Dragons Rising ✔️

Ch 34: The Message

Everyone did follow me, mostly in silence. When we got back, I was about to go flying to let off some steam, but Kuertis came up to me before I could.

"I'll tell you now." He nodded at my necklace.

I'd forgotten the reason I'd considered letting them come in the first place. "Oh, right. Go ahead."

"The message will play if the crystal is put in the element of the elent who made it."

Immediately, my anger at Clarisa was replaced by anticipation. I already knew what element my father would've used, but I couldn't let the message play in front of the others. They'd realize immediately that my father was an elent if he said anything revealing in the message.

"Thanks."

He nodded and went back to his dragon to unload his tent. Tawny was doing the same, and Clarisa was stomping off into the forest. According to her angry mutters, she was going to get firewood. Now was the perfect time to watch the message.

As soon as I was sure that both Tawny and Kuertis were too occupied to notice what I was doing, I sprinted into the trees in the opposite direction from where Clarisa had gone. Leera followed me.

After several minutes of walking, I stopped in a small clearing and gathered a small pile of twigs. Tawny and Kuertis had stayed in the campsite, and Clarisa was probably far away in the forest, but I still felt nervous. I had to remind myself that I was all alone. Except for Leera, of course. I chanced a questioning look at her, and she promptly laid down.

[I'm not missing this.] She spit flames at the pile of twigs.

I jumped back and started beating at the ends of my pants, which Leera had also caught on fire. It took me rolling in the dirt to put them out.

I stood and glared at her. [Thanks.]

[Sorry.] She grinned, which honestly would've been terrifying if I hadn't known she had no intention of eating me.

[Why are you so sure?]

I rolled my eyes. [Because if you ate me, we'd both die. You're not stupid.]

[I'm glad we agree on that point.] She stopped grinning, which was a relief.

I snorted and took off my necklace. The pendant would've been enchanted to be fireproof, but the chain probably wasn't, so I separated them. As sure as I was that my parents would've left me a message if they could, I wasn't sure if I was ready to hear it. What could they say that would make up for them abandoning me? All these years, I had thought they'd left me because I looked like a freak. But wouldn't they have known that mutations were common in paltors? They shouldn't have been surprised when I came out all messed up.

Either way, I hesitated to throw my pendant in the fire. Leera took the matter into her own claws, exhibiting the same control over my hand as she had during the Academy competition. It moved of its own accord, tossing the red crystal into the flames.

"How did you do that?" I asked, so surprised that I forgot to use thought speech.

[What? The crystal's doing something now. You should watch it.] She stared intently at the flames.

I crouched down to get a better look, resolving to bring up Leera's strange mind control later.

The crystal was hovering in the middle of the fire, inches above the burning twigs. The flames themselves transformed into a scene that was colored with more than just orange and yellow. The scene held two adults in their twenties, sitting together in a small room.

Despite his age, the man seemed to have an ageless wisdom in his amber eyes. He was a tall elent with light brown hair and tanned skin, which was mostly covered by white teacher's robes. The woman sitting next to him had darker skin and hair, along with an unmistakable talme's tail. She appeared to be a few months pregnant.

"What should I say?" She looked sheepishly at me.

I almost responded to her gentle voice, but then I remembered that it was only a recording.

"Say anything you would wish our child to know about us," the man said.

It was hard to think of him as my father. I'd imagined my birth parents a million times before, but my father had never been an elent in those imaginings.

"Let me think for a minute. You go first," my mother said.

"As you wish. Ketin or Ellania—whichever one you might be—we have decided to compose this recording for such circumstances as-"

"This isn't a will, Tyor. You don't have to act like it is." My mother glanced nervously at something I couldn't see.

The feeling of happiness I'd felt at the sight of them faltered. If they were nervous, it might be for good reason. It might be the reason they'd abandoned me.

"It might as well be a will." The wisdom in Tyor's eyes gave way to weariness. "Rayork refuses to take more than one passenger across the border to Gorgoli, and he considers you in your present state to count as two. And, even if by some unlikely circumstance your pregnancy goes unnoticed by your friends and family, we will never see our child again. To him or her, we will be as good as dead."

The Gorgoli swamps were rumored to house natives who didn't care what you were as long as you were good at catching alligators. It would've been the perfect place to send a paltor, though I would've been raised by complete strangers. Then again, I had been raised by complete strangers, so it wouldn't have been much different if they'd sent me there. Why hadn't they?

"Maybe we should start over," my mother said.

"We cannot, unless you happen to possess the means to buy another crystal?"

She sighed. "I guess it's okay. You can say what you had in mind, but please don't act like we're dead already."

"I will try." He cleared his throat. "Ketin or Ellania, we are recording this message in case we never see you again. You will no doubt remember nothing of us, but we already love you more than we can say."

As I heard him say the name "Ellania" again, I wondered when and how it had been permanently shortened to "Ella." But the message continued, so I didn't dwell on it for long.

"We love you," my mother repeated, "and we want only the best-" Someone knocked on a door out of sight, and she jumped to her feet. "We'll go out the back way."

My father grabbed the crystal when another knock came from a direction opposite the first.

"Your house is surrounded," a man shouted.

Though I could see no farther than my father's fingers clutched around the crystal, I could tell that this announcement terrified my parents.