She chittered a whimper and the sound broke my heart. I threw my arms around her neck, between the horns to hold her.
“I just found my will to live and now…I don’t want to die,” I cried.
She nuzzled me with the smooth scales of her face.
Zephyros: Dismount your saddle, Delilah.
“What?” I asked, sudden realization of her plan piecing together in my mind at a flashing speed. “No! You’ll die; we are too far down!” She already knew. She had already chosen. This wasn’t a command, this… was a farewell.
Zephyros: There’s not much time; you have a destiny…and this is mine.
“NO!!!!!!” I cried, and she used her teeth to rip the bindings of the saddle, causing me to slide off and sit at the bottom of the orb.
She passed through the shield and disappeared into the lava.
The shield instantly shrank to my size, and I felt a sudden jolt. I looked beneath me and her head was pushing the orb upward as she swam through the thick liquid rock by thrusting her wings. She opened her mouth to screech from the pain of the burn, but she was only met with a mouthful of lava. She expelled it, shook her head, and continued to thrust.
“Zephyros, NOOOOOO, I’m so sorry.” I sobbed uncontrollably as I lay on the bottom of the orb, my hands rubbing her face through the shield. Her heartbeat beneath my palms had once felt like safety. Now it felt like a countdown.
I was not bonded to her in the way Aurelius was, but I had a general connection to all dragons. I could feel her pain, though probably only at a fraction, and even that was excruciating. I couldn’t imagine the agony she must have been in, and it was all my fault.
Her green and blue scales were blackening. Her wing beats were slower, and she groaned in her throat.
We had to be at least two thirds of the way up when my shield flickered, its integrity weakening. I knew Titus was struggling to keep it intact.
“Oh fuck. Fuck.” My voice cracked. “No. No. No!” Then I realized the reason we had slowed was because…oh god. My stomach churned in horror. The membrane on her wings had been completely eaten away by the lava. Slender bones covered in black, charred scales were all that remained of her once beautiful wings, and the sight was enough to make me wretch.
Zephyros: I’m sorry I can’t go any further, there’s nothing left of my wings.
Her voice agonized in my mind.
“No, We are going to get out of here, Zephyros don’t give up!!!”
And then silence.
“Zephyrosss, ZEPHYROS!!!!!!!” I wailed in agony. She was dying. The shield wasn’t going to hold much longer. This was it.
Titus’s shield was losing its integrity by the second, and Zephyros could no longer push me to the surface.
We were stuck, and we would most certainly be swallowed by Mount
Orid.
Then the entire realm shook again. “DELILAH!!!”
“TITUS!!!!!” I screamed, loud enough to shatter my own eardrum, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t an immortal. I didn’t have magic. All I had was…was…I felt my neck to make sure I still had them on.
“Breaking the chain and sending the pearls scattering will protect you from any type of magic temporarily.”The mermaids’ words echoed into my mind.
What’s more magical than an enchanted volcano?
Without another thought, I viciously yanked on the chain and the pearls fell—but they didn’t hit the ground. Instead, they suspended midair, then swirled around me, forming a new, stronger protective orb.
As soon as the pearls orb had taken shape, Titus’s shield shattered.
I yelled at the pearls. “NO, NO, save her too!!” But the pearls did not listen, as they were as inanimate as a regular piece ofjewelry—
K. ROSÉ
