Chapter 12: Burnout

The snow beneath her crunched in a broken rhythm. Three legs were one too little; She heard herself dragging the other feet, hobbling and losing momentum. The smell of her own blood hung in the air around her and there, deep inside her head, ancient instincts could not help but wake up to tell her that she sounded and smelled rather delicious to everyone around her.

Twigs cracked, something rustled in the trees. It had done so for a few minutes now and the sound closed in fast. Her ancient instincts were right, and it sent a shiver down her neck. “I suggest you grab a big stick,” Sylph said, “The wyvern is following us.” It was a lie. That wyvern was not just following them, it hunted. She did not want to tell Brandon.

His gaze flicked through the canopy as he bent downwards and picked up a frozen stick roughly the length of his outstretched arm. “I don’t like this. Will it attack us?” Sylph’s ears swiveled in the rustle's direction.

If only her dragonheart was still in working condition; All that remained after earlier was a hollow in her chest. Every step she took hurt more than the last. Her strength had all but faded, leaving only the natural muscles with no support. She was lucky enough to be this athletic and trained, otherwise she would have dropped in exertion twenty minutes ago. A dragon without dragonheart could barely walk, never mind putting up a proper fight. It was the very core of her strength. Veria’s words of warning rang in her ears: “Should you overexert your dragonheart, DRINK SOMETHING AND LAY THE FUCK DOWN.” She heard it in exactly that intonation. She knew she needed rest, preferably right where she stood. Albeit cold, the soft snow looked rather inviting. Her steps slowed as she considered that thought, but she forced herself to lift her aching legs and keep walking. With that wyvern on her tail, they could not stop. They had to reach the ship.

A heavy twig snapped above her. “Duck!” Sylph yelled and spun towards the hiss of wind and wings carving through the branches. A dark-green shadow, camouflaged in the firs, descended. It screeched and bared its teeth. The outstretched claws blinked as they rushed past her and missed Brandon by inches as he threw himself to the ground. Sylph sluggishly snapped after its wings and missed. It fled back to the canopy.

“Why did it attack me!” Brandon crawled back to his feet, stick at the ready. Her heart jumped. She had missed it sneaking up. She had missed the opportunity to counter. It nearly grabbed Brandon. Her senses lacked sharpness. There was no fire behind her movements. She could not even decide if she should run or fight. The realization was as icy as her chest. This was what it meant to burnout, the cold inside her and the inability to fight like you knew you could.

Her ears picked up Brandon’s heavy pants, and she shook herself, grabbed a pfod full of snow and squashed it into her face. The sudden wet cold jolted her head, not as much as her dragonheart could but just enough. She knew she remembered how to deal with a wyvern like that, but all her knowledge seemed buried deep down in her head, locked away beneath the all-encompassing exhaustion radiating from her chest and the fog clouding her mind. Even if she was burnt out, she could still beat that wyvern. It was just an animal, a rather large one with sharp claws, but an animal.

“You look like easier prey,” she answered and concentrated on her upper back. The last of her energy went into charging herself up, if only a little, until her chest cramped once more and she doubled over. “Get close to me, but do not touch me. I am charged,” she hissed, “One touch is all I need to kill it before it shreds us.”

Brandon did as instructed and followed as close as he could. They made their way forward. She could hear it stalking them from up above. Every move it made, every branch it touched, and every clod of snow that dropped to the ground. No more steps, or breaths, or her whimpers. All of her attention was up in the canopy. She caught fleeting glimpses of the creature as it hopped and glided on the biggest branches. Its scales were a dark green with a brown underbelly that camouflaged it pretty well, and standing on its hind-legs it nearly matched Brandon in size. The wings were unnaturally large when compared to a dragon of the same size. Wyvern lacked the dragonheart to make up for it. Calling it a dumb animal was a mistake on her part. It moved and waited, much like an opponent looking for an opening.

Noticing her distracted thoughts, the rhythmic flapping of wings stopped, and it dived. “Duck!” Brandon threw himself to the floor once again. Sylph trusted her ears more than her eyes and positioned herself above him. It would not fall for this trick a second time.

