It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. -- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Many immortals were shapeshifters. Many more were said to be shapeshifters but had never been able to change into any other form. Then there were some who spent years believing they weren't shapeshifters only to suddenly transform -- usually in a moment of extreme stress. People still hadn't stopped laughing over the time a lawyer had turned into a rabbit right as the judge was about to pronounce sentence on his client.
Irímé had laughed along with everyone else when he first heard that story. He'd never once believed something similar might ever happen to him. As far as he knew the priests and fortune-tellers had made a mistake. He wasn't a dragon immortal. He wasn't a shape-shifter at all.
He stared silently at the approaching policemen with a strange sort of serenity. There was only one reason for them to be here. Well, they might be here about the assassin, but that situation had already been dealt with. Permanently dealt with. So there was only one other reason: Abi's necromancy. Irímé knew with the sort of knowledge that needed no confirmation that they were here to arrest Abi. He knew it just as well as he knew he would never let that happen.
One of the policemen finally noticed him. Until now they'd all been preoccupied with staring into windows. So preoccupied they hadn't seen Irímé right in front of them. That was not exactly the behaviour anyone would expect from Her Majesty's police force.
"You there! Young man! Have you seen Princess Abihira lately?"
Calmly and without any real emotion Irímé said, "Yes."
All of the policemen brightened up as if he'd given them the best news they'd heard all day. "Do you where she is now?"
In spite of Irímé's outward indifference, inwardly his chest was full of some writhing, stormy emotion he couldn't understand. It wasn't fear or anger. It wasn't even worry. "Yes."
"We have a warrant for her arrest. Can you take us to her?"
Irímé looked the speaker right in the eye. "No."
The policemen looked at each other in dismay. Clearly they hadn't expected this.
"Young man," one of them said hesitantly, "if you don't help us we'll have to arrest you as an accomplice."
Another of the group, more impatient than the rest, got tired of this useless conversation. He stormed forward and pushed past Irímé. Pointing to the open door he said, "She must be in there."
The writhing emotion in Irímé's chest suddenly resolved itself into magic he hadn't known he was capable of. He reached for it without a second thought.
Legends said many things about dragons. No two were alike. Some breathed fire, some were large enough to blot out the sun when they spread their wings, some lived in the coldest parts of the sea, some hoarded gold and some hoarded knowledge. But every legend agreed on one thing. No one should ever get between a dragon and something it was protecting.
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The palace guards were very confused when the policemen ran past them, screaming at the tops of their lungs. Some of the braver guards ventured out to see what had scared them.
A dragon lay on the palace lawn. A relatively small dragon compared to some; it was barely the size of a small cottage while others were said to be as huge as mountains. A dragon with brilliant blue scales and a white underbelly. A dragon with large blue eyes and thin lines of smoke rising from its nostrils. Its tail curled around its body like a cat's. It looked at the guards with calm indifference.
One of them dared to approach it. As soon as she got too close the dragon growled. Wisely she decided discretion was the better part of valour. She fled as if a horde of demons were after her.
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Abi steadfastly avoided as many of Ilaran's memories as she could. When she had to stop for a rest she closed her eyes and covered her ears. She did not want to spy on someone else's... relationship. No matter how inadvertently.
I must be near the end now, she thought.
She risked opening her eyes ever so slightly. Luckily there was nothing intimate or embarrassing about this memory. It was a perfectly mundane one, of Ilaran writing a letter. Mundane but not very interesting. The most notable thing about it was that he now looked the same age as he had been when he died. She must be getting very close to the end of his memories. What happened then? Would she find his soul there or would this have all been for nothing?
Abi was about to move on when someone knocked the study door.
"Come in," Ilaran said.
Kivoduin opened the door. Abi turned red and prepared to leave at the first sign of any, ahem, affection. "I've booked your train ticket."
"Thank you."
Odd. There was nothing in their interactions or how they looked at each other to suggest they were lovers. If Abi hadn't seen that earlier memory she would have assumed they were nothing more than friends.
"Are you sure about this?" Kivoduin asked.
Ilaran folded up the letter and put it in an envelope. "Yes. I have to find out what happened to Siarvin. I've stood by and done nothing for long enough."
Ah. So this was just before he left for Eldrin. Haliran's trial wasn't far ahead. Neither was Ilaran's death. Abi moved on. It felt like her stomach had turned to lead. That feeling only intensified as she relived Ilaran meeting with Siarvin and Shizuki, tracking down Koyuki, and stumbling upon herself and Irímé in the graveyard.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Good gods, Abi thought as she stared at herself. Was I really that muddy?
There was unfortunately no way to deny that Abi and Irímé made a very sorry spectacle when covered in mud. The present-day Abi turned away from her memory self to look at the fourth member of the tableau.
There she was. The corpse that had caused so much trouble. Ilaran's murderer. Abi couldn't bear to look at her for long. She might as well have been the personification of all her mistakes.
She moved on again. Every step felt like she was walking down into her own grave.
Abi reprimanded herself, Don't be silly. You're not the one who died.
She had already seen Ilaran bleed to death once. She didn't want to see it again. But even so she couldn't help watch in horrified despair as the corpse charged at Ilaran. There were so many moments when she could have stopped it. If she hadn't been so distracted by the assassin's corpse she could have seen it approach. If she hadn't been so dazed she could have pulled it away from Ilaran.
But she was distracted and dazed. The corpse did attack Ilaran. And again she watched him bleed out in her arms.
