Chapter 7: One last chance

Sylph entered the bathroom with a yawn and threw the book on the shelf next to the claw-filing rack. She missed, and the book smacked into the bottom whetstone. Close enough to the appropriate place, she would grab it tomorrow.

Learning about her path could wait. After taking all this time to appear, it wouldn’t mind waiting a few days more until she found the answers she wanted. Focusing on too many things at once ended in disaster or doing all of them badly.

Sylph yawned once more. The sound and motion alone was enough to feel her body slow down and the fog in her mind thicken. Veria was right, the sun wouldn’t rise for a few hours and now, that the initial panic and excitement had worn off, the leaden tiredness in her muscles and mind came back in force and all she wanted to do was curl up.

She turned towards the spacious tub that stretched all the way from one wall to the other. Oasis had insisted on including it in the house. Showers were the modern solution, but, according to Oasis, Carthia lacked public baths. In Sylph’s mind, they served very little purpose when every house had access to convenient, clean water. She’d rather not share the same bath with others, who knew where they had been and what they’d been doing in there.

Sylph climbed up the two steps of solid wood around the embedded tub and slipped down the smooth, cold stone on the other side. The bath was divided into two sections, a deep end to soak and a large shallow bank to wash yourself on. A large assortment of soaps, cans of scents she could barely smell, and body oils lined the sides, along with three sets of brushes, buckets, and sponges.

She curled up in the deepest end, surrounded by stone on all sides. The cold rock zapped the heat from her body. A tub wasn’t the most comfortable place without water, but she didn’t fancy sleeping in a place where another lake would do actual damage or the cleanup would be a hassle.

She stood up, stretched and reached for the metal tap to turn on the hot water. The stream was icy at first, then turned pleasantly hot. It started to envelope her with a comfortable warmth, unlike the embarrassing lake in her bed. Water from a tap was one of the worlds, if not the best invention after earplugs. She never wanted to miss the kingdom’s technical and magical advancements. Basic necessities were so convenient nowadays.

She stared down at her own reflection in the shallow water and focused on the unsightly scar. To the frightened hatchling from fifteen years ago, fulfilling all these basic needs would be a dream come true. She stopped the thoughts before they could take hold. Her parents were partially at fault for losing her. They had a lot of questions to answer.

But before she could commit to that goal, her ability had to be calmed, controlled, tamed, something along those lines. Her scales still tingled like minor storm clouds ready to burst, and the center of water deep in her chest twitched and swayed every time her thoughts strayed a bit too far. Sylph concentrated on the center of water in her body, shifting it a little more upwards until the water below her absorbed straight into her body.

She scratched her scar in thought. This part seemed very easy to do. Getting it to stay still while not focusing was the problem. She shifted the center once more into a place she thought might keep it steadier, her stomach. She squeaked in surprise as water coursed through her body, pulling at every muscle and organ at once. A wave of nausea headed up from her rapidly filling stomach and she jerked the center away.

The tides inside her settled back down, but an enormous amount of water remained in her stomach. At least she wouldn’t go thirsty for a while. The center itself snapped back to an equilibrium somewhere behind her lungs and below the start of her wings. It continued to sway and wiggle, but maybe she just had to get used to living with the constant pressure and tension, like being reminded of your tongue and feeling it sit in your mouth. Her new pathwalkerness needed a lot of exploring, but waking up dry tomorrow was all she wanted for now. She turned on her back and leaned against the side of the tub to enjoy the warm water creeping up her sides and gave in to her body’s need for rest.

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A muffled scream tore Sylph out of deep and dreamless slumber. She forced her eyes open against an odd pressure, a blurry mosaic of yellow and red hovered some distance above. It remained motionless; the shape seemed oddly familiar. Before she could follow that thought any further, the shape dove downwards and Sylph tried to collect her drowsy limbs.

The world exploded into bubbles as the thing grabbed her forelegs with a grip like a vice. Sylph tried to pull away, but her body moved slowly and sluggishly, her mind cluttered with sleep. It janked her upwards and her joints stung in hot pain. She feared her forelegs might get torn out of their sockets if it pulled any harder.

