Arrows rained down around Susan as she bounded through the woods. Trees shuddered with her passing, her enormous limbs crushing the loam beneath as they pushed her away from her pursuers.
Her ears picked up the careful intonation of spell work somewhere behind her. She sped up, leaping forward in a desperate attempt to keep out of range.
Fear and need had taught her to recognize the sounds of spell work with incredible precision. Sometimes it meant pitfalls and earthen walls summoned from nowhere. Other times the spells sped the soldiers up to keep pace with her. Or sometimes it meant-
The trees around her exploded into a storm of wood chips as her world erupted with light and noise.
The heat washed over Susan’s back as she was blown forward by the force of the explosion. Despite the immense size of her body, her feet left the ground as she went airborne for a moment.
For a second she hung in place, before the earth came up to meet her one more. Four legs caught the ground and pushed off again in a show of coordination Susan didn’t know she had in her.
She huffed out a laugh as she ran. The shouts of her pursuers dimmed for a moment as she drew away. For the first time in a week, her enemy's magic worked against them as it helped gain her just a bit more distance.
It would have been wonderful if this represented any form of escape from her pursuers, but Susan knew perfectly well that her advantage would be gone within a day. There was an entire army chasing her, after all.
It had been a week since she escaped the Great Caldera. The moment her Dragon Heart ignited she had blown her way out and started moving southeast toward the Beringian Strait, her best chance at escape from the Atlan Empire.
Her eagerness cost her, though. As it turned out, the Atlan Empire still kept watch over the Great Caldera. A group of soldiers had found her within days of her escape.
She hadn’t been initially afraid. Considering the size and power of her transformation, any fight with normal soldiers should have been easy.
That belief went right out the window the moment one of the soldiers had fired a spell at her. She had dodged to the side, then watched as it arced over her shoulder and hit a tree behind her.
And disintegrated it.
Susan didn’t feel like sticking around after that.
So she ran. And kept running. Stumbling and crashing as she carved a trail of broken pines through the forests of the Oberian continent. All because she hadn’t taken the time to familiarize herself with her new body.
Her shoulder ramming into a tree brought her back to the present. Its trunk was smashed into pieces around her, the remaining top section crashing down somewhere behind her.
Triumphant shouts from behind reached her ears, accompanied by more arrows that clattered over her scales.
Susan pushed off with all four limbs, entering into a heavy sprint even as she cursed her distraction. The shouts faded behind her for a moment, before a new voice emerged. This time from her right.
Instinct had her limbs scrabbling beneath her to get out of the spell, but it was too late. She felt a wave of heat and force wash over her body once again.Trees shattered around her as her body left the ground and she was thrown sideways in a messy tumble.
For a moment she saw nothing but blue sky and brown wood, before she crashed back down to the ground. Her body rolled a few times before she came to a stop.
Taking a second to shake the disorientation away, she pushed herself to her feet. Instead of more forest like she expected, Susan found herself in the middle of a road. Fifty feet wide and made of flat square stones, it stretched far into the distance until it disappeared over the horizon. With a ditch dug on either side of the road and an additional fifty feet of cleared land on either side, the construction rivaled most modern roads from earth.
The trees stood tall on either side of the road, boxing it in except for the area she had been thrown through. The pocket of broken pines echoed with the shouts of soldiers.
They were catching up.
Susan glanced between the road and the forest, she needed to pick her escape route. The road offered the opportunity for a speedier escape, but not in the direction she needed to go. A glance up toward the sun showed that the road headed… southeast?
A grin split her face for the first time in days and she kicked off. Running for all she was worth over the cobbles and toward freedom. The sounds of the knights behind her, their shouts, spells, and even the clank of their armor faded away as the flat road allowed her to really put her new quadrupedal form to use.
The wind rushed over her face and the trees began to blur by on either side as her bounding gait carried her over the cobbles faster and faster. For a brief moment she could almost believe that she had escaped. Her incredible hearing gave no indication of anyone near her.
The chatter and clanking of soldiers appeared again, this time ahead of her. Susan growled in frustration as she spotted the culprit.
