Episode 1.7

Part of me knew why I would die, why my powers weren’t working. At least, I suspected the reason for it. Phoenix dragons were natural shapeshifters, capable of hiding among other species for centuries.

But it came with a downside. For other shifters, turning back to their natural form was as easy as falling asleep or even just losing concentration for a few moments. For us, returning to our natural form was just as difficult as leaving it. We could store magic in our second hearts and use it after we’d transformed, but that was no use for me. Shade used the last of my birth magic to turn me human, so I didn’t have any stored up.

If I could find another dragon or a magical artifact made with dragon magic, I might be able to transform. Then my draconic body could convert food and rest into magic all on its own. Unfortunately, finding a dragon was easier said than done. After the Draconic Plague, our numbers dwindled significantly. Even with Aster’s help, it would’ve been nearly impossible to find one before I froze to death.

But of course, I couldn’t ask him to stay. He was still crouching next to me like he hadn’t decided whether to stay or not, but I wouldn’t sway his decision. It wasn’t fair to him, not after how hard he’d tried to stop me from dragging us all here.

“Before you go, could you- uh tell me what happened after I jumped into the ravine? How did all of us end up going through the portal?”

“You… fell, and I climbed down to you. Izzy ran down the long way, and Vance chased after her. They both ran through the portal, but I didn’t realize until I picked you up and tried to carry you out of the ravine up the same path. The portal was invisible, sitting right in the middle of everything.” He stood, stretched, and started shuffling around me in a circle. “Oh, and I never said I was leaving. I just said I couldn’t carry you that long.”

I groaned. “What are you doing?”

“Making an igloo.” When he’d finished clearing a circle of snow, he started compacting lopsided blocks of snow as the foundation of his ‘igloo.’

“This is ridiculous. By the time you get anything set up, Vance and Izzy’ll be skinning something as a bed, sitting next to their fire, in their nice, wind-protected cave.”

“Maybe, but it won’t be as cool as an igloo.”

“No, it’ll be warm. That’s the point. You don’t want a cool house in this sector.” I curled up for warmth, and the pain shooting down my legs nearly made me black out. Or maybe I did black out, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was, one second I was trying not to whimper, and the next moment half the igloo was done and I was in a coat burrito.

Aster was nowhere to be seen. Not that that meant much—even with the twin moons overhead, it was too dark to see much farther than the confines of the little igloo. For a moment, I felt a flicker of hope and sadness at the thought that he might’ve come to his senses. But then he came back with another lopsided block of snow and stuck it on top of the short igloo wall.

“Take it back. The coat, you- you need it.” I tried to wriggle out of the coat, but he’d tied his belt around the middle like a straightjacket. My brain was too fuzzy to figure out how to undo it.

“I’m fine, really. She’s great at this.” He patted his black fur scarf, which he definitely hadn’t had when I may or may not have blacked out.

“Wha-”

The scarf raised its head and opened two amber eyes. “Sorry, I would’ve kept you warm, but you kept moaning and pushing me off.”

“‘Snot like you could’ve-” I stopped myself as one of Shade’s lessons on voidcats popped into my head. They were meant to live in the void, a place so much colder than the planetary poles that no non-void or non-fire creature could survive there for more than a few seconds.

To resist that cold, they created a field of warmth around them without even trying. A kitten like her could probably only warm one person at a time, but that was still a huge deal out here.

“Why’d you come back?”

She shuffled her wings. “I thought you were coming with us, but you didn’t, so I came back. If I keep your friend warm, will you help save my mom? And my sisters and brothers? Please, I tried to get them out, but I couldn’t, and now Merlin says… you know.”

If I was going to die anyway, there wasn’t any harm in saying I would help. But at the same time, I didn’t want to give her false hope.

“I’m not doing so hot right now.” I winced. In this frigid landscape, no one was doing so hot, not even me as a fire-type dragon.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t have powers. I want to help, really, I- I want to help, it’s just… no powers.”

“Oh.” She set her head back on her paws, returning to her state as an amorphous black scarf in the darkness. “How do you get your powers back?”

“Dragon could help. Dunno where you’d find one.” Maybe she could find a void dragon. They were so solitary that the plague hadn’t wiped them out all at once. But being that solitary also meant they were extremely hard to find. A little void kitten wasn’t likely to stumble on one. Even if she did, there was no way she could convince one to come back with her. They hated the physical dimension almost as much as dreamwalkers did.

“Ooh, I can do that.” The voidcat jumped off Aster’s shoulders and flitted off into the darkness.

Already shivering, Aster came over and crouched next to me. “She going to answer the call of nature, or…?”

“I dunno.” It might’ve just been the cold numbing my brain, but I could’ve sworn the voidcat planned to go and find a dragon for me. Not that I really needed to worry about it. There was no way she would manage to find one, and by the time she gave up and came back, it might be too late. Already, I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. My face was so numb it didn’t even hurt anymore. Oh, and I’d stopped shivering. Maybe this coat was thicker than I’d thought. It really didn’t feel that cold with it on.

“How are you doing?”

I frowned at Aster’s question. I definitely wouldn’t say I was doing well, but I wasn’t doing too bad under the circumstances. At least I was still lucid.

“Mars, you okay?”

“Give me a second.” After a few more seconds of internal debate, I instantly forgot everything I’d meant to say except, “Fine. I’m fine.”

“Mars-” I could hear the tension and worry in his voice, but whatever he’d wanted to say was cut off by screaming in the distance.

Those were very familiar screams, the same kind Izzy screeched in my ear every time we watched even slightly scary movies. “Izzy?”

The screaming came closer, accompanied by Vance’s incoherent shouts. Aster jumped to his feet and squinted out over the snowy landscape. Seconds later, two snowy forms crashed through the far wall of the igloo to cower behind it. Vance fumbled with his gun. His bare fingers shook too much to hold it steady, but he fired anyway. The crack of the rifle exploded against my eardrums, rendering me oblivious to the world until the ringing stopped.

Finally making my freezing brain focus, I looked up at the back of Aster’s trembling knees. “What’s the screaming and the shooting and-” I couldn’t remember what else was going on, so I tried to peer through Aster’s legs to whatever was freaking everyone out.

It was just an iceberg, nothing scary about that. I didn’t remember it being there before, but I didn’t remember a lot of things right now, so that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before.

“Don’t shoot, idiot,” Aster hissed as Vance set up the rifle to fire again. “You might as well shoot a rock.”

I laughed. Vance shooting a rock and expecting it to bleed wouldn’t have surprised me one bit. He was probably cousins to the rock, or at least his head was.

The iceberg shuddered. Icicles cracked off its sides and speared the ground. A thunderous noise rumbled from deep inside the formation. It almost sounded like a voice, but it didn’t make any sense.

“What’s it saying?” Aster asked.

I snorted, but that didn’t work too well with my nose all bloody and frozen, so I ended up coughing instead. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Come on, concentrate. What its saying sounds just like what you and the cat say. You have to understand it.”

The iceberg roared again, slower this time. It almost sounded like words. Oh, no those were words. I just hadn’t heard them in a long time. It was Tenan, the common trading language Shade said was the language of peasants. He’d briefly gone over it before we studied Bontair. I scrambled my brain to remember the words, but I couldn’t decipher what the iceberg was saying. All I could remember were a few useful phrases.

“Go away, leave me in peace.” According to Shade, this was a very useful phrase for making aggressive market traders back off. It didn’t work quite as well on icebergs.