He was breathing heavily as they tried to slowly sit him up. He was confused about what had happened. Jaxtor was supporting him from behind as Iratoi helped him into an upright position.

“Are you okay?” she asked as Eloise pressed a cool cloth to his forehead.

“I… I don’t know. What happened?”

Jaxtor’s deeper voice echoed against his thoughts behind him, making him squint, “we thought you could tell us.”

“You just started thrashing and gasping in the middle of the night,” Eloise explained. “Then the room started to get colder. We could feel it was coming from you. Ira and I tried our best to keep your soul from sliding into it.”

“My… soul?”

Iratoi brushed Kaden’s sweaty hair from his eyes and said, “you were falling into a darkness we have never felt before. Are you feeling okay? Can you tell us what happened?”

“I saw my family. They were getting pulled in by a darkness and I couldn’t do anything. Then it came for me. I couldn’t fight it.”

“You fought admirably on our end,” Jaxtor echoed. His voice just kept grating on his senses. As his focus was coming back to him, everything was grating on them. The light next to them was too bright, even though it was merely a small lantern.

“What happened to me?” he asked with a shaking voice. He felt like he was about to burst into panicked tears.

Iratoi swallowed hard and said, “You were given something too strong. You don’t know how to control it. If we can’t get you to someone who can help you, it will consume you.”

The air was sucked right back out of him with that revelation. The darkness he saw was inside him. It was the power he was granted. Were the visions, visions of him? Was he going to be the one beheading someone?

Over the next hour, they took turns doing some type of ritual. They said they were using their own magic to attempt to heal him, help him recover from the event. He was exhausted, but couldn’t bear to think of falling asleep again. They wouldn’t be able to save him again, not after the time healing him now.

“Zuma!” He said in a jolt. “Why wasn’t Zuma alerted?”

They all shared looks with one another before climbing toward the window to look for them below. Zuma was still there, but they weren’t moving. Their chest wasn’t rising, no mist was seeping out of their nostrils.

Before they could stop him, Kaden was climbing out of the window and down the roof toward the dragon. He slid across the tiles, causing many of them to fall off completely. Kaden got to the edge and didn’t hesitate to jump to the ground below. Rolling as he fell, he was able to mitigate the shock of the landing.

Running up to them, he placed his hands on their neck and Zuma’s body was cold. Their scales felt like ice and were painful to touch.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he repeated as he tried shaking them awake. “Zuma! Zuma! Wake up!”

The dragon didn’t react. Tears started to stream down his face as he shook the dragon more fiercely. Their connection caused this. He knew it. He couldn’t handle his magic and they were suffering from it. Taking a deep, shaky breath in, he tried to calm himself and think it through.

“If I was fighting corruption, and Zuma is connected to me, then Zuma is fighting the same corruption. Only she didn’t have companions to help her through it. I have to help her through it,” he said out loud to himself.

Kaden’s mind flashed back to the original vision. He tried to recall what happened, how he had pushed it away the first time. This time, he was alert and coherent. He was able to be more present in the moment. A spark.

There was a spark that pushed away the darkness. It had shone so brightly that the darkness couldn’t thrive. The concern for his family allowed him to will the darkness away. Focusing, he tried to push this same concern forward toward Zuma.

Nothing happened. Zuma remained frozen.

He traced the lightning scars on his hands, the same ones Zuma had on their body. They were bonded. He managed to do that before he ever even met the matriarch. He did that when he had saved them from the rune trap. Leaving them frozen like this would be just as bad as leaving them to suffer in the trap.

Closing his eyes, he tried to focus all his energy, all his will, into his hands. The idea of a light, a spark, pulsed through his thoughts. He imagined a healing energy, a warmth spreading through his body.

The spark ignited in his heart but remained inside himself. He tried to pull and tug on it. Move from his soul outward toward Zuma.

It wasn’t moving.

Kaden took a deep breath and tried to focus on the spark. Letting it wrap its warmth around his heart, down his spine. He let it invade every inch of his body. Giving himself over completely to its power, he concentrated on merely the healing energies of it.

Pressing his hands on Zuma’s chest, he envisioned that spark, that warmth being shared with the ones he cared about. He pictured his healing aura spreading and worming its way from himself to others. He felt their skin soften beneath his hands. Their chest started to rise and fall in deep breaths.

He kept pushing the energy toward Zuma, happiness over taking him, fueling more fire into the act. The warmth spread across Zuma and their body started to stretch and move. Their eyes popped open in surprise.

He let out a relieved laugh as Zuma shook off the invisible ice that had held them in place. The rest of his companions stood at the edge of the patio, watching the event.

“That should not have been possible,” he heard Jaxtor say.

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Eloise was whispering, “the darkness had Zuma. He shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Iratoi slowly walked up to the two of them, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder while he still held his hands to Zuma. Turning his head, Kaden showed the tears that were dripping down his cheeks. He hadn’t realized he had been sobbing, but when Iratoi touched him, he turned away to hide the tears that decorated his cheeks.

Morning came shortly after and they were out before any of the civilians had even awoke. Kaden was exhausted. Feeling rested was the last thing he thought would have happened that day. They had to put some distance between the incident. Zuma wasn’t flying above them this time, but walking next to them. Kaden didn’t want them to be far from him, not after nearly losing them when only just now met them.

There was something about the dragon, something he couldn’t really explain. Their bond was getting stronger every day. The more time they spent, the more firm it grew. It felt as if the dragon had always been part of his life. He just never knew it. Their presence comforted him when his thoughts tried to consume him. Everything that had happened to him was extremely overwhelming.

With Zuma near, he felt safer. He would not be sleeping far from their side for the rest of the trip. He announced this declaration to the crowd, that he would not be getting a room with them, that he would be staying with Zuma from there on out.