It was a carriage. Ornately styled with golden engravings, it was pulled forward by a quartet of horses and surrounded by a contingent of mounted knights.
They must have been expecting her as the group was already preparing spells to fire at her. Susan let out a roar that echoed down the road, startling the horses and making the soldiers pull them closer to the carriage.
Susan moved to run along the strip of land along the side of the road, hoping to avoid another confrontation. The turf crumpled her feet, slowing her speed as she drew closer to the carriage.
The guards seemed worried, but not panicked as they stared her down. Moving to form a circle around the carriage, several of them raised their hands in the air and a transparent dome appeared around them.
The door of the carriage opened and a person stepped out onto the road. Tall, blond haired, and wrapped in a frilled golden corset, the woman was clearly a noble. And clearly an elf as well judging by her enormous pointed ears.
She watched with a sneer as Susan began to close in. An arm raised in the air as she began to chant. Susan couldn’t hear the words, but the air around the woman began to tremble.
Her legs dug into the ground but momentum carried her forward and further into the woman’s range.
A cruel smile came over the noblewoman’s face as the spell completed. A bolt of energy erupted from her outstretched arm, crossing the space between her and Susan in an instant before hitting the dragon in the side.
The breath was forced from her chest as her entire torso compressed. The incredible momentum she had built up with her run stopped in an instant as her body folded around the incredible force of the spell. Head met tail as the impact made her flip in place before falling to the ground in a heap.
Desperation had her pushing herself back up within moments despite the ringing pain in her head and chest. She could deal with pain. She couldn’t deal with another one of those attacks.
A fireball hit her in the chest, the following explosion throwing her off her feet and back onto the ground.
Susan hadn’t noticed when but the carriage had drawn closer. She had been a thousand feet away when the spell had hit her. The group had closed over half the distance in the time that she had been down. The noblewoman was already preparing another spell, while several of the knights were preparing their own.
Susan scrabbled for a moment as her feet failed to get traction on the soft ground beneath her.
One of the knights finished their chant. Something coalesced in their upturned hand. A brightly burning spark, suspended within a softly glowing transparent sphere They leaned back on their saddle before quickly whipping their entire torso forward to throw the spell like a fastball.
It zipped across the distance between them like a bullet, aimed squarely at her torso.
Her claws finally dug deep enough, jerking her forward just enough to dodge the spell. It vanished somewhere behind her, followed by an explosion that sent Susan stumbling to the side back toward the road.
Her claws met hard stone again and she took off. A barrage of spells were thrown but fell short as she pulled away from the group.
Susan cursed her bad luck as she ran. Of course the only road heading southeast had some insane wizard noble traveling on it. Now she was going to have to circle around them somehow, all while avoiding the soldiers already after her.
Something caught her legs. Her brain didn’t even have the time to process it before she was tumbling head over tail across the stone cobbles.
Triumphant shouts echoed around her as the armored Atlan Knights shimmered into existence around her. Her breath caught in her throat as she recognized the trap she had fallen into.
There was no warning before spells began to pelt her. Explosions tossed her back and forth while piercing bolts of energy sent stabbing bolts of pain as they peppered her.
She tried to whip her tail around to hit one of them. The tip of her tail hummed through the air as it flew toward one of the steel covered men, only to be deflected by an earthen shield conjured by another.
A retaliatory barrage of spells thrown by the surrounding knights sent her stumbling back.
The knights drew in closer. Soon the explosions and bolts were replaced by conjured whips of steel, earth and water. She felt the coils wrap around her neck and limbs, then pull taut. She braced against the yanking of the cords but found herself losing against the pull.
Susan roared and thrashed, but found each of her attacks stopped or deflected. As her struggles stilled, the knights grew in confidence. Their whips increased in number and she found herself constrained even further.
Her breathing quickened, as she felt herself slowly pulled down further and further towards the ground.
‘Hello Miss Dragon,’ A voice whispered in her ear.
Susan jerked back, whipping her head back and forth looking for the source of the sound.
‘Sorry for startling you,’ It continued, ‘But I’m afraid we have more pressing matters at hand. Now please just give me a second to get things set up.’
