Dragons Rising ✔️

Ch 47: Fire

I forced myself to stand, sure that a fire this soon after the arrival of the bronze dragon couldn't be a coincidence. The man disappeared from view up ahead, while I could only stagger after him. What I needed was more energy, at least for a little while, and the only way I could think to get it at the moment was from Leera. While I found it difficult to send thought messages in my weakened state, I could still easily sense our mental bond. She would probably be upset with me when we met up, but it was an emergency. She would understand.

I reached out through our bond and tugged on the magical energy that resided in Leera. It was enough to energize me into a run. In seconds, I caught up to the gardener and outpaced him. When the stables came into view, I stopped.

They were in flames. Any dragon stable should've been magically fireproofed, but something told me that the katalni had found his way around that.

"Put it out," the man shouted as he caught up to me.

"It's too big." How did he even know I was half elent, much less that my element was fire?

"Your kind have a way with fire. Now, put it out before someone gets hurt."

I heard shouting from the other side of the stable, near the makeshift town. If the fire spread, it would be a disaster. And it would spread; I could tell by the intensity of the flames. Even thirty feet from the stable, the heat made my skin prickle. The gardener was sweating profusely and staring at me with a gaze almost as intense as the flames.

"I'm not who you think I am. I can't do this." I wished I could, but my last run-in with the bronze katalni had nearly killed me, and I didn't even have Leera's help this time.

He opened his mouth again, no doubt to argue, but a girl's scream came from inside the stable.

"I told her to go home." He was running toward the stable's back door, cursing.

There was no way he could survive going into that fire, but I could, even if I couldn't put it out. "Stay back," I shouted as I ran past him and crashed through the back door.

Smoke filled the stables, and roaring flames drowned out nearly everything else, but I followed the girl's screams down one of the walkways. An unnatural clearing in the smoke and flames circled around part of the walkway and all of the occupied stalls.

The bronze katalni stood in the middle of it all, the little girl crawled up at his feet. Blood seeped from a wound on her right arm, but she seemed otherwise uninjured.

"I will free you all, and we will begin the revolution," the katalni roared. One by one, the doors of the occupied stalls exploded outwards as their occupants shattered the now fragile, unenchanted wood. They came out to stand before the katalni, some looking up in awe while others looked down at the crying child.

"This girl shall be an example to all others of her kind. They can never stand up against our true might." The katalni lowered his head toward the girl.

My initial fear at the sight of him vanished as I charged into the clearing.

His head snapped up as I emerged from the flames. "You again." He growled and swiped at me with his claws.

I stopped barely ten feet from him. Even with Leera's magic buzzing through my veins, I wasn't invincible, and it would wear off soon enough. Even now, I could feel it fading away. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it now.

Before I could take more than a step forward, shouts came from beyond the flames—no doubt the frantic miners trying to save their livelihood. Fire elents would be among their number, and multiple elents could probably stop the fire. Not in time, though. A dragon's claws acted quickly.

The katalni reared on his hind legs and punched a hole in the ceiling. "Go, all of you. I'll deal with the blood traitor myself."

The dragons took off, widening the hole in the ceiling and sending down chunks of flaming timber. I narrowly dodged one of the pieces. Heart pounding in my ears, I sprinted toward the gardener's daughter.

The katalni hissed, falling back to all fours and summoning a wall of fire between us. Whether it was due to my failing strength or the katalni's rekindled determination, the flames seared my skin. Gasping, I stumbled back and drew my wand. I desperately sketched a rune in the air to push the flames away. They didn't even budge.

He laughed. "I am one hundred and twenty-six years old, hatchling. Your magic is no match for mine."

The flames press in closer, until all I could see was red. I tried to leap through them in one fell swoop, but they had a physical substance to them that pushed me back while the heat turned my scales black.

"Even you can burn to death given enough time." The katalni sighed as more shouting came from the direction of the front doors. "Unfortunately, my time here is limited. I leave you to the other two-legs." He leapt into the air and clawed his way through the ceiling.

I ran to the gardener's daughter as the flames closed in. Now the katalni was gone, it felt like a normal fire. Pain and fear shook my hand until I struggled to draw a rune, but I managed to push the flames back from us. Barely. I wouldn't be able to keep it up for long.

Luckily, I didn't have to. A team of elents cleared a channel through the flames. They stopped feet from me, all of them wide-eyed.

"Paltor!"

"Careful, she's got a kid."

Even with Leera's extra energy, my limbs were growing heavy from the task of keeping the flames back. With the elents managing the fire, I cautiously tried stopping the spell. The fire stayed where it was, maintained at bay by the elents.

I raised my hands in surrender. "I didn't start the fire. Please, just let me go." I backed toward the rear doors.

They all fired spells at me at once, and everything went dark.

"She still alive," a man was saying.

"After nine fire spells to the chest?"

My hands and feet were tied, and I was flat on my back on something hard, something that was moving. The air was stale, and I felt it rebounding off something to gust in my face. I opened my eyes to see wooden boards inches from my face. They were all around me, pressing in tight. I was in a coffin.

"Yeah, it's some kind of record. But no one could survive this, especially not a half fire elent. They hate water, you know," the first man said.

I heard water in the background and the sounds of my coffin being dragged over wood. The coffin dropped. It hit something and continued sinking. Water squirted through gaps between boards. They'd dropped me in water. I was going to drown.

I pulled at the ropes around my wrists, kicked at the end of the coffin, slammed my fists into the lid. Water was up to my chin and rising fast.

"[Leera?]" I shouted in my mind and outside it at the same time. I could barely feel our bond, and I didn't even know if I'd managed to send a message.

There was no reply. I fought harder to crack the boards. They were too solid. The water was over my face. I lunged forward to get a breath of air before pounding the wood again. This couldn't be happening. Of all the ways I'd thought I would die, drowning in a coffin wasn't it.

And to top it all off, my last living act would be to drag Leera into the grave with me. I should've listened. For once in my life, I should've listened. I wished I could've told her exactly how sorry I was.