Elemental Shadowed by Helen Scott

29

Tessa

We had said goodbye to the queen and her advisers, and the castle guard had offered to escort us to the portal chamber, but my guys had declined. On the way there we had decided that I needed to get my dragon back before we went anywhere. So, we were taking a detour to the outer areas of the palace.

The fresh air filled my lungs as we ducked out into the open courtyard. My bangle was securely in hand and I was ready to get this dragon and get out of Atlantis. The damn realm had tried to kill me more times than not, so I was good with trying my welcome elsewhere.

"Here, dragon, dragon," I called quietly.

Kai snorted behind me. "Like a caretaker is going to respond to that."

"You don't know anything about him. I held him when he was born, I think that entitles me to call to him any way I want, don't you?" I said, my tone sharp.

"Damn, I thought after parading around naked you might have calmed down. Guess not," Kai mumbled.

I knew he wanted a reaction from me, but I wasn’t willing to give it, so I just ignored him and carried on. As I meandered through the trees I felt like I was being watched, but I wasn't sure whether it was just by my guys or something or someone else.

"Is there a fountain or pool anywhere around here?" I asked Finn.

He simply nodded and led the way. As soon as I could hear the water falling I motioned for them to wait there, which earned me some glares and a roll of Kai's eyes. I ignored them and headed toward the noise, hoping that my instincts wouldn't be wrong.

A large brass fountain rose out of the ground. The base was a wide pool that ran along the wall of the garden in a soft arc. On the wall there were two brass dolphins and a manta ray. The dolphins were spraying water toward each other while the ray just looked majestic. It encompassed what I'd learned of Atlantis quite well. Playful but regal.

As I approached, I heard splashing that didn't sound like it was coming from the fountain itself. When I looked down into the pool of water there was my little dragon, his blue scales shimmering in the sunlight. Relief overwhelmed me as he dove to the bottom corner and came back up with the Atlantis stone. I wanted to shout with joy, but I didn't want to draw any attention to us, so instead, I just held my hand out.

"Thank you for taking care of that for me," I said quietly as the dragon dropped it into my hand. "We are going on a trip to Hyperborea. I don't know if you understand what that means, and I don't know if you should come with me, but if you would like to join us we are leaving now."

"Is she talking to it?" I heard Dres whisper behind me. "Fascinating."

Without any hesitation or any sort of warning the dragon darted from the water and flew into me, disappearing as it did so. I felt the band on my arm warm and the tattoo spread over my skin. Waves, claws, and scales this time, as though the dragon was trying to warn people not to mess with me.

I tried to hide my smile, enjoying the fluttering sensation in me as the dragon apparently found somewhere to rest. The cool, refreshing sensation spread over my body once it was settled, and when I turned back to face my guys, Dres and Kai were standing there with their eyes bugging out of their heads, while Finn and Griff were smiling with joy, seeming to understand my tenuous connection to the creature more than the others.

"Shall we?" I asked with a grin, happy to have my dragon back where he belonged.

Somehow now that we were together again, I felt... more. More at peace with myself. Like I was almost whole again, for the first time in, well, ever. It was as though the dragon was awakening a part of my heart that I had locked away years ago when I was just a child. My gaze drifted over the men I was following. I wasn't sure where they fit in, but I was anxious to find out.

The portal room was empty, just as we had requested, and as Dres tossed something into the air a giant window filled with what looked like clouds appeared. It was different from the one I'd seen when we came to Atlantis, but then I supposed that should be expected, we were going to a different place after all. It made me wonder what the portal to earth looked like though. Was it a combination of all the others since, from my understanding, it had elements of each realm? Or did it look sad and gray because there was no magic? Whatever it was, I hoped one day I would get to find out.

"Will you take my hand? I don't want you getting lost again, not when the country is at war," Dress said.

"That'll keep me with you?" I asked, suddenly feeling unsure after the reminder of my last portal trip.

"Yes. In fact, it would be a good idea if we all joined hands to prevent any of the shenanigans that happened last time," Dres suggested as he looked at the others.

The guys nodded. They had all picked up bags and various other items that they were carrying what they needed in. I grabbed my pack from where it was resting against the wall and took Dres' hand. It was no surprise that Griff was on my other side, with Finn next to him and Kai on the other side of Dres.

Once we all had a tight grip on our belongings and each other, Dres led the way into the portal. It was lucky that it was so wide, otherwise Kai would have either had to go first or moved to take Finn's other hand. I knew they all liked each other, were best friends, as close as guys got without actually being brothers, but they each had their own favorite person, that much was obvious. For Kai it was Dres, and vice versa.

When I felt Dres tug on my hand, I had to fight not to hold my breath as I walked into the wall of cloud or fog or whatever it was. I wasn't sure what I was braced for, but I didn't expect to step into a literal cloud.

It looked like a loading screen on a video game or something. When I tried to move I found myself locked, my body unresponsive as I tried to say something to Dres.

The sensation of smacking into a wall overwhelmed me, and my whole body hurt as I bounced off something. I felt like one of those people who doesn't see a glass door and just barrels into it, except it wasn't just me, if the sudden jerks on my hands were anything to go by. I tightened my grip, determined not to be separated from them again, and tried to will myself to be with them as much as possible.

