Swords of the Secret Son

Chapter 2 - Vander Treyani

I woke up that morning with the putrid stench of death even more rancid than ever, hot air blew down from above, and a thick, gooey substance dripped down my arms. Tentatively opening my eyes, I discovered that I was twenty feet above the ground, inclosed by what felt like an oversized elbow crook. My legs dangled from under the beast's arm and my upper body just peaked out from above. 

The sun was high and the leaves were rustling in the wind. My tangled hair was flapping around and the hand wrapped around my stomach was cutting off my blood circulation.

"Help!" I called.

"What-uh?" A voice groggily responded from nearby.

"Hruh! Hmi noug. Hmi Laet!" A sharp grunting came from above us, roughly translating from the language of Vraxvir to, "Huh! Food wake. Food talk!" I prided myself on being fluent in over twenty languages.

"Ogre!" the person and I yelled in unison. I started to kick free, pulling my spear from my belt with my loose arm. I could see the girl who the voice belonged to doing the same, locked between the ogre's other arm and side.

Biting down on the least slimy surface my mouth could find and quickly falling from the ogre's grasp, flying was not how I imagined it to be. Instead of the chirping birds accompanying me on my flight down to the ground, I was greeted by absolutely charming screams coming from the girl's mouth. Looking up, I saw the unnamed girl's leg entering the ogre's mouth.

Oh no. I had to to it. If this wasn't an emergency, what was? Lifting myself up from my crumpled position on the forest floor, I rose into a heavenly state. Numbness began to spread from my fingers and toes to the rest of my body like wildfire. Golden beams shot from my eyes and ears and smoke was exiting through my nostrils.

I couldn't see. I was stuck in a beam of light, my senses melting away along with my human skin. The only sense that remained was smell. There was only smoke. After what felt like an eternity, my vision and other senses regained. I looked down at my body and saw that I was no longer Vander.

"AS'ŠHKA DÆMMI'NOØS ĒĒLDINŚHH!" Heat ran through my fingertips as I shouted in Na'e, my native language, and I was encased in a black cloud of fog. A strange force was beckoning me towards an extremely wimpy looking ogre with limbs entering its mouth.

I regained my human morals, extinguishing the line between monster and person. I was one. With one flap of my oversized, scaly wings, I lifted my new meaty body into the sky, pouncing on the ogre's shoulders. The ogre immediately spat the body out its mouth, hitting the ground with a quiet splat. Finishing it off with one blow of fire from my breath, the now tiny looking ogre slumped down to the forest floor with a thump.

I immediately took off, flapping my purplish green scaly wings in the air. Flying across the countryside, this was me. This was my life. Why would I ever want to be a human? Now I had the power.

Something inside of me stirred and I knew I had to turn back.

"Who are you?" A weak voice came from a minuscule life form crawling out from under the ogre.

-

"You're up, dragon," the girl stated coldly once I groggily opened my eyes.

"I-I am...?" I asked, genuinely confused. "What happened?"

"You saved my life. I thought I ought to say thank you. Well, goodbye." She turned on her heel and grabbed her things, walking away from my camp.

"Wait!" I shouted. "What's your name?"

"Jay," the girl called back without turning her head in my direction, tossing a dagger around in her hand.

"I'm Vander," I huffed as I sprinted to catch up with her. "You shouldn't be out here alone. What's your business? I'm pretty sure that whole incident with the ogre means you need my help," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Get off of me," she mumbled quietly and shrugged my hand off briskly. "Why do you care?"

"I haven't been with another person who doesn't want me dead in a few months."

"Who says I don't want you dead too?" Jay replied coldly, still refusing to make eye contact with me.

I smirked. "Let's call it intuition."

"I'll ask you again. Who are you?"

"Vander Treyani. Eighteen years." I took a deep breath. "Runaway slave from the first realm."

"And?"

After hesitating, I relented and spout out, "There are rumors. My parents said they found me in the street in a cardboard box as a sick, green skinned baby with a note saying nothing but the word 'Vander.'" Vander meant "life" in Seldan, the queen's language. "They sold me. They sold me because they saw me transform into a dragon. My master said that the queen herself was my true mother, my father being some reptile.

"Treyani means 'dragon heart' in Seldan, doesn't it?" Jay asked. I nodded.

"I chose it myself. It's not my master's or my parents'."

"Okay, dragon boy," replied Jay, tucking her long, golden-brown hair behind her pointed ear.

I asked seriously, "What do you think it was like Before?"

"Oh, I don't know. I lot of plagues and stuff. But more freedom."

"Would you rather live like this, protected from most natural beasts outside of the regions living under a dictator, or Before, exposed to lethal illnesses and animals daily but living your life carefree?"

"Why couldn't it be a mixture of both?"

"What, life filled with dangers under our wonderful Queen Arwen?"

"Life with few illnesses, due to the freedom of education and science, living under your own rule. Or at least under some benevolent person like King Ryedaen."

"Like that's going to happen anytime soon." We were quiet for awhile after that.

"Do you think that he's really dead?" Jay asked while we were walking. She looked me in the eye and appeared to have a glossy-eyed look on her face, as if she wasn't completely in reality.

"Who?"

"My brother. He d-d-died being forced to f-fight for Vision."

"Oh. I'm sorry. Probably."

"Do you think he's happy?"

"I don't think there's anywhere to be happy in. There's just life. Then just non-existence."

"So you don't think there's an afterlife?"

"Nope."

"Oh. I do."

"I know."