Her ears popped as her head left the water and a bloodcurdling scream tore into her like a sharp blade. She yelped in pain and tried to shake away the noise, but her ears closed at their own pace. They took a never ending second to dampen the daggers in her ears to butter knifes.

Someone dragged her further with force and she flopped backwards over the rim of the bathtub. The base of her tail was the first thing to hit the stone floor and the impact sent a dull jolt through her body and her hind legs went limp. She cursed herself for not reacting in time. That was a place you never wanted to take a hit on. It left you helpless for seconds at best and paralyzed at worst.

She drew a sharp breath as the pain swelled up her body, but nothing happened. She yapped for air, but it stopped right there at her mouth. Her lungs sat heavy and motionless in her chest. They pinned her to her back like two large pieces of lead.

She turned her head to face her assailant and had to do a double take through her watery eyes. She blinked, but it was still Oasis. The usually gentle Sol had a terrified gleam in her eyes. Her tail snapped from side to side and her wings danced and flicked. She raised her front leg and tensed up, shaking, as it hovered above Sylph’s chest.

“-” Sylph tried to speak, but a small splatter of liquid flew from her mouth instead. She gazed at the pfod above her and all fighting instincts kicked in. Using her legs, she tried to push herself away, but her hind legs only twitched, tingled, and barely produced any meaningful force. She braced herself and tried to exhale in preparation, but her lungs would not listen.

Oasis’ front leg smashed down on her chest and a squall of water shot up her throat and sprayed out between her teeth. Her dragonheart ignited, drove out the pain, and burned away the last remnants of sleep. “Ihrmmmh orrrgkay!” Sylph gurgled. The water blocked any meaningful words from her throat. Oasis was mistaken. She was not drowning. Her lungs had filled with water, but she would surely know if she was currently drowning.

Her mother did not listen. Oasis hopped upward with both front legs and came smashing down like a hammer. Sylph’s hind legs wobbled and buzzed with the aftershock of the earlier impact, but they reacted. She pushed herself with the legs on one side, used the momentum to roll over onto her stomach, and jumped to her feet. Oasis slipped over her own legs as her pfods missed and smashed onto the slippery floor.

Sylph struggled to draw a breath. Her body fought for air, her mouth opened and closed uselessly like a fish out of water. And like a fish, she felt her oxygen run out. She might drown out of water now. She focused on the center of water. It sat deep in her chest, right in her lungs. She gripped it, leaned forward, and the water seeped through her body like a sieve. Air forced itself into her nostrils and mouth and rushed downwards to fill the vacuum. Her lungs itched and burned as they filled and stretched and she fell into a coughing fit. For a second, she forgot how to breathe, but her body remembered and she gasped for air that left her more breathless than before. Her chest throbbed and ached, not from the water inside, but from being hit by several hundred pounds of good intentions.

“Please stop, I am alright!” Her voice sounded hoarse and deep and speaking left a dull pain in the back of her mouth. Oasis slowly rose back to her feet, turned towards Sylph, and paused. Her wings and tail drooped weakly downwards and her head followed until she was face to face. Her normally kind and soft eyes stared straight through Sylph with a gaze devoid of all emotion. Sylph felt dreadfully at fault for it. She had never seen Oasis like this, never wanted to see her mother like this again.

Oasis wheezed. A smile formed beneath her tears and the ruby shimmer of life returned to her eyes. She jumped forwards, arms stretched wide. “Syyyylph!” Oasis cried. “You are alright.” She hit Sylph with her full weight, and no amount of bracing or stance helped her hold her ground. They slid a few feet backwards as Oasis wrapped her arms around Sylph’s neck and torso. “You are alright.” Pale yellow wings enveloped and trapped her. Oasis’ scales burned like red, hot iron against her own. Not even now could she escape her own body’s painful reactions.

“I’m fine,” Sylph wheezed and tried to slip free by pulling her head away, but there was no way for her head to go without hurting her mother.

“I thought something had happened,” Oasis heaved. Tears streamed down her face and ran down Sylph’s neck in a fiery streak. She pushed against Oasis once more to escape the hug, but her whole front half rested on Sylph’s shoulders and her arms held her neck like a vice.

