Serial Saturday: "Clan of Outcasts" Season 3, Part 33 "Lady Two-Bloods"

Part 33

"Lady Two-Bloods"

Three years prior...

Memories swirled in flares of blue around her... The sight of Jaran and Korsan watching her with growing concern soon engulfed by the light of the sun, the colors of everything leaping out so brilliantly that the whole world seemed hazy... she'd never noticed the taste of the air before, nor the feel of every single thread in her dress, nor even the incessant clamor of nature surrounding them, closing in on them... She couldn't feel her legs... she vaguely recalled stammering out the word "Help..."

And the next thing she knew, everything vanished in a wave of blue light, and a sudden fatigue settled into her whole body. Erlis did something she hadn't done in a long time: she caved. She withdrew into herself, the part that was still a dragon on the inside. 

The outside, she reasoned with herself, that was where the Elvish blood is changing me, altering me first in appearance, but the more it seeps in, the more it changes... When my heart no longer beats with Dragon blood, will I be cured of my Gift, or will it replace the healer's touch with something more akin to its own nature?

She hadn't quite reasoned it out before she regained consciousness, and everything she experienced in her dream faded to the deepest recesses of her mind from whence they came. It was another two days still until she had enough strength to walk, but as soon as she could, there was only one place Erlis wanted to be, and one person she needed to talk to.

Tristan, the redheaded wind-puller Velora had recruited to her Forest Rangers, snapped to attention when the tall, black-robed woman stormed toward the cluster of buildings forming the Ranger Service Head Offices.
"Hello, Lady Erlis! To what do we owe the--"
"Velora!" Erlis roared with dragonish fury. "We need to talk!"

Tristan raised his hands, and a thick gust of wind blew Erlis' hair back from her face. "Please wait a moment, while I check to see if the Warden is taking visitors--"
"She's taking me!" Erlis snarled, shrugging off the gust of wind and stepping forward. The rebounding blast of air pushed Tristan back a few paces, and blew the door of Velora's office open. Erlis strode right inside.

Velora had been staring at a large map of the forest posted on the wall. When Erlis walked in, she only had time to turn around before the imposing woman had her face just inches from Velora's own.
"This is your fault!" Erlis thundered. "You let them change me! You're the reason I'm sick!"

Velora's face tightened, and her gaze hardened in the face of this fury. "I seem to recall you being fatigued by the action of getting out of bed at one point--and yet you seem to have made it all the way here from the White Castle without much effort. It certainly looks like the remedy worked."

"Remedy, my eye!" Erlis backed off, only to pace the room in front of Velora, who sank into the chair standing behind her desk with all the decorum of a court justice. "That was no remedy... just trading one internal conflict for another!" She bared her teeth and ran her hands over her arms. "Ever since Jade took Troy back to Justicia, I thought I'd gotten a handle on it..." she said with a shudder. "I had spent all my life wearing ugly scales, I didn't want to return to that if I could help it..." Her lips twitched into a sneer. "But the trouble was, I couldn't help it. Every time I healed someone, every time I used my Gift, there it was, the sleeping dragon within, pushing and yearning and stretching to burst out to the forefront again."

Velora yawned and wriggled her head. Fur broke out over her face, and her mouth and nose elongated while her ears shifted upward to two furry points at the top of her head. The wolf-head nodded to the troubled healer and with another shake, Velora shifted back into herself to speak.
"A little shifting never hurt anyone of us," she remarked. "Why not just let the dragon loose for a bit, every once in a while?"

"Because I can't!" Erlis retorted. "Don't you understand? Every time I've been a dragon, I've destroyed something, killed people. At least as a half-dragon I was still human-sized--but the longer I keep using the healing factor of the Dragon's Blood, without shifting into a dragon, the harder it is to stop it from taking over completely." She folded her arms around herself, reaching up to fidget with the smooth, glowing blue stone hanging around her neck. "I can't ever let even one of the scales show, or the rest of them will follow."

Velora raised an eyebrow. "I still don't see why you're so afraid of it--"

"I'm not afraid!" Erlis came to lean her hands upon the desk between them. Her eyes flamed with fury. "You don't know what it was like to live for so long with people shunning you for the way that half your body looked so grotesque. Maybe I don't have that anymore, as bad as it was, but now..." she pulled her hair back from her face in a sweeping motion of her hands, "How do you expect me to explain this?"

Velora stared at Erlis' earlobes, the pink fleshy disks--except instead of being rounded oblong shapes, the tops of her ears had warped a little, coming to a very fine point at the top. While it wasn't too perceptible now, something about Erlis' reaction told Velora that it was only going to get worse.
In fact, she knew how much "worse" it was going to get. Low Prince Spruce had informed her as much.
She hedged her bets with a shrug. "Well, what do you want me to say?" she replied to Erlis' question flippantly.

"The truth, Velora!" Erlis emphasized. "I know that you know more. Tell me!"