Breathing was starting to become a concern as the cloud didn't let up and my body wasn't responding to my normal needs or actions. When everything seemed to tilt and shift, I had to hope that we were there, because I was starting to feel like I was suffocating.

Wind brushed against my face, and I took a deep shuddering breath, happy to have my senses back. My feet were on the ground once again, which I was more than a little thankful for. As the wind entered my lungs though, I realized that it wasn't clouds we were passing through but smoke. I couldn't help but cough as the particulate seemed to get stuck in the back of my throat.

When the wind gusted again, the smoke cleared a little and I found that we were in a frozen countryside. Dead brown grass and rocks were under my feet as I straightened from my coughing fit, and that was most of what I could see for miles. The sharp peaks of mountains seemed to rise out of the nothingness around us. The longer I looked the more I realized we were on top of a hill. There was a small farmhouse in one direction and the smoke was coming from the other direction.

"We couldn't portal to the castle. My guess is the queen has blocked things off," Dres said.

"Where are we?" I asked, turning to face my stoic warrior.

"That is my childhood home." He turned and pointed at the farmhouse. "I thought we could gather ourselves here and then try and get to the founding families."

I nodded. "Let's go." I didn't like the smoke that seemed to be swirling toward us any more than I had liked showing up at the wrong portal in Atlantis.

We set off over the snow-covered fields and down the hill until we were standing in front of a small cottage. The building we had been able to see from the top of the hill was actually the barn. The cottage was less than half the size and the thatched roof came down from the top all the way to about two feet off the ground. There were small slats that were windows on each side of the wooden door, but where I would have expected some kind of light shining out from inside, there was nothing.

"Dres..." I whispered my companion's name, unsure what to say or how to vocalize the dread that was pooling in my stomach.

It seemed like the others sensed it as well because no one was making a move toward the door, although that could also have something to do with the streak of black paint that had been splashed across it. There was no smoke coming from the chimney or any kind of indication that the house was occupied.

After a while, Dres seemed to steel himself and walked forward to knock on the door. I couldn't help but think it was an odd gesture given what he'd said about his people being able to read any and everyone's minds.

The door swung open and the scent of death gusted out. I covered my nose and watched as Dres walked in.

The inside was small, nothing special, just a working family's home. A fire pit sat in the middle of the room with a spit over it and herbs hanging from the ceiling around the chimney opening. There was one door in the back and a ladder that went up to a loft area.

Dres moved with purpose toward the door, but when his hand landed on the doorknob, I saw him hesitate. We all knew what was going to be behind it from the smell, and I wished he wouldn't open it, but we all knew he would.

He squared his shoulders and tightened his hand around the door knob, his knuckles turned white for a moment before the door swung open. The smell overwhelmed us again, and I had to fight the need to retch. The psychic warrior in front of me took one step and fell to his knees.

As much as I wanted to turn and run the other way I couldn't. There were some things that you couldn't outrun. This was one of them.

Quietly, I moved toward him, my eyes not making sense of the room in front of me at first, but then after looking a second longer, I wished they hadn't. The bodies were clearly a few days to a week old, having started to decompose.

From what I could tell, the man, who I assumed was Dres' father, had been killed in his sleep, his throat cut, with the spray of blood decorating the surrounding area. Dres' mother must have woken up because she was half out of bed. Her nightgown, which was cream in parts, was mostly a dull reddish brown from where the blood had dried on it after she met her own end.

There was nothing poetic about what was in front of us, nothing that would do Dres any good to look at, only death and sorrow. I squatted in front of him and hoped I had enough strength to get him to move.

"Dresden, come with me," I said. My voice was soft but unyielding. I could sense that, at that moment, he needed a firm hand or he was going to lose it. His dark eyes blinked at me without a shred of recognition in them. "Come on, let's go." I took his hand and tried to haul him upward.

The others stepped forward to help, but it was too late.

Dres screamed in my face.

I couldn't tell whether he was saying words or not, somehow I doubted it. This was a scream of anguish, of grief. It was the sound of a child's heart breaking. The only problem was that he wasn't a child. He was a warrior who could control the wind itself.

When he lashed out, I took the brunt of it. He sent me flying backward into the wall of the cottage, only the wall wasn't there anymore. The entire cottage was gone, blown apart like a bomb had gone off.

I flew through the air for longer than I would have thought possible, but then this was magic that we were dealing with. My scream was wrenched out of me as I went. The ground came up to meet me like a truck crashing into me.

The air rushed out of my lungs and I was left on the ground gasping, my mouth opening and closing as I tried to fill my lungs even though they weren't working. My vision faded around the edges as pain overwhelmed my body.

Every scrape and bruise from the last few months seemed to echo into existence inside me. As the darkness overwhelmed me the last thing I saw was a face peering over me that looked both familiar and strange all at once. It was one I didn't fully recognize, surrounded by gray and white armor glinting in the weak sunlight.

Concern filled eyes that I couldn't make sense of before I felt arms moving under me. As he lifted me I cried out in pain and the darkness finally overwhelmed me.