Guan Fa Lian was exhausted. She had been exhausted for what felt like her whole life but right now was just about the most tired she had ever been. There were more dramatic words she may have used but searching her mind for them was too much effort.
A screaming beam of flame exploded through the clouds above her. Grabbing a loose root on the ground, Fa Lian half-jumped, half-threw herself with all the power she could manage. She fell from the precarious cliff that had hidden her from the dragon’s assault for a short while and landed heavily into the sand below. The rush of waves sounded like the blood pumping through her pounding head.
Lian had been engaged in this battle ever since she had left the sanctuary of her mother’s soul stone. Her soul stone, she reminded herself. The stone quivered happily in response and injected her with enough energy to clear her mind at least. Lian pushed herself to her elbows, looking around for danger or the potential of safety.
The landscape shifted like a dream, as it had been doing for the entire time of their battle. Lian knew that this combat was being waged in her core, within her body, in her very soul. Ryong Aang was not truly at fault, there was essentially no consciousness in the destruction that it was wreaking upon the dreamscape. With each clash, each time Lian had to escape or hide, the battlefield changed.
She was currently ashore upon an island. The scale of this island was unknowable, she had been avoiding the dragonfire for what felt like hundreds of miles. She was so tired. The cliff she had fallen from was vanishing, leaving a field of gloomy black roses in its place. Lian ran into the field, catching her clothing, and the exposed arms and legs besides, on the thorny brambles.
She had no recourse to the assailant haunting her steps. Even now, the clouds above were being parted by the great wingbeats of the immense lizard. The spiky underbrush was already being soaked in her blood but she buried herself into it even deeper.
There must be some solution. Fa Lian had thought this a thousand times and had not yet come up with an answer. When she thought to use a spear, the ethereal space around them had become a stadium of gargantuan proportions. The empty seats had mocked Fa Lian as each and every weapon and trinket she had thought to throw at the beast had fallen harmlessly from its scales. Her assault was not a frenzied and frantic thing but a calculated attempt to find the creature’s weakness.
Thus far, she had only found her.
She doubted her strength when the hammer blows did not make the dragon flinch. She doubted her agility when she was not quick enough to dodge the brutalising licks of crimson flame. When the smoke from the blaze burned her eyes and made her cough, she questioned her vitality. She doubt her intelligence, questioning whatever stupid thought had let her pick up the blasted staff of Ryong Aang in the first place.
She did not, however, question her own resolve.
Each swing of the sword had made her more capable, even if the blade had hung heavier with each swipe. Every stab of the spear had let her push forward just that little bit more. The dragon had not seemed to wane in the face of these small scale sieges, but neither had it grown. Not like she had.
She spat out blood, her lip torn open by a thorn. The teeth upon the vines clutched at her flesh even as she forced her way further into the increasingly dense floral knot of pitch black petals and bloodsoaked stems. The brackish daggers cut at her throat and face but still she pressed on.
Until she couldn’t any longer. The roses held her limp, tired frame suspended. The fight inside her was burning like the dragonfire above but her body was simply spent. She simply could not do this alone.
“Please. Someone just- … anyone… help me.”
As though in direct answer to Fa Lian’s plea, the skies opened. She looked to the clouds above and with wide eyed confusion, watched as the small… something… dropped further and further until it impacted the ground a distance away with an earth shuddering rumble.
Like the dispersing of smoke, the roses and their grasping claws were all dashed away with the shockwave. Fa Lian fell onto her face unceremoniously, but she did not have the energy to care about her grace or dignity right now. She was just glad the pain had stopped.
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However in the now open plain, the roaring of Ryong Aang was carried a far distance. The dragon’s eyes would see a far distance. What little protection she had experienced in obscurity was now banished. All she could do was hope that whatever it was that had smashed the field of macabre flowers had drawn Ryong Aang’s attention. She rolled onto her back and decided that was truly the last of her energy. Even closing her eyes was too much effort, so she stared upwards.
The great serpentine body of Ryong Aang dipped below the clouds piece by piece. A large scaled section of stomach or torso here, a powerful and muscular leg there. Scales the size of dinner plates, glowing and glinting more gloriously than any gem in existence, glimmering the ground with garnet gleam. A great, burning eye of molten fury. Ryong Aang was trapped in this battle in a more real sense than Lian was.
There had been a snap in their connection and their minds had become one, for just a moment. Two things that were not meant to be one becoming one. It broke both of them and the battle for control was also a battle for survival. If Ryong Aang burned through Lian’s lifeforce the dragon would be freed. What this meant for herself was death, what it meant for Ryong Aang was unknown. Lian was trying her best to keep it that way.