“You are hurting me, let me go, please,” Sylph begged, which prompted her mother to cry and grip harder. Her heart thumped hard and fast enough for Sylph to resonate in her entire body.

Sharp steps echoed through the hallway. “Stop, nothing happened!” Sylph yelled to the best of her ability, but she feared it might be too late. The door exploded into splinters and a silver blade split it en-twain. Veria crashed through the cut door head first, brought in her pfod, gripped the enlarged hole and ripped through the thick oak as if it was paper. Sylph felt her head pound by just watching. A door was no match for Veria. It wasn’t even locked, she remembered.

Veria paused among the raining splinters to take in the scene. Her tail dropped limply to the ground behind her as her body relaxed. She clenched her teeth. “Sylph is now a pathwalker.”

Oasis’ tail slammed against the tub and a deep, reverberating thump filled the room. She blinked and stammered for a full breath. “Excuse me? I thought she drowned!” Oasis’ grip loosened and Sylph took the chance to slip out of her grasp. “Why did you not tell me? You certainly had enough time and opportunity last night.” Oasis claws clattered on the stones.

Veria inspected the filled tub, and Sylph joined her. “I wanted to leave that to Sylph. It is a personal decision. Quite a few pathwalkers choose to hide their ability for various reasons.” Veria turned her gaze away from the tub, took a step back, and mustered Sylph. “Although now I have to wonder, what did happen here?”

Sylph wordlessly stared at the flat waterline. If only she knew, her mind came up blank for the last hours. She felt pretty well rested, all things considering, except for the pain in her chest and the dull throb lingering at the base of her tail. “I think I fell asleep, the tub continued to fill, and I kept sleeping; underwater.” There had to be more to her abilities than to make puddles. Sylph raised her head. “If you told me I was still dreaming, I would believe you.” A sly grin spread on her face as her mind spotted a golden but crude opportunity. “Guess it was a very wet dream.” It prompted a slight chuckle from Veria.

Oasis’ tail lightly tapped them both on the snout. “How can you joke about that and how can you laugh about that!” Her gaze flicked between Sylph, Veria, and the tub. She exhaled, and the color drained from her face. “I mean- what?” Veria caught her as she slumped forwards. “Let’s talk somewhere else.” Veria propped up Oasis with her shoulder and guided her through the splinters and out of the bathroom.

Scaring Oasis half to death had not been her intention. Seeing Sylph on her back at the bottom of the tub must’ve been horrifying. The thought of it hadn’t left her mind, albeit for other reasons. She had to check something. Sylph hopped up the two stairs in one jump and slipped into the water. The cold robbed her breath, her teeth clattered, and her scales wanted to pop off. Too bad her ability could not warm the water back up.

Her muscles slowly relaxed as she acclimatized to the cold. She exhaled and submerged herself. Shifting the center of water out of balance, the surrounding liquid felt as though it pushed back. Her ability must allow her to breathe underwater. It was a logical conclusion. She moved the point around her chest and imagined the water filling up all the vacant insides, replacing air with water, it should be easy.

The water rushed inwards with enough force to press her against the bottom of the tub. Her insides bloated, filling her stomach and everything else that could hold water; but it steered clear of replacing the precious air from her lungs. She relaxed her hold immediately. A sharp and intense wave of nausea crawled up her throat and gave her just enough time to scramble out of the bath and to a place far more appropriate.

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Sylph left the bathroom half an hour later and vowed to not give that idea another try anytime soon. Too messy were the consequences of getting it wrong. But on the bright side, her insides had never been cleaner.

She tiptoed around the sharp splinters and followed the path of wet pfod prints. Her mothers sat snuggled up with their wings around each other at the kitchen table. The color had not fully returned to her face, but she looked far better.

Sylph settled down on her mat and explained the events of last night until her mind became distracted by the wooden bowl of cloudy apple juice sitting in front of her. Despite the scene earlier, she felt the gnawing of hunger, possibly because there was nothing left inside her, and one bowl couldn’t do any damage.