Velora let out a long sigh. She knew that Tristan would keep everyone enough of a distance away that they didn't have to worry about prying ears--new recruits could always be counted on to make those types of extreme decisions when it came to security, and right now, she didn't find it as annoying as she usually did.

"Fine!" She snapped. "Sit down, though. My neck is getting sore."

Erlis sat stiffly in the chair.

Velora huffed once more, then said, "The truth is... It's not just called an Elvish cure because it came from the Elves... The truth is," she finally met Erlis' gaze, with a somber face. "The blood that I borrowed wasn't just for testing. They mixed it, combined some of your blood with Elvish blood to make the cure."

Erlis didn't relax, and her gaze didn't waver. "And then what? I inject myself with Elvish blood, and what is it actually doing to me?"

Velora struggled to let the words out. "They found that nothing else had any effect, that the Dragon's Blood would just eradicate any other substance... Except the Elf-blood. When they tried to mix Elvish blood with Dragon Blood, diluted by your own blood as it was, the Elvish blood... overtook it. Broke down the Dragon Blood until all that remained was Elvish blood."

Silence reigned in the small cabin. Finally, Erlis caught her breath. "So that's it, then," she whispered. "I'm becoming one of them."

"It's not an instantaneous process," Velora admitted, "and it isn't inevitable either. From what I could understand in the way my contact explained it, as long as you keep healing, the Elvish blood can't take hold, and the Dragon's Blood remains as strong as ever, and you'll still have to eventually deal with shifting into a dragon when the compulsion gets too strong to resist. However, you can rid yourself of the dragon issue altogether if you refrain from healing--but that will also allow the Elvish blood to take over inside your body, and..." she shrugged and dropped her gaze. "And yeah, you'll just become more and more like them until you'll be virtually indistinguishable from them."

Erlis pursed her lips tightly and stared out the window beside her. "So," she murmured slowly. "That is the diabolical exchange: continue using the Gift I've been given, and live in fear that one day I will not be able to restrain the monstrosity and woe betide anyone nearby when that happens... or become an Elf, and never access my Gift again." She gave an agonized grimace at the idea.

Velora nodded. "That's about the size of it. I'm sorry that my efforts to help have removed any chance of you getting back to normal."

Erlis gave a wry snort. "We ceased to be normal when we first manifested our Gifts, young Wolf."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This is it. My worst nightmare become my reality.

I thought I could handle it. I could cover the distance between the Roque and the cove much faster as a dragon, and I could carry my friends to safety. Just once, that would be enough. A second time, perhaps--but only briefly, and with a clear agenda in sight.
Then the change happened all on its own, without any of my doing.

The Dark Man's voice slipped into my psyche, telling me that there was danger coming and that the only way to stop it was to shift into a dragon. I should have known better, should have fought harder--but there was no stopping it. Once the suggestion landed, the change happened like a reflex. It was supposed to be bound to my own will, as Troy had promised me... but now the dragon responded to his will.

I took off into the air. Perhaps if I kept him busy with my activity as I swooped and dived, I could distract him from causing trouble.

His influence held tight. A dark cloud wrapped around him as the army of crows descended, and he wasn't there anymore. It reminded me of how Troy moved, through shadows--Trevon is a Shadow? But neither he nor Mallory were Abnormals at all--so how could Mallory reproduce Gifts, and Trevon engage in shadow-jumping?

I needed to keep an eye on him, for as long as I didn't have any compulsion to attack my friends at The Roque. I watched him vanish and reappear over the length of the city ruins, running from one end to the other.
"Perhaps you might know where the Key is?" his voice murmured over my thoughts, as his influence slid deeper into my mind. "It's got to be buried somewhere nearby, hasn't it? Someone found it, and dropped it..."

I turned away from him, lest he pull the memories from my mind.

"I am here, brother!" called a cold, imperious voice, also in my mind. At once I knew who it was: the Crow Queen herself, amid the cloud of feathers and squawking and talons. "Where are you?"
"Searching for the Key, dear sister," Trevon responded. "Your throne is almost ready."
"Never mind that, darling," she crooned in a voice that made my skin crawl and my bones ache. "Come and see what I see."

Trevon shadow-jumped again, to a high tower on the edge of the city, overlooking the chaotic battlefield. The others had arrived! How many, though? Had Polaris brought them all? I saw Jaran and Beren--my eyes immediately searched for Zayra, hoping that she had kept the good sense not to come with them, since after all she was the one who bore the--

Oh no; what have I done?

"Interesting..." murmured Mallory, as a wicked smile broke over her face. Her influence gently shifted into control of the dragon--perhaps this was a flaw hidden within my abilities, carried over from when Zayra tried to use my blood to heal herself. Perhaps a little bit of Zayra's power-hungry Gift had seeped into me, so that the Dragon's Blood in me reached out for whoever had the most power. What did that say about the magnitude of Mallory's capacity?

