As they descended the stairs, Mel grew increasingly uneasy about what would be down here. She placed her feet with care on each step, not sure if she wanted to risk slipping. Hanon walked behind her, a soft light glimmering around him. He’d made himself into a walking lantern and Mel guessed this meant he was growing comfortable around her. Enough to let her see his magic, at least.
Luthel trailed behind them, uncharacteristically quiet, and it only added to the pressure growing behind Mel’s eyes. There was a dull pain there in her mind, something telling her she shouldn’t be down here. She felt like she was a kid again, sticking her nose into something that was better left alone.
The stairs finally bottomed out into a narrow corridor. On the wall hung a torch and Mel gave it to Hanon, expecting him to light it for her. At first, he only stared at her with a frown on his face. But then the white glow that had made it possible for them to see anything down here extinguished and a moment later, flames shot out of Hanon’s mouth.
Mel’s face lit up from his magic and she took a step back, watching with wide eyes as the torch caught fire. Hanon’s gaze met hers and he closed his mouth, still with the same frown on his forehead. Mel felt a shiver run down her spine, and there was something in his eyes that made her uneasy. Or was it perhaps the powers he possessed, that she supposedly possessed too.
Hanon was like them. The people who had lived here in Krazaa. The people who’d been depicted on the side of the sundial together with the dragons.
Mel took the torch from Hanon with a curt nod and turned her back on him, not wanting to linger in these feelings. She swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat and made her way through the corridor.
At the end of it, there was a closed door with a slit at the top. Mel felt at the handle and the door swung open without much protest. They strode into a dusty room filled with the same scent she’d felt from above the stairs, only much stronger. She took a few steps around the room, lighting up surfaces of tables, chairs and equipment. But it was there that she stopped, her mind finally catching up to what she was seeing.
There was blood everywhere in this room and the equipment consisted of sharp objects and benches to constrict people to. There were nails and tongs and spikes everywhere that she just didn’t want to think about. But it seemed like her mind moved on its own, seeing and processing this information against her will.
She took a step back, her hand flying up to her mouth just as her stomach churned and something acid threatened to make its way up. She caught Hanon’s and Luthel’s faces, seeing the uneasiness shining through their taut expressions as well. Mel took another step back and crashed into a table jammed into the end of the room.
She spun around, startled, and illuminated the contents strewn across the surface. But here there was more dust than blood and nothing sinister looking at all. Only a small leather-bound book and a few coins of some currency she didn’t recognize.
Mel picked up the book, turning to Luthel, and handed him the torch. She brushed the dust off the cover, but there were no markings on it. Luthel nodded to her to continue, and she opened the book while he shined the light on the pages. Hanon was somewhere in the room, looking around with a faint white glowing aura.
“So far, we have been able to contain the taint,” Mel read aloud. “We have closed the gate and no travelers are allowed inside. Only those who can be examined are let in. I have brought a few patients who have been contaminated here for further experimentation. Perhaps I can find a cure for this disease. Perhaps we can save them.”
She looked up when she flipped the page and saw that Luthel was staring down at the book, urging her to go on. So she did. “I see them in the night. Some of them are my former patients, the ones I couldn’t save, the ones who weren’t blessed enough to die. But most of them are faces I never knew from the other cities. The fallen kingdom. They’re out there waiting for me. I can feel it in the way their white eyes stare up at me in the evenings. How their piercing gazes mock me in the night. How I long to solve their mystery. How I wish I could cure just one of them.”
Mel flipped the page again, growing more uneasy by the minute. “One of my own has fallen prey to the disease. A mighty dragon has fallen, stripping him of his powers and making him into something between light and dark. I don’t know what to do to help him. All I can do is to treat my brother the same way I’ve treated all of my patients. I need to understand what is going on in his body. How the taint got inside when he didn’t leave the city. Or else we might all fall. I need to get under his skin to see what hides beneath.”
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Mel didn’t want to keep going anymore. She could feel that this diary was turning out even worse than it had started. She didn’t want to know there was no cure for the taint or what even had happened to the dragons. She didn’t want to have her hope squashed. But she needed to know.
