24
(Dokken- Breaking the Chains)
Brenden
We raced directly behind the rickety wagon where Desmond, Tells, and Vetia were being tossed around like popcorn in a pot. The wagon violently bounced up to Geren’s house, and we caught up just in time to hear him.
I ran over to him. “She’s not the fireblood! You saw it! We already gave that to the town! She’s our friend who had broken arms.”
Geren squinted his avian eyes and reached his massive arms to the locked cage. The steel creaked and screeched as the metal slowly bent, and with a crack, the door was pried off its hinges and Vetia crawled out on her hands and knees, beginning her sigil as soon as she touched the grass. She reached her glowing hand into her mouth and the gurgling stopped. Geren lumbered to his pile of cages and contraptions.
“You are deceived by… intelligent fireblood. Her true nature unshown… but perceived by senses.” He came back over holding one of the hooped rods we went out to catch the other fireblood with. I didn’t know what he was planning, but I stepped in front of him.
“Geren what are you doing? She’s not an animal.” I was furious from the incidents of just a few minutes ago, but holding it back was getting difficult with Geren acting strange too.
He stopped and looked down at me. “Intelligent firebloods… conceal themselves… being creatures of deceit… of false security. Rods shock fireblood… show true appearance… hidden attributes.” He held the pole out toward me.
A part of me was curious, but then I looked back at her sitting down with her hand in her mouth and on her cheek like a whimpering idiot. “She’s our friend, she’s not going to try to hurt us, and she’s not a monster. We don’t need to restrain her!”
Desmond put a hand on my shoulder and looked up at Geren. “You can smell it on her then?”
“Rotted eggs and… tyranewt petals. Smell of sevoan… form of fireblood. Most deceptive form. Hides aspects of self.”
“Brenden,” Desmond looked at me as he took a rod. “I can smell it on her too. I heard her say things at night. She was talking to herself, about things she was trying to hide from us. Maybe Geren’s right, and we should try these out just to see.”
Adam stepped up angrily. “No. We’re not just using those on her. You’re acting like she’s been conspiring against us when she was probably going to tell us once she figured it out herself. Don’t act like you guys haven’t had trouble getting used to these bodies too. She’s not acting like the fireblood we killed. She’s been our friend this whole time.”
Geren opened his mouth to say something, but was caught short looking at Vetia, who pulled her glowing fingers out of her mouth. “Fireblood… using sigils?” He stood in place, perplexed but curious.
Vetia wobbled up and coughed out the last of the blood. She was worked up, only guttural gibberish and grunts escaping her mouth. She was trying to say something, but her tongue was still missing, so it was all unintelligible. When she realized we couldn’t understand her, she stomped over toward us and pointed to Adam, nodding. Geren took a step away and set himself in a loose fighting stance. Vetia got a good look at him for the first time. Her eyes shot open with curiosity and fear, but she shook her head and held her right hand out toward Desmond.
I put my hand out to hold Desmond back. “Geren, is this going to hurt her? It seems like everywhere we go, one of us is getting maimed by something else and I really don’t want to keep that trend going.”
Geren was still on edge. His face and feathers reminded me of my old cockatiel when it was getting batted at by my cat. “Shock pain… like muscle spasm.” His eyes were locked on our silent healer, who stared back with determined defiance. She didn’t lower her arm.
I let my hand down and kept my eyes on her as Desmond wrapped the loop around her wrist. She immediately recoiled lightly, but not in time before her arm seized. Her hair frizzed and rose like she was caught in a storm of static, then her body shuddered and the skin on her back looked like it was boiling. Bone horns curled out the sides of her head, smooth, twisting spires pointing straight up. The back of her shirt ripped and dragon-like wings opened. The sections of bone and muscle were the same wine red as her hair, the flaps white like her pale skin. Sharp bone nails shot out of her fingertips and long, jagged teeth emerged over her teeth. Her mouth widened almost to her ears as her jaw unhinged and extended into a gnarly maw of serrated spiked teeth.
Her face was positively horrifying to look at, but she yelled like a scared fool when her wings aggressively shooting out knocked her off balance. However, she caught herself on a thin, pale tail topped off with a thorny spike. All of her newly revealed extremities dripped a pinkish mucus, like they’d just been created out of her body.
Rainbow light refracted off of a strange, almost invisible mist that emanated from the back of her neck and a flowery smell like strong perfume immediately permeated the air. The smell wasn’t unpleasant, but it relaxed me, like it was calming my emotions against my will.
Geren, who at some point had stepped back about twenty feet, started lumbering forward again, an intense look on his face. Desmond had stumbled away, grabbing his nose and gagging, holding his head like he just slammed it into something. I was knocked back, trying to avoid her wings as they erratically flapped around trying to find balance.
Vetia’s muscles continued seizing violently, unable to pull free the loop that was now twisted like a noose around her wrist.
Geren’s voice screeched out, “Be still, fireblood!” He stepped forward more aggressively with the intent to take her down.
I cut him off, glaring up at the looming beast of a creature before me. We held each other’s gazes as I tried my best to figure out what he was going to do to her.
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Suddenly, his massive frame lurched back and lunged at me fist first. I couldn’t do a single thing except raise my arms to block my face. His giant beak opened to bite down on me while his stocky arm clutched the back of my head and pulled me into his gaping jaws.
The tense moment became instantly muffled and still by his hand wrapping around my head, but his piercing screech shattered my brief confusion. Geren spun me, putting himself between Vetia and me. His hand pulled away and a small stream of blood dripped onto my shoulder. He was bleeding from where he grabbed me, having protected the back of my neck from her uncontrolled wing spike.
