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When I closed my maw around Leviathan’s jugular, I braced myself for the warm, pleasant taste of blood. It was something that didn’t come. Instead, I got a mouthful of salty seawater.
My head jerked back in confusion. Leviathan simply hovered there, only a few yards away, that infernal grin pasted to his fish-lips snout.
I lunged again. Again, as I snapped, I got nothing but a mouth full of water. It was as if this beast was not flesh and bone at all!
I roared in frustration, resorting to brute force, lashing and swinging wildly at him. Nothing connected. He was either too fast, or simply dissolved into nothing the moment I struck.
“FIGHT ME, FIEND!” I bellowed in mounting rage. I’d had enough of his trickery.
“If you insist,” he said smoothly. Apparently, he was tired of this game, too.
I heard a sound, a whip-crack of lightning, and felt searing pain as Leviathan’s barbed tail lashed from nowhere to strike me straight between the eyes. It left me dazed and staggering. I fought to keep my senses, but the blow was so precise, as if he knew exactly the right spot to down a Dragon.
My vision swam and I felt myself sinking into senseless darkness. I knew this was my end.
image [https://sygnus.org/flames-of-bedlam/story/pic/divider.png]
I awoke to the cliche of water splashing on my face. Talk about adding insult to injury. The water did its job, however, and I sat bolt upright, gasping like a dying fish.
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My whole system was in shock. I didn’t know what was causing it. Silence pressed around me. I felt like I’d been gutted and left out in the sun to die.
Surprisingly, I was still alive. After everything I’d just done. After facing… and (I grudgingly admit) being bested by… that beastly sea serpent… Somehow, I woke again.
The memory of my unexpected loss stung. My head still throbbed from the thrashing I’d taken. Groggy, I touched my forehead with one hand, feeling at the huge tender spot. Then, I hissed as it stung.
“You probably should leave that be,” a familiar voice told me.
Still disoriented, I fought to force my vision to focus. I didn’t need to see him. I could smell him. His scent had changed from forest and wood smoke to sea-salt and ocean winds.
I readied myself to the best of my ability. Leviathan was near.
image [https://sygnus.org/flames-of-bedlam/story/pic/divider.png]
“Stay calm,” he said. It sounded like he wanted to add a trickle of laughter to the words, but they came out forced instead.
When my vision finally served me again, I saw him sitting there. Just plain Levi. Back in his person form. He sat on a log next to a low-burning campfire, cooking something on a spit.
We were alone.
I was alive.
I’d also returned to my person form. But, there was something unnatural and pressured about it. That’s when I first took note of the solid metal cuffs on both of my wrists. Just looking at them turned my stomach. Like they were actively trying to turn my attention off of them.
“You didn’t give us much choice in the matter,” Levi told me as he prodded the embers with a stick. “You’re a blasted Wild One, aren’t you?”
“Choice?” I echoed. My voice was raw in my throat. Raspy.
He motioned to my cuffs. “We usually save those for those who turn.”
“Turn?” I bared my teeth at him.
“Sometimes it brings them back to their senses. I think it’s because it cuts them off from the energies. The influences,” he explained. “Not sure it’ll help you much. You’re in pretty deep.”
I realized then why everything was so still… so silent. Why things felt so strange. It was something the cuffs were doing to me. I couldn’t feel the Flames anymore. I was rendered completely without my power. Without my Dragon.
I was at his mercy.