Another silly idea entered her head and refused to leave. She raised her arm, stuck one claw into the bowl and shifted the center into her pfod. To her surprise, the juice didn’t travel up her claw. Her ability only seemed to work on the soft parts of her body.

Veria and Oasis shot her amused and worried glances. Sylph eyed the cloudy fluid and submerged her whole pfod. “What are you doing?” Oasis reprimanded her.

“Don’t play with your breakfast,” Veria laughed. Something you only said to a hatchling and a new pathwalker.

The juice felt different as it absorbed into her, pricklier. She gave the center a little spin for a try, not thinking much about it, but the rest of the bowl drained into her body and left a strange mush behind. Her pfod bulged with the contents of the bowl and she realized that she just separated the water from everything else. Both the juice and water did not combine as long as she held her balance.

She moved the center up her arm, into her neck and up towards her mouth. A few drops made it through her scales as she did, but most of the juice and water crawled upwards like a living thing. It made its way up her neck, constricting her esophagus slightly from all sides. She did not like the feeling of something crawling up inside of her, but continued to drag it upwards until it finally stopped above her mouth.

Apple juice dripped from the roof of her mouth and hit her tongue. It tasted, as expected, like barely flavored water. If she could move it to her mouth, she could put it back into the bowl. She hovered her pfod above and concentrated on guiding it back. From between her scales, the first pale-green droplets fell into the bowl. Some hit the floor as they bled out through her outstretched arm. The first lonely drops quickly grew in number until they formed a little continuous stream that filled the bowl up further than before. Sylph took all weight off the center. It rushed back to her torso and solidified, stopping all escaping water in its tracks.

“Fascinating. You have a better grasp of it than last night.” Veria watched the last drops drain from her pfod. If she had witnessed the scene in the bathroom, she’d not say it like that.

“I think these are the very basics. Absorb and release water and maybe even separate it from anything that is not water.” Sylph eyed the bowl with suspicion. The juice looked a lot thinner and less cloudy and the bowl fuller; it was also lukewarm. She lifted the bowl and, for the first time this morning, drank like nature intended her to. She emptied it in one go, sat the bowl back down and grabbed a piece of rye bread.

She chewed her bread, and the next idea had already formed. Other pathwalkers could summon fire or freeze the very air around them. Maybe she could drown all opposition. She moved the center back to her pfod and leaned into it with her full weight. Water rippled through her body like a wave through a calm sea. It gathered like a storm front and Sylph released her hold. But like earlier, she had over committed. The point remained and sat as a heavy liquid in her pfod. Pressure surged inside of her and the scales on her arm and shoulder puffed outward.

Water spew from her upper body and drenched the room like a bursting pipe. Oasis jumped up from her mat and Veria burst into laughter, staying seated. “Whoops.” The biggest puddle crept back into Sylph as the point solidified back in her torso, but the table remained soaking wet.

“I think that’s enough experiments for breakfast,” Oasis said and poked the soggy loaf of bread on the table.

Veria looked at the mess, then at Sylph. “I haven’t forgotten,” Sylph said, and the tone got serious fast. “Being a pathwalker; it has to do with my parents, am I right?” She expected the answer. Eavesdropping had told her all she needed to know.

Veria folded her wings behind her back.

“Right now?” Oasis asked and tried to scoop some of the water from the table into a bowl.

“It’s time to talk about your parents.” Veria shook the water off her face, sprinkling more drops over the table. She used her voice in the same way she did when she said something inspiring. That and the way she fixated Sylph with those piercing eyes nearly made her believe she would tell the truth.

“They died at the hands of the slavers that took you. We found their skulls mounted like trophies.” Veria did not even flinch or react as she bluntly stated her lie. Not even her voice showed a hint of the lie.

“You can’t just say it like that!” Oasis whispered and poked Veria.

“How else would I say it? I won’t console her by talking around the fact. The truth is harsh and I won’t keep it from her.”

Oasis put on a forced smile. Lies poured from Veria’s forked tongue and it didn’t phase her at all. She didn’t want her to know. Lies. All lies. This is why Veria wanted to be the one talking to her. Oasis could not deliver it that bluntly.

