Chapter 29: Visions & Soup

Chapter 29: Visions & Soup Suddenly, there was a roar from above and a white comet streaked down into the hole and towards the lava. The dragon spiraled down, swept around Bran in a circle and pushed the lava away. Misha snarled at it then turned his attention to Bran. His eyes were half open but there didn’t look to be anyone home. Misha nudged him with his nose and Bran moaned a little but didn’t wake. Not good, but not as bad as it could be, Misha thought to himself. He looked around. There was a spiky tree made of purple crystals just a few feet away. Out in the real world, it would probably be a good tourist destination to take photos but here it just radiated malice. In the ground and walls not far away were shards of the same crystal buried deep into the surface. The tree wasn’t moving now but Misha concluded that it was definitely dangerous. He had to get Bran out of here. Misha was still not all that familiar with this draconic body, but he had confidence that he could at least carry Bran with his paws as long as he used both and was careful about it. As for the sword... Bran didn’t want Misha touching it, didn’t even want him touching its case when it was inside, but what choice did Misha have right now? He knew that he had to get Bran out of there and the sword seemed really important to him, so it had to come too. Misha made up his mind and lowered his head toward the sword. He used his tongue to get one side up then carefully brought his teeth together to hold it gingerly between them. Images flooded the dragon’s mind. Most were chaotic, too difficult to decipher in the brief moment Misha saw them, but some were not. A child. Another. Yet another. He saw dozens of children, all of varying ages, gender, colourations, everything. But there was one thing that united them all, that made it clear they were all connected: that sullen expression on their face, the same sullen expression Misha often spotted on Bran’s face during moments of quiet. It made his heart ache for some reason. "...Misha?" Bran’s weak voice instantly returned Misha to the present. He shook his head then nuzzled Bran’s cheek to tell him he was okay. Bran was awake but still looked out of it, so Misha resolved to go ahead with the paw grabbing plan. Carefully, or as carefully as one can be with five sharp claws, Misha stretched both his paws around Bran’s sides and held him against his chest. Then he adjusted the sword in his mouth. He could feel one side nick the corner of his mouth. "Misha..." Bran’s voice sounded sharper this time and the dragon looked around to see that the crystal tree was growing again. He tensed, slowly edging backwards as the crystals grew larger. Suddenly, sharp shards erupted from the base of the tree. Misha turns his body to shield Bran while also swinging the blade in his mouth. For once having an impossibly long and flexible body came in handy. Somehow, Misha managed to protect Bran from harm and only got a few cuts here and there from the volley. "Let’s go," Bran said weakly, patting one of Misha’s claws. Earlier Misha would have immediately obeyed, but right now, there was a dark cloud brewing in his mind that made him deaf to everything else other than that voice. Give me blood. Misha coiled, snake-like then, when the next volley of crystal shards burst from the tree, he, while still holding Bran tight, shot up like a spring, coasted a moment in the air, then spiraled toward the tree, sword now shifted in his mouth to point forward. The tree shattered as the sword drilled into it and so did the ground beneath it. Purple grains of dust puffed up in the air then rained down onto the lava. When they touched, the dust disappeared, and the lava’s angry red glow simmered down. -- "When did you figure out how to fly?" "On the way." You were sitting in bed, the proper bed in your old bedroom while I gave you a bowl of medicinal soup. You’d given me the recipe earlier and I’d just finished making it. We didn’t have exactly everything listed in the recipe, so I had to substitute some things and go out to get some more later. You took a sip of the soup. "It’s good," you said. I didn’t reply. I knew that couldn’t be true, I’d taken a sip earlier. You finished the whole bowl and set it aside. "What’s wrong?" you asked. I shook my head. "Nothing." "I thought you did pretty well today," you said. "You transformed into a dragon on your own and learned how to fly. That’s pretty impressive." I stared at my feet. A moment passed. "...Misha-" "You thought, you thought you could just send me away then... then go off on your own to..." Frustrated tears filled my eyes. I rubbed them away. "What...?" For a moment you looked at me, confused, then you understood. "Misha," you said, reaching for me. I stepped away from the bed so you leaned over and took my hands and pulled me closer. "Misha, listen to me. I wasn’t planning on dying. Yes, I’m unwell, but I wasn’t planning on just... The crystals, you saw them right? The purple ones?" I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. "I’ve never seen ones like that before. Normally, once you find the body of the spell, you just destroy it, and that’s it. But this time when I broke those purple crystals they grew back and their energy ended up resonating with the sword. That’s why I’m like this." "But... why?" Bran chuckled. "Evil knows evil, I guess. I really don’t know." "Really?" I asked. I wasn’t asking about the crystals and you knew it. "Really," you said. "I’m not the kind of person to take things lying down." Your face and lips were pale and there were still red marks under your eyes, but you already looked better than when I found you in the lava pit. I nodded. "C’mere." Before I could react, you’d pulled me closer so that I was sitting on the bed next to you. Then you put an arm around me and embraced me so that my head rested in the crook of your shoulder. "I made a mistake today," you said quietly by my ear. "I shouldn’t have sent you away. I thought it was for your own good, but... I won’t do it again." I put my arms around you and nodded, hoping you wouldn’t notice the tears coming from my eyes. How long had it been since I’d cried like this in front of someone else? Cried like a little kid? Probably not since I’d been a kid or since my mum left. I felt embarrassed, but also not as embarrassed as I thought I would be. Maybe because it was you. "Feeling better?" you asked. I pulled back and quickly rubbed my face. "Yeah." "Alright, open your mouth." "Eh-waugh!" Despite being unwell, you had an easy time holding my head and forcing my mouth open. For a moment I felt like a dog who’d accidentally walked into a veterinarian’s office. You rotated my head left and right then finally let go. "It shouldn’t leave a scar," you said. "But I’ll see if I still have some cream. If not, I’ll make up some more." I rubbed the side of my mouth self-consciously. I’d actually totally forgotten about the cut there from the sword. To save myself some face, I took the bowl and ladled out another lot then gave it to you. "So, what happened then in this case?" I asked. You raised an eyebrow. "Case?" "Yeah, with Coral and Melody and all that." You drank half of the bowl, looking amused. "I suppose you could call it a case. Well, in this case, I’m going to have to speculate about some things, but what I think happened was Coral had some kind of existing problem that she couldn’t solve then when she came into contact with the spell in that book’s name, it... infected her and made her think that fulfilling the requirements of the spell would solve her own problem." "So... the person who created the spell basically hijacked her anxiety to try to fulfill their own goal of finding this book?" "It’s the only thing that I can think of that makes sense. Coral clearly doesn’t care about the supernatural or is superstitious, we’ve been to her home and there was nothing like that there, yet why would she want to find this book? Plus-" "Her problem is that she has a crush on Melody," I finished. You looked at me a moment, both surprised and impressed. "You guessed that too then?" I scratched the back of my head. "I, uh, have experience crushing on a best friend and all the extra worries that brings." "Ah."