Planet Omega

Chapter 10

The moment is short lived. A roar sounds to my left just before another one of these creatures collides with the one I hit, and they roll in the sand. The second creature's arrowhead tail is still shifting and molding to match the first one, a telltale sign that it isn't just another creature. It's Will!

Bringing that shifter into the fold was the coolest thing I've ever done, because It can do things like this.

"Cal! Are you okay?" Emma's arms are already around me, helping me back up to my feet and brushing the sand off of me.

"I thought I told you guys to run," I say, trying to sound angry, but it takes too much effort. My eyes are locked in on Will trying to get the creature into a death roll, but Will's still trying to figure out the shape and strength of this beast. There's only so much It can do to fight an original.

"We weren't going to leave you behind to die, you idiot," she scolds me, tugging me back. "Mateo's deduced it's a type of desert wyrm, a dragon relative."

Dragons. Oh, shit. That complicates things.

"I don't think it wants to kill me," I say to Emma, watching the fight between the two wyrms. She gives me a look that tells me she thinks I hit my head way too hard. "It had the chance, and it didn't hurt me. Its eyes turned blue and just waited on me." The plea in my voice has Emma looking around for Mateo, who's trudging up through the sand towards us. He's waving a book around.

"It's not a wyrm!" he calls out, mildly concerned with the situation of the two entangled...not wyrms. "It's a mage demon! They mimic dragon relatives!"

I hear Will bellow in pain, and I know it's Will because the other beast has a much lower guttural range. "Will, stop!" I shout desperately, trying to get their attention.

Emma waves her arms about and cups her hands around her mouth. "Will, pull back! Will!"

I start moving away from Emma and Mateo, so I can try to get the other beast's attention, now that it knows me in a different sort of way. I rack my brain, trying to figure out if I've ever heard the term 'mage demon' before. Lineya used to shove books at me, and I swear I might have seen a picture or two, but I didn't actually read those books. "Hey! Hey, you!" I shout at it. "Mage demon!"

As if those were the magic words, the now blue-eyed creature begins to unwrap itself from Will, looking my way. Emma manages to get Will's attention now that It can breathe properly again, and the mage demon crawls my way, head low to the sand. I hold my hand out again to it in the way I did before when it let me touch it, and much to everyone's surprise, it presses its nose against my hand. Then chuffs.

It chuffs, like any old large cat, content with its surroundings.

I see Will shift back into Its humanoid form, and Emma runs over to tend to any wounds. Mateo, meanwhile, walks up towards me and the mage demon. Instantly, the mage demon begins to growl that menacing growl. "Easy," I say softly. "Mateo is a friend." As if I know what the fuck I'm doing over here. Talk to it like a dog, right? At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

Mateo barely hesitates approaching. "Your spell, that lightning you called, it was just enough magic to tell it that you're a mage. They only follow a mage's magic, apprentices don't have nearly enough, but that spell did it!" He's way too excited, despite almost dying earlier.

And I am just so ready for a nap. It'll be hours before my magic replenishes, and there's no guarantee it'll be able to draw enough energy from the desert. "So mage demons...what, like mages?"

"They don't just like them, they follow them. It's like having a giant magical pet." Mateo grins up into those blue slitted eyes. "Mage demons only recognize the magic of a mage. But I haven't heard of any in a very long time. I assumed they were hunted down alongside the mages."