The earth rumbled, sending some of the knights stumbling. Susan pushed up, snapping some of the cords and pulling knights off their feet. Standing up on her hind legs, she let out a roar so loud the air shook.
Towering a hundred feet over the ant-like forms of the knights, she readied herself for the first true fight in her new form.
‘Wonderful!’ The voice whispered again, startling her again, ‘Now I need you to play dead.’
A figure appeared in front of her floating midair. An elven man, dressed in traveling leathers and wielding a bastard sword in one hand. He was straight backed with a severe face as he looked down on Susan.
She reared back in surprise, then snapped forward to bite at him. Enormous teeth snapped on nothing but air. The man vanished the instant before her mouth closed on him.
“DIE BEAST!” A voice roared from behind her.
Her head whipped around to see him grasp his blade in a two handed grip and swing it forward horizontally. A brilliant arc of light appeared as he slashed the air. It hung there for a moment after he finished the swing, then shot forward with impossible speed.
It moved from in front of him to her neck in an instant. Susan gasped as she watched the glowing line pass through her body with no resistance. Horror grew within her as she waited for whatever terrible result would come.
A cheer from below startled her. She glanced down, only to freeze in shock as she watched her own severed head hit the ground below her.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Susan’s head whipped up to stare at the elven man in shock, he winked back.
She let herself fall forwards, her body hitting the ground with a teeth rattling thud that made the cobblestones of the road jump in the air. The world lay silent for a second before a second, louder cheer erupted all around her.
Her eyes took in the celebrating knights around her as they pumped their fists skyward and roared at the sight of her… dead body. That was a surreal thought to have.
The sight of her own decapitated head on the ground was distracting enough that she barely noticed when the knight's cheers were interrupted by the clattering of a carriage. The ostentatious thing appeared at the edge of her vision as it pulled to a stop.
The door swung open to let out the elven noblewoman a moment later. She stalked toward Susan’s prone body as the Elven man floated down from above.
One of the knights stepped forward to greet them. Distinguishable by the gold filigree that colored the emblem on his chest and the edges of his armor, he swept into a low bow.
“My Lord, my Lady,” He spoke. “Thank you for coming to our assistance.”
The still floating mage simply nodded while the Noblewoman snorted.
“Bah, it was nothing,” she said.
She cast her eyes over Susan for a moment, taking in the heavy scales and snakelike form.
She sniffed in disdain before speaking, “So this is the beast I was called here to put down.”
“Indeed my lady,” The knight responded, still bowing.
“A strange thing, where did it come from?” She said with a glance toward the knight.
“It escaped the Great Caldera, we have been chasing it the entire week since.”
The noblewoman’s head whipped toward him.
“Impossible,” She snapped, “No creature could ever escape the cliffs.”
The knight did not move a muscle, even under her glare.
“It did not, it was let out.”
This time even the elven man’s head turned to look at him. Susan couldn’t see the look on his face but she assumed it was something like the open mouthed incredulity the noblewoman was showing.
“Tis’ the truth,” The knight continued, “The creature escaped through a newly cut tunnel passing through the whole of the eastern cliffs.”
The noblewoman frowned, “What fool would dare tunnel into the Great Caldera? Have you found the culprit?”
“We search for him now, though the search has not been as fruitful as our hunt here.”
The discussion continued but Susan began to tune it out. It was ridiculous. Could they really not conceive of a dragon strong enough to break through the Caldera wall?
The elven man, unnoticed by the other two, approached Susan’s fake head. He took a small bag from his belt, before holding it up, mouth pointing outwards. The illusory head trembled, then shrank down until it was barely the size of a marble. Then jumped up and into his bag.
That got gasps of shock from some of the onlookers, but the elven man didn't seem to notice. Approaching her body, he did it again. She watched wide eyed as her body seemed to do the same, shrinking down before vanishing into the tiny sack. A look down her length showed that she was now completely invisible.
‘Now quick,’ the whisper came again, ‘Into the woods.’
The next minute was extremely awkward. With her neck, tail and stomach held high, Susan must have resembled a badly drawn W as she tiptoed over the heads of the knights.