“Subject number forty-three. My kin. He’s the first dragon to have been tainted under my gaze. First, we lifted the skin off, examining the muscles and tissue underneath. But there was nothing there, nothing had changed. We continued yesterday by tapping his veins and spilling out the blood. Some of the other patients have shown promising results from bloodletting. I am hopeful of the results we might get from this. The smoke rising from his blood is disturbing, but I am used to it by now. One of my newer staff fainted and had to be brought out to the balcony for reinvigoration. This is not a pleasant business, but necessary if we are to beat this thing.”
Mel stopped, dragging in a deep breath, and flipped the page once again.
“How could they have gotten a dragon in here?” Hanon asked, turning around in the room and pointing at the relatively small space. “Could the experiment on the dragon have been performed somewhere else?”
“It doesn’t say anything about another facility, though,” Mel said. “Perhaps the dragons weren’t always large. I don’t know. But the person who’s writing this also says they’re kin. Maybe they could shift shapes.”
Hanon dragged a hand over his arm, seeming to draw inside himself again and didn’t reply. He just stood there, dragging his hand up and down the length of his arm. Luthel nodded to Mel to continue once more.
“I knew what they were doing in Bahlan. I knew they were killing us. I should have left Krazaa back then and gone to war against the cities, but I was foolish and believed the king would intervene. That he would do what was best for the people. But the king is gone, hiding in his precious valley and leaving us to run the old kingdom by ourselves. I don’t know how many of us they sacrificed down there in their forge. Everything to get our powers, to use them in their metal without us. Well, they have it now, those damned fools. They have their dragon stones that are resting on the graves of too many dragons. All for what? So they could awake this nightmare. So that we could feel the terror of the void.”
“They awoke something down there among the pain and fear. Something that feeds off the corruption of their newfound powers. Do they think the void has come to save them? There is no salvation in domination. There is only subservience. I refuse to serve the void. I will fight those white eyes until my last breath and so will the rest of my kin. What is left of us, anyway.”
Mel turned to the last page. “Make me into a flying beast, a magic kite, made for you. But don’t let my eyes turn white and my body grow hazy like them. Mother, take me, release me from these bonds that tether me to this earth. Help me soar above the darkness and feel your light once more. Teach me what the meaning of sun truly is. Let me show them there is fear in your glory.”
Suddenly, it all clicked in a big way for Mel. It was like the puzzle pieces in her brain finally slotted together and she could now see the full picture. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. Why it had been so difficult for her to even glimpse it. But now the dam had broken, and it was like a waterfall was rushing through her, filling her up with her own energy.
The book fell from her hands and landed on the floor by her feet, and Mel’s gaze traveled down to her fingertips. There was something about her shape, the taut skin of her hands that had always felt wrong, strange even. It was like she knew she could be more. She’d always known she’d belonged up there. Her gaze flew up to the ceiling, and she exhaled a long breath.
“We’re dragons,” Mel said. “I’m a dragon.”
For the first time since it had happened, Mel could feel the taint coursing through her veins, tethering her to this earth. She felt the thick layer of smoke covering the sky like a pressure weighing down on her shoulders. It was all designed for her to make her stay down here. It was as heavy as the lies she’d been told about dragons and gods. It was her destiny to find the dragons, but they had never been on the other side of the world. They had always been with her.
Mel’s eyes drifted down and connected with Hanon’s. His face was stricken and his eyes were too large for him. The release she’d felt from finally knowing the truth, for figuring out this strange maze she’d been walking through her entire life, vanished and instead a prickling sensation took place. A feeling of her missing something here in this moment.
That’s when she saw that Hanon’s eyes weren’t directed at her, but at his own father standing next to her. Mel turned and faced Luthel. His face was hard and his jaw was set in a painful line. Mel felt the hairs on her arms stand and she took a hesitant step back from him, giving Luthel space to react to this news.
She waited, flicking her gaze back and forth between the two of them. But Luthel never said anything. He just stood there frozen like a statue with the torch lighting his face. She knew this must be difficult for him to hear, but he couldn’t ignore this, right?
It was staring them in the face. In fact, it always had. Even up there by the sundial, it had really said it all. Hanon was a dragon, just like her. These were their ancestors.
“I don’t think we can just dismiss this, Luthel,” Mel said. “I think it’s pretty clear what this means. Who we are.”
Mel’s eyes flicked once more between Hanon and Luthel. But neither of them seemed to acknowledge her presence. Eventually, Luthel turned and stalked out of the room and up the stairs, plunging Mel and Hanon back into complete darkness.