I felt her pushing my instincts, and there was nothing I could do about it.

"The Key is with HER," Mallory informed Trevon, indicating the Princess. I saw Lizeth and Nyella nearby, each equipped with a supply of the vials Lizeth had been developing. They had armed Zayra with vials of her own, and the three of them created a barrier of ever-changing Gifts.
"She must be separated from those two," Mallory decided. "Trevon, isolate her."

"As we must," Trevon answered, and he shadow-jumped down into the fray.

I became overwhelmed with the desire to fly low and rain fire upon the enemy--whose enemies? Mine? Surely not! Why did I suddenly hate these people I'd regarded as my friends?
"Do it!" Mallory thundered within my mind, and my jaws opened.

Flames lit the battlefield, sending Lizeth reeling backward. Nyella huddled close to Zayra, but Trevon's shadow-tendrils pulled her away. Lizeth tried taking a fire-quenching tincture, and split the flames to walk among them without getting hurt, but under Mallory's control, I ignited the inferno again and again, heaving like a bilious patient against every inclination. Zayra ducked and fumbled with her vials, trying to find one that would protect her. Mallory sent me swooping down toward her, although each time I could shift my claws just a little bit, so that I wouldn't actually catch her up like the Queen wanted me to.

A flash of fire darted toward my face. Damaris! The small Phoenix compared to my massive dragon size coached me through the same focus exercises Lizeth had taught him, back when he was under Troy's control. Brave soul! In the face of that true friendship, I regained a little bit of my own willpower and actually turned aside, to fly over the city--maybe even out to sea, in order to allow my friends to regroup and stall to find some way of breaking the influence of these wicked siblings. Lady Two-Bloods is no one's pet!

Velora's ultimatum to me returned in my memories, and I thought about the Elvish blood I still carried. Becoming an Elf for the rest of my life would be a small price to pay for evading Mallory's control, wouldn't it? I focused my mind on those moments when the Elvish influence seemed strongest--my appearance changing, my senses sharpening, my pale skin breaking out in a cobweb of those shimmering bloodlines...

I opened my eyes. I was high in the air, still a dragon, but the voices in my mind had faded somewhat. It worked! I flew back toward the battlefield, now in full control of myself. I would stem the tide and turn the battle in favor of my friends! I made it to the edge, where Zayra was beset on all sides by soldiers. She hardly had time to drink a vial, even if she knew what Gift it would unleash. I blasted a few soldiers with fire, but darted aside when the flames got too close to her.

Zayra called my name, and something glittering rose into the air, catching around my foreclaw. At the same moment, a stone almost as big as my dragon form sailed through the sky, headed right for me. I couldn't get out of the way, and the force of it knocked me clear back into the city ruins. I crashed through the shattered dome of a large building, hearing several dragon-sized bones crunch as I did so. A wave of pain rippled through me, immobilizing me there. Trevon's black cloud sizzled through the opening after me, but before he could do anything, a flare of blue light enveloped me, and I heard a commanding voice before everything faded into complete darkness:

"STOP!"

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Velora paced in front of the portal, watching the perimeter of the safe zone she'd set up around it.
Her pack was doing a marvelous job of keeping everyone and everything at bay. Once she reached this side of the battlefield, Zayra would have a clear path toward safety.

The white-haired ghost-man appeared in front of her, as she was mid-pivot.
"Any sign of the Princess yet?" asked Polaris.

Velora bared her teeth to avoid swearing in front of a Knight of Juros. "No!" She growled. "And Erlis just got blasted out of the sky--things are going very badly!"
"Keep faith, young Wolf!" Polaris attempted to hearten her. "Juros is fighting with us, we will not fail!"
"We'd better not!" Velora seethed.

A watch-wolf yapped, signaling that someone was coming. Velora drew her sword and braced herself.
A burly figure charged into the trees--but her wolves did not spring to attack him immediately, which told her everything she needed to know. Velora sniffed, recognizing the scent. "Raedyn?"

The burly man thundered toward her, with the pale, slight form of Zayra draped over his shoulder. She bled from a wound in her side, but as he neared, Velora saw that Raedyn's back fairly bristled with arrows.

This time, she did swear. "What the blazes do you mean, coming all this way like that?" She bellowed, as Polaris coached them all through the portal and into the underground passageway that would lead them right to the Roque.

Raedyn glanced over his shoulder at the collection of arrow shafts and shrugged. "I didn't feel a thing," was all he would say.

Polaris leaned forward eagerly as Zayra stirred. "Your Majesty, where is the Key?"
Sure enough, not even the golden chain graced the Princess' neck anymore.
Zayra let out a painful whimper and decided to forgo moving altogether. "I don't have it," she whispered softly. "But don't worry... It is safe..."

The three beleaguered warriors scurried through the tunnel, while overhead the battle between the Gifted and the Crow army raged on.

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