It was good that she had fallen on the brick road. She wasn’t sure if the invisibility spell on her extended to the footprints she would have left otherwise.
She couldn’t help but hear the conversation continue as she crept along.
“Incredible,” The noblewoman said. “I didn’t know there were any masters of space magic within the empire.”
“Hmm, really?” The man spoke up, his voice oddly squeaky.
There was a brief moment of silence as every other elf on the road turned to look at him.
“Well shit.”
A bang echoed from behind her and she chanced a glance back to see what had happened. The elven man was… Gone? The knights seemed confused, but the noblewoman’s head snapped up, her face contorted with rage.
WIth a wordless cry, she shot out a shockwave of magic that blasted over the surrounding area. Susan felt her scales tingle as it washed over her. A look down at her body showed that it was once again visible.
“Well,” A voice came from her back, “I do believe it's time to run.”
Looking at the twisted snarl of fury that adorned the noblewoman’s face Susan couldn’t help but agree. Quite literally turning tail, she ran.
The collective roar of protest from the knights behind her said they wouldn’t be far behind. The roar of explosions started up once again like an extremely violent band giving an encore. Glimmering sparks of magic landing all around her before vanishing in eruptions of light and sound.
“Can you fly?” The voice shouted.
“What?” She called back.
“You have wings, can you fly?”
“Maybe!” She yelled, jumping to the side to avoid a quintet of spells flying at her, “Haven’t tried yet!”
The voice fell silent for a moment, and Susan turned her focus back to running and dodging for her life.
“Now I’m going to try something,” The voice shouted over the noise, “So when I say jump, I need you to jump.”
“Sure!” Susan said as she glanced back again. She caught a glimpse of the noblewoman riding behind them on a horse stolen from one of the knights. The woman was in the middle of chanting another spell, hand held high above her head as she screamed out the words.
Susan leapt forward, trying to push herself to go at least a little bit faster. She knew it wouldn’t be enough.
“JUMP!” The voice roared.
Susan jumped.
She shot into the air easily rising to twice the height of the treetops. A black bolt of energy shot along the road below her, shattering the paving stones as it passed over them.
Her body hung in the air as if suspended by a string, before slowly beginning to drift back down. Her wings unfurled, catching the air and, impossibly, holding her body aloft.
“Fly, fly!” The voice shouted.
Susan flapped her wings and rose. The feeling was incredible. Flight under her own power was not something she had expected to achieve soon, but now that she had she regretted not trying earlier.
It was breathtaking, even more incredible than the act of tearing down the cliffs of the Great Caldera. Rising into the air under her own power, a dream shared by practically every person since the dawn of time.
She turned her head to stare at the wide V of scaled skin formed by her wings. They shouldn't be able to lift her. She’d designed them, and she knew they weren’t meant for this kind of flight.
As she ascended higher and out of the range of the knight's spells, she turned back to the person who had made this possible. It wasn’t hard to find him.
The brightly colored figure stood out among the light gray scales of her back. He was every bit the opposite of the simply dressed elven man he had disguised himself as earlier.
Barely two feet tall, the miniature man wore an enormous red hat that added a foot to his height, and a large coat of the same bright red that covered him down to his ankles. A pair of black eyes sparked from within an enormous black beard that fell from his face to his knees.
“Allow me to introduce myself, madame dragon,” He spoke in his squeaky voice, “My name is-”
----------------------------------------
“Hadwigis!” Grandpa Zach shouted, “You knew Hadwigis!”
Susan’s audience was seated around the coffee table in the same arrangement as when she started her story. Grandpa Zach was seated across from his wife, who had both granddaughters caught in a hug. He had been leaning further and further forward as Susan slowly described the mysterious figure. His excitement must have finally overcome his sense as he excitedly shouted out his guess.
“Don’t interrupt dear,” Hilda said with a sigh Susan felt through their hug.
“But…” Zach trailed off as he looked around and took in the annoyed stares of his granddaughters.
He coughed into a closed fist. “He, uh… was quite famous for his work on purity magic,” He muttered awkwardly, looking to the side.
Susan rolled her eyes, “Anyways.”
