”
His friends’ brows raised.
What was he going to do?
It was his fault the mother still held them all hostage in the hold. Could he maybe speak to her, mentally, the way he could with Vi? It was likely that the only thing she would do was kill him.
Kael got up and sidestepped around the room, keeping far away from Draven and Vi. “Okay, yeah, I’ll get ye some meat, but ye need to figure out what yer gonna do.”
Then he scurried out the door.
Vi watched him go, glowing purple eyes narrowed, and she shared with him a strong dislike of Kael.
Draven sighed. “He’s my oldest friend, so ye’ll need to learn to like him.”
Vi snorted and flapped her wings.
Some time later, there was a soft tap from Kael again.
Draven opened the door and stood back, and his friend once more bustled in, one wary eye on Vi, who was now curled up in her crate by the ice wall, sleeping, the crate that very soon would be too small for her.
He held out a sac that smelled of herbs and charred wood. “They’re full out of red meat, Drav. I was only able to get smoked and cured meats, as the fresh stuff is gone. Ye really gotta figure out how to make the mother go away.”
Draven pulled out the translations he already had and added the new ones that Kael had brought. He scanned through them. “Well, usually the babies drink the mother’s milk.”
“So give the mother her baby back! What are ye going to do with a pet monster?”
Draven pointed at one of the translations.
Kael leaned in and looked at it, then snorted out a laugh. “Fly on it? Are ye mad?”
Draven shrugged. “Why not? It says here they used to. And I want to travel to Solaris’ continent, and meet the Void Striders. Imagine what travel like that could do for us, for the Gloamer resources and trade and supplies?”
Kael eyed the baby shadow-crawler again. “I don’t know, Drav. It’s all, well, a little sunsick.”
“Or maybe isolating ourselves here, burning this knowledge, maybe that is what was sunsick. Look at all the good things we’ve learned from these books already that can help Gloamers. Yer a scholar. Ye can’t deny that.”
“No, ye tell it true.”
And that was when the loud, banging knock reverberated across the unit.
Both their heads jerked around to stare at the door, stunned.
No. No. No.
Kael wrung his hands. “By the Ash, not Umbrist Sidero again?” His eyes darted to Vi.
Draven hid the translations in the stone hollow in his room, then picked up Vi’s crate and took it to the back room and closed it. She was fast asleep, and he could only pray to the Goddesses that she didn’t wake and wail at being locked into it.
The loud knocking came again. “Open up Drav. It’s Tynan.”
Palms sweaty and heart racing, Draven walked to unbolt the door.
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Author Notes:
Image made with Midjourney.
I have written about the world building of this story here.
This is also being published at Royal Road.
What a cliffhanger!