Chapter 43: In the Veil

Fir trees sprung forth and carried the snow upwards, blocking out the sun and blue skies in favor of gray clouds and a thick, black canopy. Snowflakes blew in from the distance until a blizzard encompassed the small group. The cold bit into Sylph and had her shiver.

“This is Linz.” Dalian’s snow-white scales blended in with the blizzard, leaving only his deep blue eyes clearly visible between the thick snowflakes.

“This is where it all started.” Veria shook the snow off her wings. “Is that what you are showing us?”

“You did not trust me with the knowledge of my past.” She summoned her memory of the town, the burned huts, the impaled skeletons, and, most importantly, the one that walked and talked.

The world stopped, literally. With a mere flick of his pfod, Dalian grabbed hold of Sylph’s memory. He approached the skeleton with hurried steps. “She should not be there. How did you meet her? I got rid of them all.”

Veria rushed forward, grabbed Sarah’s skull, and plucked it straight from the spine. She held it by the jaw and turned to face Dalian. “There are two dragons who mess with the dead. I know it was not you.” Her teeth blinked as her tongue slithered back and forth between them. She spun around, scanning the entire Veil with the keen eye of a Metia in a singular spin and then choose to throw Sarah’s skull toward a hut that had perhaps looked at her the wrong way. “Tell me Void is here. I want to smack him!”

Dalian shook his head. “Jonathan is not with us, not anywhere close enough for you to yell at either.”

Arastra raised her head from the lush green beneath her tree. She had firmly claimed that corner of the Veil and decided none of Sylph’s memories could touch her precious piece of forest. “Somebody has to keep order in the Veil while we chase your daughter over the entire continent.”

“It was Void that left the skeleton for me to find?” She had been sure it was Dalian, and yet, when she imagined Void, this made far more sense. The cryptic message left for Sarah should have given it away.

“Apparently so,” Dalian admitted, and the skull flew back to reconstruct Sarah. “We talked to her. Afterwards I helped her pass over into the Veil.”

Veria paced around the frozen image. “Void was against hiding the truth from the get go. He sabotaged us and broke our agreement.”

Sylph scoffed. “I would not call that sabotage. I agree with him. Why should I not ask them myself? Sarah gave me the clues to go on and actually find the truth.”

“Sarah was a liability to the story. I’ll deal with Void later.” Veria talked with such confidence that one could think he was just another recruit and not one of the most powerful dragons to ever exist. She huffed a scant breath. “It should have been us that told you one day. But I stand by the decision that it was the right call back then.”

She was damn right. Keeping the secret had not protected Sylph in a meaningful way. “And now it is too late.”

“So that is how you knew to travel to the great desert. Sarah,” Dalian hummed, his voice trailed off like a petal in the wind. “That is quite the journey. Your ship must have been fast. What happened next?”

Dalian, and perhaps even Arastra or Veria, could simply force her memories if they wanted to, but they did not. They wanted to talk to her and listen, and she would be lying if it did not feel good to talk about all that bothered her. Recalling the hurtful memories freed her thoughts in a strange way. She both wanted to keep them locked up inside forever and scream them out in their faces.

The snowflakes in the sky turned a dirty orange and dropped like a flat sheet to produce the great desert. A heat as thick as molasses settled on her back and melted the last snow into more sandy grains. Summoning places had always been easy for Sylph. It took a mere thought to add tree high cacti to the scene.

“I got my ability under control.” She turned to Dalian. “I can filter water now.” As much as she had no problems pushing her imaginations out, she had a hard time keeping powerful memories in. “No, not that, anything but that one,” she begged her mind, but the Veil sucked the most vivid and uncomfortable images straight from her body like a leech. It now showed her and Brandon, and a bottle pressed against her arm.

Judging by the awkward silence, they had guessed what that pale yellow liquid in the bottle was. “I see nothing but sand all around you. That is a clever application of your ability in an otherwise desperate situation,” Dalian nodded in approval.

“Everything is allowed if it serves your survival. You did great,” Veria said. Her tail flicked forward and stopped right beside her shoulder so she felt the small gust of wind.

Sylph remembered why she had a love-hate relationship with the Veil. No wonder she had been so willing to talk about everything, things that bothered you were quick to surface in here. Or things that were fresh in her mind, Dalian surely remembers that one time where a certain book with a certain scene involving lots of rope and knots and knotted ropes- she felt the heat of shame crawl to her face and focused on the cacti ahead lest that scene would form into being right in front of her. Best to think about anything else.

The cacti pricked her mind. She did something worse with her ability in the desert. A limp body dropped from the sky and crashed into the hot sand with a dull thump. Dalian jumped backwards like a startled wyvern and the spikes on his back stood upright.

Veria had her tail at the body’s throat before the dust had settled and inspected it closer. “What happened here?” With a claw, she tapped the mummified head, which then turned to sand.

“What, by the six, happened?” Dalian stood frozen and pointed behind Sylph. A monstrous shape towered behind them, evidently Sylph, but horrifically out of proportion. She held Tim’s body between her elongated teeth and blood raced up her arm. A sword stuck in her thigh. Sylph felt heavy and sank into the sand. This image came from her own mind. The grainy surface beneath her swallowed her legs and chest until only her head and wingtips were visible. She rested her chin on the warm sand, facing away. “I did something terrible.”

Veria laid down in front of her, head as close as possible until they were snout to snout. “I am not new to the Veil. I can piece a story together. You poor thing, I hate you had to defend yourself like that. But once somebody pulls a blade on you, they know the consequences of that action.”