“Would you like some help with that?” A layered voice asked. It was somehow both like grit and honey in one. She did not have the energy to move her head to see who was speaking, or even the force within herself to say that yes, if the load could just be lightened for a moment she could do it all on her own. It seemed that her response would not be necessary, however.
A hand rested itself on her shoulder and without a moment wasted Fa Lian felt herself begin to surge. She had to concentrate on not moving, the feeling she was experiencing was so surreal that if she did move she felt she might explode. All at once vitality returned to her limbs, her mind felt clearer and her thoughts more sharp. She tasted the blood in her mouth that had been dulled by her fatigue, only to feel those very wounds close and heal.
She closed her eyes as the process took place. Even as the world began to shake with the roar of the mighty Ryong Aang, the hand never flinched and Lian kept her eyes closed. She had a lot of questions, even some frustrations, but those could wait. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to feel the comfort that was being allowed her right now as the nightmare she had been fighting became something else.
Something more lucid and freeform.
——————————————
“Please. Someone just- … anyone… help me.”
Ah Dan felt the cloak gather around him as he plummeted towards the clouds. He had fallen straight into Fa Lian’s sleeping mind and he knew, though he didn’t know how, that the cloak was a part of his journey here. It wasn’t something he had made himself, but something that had been given to him in a dream he no longer remembered. It was a strange type of memory, to know that you forgot something important. Dan also knew that when he awoke he would likely forget again, so instead he focused his attention downwards.
Like a large centipede below him, the massive form of the dragon Ryong Aang snaked through the clouds, occasionally lighting up the sky with crimson torches of blistering flame. It dragged itself along the cloud tops, searching for something further below. As Dan fell, the cloak he felt around him gained more form, a sleek white fur that seemed to wrap itself around him with intent. Swaddled as he was, Dan plummeted quicker and quicker.
Dan had been in dreams like these before and he hated them.
Even knowing it was different, the anxiety within him spiked as the clouds passed him, only increasing when he could finally see the floor. The fur cloak seemed to brace itself as Dan did, a solidity forming just as the dirt rose to meet them. The explosion of force was seismic, another feeling which Dan remembered from his own nightmares. However, he felt more in control here than in his own dreams.
That was good.
When the dust settled, Dan looked around. The cloak around his shoulders slid off, the mind of its own becoming more apparent. As the cloak fell, a woman appeared from nothingness, drawing it around herself. She sent a sly look Dan’s way as he gazed at her, as though teasing him for his eyes naturally falling upon her soft skin. He looked away, blushing, which made her laugh.
“Kumiho.” Dan remembered who she was now he was in the dream. As the name found purchase in his mind, he felt it become locked in place. He would not forget this time. He was not fading in and out of his own consciousness but instead had fallen into Fa Lian’s. Dan pointed his chin to the sky, at the dragon above. “Are you stronger than him?”
“No,” she answered, a playful smile in her voice, “I have no power at all.” Dan knew that was a barefaced lie and Kumiho knew that he knew. She laughed again and wrapped her arms around Dan from behind. This time, it was not a cloak that fell over Dan but Kumiho’s presence. Her control and her confidence supplanted Dan’s own and he felt the surge of power which she had denied.
Maybe Kumiho wasn’t truly as powerful as Ryong Aang. In the real world, that would certainly be true. However this was not the real world. Dan traipsed towards the field of black roses and dispelled them as he reached the first one. The vines had grasped at Fa Lian and Dan saw her fall clumsily to the ground in a heap.
“Would you like some help with that?” Dan asked, his own voice surprising him. Kumiho’s tones wrapped around his own, making his words feel strange as they left his mouth. With a look upwards, Dan made eye contact with Ryong Aang. It growled, setting the clouds alight with the thunderous sound. He ignored the intimidation and reached down to Fa Lian. With a practised concentration of his mana, Dan sent his healing energy into the injured girl.
Ryong Aang stopped growling and roared in response. Dan continued to ignore the beast, sending wave after wave of positive force into Fa Lian. He felt Kumiho pull from his shoulders and bare her teeth towards the dragon. “Troublemaker,” Dan said, “Whatever happens next is your fault.”
“I can take ownership of that, I think.” Kumiho replied, falling back into place around Dan as an aura. While they spoke, Fa Lian was rejuvenated. She began to make full use of the dreamspace around her, the scattered fragments of black rose winding their way back to her as though the breath of the world were being inhaled through her. In response, Ryong Aang began dropping from the clouds, a meteoric descent that promised cataclysm.
While he fell, Fa Lian transformed.