The wyvern did not stop the attack, but changed to aim for her head instead. Dagger-like claws outstretched, it barreled down towards her. Sylph braced herself on three legs and retracted her head as far as possible, willingly exposing her throat with shoulder towards the wyvern. She mimicked an inexperienced dragon on purpose, one that tried to save their head instead of their throat.

The wyvern aimed lower, taking the bait. It opened its claws moments before it connected. Sylph swiveled her head forward, twisted to her left and slammed her shoulder into its claws. A sharp stab of pain shot through her as they collided, and she swiped with her wounded pfod. She smacked its side with an open palm and a slight tingle in her back told her that her weapon had discharged the instant they connected.

It went stiff, lost its grip and dropped to the floor. It hit the snow with a thud and not even a second later, flapped and screamed. The shock had been too weak. She braced herself to follow up, prepared to pounce, but her legs buckled beneath her and she slipped on the icy ground to her left.

She then spotted Brandon. He had crawled out, held the stick in two hands and brought it down hard on the creature’s head. A loud thunk echoed through the forest and the wyvern went limp. She had never expected Brandon to actually use the stick. Nor had she expected him to be this quick to react to her not being able to follow through.

Sylph forced herself back up and lurched forwards. It wasn’t dead; they had thick skulls. She nearly lost her footing once more as she stepped on its wing. With her good pfod, she pressed the side of its head into the ground. Holding her wounded pfod against its throat, she felt the heat and weak thump of the heat through the large artery. She forced her claw into the flesh and slit its throat wide open.

Fresh, steaming blood rushed over her pfod and formed a puddle. She collapsed to the ground, panting into the snow. “Great job,” she said and forced herself to look at her shoulder. It was a scratch, barely deeper than the wounds on her pfod.

Brandon stood still, eyeing the stick, mesmerized. “I’d help you up, but-”

Sylph enjoyed the coldness of the snow for a second longer before she forced herself back to her wobbly feet. She licked the wyvern’s blood from the back of her pfod. The sweet, metallic taste prodded her mind back awake, or it was the fact that Brandon stared at her slip-up in manners. Cleaning yourself was something to be done in private. She held her wounded pfod away from her body. “We should hurry back.”

The trees blurred into one large brown mess above the other, white mess. Her ears rang. Another encounter like this and she was done for. Just make it to the ship, she repeated to herself like a mantra as she hobbled after Brandon for what felt like an eternity.

“I think I see it,” he dashed ahead, stopped and waved. She spotted the ship through the thinning forest, sitting on the snowy plain like an inviting hearth. With the last crumbles of strength she had left, she made her way up the ramp.

**************************

Sylph coiled into her blanket and wrapped herself so tightly that it reminded her of a dragon filled pastry roll. But not even the rolled blanket stopped the cold from her insides. Brandon settled down on the crate opposite of her and wrapped himself into his wet jacket and clothes. He clutched the stick in his hands and stared, unusually focused and quiet.

“I am so sorry,” Sylph said, knowing all too well that being sorry was never enough. “I nearly got us hurt or killed.”

Brandon looked up from the stick and pried the sticky sap from his hands. “It was not something either of us could’ve guessed or changed. Just bad luck.”

Sylph whipped her head from left to right to shake it, but her horns got stuck in the blanket. “I could’ve dealt with that wyvern if I hadn’t burnt myself out by getting too angry at Sarah. Veria would kill me. Do you know what she calls a burnt out dragon?”

“Easy target?”

“Close. Dead, that is her answer.” The lingering haze of sleep prodded her mind, but she shoved it aside. “It’s a written rule of training that you drop everything you were doing, should you overexert your dragonheart. It can lead to a literal stroke, paralyze you, or straight up normal heart attack. Although in most cases you’d just fall unconscious and soil yourself.” She focused on her chest and the cramping cold. “I think I just about avoided that. I don’t want to imagine what could have happened otherwise.”

“In that case, we can be glad it went that well.” He put aside the stick and opened his notebook.

Her body demanded sleep, but she forced her eyes to stay open just a little longer. “Amazing how it gives us all our strength, but is also our downfall after exhausting it. In a fight, I would’ve paid close attention to how I burned and judged how far I can push myself. But today, I just did. I disregarded all that I learned because my past got back into my head.” She exhaled and relaxed her eyes for just a second. “But if you ask me, a part of me is glad I got mad, that I finally got to tell them how I felt.”