Blood trickled from Vetia’s hooked ears, the effects of Geren’s screech now showing. She turned away from him in a spastic, tazed frenzy, yelling in pain. Once he saw the opening, he didn’t hesitate to lunge in and wrap his left fist around the base of Vetia’s wings, pushing her forward. He planted his foot on her tail and used his leverage to force her onto her face. She was helplessly pinned, but Geren still couldn’t reach the tangled loop on her wrist while keeping her still.
“Remove the bind!” Geren screeched out like an eagle. Desmond was hunched over holding his ears and nose, so Adam rushed over and clamped Vetia’s wings together while Tells and I freed her wrist.
All I heard were our staggered breaths and the swishing of spiraling blue flowers brushing against each other. Vetia groaned while her muscles settled and Geren stepped off of her. Adam pulled her to her feet and pinched the back of her shredded shirt to keep it from falling off. Her teeth slowly retracted back into her gums, her ripped cheeks returned to normal, and her claws disappeared into the tips of her fingers. The wings, horns, and tail remained, however.
Adam looked over the wings and tail curiously. “Did you know you had these the whole time?”
Vetia gave him a slight nod with a look like she was trying to say “it’s complicated.”
“Poison on wings,” Geren wheezed, “numbs the wound. Relaxes muscle.” His eyes locked on her with discomfort and mystery. “Other points may be… different poison… unknown effects.” He clenched his cut hand, but couldn’t make a full fist.
The friendly fireblood traced a sigil in the air and held out her glowing fingers toward Geren, who cautiously presented his hand. She wiped her finger over it and Geren inspected the wound, his face in awe like he was having a slight existential crisis because of the woman before him.
I jogged over and helped Desmond up. His eyes and nose were red and running like he’d just been pepper sprayed. I started to walk him toward the rest of the group, but he jerked backward.
“Nah, nah, I ain’t goin’ near that nasty hoe. I looped that thing on her and she fuckin’ skunked on me!”
I patted his back and half mumbled, still not completely sure what was going on. “At least you finally made a girl squirt.”
He glared at me miserably. “Fuck off.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. With the weight of the wagon fight on my mind, my thoughts were still drifting back to uncertainty and fear.
Are we really so powerless that we had to sit and watch while a noble brutalized our best friend? Is this the type of place where if we try to do something, we’ll just get killed?
“Come, Desmond,” Geren gestured for him to follow along with Adam and Vetia. “Wash eyes and nose.”
Desmond grunted and followed Geren into the house, halting when he saw Vetia close to him. He sniffed the air and deemed her safe again. When she offered an apologetic smile, he shoved his middle finger into her face.
They disappeared into the cabin and I was left outside with Tells, who stood silently in the field looking disdainfully toward the road. She gripped her sword aggressively like she was itching to slash away at something. A fierce backwind blew through the meadow, spinning the azure flowers like a raging ocean as her hair violently whipped around her face.
“...a thing!” I caught the last thing she said as the wind died.
I stared at her in confusion. “What?”
Her head turned on an instant and she puffed up angrily. “You didn’t do a fucking thing! You just watched! You and Adam!”
I was frozen on the spot.
“Why didn’t you do anything?!”
The words finally escaped my throat. “You didn’t either.”
She scratched a drying scab off her throat and slashed a flower in half. “I had a sword around my throat!”
“He would’ve killed you if-”
“I don’t fucking care! Still should’ve done something!”
“Then why didn’t you?! Huh?!”
“I don’t know!”
“Tells! What the fuck are you-”
“I know! Just- AAAH FUCK!”
Her aimless anger was reaching a breaking point and she was trying her best to control herself, so she turned around and stormed to the edge of the forest where she immediately slammed her sword into a tree trunk. She growled as the vibration shot up her arm, but didn’t stop swinging.
I mindlessly ended up on Geren’s doorstep and sat down. Speckles of darkness blotted everywhere my eyes went. Air didn’t want to stay in my lungs. My heartbeat pounded inside my head.
What if we get to the next city and they’re waiting for us? Will we even make it to the next city before tempers flare and we all go off on our own? Desmond is tired of babysitting everyone. Tells is angry at the whole situation. Vetia is probably in horrible pain and wants to be done with all of this. Adam is just trying his best to keep everyone comfortable, but he can’t do everything. And then I’m just doing… nothing. Nothing at all. I can’t even defuse an argument. All I’ve done is make everyone else miserable. I was useless against the fireblood and those bugs. They don’t need me at all. And if we even make it to the next city, what do we do? We don’t have goals or anything. We’re just aimlessly wandering this world with nothing worthwhile to give. And back home? Probably even worse for our families. My family. I can’t even imagine how bad it’s going for them because it was already as bad as I thought it could get. And now I’m in a place where I could be thrown around, abused, and killed by people simply because they had a name. And we can’t do anything to protect ourselves without becoming public enemies. Is that how this world really works, or was that just an isolated incident. Fuck, I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?
A metallic snap rang out through the field of fluttering flowers. Tells stood at the treeline, a noticeable chunk of wood hacked away from the trunk and a bladeless, broken scimitar in hand. Her entire body rose and fell at each breath and sweat dripped down her forehead. She grunted and hurled the hilt into the forest before dropping down to curl up against the tree, hands holding her head against her knees. The field filled with silence except for the muffled voices coming from inside Geren’s house.