The memory faded away with the last beat of Ilaran's heart. Abi stood amidst the grey mist again. She was the only person in a sea of emptiness. Yet the path still led on. Slowly she walked onwards. She discovered the existence of another wall in the same way she discovered the first one.
"Ow!"
For the second time on this trip Abi rubbed her aching nose. She glared at the invisible wall ahead of her. Once again she leant against it. Once against it gave way and she stumbled into another world.
She noticed three things in quick succession. First, there were no colours in this world. Ilaran's memories had started out very colourful, far more colourful than the real world normally was. As he got older the colours faded. By the time Nuvildu died they were almost in black and white. Over the years after that they gradually regained colours, but they were never as bright as they had been when he was a child. Compared to this place even the black and white memories were a riot of colour. There was nothing but black and grey everywhere she looked.
Second, the air was unnaturally stale. It caught at the back of her throat and filled her lungs like a solid thing. Abi coughed. Each breath felt like she was slowly suffocating.
Third, she was standing on a stone floor in the middle of a vast room. She'd never seen such strange stone before. It glinted like glass even though there was no light for it to reflect.
In front of her she heard a voice. A very familiar voice.
"Oh, thank god." That was followed almost immediately by, "What took you so long?"
Abi was slightly too preoccupied with trying not to choke on the air to answer. She looked up and glared at Ilaran. He could be a little more grateful. Especially after all the trouble she was going to just to rescue him.
Her eyes fell on the room's other occupant. Suddenly the stifling air wasn't the only reason she couldn't breathe.
If she had passed that woman on the street Abi would have thought she was only an unusually tall woman, so pale she looked sick. In this place, surrounded by an intangible yet undeniable aura of power, there was no doubt who she was.
Abi bowed awkwardly. It would never do to offend Death herself, after all. Especially when she was here to raise the dead. Then she looked at Ilaran. She knew she owed him an apology for going through his memories. But what could she say? How could she ever explain that?
"Don't bother," Ilaran said flatly. "I've seen all of your memories too. At the risk of sounding rude, I want to erase them from my mind and never think of them again."
Perfectly reasonable. That was just what she wanted to do too. She looked questioningly at Death.
"What happens now? Do we just walk out of here?"
"More or less," Death agreed. "The path that led you in here will lead you out again. Follow it until you get back to the Land of the Living. Oh, and one more thing. You must never look back or you'll both be stuck here forever."
What a delightful thought. Abi couldn't suppress her shudder. Then a thought occurred to her. "Wait, we have to go back over all those memories again?"
"No. Not when Ilaran is with you. You didn't have to go through them the first time either. Only an incompetent necromancer would get so badly tangled in someone else's mind."
Abi did a decent imitation of someone who'd been turned to stone. "You mean I could have avoided all of that? How?"
Death shook her head with an infuriating smile. "I can't stop you performing necromancy, but I'm certainly not going to make it easy for you. Now get out of here. I have work to do."
What work does Death have to do? Abi wondered. She realised how stupid that question was before she asked it.
"Well?" Ilaran said. "What are you waiting for?" To Death he added, "No offense, but I hope I never see you again."
She said nothing.
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Many strange things happened every day. Some of them attracted more attention than others. A dragon taking up residence in a royal palace was one of the things no one could ignore. The policemen fled back to the station and called for help. Before long a small battalion of soldiers, policemen, and curious onlookers advanced on the palace.
The dragon tolerated their presence until they came too close. Then he gave a warning growl. Some of them were too foolish to heed the warning.
Seconds later they ran for their lives in the other direction, singed and yelping, as the dragon breathed a burst of flames at them.
A few of the less panic-stricken spectators were surprised to see something bright green coiled around the dragon's neck. At first they mistook it for a scarf. But what use did a dragon have for a scarf? A closer look revealed it was a snake. A long, green snake with its head resting on top of the dragon's.
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Back in the house, Siarvin and Koyuki face-palmed.
"I told Shizuki to show proper respect!" Koyuki complained, shaking his head as he looked at the snake. "How could he think that's what I meant?"
Siarvin's thoughts ran along a different line. "Could Irímé draw more attention to us if he tried?"
A tremendous clatter arose in the bedroom. Both men jumped violently. They exchanged alarmed looks. Then, very carefully, they tiptoed towards the door.
It was flung open just as they reached it. Siarvin screamed. Koyuki leapt backwards. Ilaran stood in the doorway -- a blood-stained, pale, but undeniably alive Ilaran. He stared at them. They stared at him. In the background Abihira complained loudly about chairs placed right where she would trip over them.
At last Ilaran spoke. "Well? What's wrong? You both look like you've seen a ghost."
There was only one possible response to such an awful joke. Siarvin swatted his shoulder -- lightly, just in case he aggravated his neck injury -- and pulled him into a hug.
Abihira hopped over to the door, grumbling under her breath about her leg probably being broken. "Where's Irímé?"
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It was a very easy question to answer. A dragon in the garden wasn't exactly the sort of thing anyone could avoid seeing.
Abi stared at Irímé. He stared back at her. Shizuki raised his head and hissed a greeting from where he was still curled around Irímé's neck.
"Why are you still a dragon?" Abi asked, bemused. "I'm not in danger now."
If a dragon could ever look sheepish, Irímé did in that moment. A very unpleasant possibility occurred to Abi.
"Don't tell me. You don't know how to change back, do you?"
Irímé shook his head.
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Ilaran stared out the window at the dragon, the snake, and the necromancer talking to them. "...Tell me, someone. Just what happened while I was dead?"
END OF BOOK 2