The golden knight is momentarily shocked by my tone, and before he can recover from the insult to his station, I go right up to the dragon’s head, by his jaws full of razor-sharp teeth and his fire-breathing nostrils.
The creature does what he can to keep track of me, but he’s obviously at the very end of his strength. Kneeling down, I take a deep breath… and stare directly into its eyes—
I suck in a gasp and only have a split second to note the oblong pupils before I’m swept into his suffering. The pain in my side and left arm is intolerable and my breathing becomes labored, but there are further injuries. And then I see and feel the death, and it is awful. The dragon suffers all night long and is toyed with by nuisance predators before his heart finally stops as dawn’s light pours over his broken body.
A ragged grunt is released from the snout, as if my commiseration brings some relief—
My body jerks back, and for a second, I think it’s a spasm from what I’m feeling. But then the knight tries to take both of my arms—
“Unhand me!”
As I yank out of his hold, my savior jumps back and focuses downward. To my shock, I see my little knife in my grip—an absurd show of self-defense against his armor and his greater power, but I’m desperate and that gives me an edge.
“Go,” I order him over the din of the Fulcrum. “I am nothing to you—leave!”
“You are bleeding!”
Ignoring the man, I kneel once again by the dragon. “I’m going to take care of you. Trust me.”
The beast blinks, the dual sets of lids crisscrossing vertically.
The pulsing vein that runs up the side of the throat is hard to find because the heart rate is so slow and I’m not sure of his anatomy. But I locate it, and keep our stares locked as I lean forward.
I put the tip of my knife to the pattern of scales that are so much softer on the underside of the massive chin.
“I’m coming in after you,” I vow. “I’m not going to let you go and I’m not going to lose you.”
Even though I’ve never actually tried to resurrect an animal before.
Taking my own deep breath, I lock my jaw—
With a hard jab, I drive my knife into its throat, right at the vein. The dragon barely flinches, and as its purple blood floods my hand, warm and slick, I lower myself until we are eye to eye, nearly nose to nose. The head is almost the size of my entire body.
As I stare into its soul, what I foresee changes. The light of dawn around the body at the moment of death gets sucked down into the horizon, and replaced by a night sky full of stars. They pinwheel in a fat circle, that strange, new, brightest one the only celestial light that stays put. And then there is the gloaming, the very last of the sunset’s bloom of peach and pink and orange flaring at the west—
We are here, in this moment.
Right now—
I take another deep breath, and my skin tightens as if my skeleton and muscles are expanding, an anticipation growing inside of me like I’m about to leap.
It has to be just right. A second before, a second after, and this illicit energy I somehow command will not work—
There’s a great burst of illumination and the dragon is suddenly bathed in a mirroring effect that erupts from his body, coating the limbs, the wings, the barbed back and tail. It’s the life force within him, finding physical expression before death ushers in its departure.
They say there is no magic left in Anathos. That’s a lie. Life is magic—
Now.
Catching my breath, I make the sign of the crescent moon and then I dive into the pool of energy headfirst. The shock is always new, no matter how many times I do this, both icy cold and burning hot. For reasons I’ve never understood, I’m a magnet for the life force; it attaches to me as I swim through the shimmer, heading for the source of the wellspring.
In the center of the dragon’s chest, where his heart is, a breaching has occurred, and as I penetrate the leak with my body, everything that has escaped comes with me.
Now I am in thekwale, or the sacred interior space where the soul resides. I’m standing on a slick, yet solid grounding, and I look around as the iridescent level at my feet begins to rise, everything that has followed me back in returning to where it’s been held—
There’s the tear. Up at the top of thekwale, a breaching that reflects the mortal injury that has occurred, and I extend my hand up. I cannot comprehend how I do what I do, where the gift comes from, or why I’ve always knownmy role, but as I present my palm to the ragged hole, it seals up so that there’s only enough of an aperture for the soul to continue to come home.
The level of the silvery effect ascends my body, coming to my knees, then my hips, my waist, and higher still… reaching my chest, my throat, my chin. I always feel a panic as my mouth and nose are covered, though I’m not breathing in this other realm. I’m my own energy and nothing more here. My extraction occurs when the vessel is full, pressure building until I’m expelled as the interloper I am, my exit sealing the hole in my wake—