She awoke only a short time later. The ship was back in the air, judging by the whirring of the engines. Her head ached and chest felt cold, albeit it had stopped throbbing and she felt a great relief. At least she had not damaged her dragonheart. It would be fine in a few hours and back to normal in a few days. The great pot of tea between them had been refilled, courtesy of Brandon, and she reached for her large bowl.

“So. Talking skeletons?” Brandon asked, and she noticed the added notes behind him. The corner of the ship had turned into a wall for his research into magic and her ability in particular. She wanted to go back to sleep after a drink, but she felt like she owed him after dragging him into this. She blinked the encroaching sleep away, raised from her pastry position to something more appropriate, and yawned excessively. “Good thing I don’t need my dragonheart to talk.” Her voice was still sore.

“Oh. I’m sorry, if you don’t feel up to talking you don’t have to.” He immediately pushed his box backwards.

Sylph chuckled quietly. “It’s not that bad, I’m only a little tired now, not dying.” Her head dropped an inch. Tired was an understatement. Her mind was a mess and coherent thought semi-absent. She started anyway. “Skeletons are a dead person’s soul forced to stay on this side.” She gestured at her bowl. “A little like pouring tea into the bowl. They are basically a soul bucket. The bucket can not empty itself, so it is forced to remain here.”

Brandon nodded along out of courtesy, and she stopped the pointless endeavor. “I have a better idea. Ask Dalian once we are back. He can talk for hours about that stuff and he knows what he says, unlike me, who is repeating what he said badly and putting our souls into buckets.”

“You are back!” the captain’s voice thundered from the upper deck and ripped Sylph from the edge of falling asleep while sitting. Considering the fact that the ship already moved, the out cry was a tad unnerving.

The old man stood at the top of the stairs, hand deep in his scruffy beard. His fur cloak waved in the wind. Wind that should not waft through a hole less ship. “I didn’t have to go look for you after all, that’s a surprise.” He laughed, far above room level, and played with the map in his hands. The buzzing of engines on full power cut through the following silence as Sylph realized that if the captain stood right there, nobody steered. “Nothing to hit out here,” the captain remarked as their gazes met.

“Can’t trust folk to not get lost on uncharted islands nowadays,” he continued to yell from up top, making his way down getting no quieter. Sylph suspected he was going deaf. “Found what you were looking for?”

“We found what we were looking for.” Sylph hid her wounded pfod deeper beneath the blanket and pulled it over her wounded shoulder. The captain lounged against a wooden beam at the end of the staircase and waited for them to share information that did not concern him. He gave up after a short, but very awkward, silence. “Back to town in that case?”

Sylph maneuvered her head out of the tight blanket. “Do you know about a city called Prina? Could you get us there?” Surely the old man must have seen a few things in his time.

The captain let out a small gasp and dropped the map. His face went pale. She feared his heart might have stopped too, but the color returned to his face after a second and stared down at her. “I don’t think you know what you are asking, girl. Do you know what kind of place Prina is?” He spat the words out like a curse.

Sylph curled herself out of the blanket and stood up straight. “So you know.” Her legs still felt like mush and chest cramped, but she would get the answer out of him.

“We don’t have a clue what kind of place it is, only the name,” Brandon admitted hastily and jumped up from his seat.

The captain went silent and his old eyes softened up. “Good on you, I would’ve kicked you into the nothingness if it was otherwise.” His voice calmed as though he explained the world to a whelp and he sat down on the staircase. “Prina is known as the slavers’ capital. You never want to go there.” He picked up his map from the ground and his eyes fixated on Sylph once again. “You don’t want to go there, trust me.”

“Slavers capital,” Sylph repeated the answer, mostly to herself. Her scales curled upwards. It sounded equally horrifying and promising. Where else would she find more info about her parents. “You don’t get a say in where I want to go, old man.”

“Old man?” He puffed up. “I am forty-five,” the captain raised the map threateningly, as if to hit her with the curled paper.

Sylph raised her head as high as she could, just about reaching the captain’s throat. “I think the answer to a very important question is in Prina. So please, don’t keep me from it.”