He expected for them to protest, but instead they supported it. Iratoi advised it was probably a better idea if it helped him with his dreams. They would be traveling for some time before they even reached the southern water temple. The three of them were incapable of teaching him how to control them so anything that could help him, they welcomed it.

“How’d you do it?” asked Eloise.

“Do what?”

She motioned to Zuma and said, “Unthaw Zuma. You shouldn’t have been able to do that. That happens when an azure dragon gets corrupted.”

“So it happens that regularly that you can identify it? What is going on in the world?”

Jaxtor pushed Eloise out of the way and walked next to him instead. “It’s not that it happens regularly, but it has happened. El and I saw it happen to a dragon last year. We were sent out to a village not unlike yours but in the north. The people had found a dragon that was frozen.”

“What happened to the dragon?”

He looked down and quietly said, “you shouldn’t have been able to do that, Kaden.”

“We couldn’t do anything,” said Eloise. “By the time a more powerful mage arrived, the dragon was too far gone. They were able to thaw them but…”

Iratoi looked straight ahead of them, not turning to make eye contact when she said, “we weren’t there quick enough. It did not make it… Its magic returned to the earth.”

A hush fell between them and Iratoi increased her speed to put distance between the rest of them. They let her have her space.

He had never heard of such a thing before but, there was so much he didn’t know about. Every day was becoming more and more challenging. The only reason he was able to save Zuma was because of the spark the matriarch had shown him. On his own, the darkness had consumed him. Only the group of mages were able to barely bring him back from the edge.

He wondered if there was more to what had happened to him than even he knew. How could the vision be different in his own mind? Was it the future or a future possibility? He got lost in his own thoughts when he felt Zuma speed up.

“No, no, no, you don’t get to run off,” he demanded.

They let out a fog toward him. He flailed his arms, trying to push the fog away. Wind pushed it behind them as they flapped their wings and took flight.

“You can’t make them do anything,” said Jaxtor. “Regardless of whatever bond you two have, Zuma is still their own creature. They’ll do what they want. The fact that they choose to stick with you is all their own decision. You can’t keep a dragon on the ground forever.”

Eloise pointed above them at Zuma. They weren’t flying off and away from them, just stretching their wings and following along the road, making passes back and forth above. He shook his head at them. He needed to take those words to heart, that he couldn’t control Zuma. They were their own master, not him.

For the next few hours, he asked Eloise about the most mundane things he could to take his mind off everything. He asked about what it was like at the temple, their daily routines, all the extreme basics of what his new life would be like. She was happy to provide the distraction for them.

It was a distraction. He hadn’t been paying any attention, and Zuma had not come back for some time. Once he realized this, he panicked. They tried to get him to calm down, to understand that they were probably just off flying around.

“No, we can’t let them out of our sight. If they go too far and I lose control, they can be infected and freeze again. We have to find them!”

A roar rang out, echoing across the trees, deep into the wilderness off the road. The birds scattered and the wildlife stampede toward them. The roar was one of terror. He gave them an expectant look before sprinting off into the woods.

Jumping over limbs and branches, he was running full speed to the sound. Kaden wasn’t about to let Zuma get hurt again if he could help. Their heavy footsteps were behind him. At least they had the good sense to follow his lead.

Zuma wasn’t roaring anymore, but he could sense their presence not too far from their own. Through the dense underbrush, he could see their scales glittering in the sun. Pushing through a bush, he stepped into a small clearing to see Zuma surrounded by twisted wolves.

They could have easily taken flight once more, but Zuma was standing near something, something he instantly recognized. A rune trap.

They had found another rune trap and had been calling for them to find them. The wolves were likely not part of the original plan. They circled around Zuma, biting and lunging. Zuma shot scalding water at them and batted several away with their elongated claws. Their tail swept another off their feet.

Just as he was assessing the scene, two bursts of powerful water flew by his head. Eloise and Iratoi leapt over the brush and were in fighting stances. The wolves quickly noticed the dragon had company and adjusted their tactics.

They didn’t stand a chance with the three mages. Jaxtor came in with a rush, hitting several with icy masses that knocked them over and away. It was nothing before they started to flee the scene.

Eloise did a flourish of a jump and threw something that Kaden couldn’t even make out. A wolf fell over with a thump and started to sizzle away. The same sroyizzling he had seen the dark liquid do in his vision.

The pack fled, all but the dead one that smoldered in the dirt. The three mages slowly dropped their guard as they assessed the situation. Jaxtor kicked the sizzling wolf and gave a disgusted look.

“What kind of corrupted nonsense is this?” he shook his head at the creature. Kaden was able to get a closer look at it. Spikes were growing out of the creature’s body. They were dark and shined in the light. The creature's fur looked matted and clumped together in odd places. This wasn’t something normal for their area.

Zuma let out a huff and threw her head in the other direction. Eloise gasped when she saw it. Near Zuma was an exact replica of the rune trap Kaden had found them in.

“You weren’t lying,” Iratoi said, as she knelt down to touch the rune.

A spark ignited, and the trap initiated. A giant bubbled barrier erupted from the runes, shimmering and sparking. Zuma huffed once more and was soon back in the air. He didn’t blame them. The last time they were near a trap, they had been seriously injured. He was just thankful that they had alerted them to it this time.

The mages jumped back as the sparks popped and sizzled around the barrier. Eloise quickly pulled a notepad out from her bag and started flipping away. Iratoi did the same, scribbling down the various runes that were positioned around the edges of the trap.

“Oh no,” Eloise said in a worried tone. “Oh no, no, no. This is a Loratyk Rune.”

“Lord Loratyk?”

“The one and only!”