Sylph could not face away or run from Veria’s somehow gentle gaze. “I killed him by accident. I didn’t mean to. He stabbed me and I just swiped at him.” She still felt the guilt all over her claws.

“Instincts are hard to suppress. You did what you had to do,” she said and heaved a heavy sigh. “Trust me, I know it is difficult. I could not sleep for days after I first bit a man to death. The look on his face still lives in my memories, clear as midnight.” It came as a surprise to Sylph that Veria thought like that. She only knew her mother as a hardened fighter, one that did not look twice at a beaten opponent. Veria gave a quick glance to Dalian, then focused back on her. “I reminded myself that it was me or him. You can’t worry about your opponent in that situation, worry about you and what would have happened had he hit your artery like somebody competent with a knife would have. Frankly, he should have been bleeding before that knife even got close to you.”

Veria stared more intensely and Sylph swore she saw some strange inner workings, debating if she should be the instructor or something else at the moment. A slim smile sneaked up Sylph’s face. Her prediction of Veria’s lecture had been spot on.

Her yellow eyes focused back on Sylph as she decided how to continue. “I know you, Sylph. I know how you fight. You would not harm anybody innocent. That is not who you are.” She reached for Sylph’s head, tapped her horns and the sand vomited her back out. “Now tell me you ended up in Senbo and not in Prina.”

Sylph shook herself free from the sand and scratched her ears. “Both. We went to Prina first and ended up in Senbo.” The mere mention saw them tense up like a bowstring. They all knew, and so did she. “I found my mother. Turns out she is a complete maniac.”

A younger, but no less regal, Nahana coalesced from somebody’s mind. She lay on the rim of the bath, head propped up on one pfod as she stared at the imaginer of the memory. Her tail playfully flicked through the water and she looked oddly at ease, contempt, and tired, almost like a normal dragon relaxing after a workout. The proud tension that always tinged her face nowadays was missing. Perhaps all that stress of ruling disagreed with her over the years.

“You could have warned me instead of hiding her.”

“We did not want to risk you looking for her out of curiosity,” Veria admitted. “She has a way with words and that strangely seductive and commanding voice. If she really wants something, she takes it. You are high on that list and I told you that nobody would take you from me.”

“You feel the emotions in her voice? I assumed only Aer could.”

Veria shook her head and drew a quick breath, but Arastra took the words out of her mouth. “She was a lot more impressionable by clearly antagonistic dragonesses back then. She can not hear what you presumably hear.”

“Shut up, go back to your tree,” Veria barked.

Sylph shook her head. Veria being impressionable was a hard thing to imagine. She had kept Sylph from Nahana, so she clearly knew what went on in her head.

Veria turned back to Sylph after flicking a rude tail gesture at Arastra. “If Nahana is even remotely the same, I can imagine how your meeting would go. She wants an heir. She is very controlling and you, being the stubborn little dragoness I love, would not agree to her rules and she’d use her more convincing methods.”

Sylph went quiet. “Not too far from the truth,” she mumbled. Sadly, they had a good point, beside the whole not trusting her, of course, but wanting to protect her from Nahana was a good point. Sylph snorted and laughed, slightly surprised that she could at this point. “She wanted to keep me in the bath corridor so I don’t run off. To get away from the guard blocking the door, I made the best excuse and threatened to pee all over her hallway. And with my ability, I could have made it look really impressive.”

Veria laughed. “I would have loved to see her face if you actually did. Her bath is so precious to her.” The smile on her face turned somewhat mischievously. “Hold up, the best excuse? You could also just ask if you need a slight break from our training.”

Arastra stepped forward from her tree to be the voice of reason. “Nahana likes to keep her image and has quite the temper. So it is vitally important to not sully that image of hers, not to her subjects. Just play along until we get there.”

“So you say that I should not have bitten her, slashed her underbelly, and called her a whore?”

“Jokes are not appropriate-” Arastra swallowed her words after reading Sylph’s face. She bent downwards, chin tipped. “You already did that, didn’t you?”

Sylph nodded and fought the onset of bad thoughts rising from reality. “She has chained me to the wall. Which is why I am here.” The sand beneath her slowly turned into green wool and a thick metal chain protruded out of her throat like a metal beard. Sylph grabbed and pulled. It was not real. The pain of having her throat torn open was not real either.

A silver blade hissed past her throat and cut through the metal as though it was butter. “She did what?” Veria cracked her neck in an excessive manner. “Tell the captain to hurry. I have a daughter to take back.”

“This ship can’t go faster, I’ve told you. We are flying at full speed since we took off,” Dalian said. He sat to the side with his head buried in one pfod. Keeping this up must be hard over the vast distance.

Sylph raised her head. “You actually got on an airship to get me.”

Veria blinked, aghast. “Of course I am coming to get you. I am your mother.”

“Three days,” Arastra said.

Veria scoffed at her. “Because apparently we have to keep to procedures. Screw the procedures. We have to go faster.”

Veria spun around on the spot, not of her own doing if her sudden fighting stance was to be judged. Arastra stood face to face with her. “This is a Sawailan military airship. We can’t just fly where ever we want to. And we would barely be any faster if we stepped out of line, but would risk some pretty nasty political repercussions.”

Sylph stood up. As much as she wanted to stay, Dalian looked like he was about to keel over, and yet he did not say a thing. “I’ll do my best to escape the city with Brandon on my own in two days. You can pick us up outside of the town, following Dalian’s sense. Trust me, we will make it. I can’t wait to actually see you again.”

Veria stopped Sylph from turning away with her tail. “There is one more thing that you have to see. No, something I want you to see.”