“It must be very important to even consider that. My airship will never fly you there.” He unrolled his map and pointed to a spot far to the south, beyond the kingdom’s borders. “There,” he said and poked the map again. “That should be enough reason not to go. It can’t be that important.”

“It is that important,” Sylph hissed. She flinched as she put too much weight on her wounded pfod. “I am looking for my parents.” She got a better look at the map and orientated herself by searching for the medium-sized round island in the west, marked Carthia. The map only showed the geography, not towns or villages, all of them had been inked in by hand. Lines for the main shipping lanes connected them all together like an enormous spider’s net. It surprised her that in the scribbles, Linz was the only named island outside the northern border.

Her gaze followed a thin shipping route through the southern border of the kingdom and stopped after reaching the captain’s finger. It passed into a massive, oblong island fifty times larger than Carthia. “The Great Desert,” mumbled Sylph as she followed another shipping lane to Gideza in the far west.

The captain’s finger pointed further east, to a name and tiny spot midst vast stretches of orange nothing; Prina. There was another town right next to it and both were covered in worried scribbles and markings of words like “Unsafe” and “Danger”. She felt a sting in her side as she remembered Brandon’s helpful but late advice to ask for more information. The captain eyed her with worry, no wonder with those scribbles. His brow furrowed, and he slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry but the chance to find them, there, is pretty slim.” He reached out for her shoulder. Sylph dodged away from his arm.

“No touching. I will find them, your worries won’t stop me.” Her gaze went to Brandon. He fumbled with the cup in his hands and listened in. He didn’t have to come. It would be nice to have him along but Linz had been the aching thorn in her heart, not some slaver capital. She could handle that on her own. Her past had nothing that could hurt her anymore. It could only get easier from here.

The captain rolled the map back up and pinched the top of his nose. “I could, accidentally, spill the name of someone who makes a few special trips to the great desert now and then. Not a nice man, but loves money more than questions.” He spun around and faced the stairs. “You’d do well to remember that the desert is not the kingdom. Laws are different down there.” Sylph noticed his voice creak and strain as he forced more words from his throat. “Do not trust anyone but yourself and never, NEVER attempt to cross the desert alone. Buy a guide, even if he rips you off.” With that last piece of advice, he trudged back upstairs to steer the airship. Maybe it was best not to ask what may have happened to him down there, seemed to be a bit of a tender spot.

She turned back to Brandon. “No,” he said and repeated the captain’s stance, “that sounds like a terrible idea.”

“That answers my next question.” Veria’s lie made a little more sense. “I think my parents might be slaves.” Her tail twitched wildly. “I can save my own parents,” she said, more to herself than Brandon. The idea alone reignite her chest and sent her into another painful cramp. She could do some good, something worthy of a story herself. Brandon went silent as he watched the idea blink in her eyes. “I’m glad you came with me to Linz. But you don’t have to come to the desert. I won’t drag you into more danger.”

“The slavers’ capital,” Brandon repeated, a hidden tinge of terror in his voice.

“We aren’t slaves. What is the worst they could do? Kick us back out?”

Brandon’s face flicked through emotions. “We know nothing about the place. What if they enslaved ALL humans or ALL dragons? What if they decide to capture us both and sell us?”

Her thoughts had not reached that far. “You said they’d probably be merchants and what merchant just captures paying customers? We will arrive by airship. I doubt they catch their slaves at their doorstep. We’ll figure something out.”

Brandon sighed and rummaged through his bag. “The one thought scarier than walking into a slavers’ capital is the thought of you walking in alone. I know you’d end up in jail in under five minutes.”

Sylph snorted. “If only there was someone to stop me if I try to do something dumb.” A part of her knew it was a horrible idea, but it was silenced by the parts wanting to find the truth and the parts wanting to break some slavers’ faces to rescue her parents.

“But, I should tell my father-”

“It’s only a few days,” Sylph reassured him, “Like, two weeks at most. The made up pathwalker is very hard to find.”

“You tell him that.”

“Deal.” She crawled back under the blanket and the weight of her limbs and head increased, tenfold. “Wake me if something interesting happens.”