----------------------------------------
“Hadwigis,” Hadwigis finished, “Might I have your name.”
“Susan,” She responded distractedly as she tried to direct their flight more southeast.
“A fine name,” He said, “It is good to finally meet you, though I must admit, it wasn’t a meeting I was at all expecting. You see, I came to be in the area after a teleportation experiment went wrong. Imagine my surprise when I found myself not only in the middle of the Atlan Empire, but also an uproar over a ‘beast’ escaping from the great caldera.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, “Then I find myself even more surprised when the great beast turns out to be a dragon in disguise. Despite me knowing perfectly well that there are no mages currently planning the feat, seeing as the Atlans have control over every known dragon transformation site.”
“Wait,” Susan glanced back at him, “Are you from that Mage Group Luthera told me about?”
“You met Luthera?” Hadwigis almost spoke over her.
“Well, yeah, she was in the group I was summoned to the Great Caldera with.”
His mouth opened to respond, then stopped and frowned.
“I think it would be for the best if we started over from the beginning.”
And so Susan found herself devoting the better part of the next two hours to narrating her arrival on Themus as she flew further southeast. The chaotic arrival, Luthera’s plan and-
----------------------------------------
Hilda roared with laughter, her shaking sides bouncing Susan and making her cut off her story. She had been in the middle of giving an extremely abridged account of her arrival on Themus to her grandparents. The moment she had mentioned guiding the group's efforts in dragonification, Hilda had started her outburst.
“You hear that Zach?” Hilda was almost red in the face as she shouted across the table, “After all that nobility hookum about not havin’ a dragon in the family, and it was your granddaughter that started the whole damn golden age!”
Grandpa Zach was staring up at the ceiling with his mouth pulled down into a heavy frown. He looked like he’d broken into his own car only to find the keys in his pocket.
Hilda paused in her laughter, “Oh, sorry dear. Are you alright?” She asked.
Zach breathed in heavily through his nose, then breathed out what must have been a century’s worth of frustration in the heaviest sigh Susan had ever seen.
“It’s fine,” He said quietly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Grandma?” Susan broke in, “Can I keep going?”
“Oops, sorry again,” Hilda gave her a cheeky smile as she knocked herself on the head with a closed fist.
----------------------------------------
Hadwigis, now located atop Susan’s head like a very strange hat, sat quietly as Susan’s story drew to a close. Her voice had slowly dwindled as she narrated Takeo’s betrayal, and the final part of her beginnings on Themus.
“Well,” Susan spoke up as she tried to push down the memories clawing at her attention. “It took me way longer than I thought it would to finish the dragon transformation, like two whole centuries. Apparently binary coding and sand aren’t exactly the best tools for turning yourself into a giant lizard.”
She gave a shrug before realizing that her listener probably wouldn’t be able to see it. “Anyway,” She quickly continued, “After I was done, I cut my way out of the caldera and then got chased all the way here.”
The only response was a light ‘hmm’ from the top of her head. Susan waited a moment, but it seemed Hadwigis was still thinking things over.
Instead of speaking again she decided to look down and take in the world below her. The great road they had fought on now looked no thicker than a pencil, while the dark green of the deciduous trees had given way to brighter colors and flowers. She was relatively sure they were now moving over a more tropical forest.
She spotted a muddy blue line on the horizon. A minute of flying closer showed it to be the ocean. A few minutes more and another ocean appeared to her right.
She had finally, finally, made it to the Beringian Strait.
Her wings picked up their pace a little. She focused her attention back to maintaining the smooth rush of air around her flapping wings when Hadwigis finally spoke.
“It is disheartening to hear about Luthera,” He said quietly, “She was a brilliant mage, and a good friend. Her disappearance threw the whole of the Mage’s Congress into disarray. I had not believed that she would still be alive after all this time, but I had certainly hoped for a better end for her.”
“Yeah, she was great,” Susan murmured.
The two shared a moment of silence before he spoke again.
“Tell me,” He asked, “Did you ever find the circumstances of your abduction strange?”
Susan frowned, “You mean other than being kidnapped by a race I thought didn't exist using magic I didn't think existed?”