“And that is the whole truth?” Sylph’s claws dug into the thin leather of the mat beneath her as her digits clenched. All that talk about her when they thought she was not listening and now something as far-fetched as that. Although she had never seen the inside of her owners’ houses, there were no dragons around. These people lived in fear of larger wyvern, barring their windows and doors when one got too close and now Veria wanted to sell her the lie that they would kill and mount a dragon’s skull?

“I’m so sorry, but sadly, that is the truth,” Oasis answered. Her voice wavered, unlike Veria. Sylph’s claws dug deeper into the old filling of her mat. She wanted to scream. She could confront them about the lie, tell them how she eavesdropped. But that would change nothing. They didn’t trust her and it hurt more than not knowing the truth.

Nothing good ever came from her past. If they didn’t trust her she, could only trust what she saw and heard with her own eyes and ears. Sylph’s head drooped down in played defeat, trying to hide the smoldering rage in her chest. “I, should’ve guessed that. Linz was a horrible place,” she said silently.

Oasis reached out but her pfod stopped inches away, remembering that she hated being touched. The conversation had lasted less than a minute. The longer you lied, the more opportunities to get it wrong. Oasis stepped around the table and hovered her wings halfway around her, not touching her, but close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. “We are always here for you if you want to talk. We are your family.” Her smile shone warmer and brighter than the sun, no hint of lies in her voice.

Sylph brushed her wing away. Her gut twisted. Oasis, of all people, lied to her. Veria could do so, but Oasis? If she wasn’t sure that they lied, she would’ve believed every word she said.

Sylph simply didn’t understand. Veria’s words from all these years ago hung above it all: “I don’t want to take care of her.” She took pity and took in the leftover. Sylph’s body burned, only to feel cold, her mind filled with lead.

“Sylph,” Veria said quietly and softly. “Say what’s on your mind.”

Sylph swallowed and looked up. “You are lying. I know you are lying.” The words dropped out of her mouth. Veria’s gaze fell downwards, and she shook her head.

One last chance to tell her. Oasis lowered her head to be below eye-level and spoke first. “I am so sorry. Sometimes things don’t turn out like we imagined they would. I know it is hard.”

If only she hadn’t overheard them. If only that storyteller hadn’t put this question into her head. She would’ve accepted this, she would’ve accepted all of their lies without question. She would’ve continued to be Sylph. She would’ve rejoiced after finding her abilities. But it didn’t happen like that. She knew her real parents were out there. She knew they had something to do with her being a pathwalker. And she knew that they all conspired to hide them from her.

It was now her decision to find them, not her mothers. “I am going to visit Dalian at the pathwalker guild and maybe head to Halfhill afterwards. I still have to give Brandon the results of the paint.” She raised her wings; The paint sparkled, even after spending a night in water.

Veria chewed a spongy piece of bread, twisted her face in disgust and forced herself to swallow. “We can talk, Sylph. Please, say what’s on your mind.”

Sylph hesitated to answer. “I just need to clear my head. So go to work, open the shop. I’ll figure out how not to wake up in a lake tomorrow.”

Oasis tried her hardest to not reach out towards her. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay? We can-”

“Please, just give me some room to think,” Sylph snapped.

Veria brushed wings with Oasis, shot her an odd glance and gestured to leave. “But you better be back with the last ship if you decide to head to Halfhill,” Veria said, “And don’t show off too much.”

Oasis’ tail twitched. “And be safe. I’ll make pork tonight, with the honey sauce.”

They left a few minutes later.

Sylph would head to Halfhill, that much was true. Her thoughts sizzled inside of her head. Linz, the place it all began. She could only hope that Brandon would accompany her. She wouldn’t admit it, but the thought of going alone terrified her. Veria wouldn’t agree to her undertaking such a journey, but if she didn’t trust her with information concerning her, she’d do the same. And if they followed her, they could not deny whatever she found in Linz. And if they didn’t, that would show her how much they cared.

She prepared a crudely written note stating that she’d spend the night in Halfhill. It would give her a head start.