I silently glided higher, keeping them in view, watching them intently. I’d have to find some way to get Koar in private and find out what Saldrea knew.
For now… Izzy was safe, far from campus.
But if Saldrea knew about this shifter…
All bets were off.
KOARTHANDRIS
I’d withstoodthe humiliation of Saldrea’s friends and they’d eventually tired of trying to rouse me. Little in this world stimulated me in that way anymore.
And after they’d finished with me, they’d gone back to thinking of ways to torment Izzy, which had led back to the reason I’d been summoned in the first place.
“Can you control your powers as well as you do your arousal?” Saldrea had asked. “How… specific can you get with your destruction?”
Dragons were beings of earth, fire, and air. Our scales were harder than steel or stone, our breath hotter than an inferno, and our wings able to propel us with stunning speed through the skies. Yet individual dragons also possessed other powers related to those three elements. My specialty was raw destruction. I could do it in several ways.
First, I could superheat my very scales — in dragon form only — and release a ring of searing flames around me. It wasn’t easy to regulate. I could control how far the blaze went, but otherwise everything in that radius would burn.
Second, as a dragon or in this form, I could release all control and fly into a bloodlust in battle, using any weapon, including claws and teeth to destroy my enemies. I had little to no control of myself in that vicious state.
Third, in any form, I could unleash a controlled explosive burst, with which I could be very precise. I determined exactly how large or small or exact I wished this destructive force to be. The only problem was, the more I compressed and formed it, the greater the toll on myself.
“I could incinerate a single hair on your head without harming the others,” I’d boasted. I’d done it once before, even if I’d been laid up for a couple hours from the strain of such extreme precision.
Saldrea had smiled the cat-like grin she wore whenever she was about to do something devilish and had told me to follow her.
We’d left her residence and now made our way across campus, toward the lesser residence.
Since I was always on high alert, I sensed a strong spirit above us. Luckily, I recognized the blazing spirit as Vyns’ and thought nothing of it.
Saldrea swiped her palm-mark ID over the dorm access and the door opened. Saldrea had unlimited access to the campus, includingotherpeople’s rooms.
We made our way up to the fourth floor and Izzy’s room. Another swipe got us access and the girls rushed in, going to work.
They’d told me a bit of the plan on the way over, though they didn’t have much of one. Essentially, they’d investigate to see if they could find anything on Izzy, and once they’d done their thing I’d destroy her room so she’d be forced to live elsewhere.
The ladies trashed the place, filled with a vicious resentmentI didn’t fully understand. It seemed to go beyond Izzy’s one-time insult to Saldrea, almost as if they were envious of her. If so, I had no idea why. Still, the girls tore up Izzy’s clothes and bed, smashed her desk and devices, and left the room in ruins.
While they had their fun, I wandered, gleaning what I could about this woman, with whom Vyns seemed obsessed. What was it about her which had so captivated my friend? He’d said her spirit called to him. It was a thing among seraphim. And yes, Izzy had a rather stunning spirit for a nymph, but still…
I picked up a notebook and opened it, looking at the delicate scrawls within.
Something about her handwriting caught my attention. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t say from where. It tickled the back of my brain, seeking some long-forgotten memory, niggling and tormenting me to the point that I kept the little book, slipping it in my pocket to investigate later.
And when the girls had had their fun, they left and I did my thing, focusing my power to incinerate Izzy’s room. It took only an instant, leaving the walls bare and scorched, the window on the far side blasted away, an empty shell.
Saldrea laughed and clapped.
I sighed. I had no love for Izzy, but still… No one deserved this.
My conscience whispered,this is wrong, as it had so many times before, when Saldrea had used me to hurt her foes. I’d even killed for her.
The stains of those actions stayed with me.
This wasn’t right.
But what else was I to do?