“Ah, of course, you do not have the perspective I do,” He muttered before trailing off into silence again. Susan had to resist the urge to try and glare at the top of her own head.
“So?” She asked. She felt the man jump a little in surprise before speaking again.
“Apologies, what I meant to say is that Altus's claim of using the spell to find people with talent is quite suspicious.”
Susan tilted her head as she thought back, before quickly straightening it when she heard a yelp from the man above her.
“Sorry,” She mumbled out before speaking, “But, Luthera was always saying that the others had a pretty good talent in transformation magic.”
“Yes, but a search for talent shouldn’t bring in people from another world entirely, and especially not someone blind to mana.”
“…huh,” Susan found herself speechless. The time immediately surrounding her arrival on Themus was chaotic, and afterwards she hadn’t really wanted to remember it. But looking at it now, there was something wrong about the whole situation.
“Then what was the spell really?” She finally asked.
“I believe it must have been some kind of Causality Magic.”
“…And, uh, what’s causality magic?” She asked again.
“It is a forbidden form of magic that forces fate to conform to an outcome desired by the wielder. I believe the Atlans used it to guarantee that whoever left the Great Caldera would both have a working transformation technique, and be willing to turn it over.”
It made sense to her, but something about his statement seemed odd.
“Wait, there’s banned magic? How do you ban a form of magic?” She asked.
Hadwigis chuckled dryly, “You can’t, at least not truly. Instead it is the apocalyptic consequences of using such magic that deter anyone from using it.”
“Oookay… So, uh, you’re one hundred percent sure it didn't go wrong or anything, right?” Susan asked with a calm, definitely not trembling voice.
“Don't worry,” Hadwigis said, his body shifting back and forth on Susan’s head in a way that made her think he was shaking his head, “If the magic went wrong we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Instead time itself would have ground to a halt as you and the others summoned with you repeated the first few weeks at the Caldera over and over due to the spell trying to force an impossible outcome.”
An updraft caught Susan’s wings and she stopped flapping for a moment as it pushed her higher. Her mind had checked out for a moment as it tried to process the fact that reality itself may have just up and ended when she wasn’t looking. Like she had watched a building collapse behind her the second after she had walked out of it.
Her mouth opened to ask one of the thousand questions running through her head. Then her heart told her to leave the potential existential crisis for another day and she closed it again.
She didn't need to know every intricacy of how she might have died. What mattered was that the empire full of insane world conquering elves was actually an empire full of suicidally insane world conquering elves.
Which when she thought about it, wasn't exactly a surprise.
“On to happier news, I think I see our destination!” Hadwigis said from atop her head.
Susan was about to ask what he was talking about when she spotted something strange about the horizon. There was a gray line there. A dark and jagged streak that contrasted heavily with the smooth hills and valleys of the forests around her. They drew closer quickly and Susan was able to get a better look at it.
She was reminded of a line from history class about the Great Wall of China. It had not been the work of a single person, or even kingdom. Instead it was a collection of smaller walls and fortifications, all combined into a greater whole in order to keep out invading armies.
The thing in front of her was like someone had taken that idea and fed it every steroid and performance enhancing drug ever created.
Twisting wizard’s towers, dark spires, and tall forts jutted up from the ground, forming a rough line across the landscape in front of them. An immense wall a hundred feet high ran in between them, transforming the line of towers into an impassable bulwark.
That wasn’t all of it however. In front of the line of towers lay a zone of absolute destruction. It resembled the surface of the moon. Craters upon craters of burnt earth and melted glass layered on top of each other until they resembled something out of Jackson Pollock's nightmares.
The road below them ran ahead until it ended in a series of small, roundish lakes a short distance from the wall. Which considering the rest of the landscape, probably weren’t natural.
Susan gaped as she took in the incredible sight.
“Welcome to the Beringian Passage,” Her passenger declared, “Or as I like to call it, the Beringian Impassage!”
Susan rolled her eyes. So that was where Luthera had gotten her sense of humor from. A smile tugged at her lips though, and each pump of her wings made her feel lighter. For the first time since she entered this world, she had found freedom.