The adrenaline rush from her new understanding caused her heart to race. Shudders overwhelmed her. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shaking apart.
She struggled to get her breathing under control. Vola forced herself to stare deep into Suviklarg’s eyes. She focused only on the air entering and leaving her body. The trembling stopped. Free from Suviklarg’s influence, a new emotion ignited deep within. This indignation would give her the strength to survive.
When Vola opened her eyes, she saw that Suviklarg’s legs were brought in close to his extended abdomen, his body lowered and tail raised into a threatening pose. The hypnotic sway of his head no longer affected Vola.
“I want all of the magic. There are no other dragons left in this pathetic world. I alone am worthy of wielding the hidden powers of nature. You humans are not capable of harnessing magic. The familiars are driven by instinct leaving their magics untapped. They are mere beasts to be collected to keep me powerful.”
Twitches in Suviklarg’s swaying movements betrayed his threatening tone. The movements were sluggish. The serpent must be closer to death than either of them realized.
Hope sprang into Vola’s mind.
“As for you. There is one thing I want from you...”
Vola tensed and crouched. Both she and Suviklarg appeared ready to strike.
“...a meal.”
Vola darted forward as Suviklarg’s enormous mouth snapped at the air where she had stood. Her arms and legs splayed out on the dust-covered floor underneath Suviklarg.
Before her was the liver, the only organ he hadn’t searched. She knew it had to be the core.
The serpent’s desperation solidified Vola’s desire to escape. She rolled toward the core as Suviklarg’s head struck the ground where she had been. She saw his blood dripping from his nostril as he recovered. grateful for his diminished agility.
Vola snatched the heavy core and sprinted toward the cave’s entrance. The brightening sky outside was her sole chance at freedom.
Suviklarg’s tail slammed down in front of her, blocking her escape. Crystalized scales broke off from the impact and showered the floor. Patches of wrinkled pale green skin appeared below the broken scales. Beads of blood emerged from his skin.
“You insignificant human. Your last moments on this earth will be rotting in my stomach.” She dashed along the length of the tail along the wall as Suviklarg prepared for the next strike.
His tail attacked, hitting the side of her head. She fell and slid underneath the tail and smashed into the cavern wall. Her free hand grasped for holds as she struggled to stand, cursing at herself.
She stumbled along the outer wall and saw the small storage room archway. She threw herself against the door and crashed through. Suviklarg’s head smashed the archway as she tried to close it. The crumbled rock and splintered wood pummeled her to the floor. Suviklarg’s piercing shriek of pain filled the chamber as Vola slid to a stop at the base of the storage room shelves.
“You are trapped! There is no escape for you!”
Suviklarg’s projected words were muddled by the pain his mistimed attacks inflicted. Vola had expected to become his puppet at any time, forced to walk into his fang-lined maw. The influence never came. He must be too injured to conjure the required magic.
Vola’s limbs screamed in pain as she pushed the rubble off of her. She stretched out her left arm to make sure it wasn’t broken. The small shards of volcanic glass embedded in her clothing scratched as she moved. Heaving for breath, Vola struggled to think of what she could do.
Another crash at the entrance sent the door flying over her. Suviklarg’s tail withdrew from the broken rocks scattering across the floor. The angry eyes of death stared through the debris.
Vola stood and cradled the heavy core as best she could. She took a couple of uneasy steps towards the door. The core was not the ideal weapon for a human. For Vola’s plan, it was perfect.
As Suviklarg’s mouth opened to attack, Vola lept between the rows of the serpent’s teeth. In an instant, her world was plunged into darkness.
###
Vola landed on the soft flesh in Suviklarg’s mouth as the serpent’s head tipped up. She scrambled to grab anything with her free hand. The forked tongue whipped frantically to swallow her and the core.
Vola grabbed one of the short fangs lining the sides of the closed mouth. She wedged her feet between other pairs of longer fangs to brace herself in the middle of this more deadly cavern. Her grip tightened on the core’s scoured surface.
The head of the serpent continued to lash around; his mouth opening and closing. Retching sounds came from above her head. The smell of acidic bile billowed upon her from the depth of the serpent with every convulsion. Dim shards of light made their way in as the serpent thrashed. Vola’s feet stayed in place. The mucus covering the white flesh of the mouth shimmered as light came in. Vola hoped she could hang on long enough to find what she was looking for.
“I. Will. KILL. YOU!” Suviklarg’s voice boomed in her head. The anger behind the telepathic message pierced her mind like swords. Vola managed to stay firmly in place despite the mental onslaught.
Suviklarg struggled to eject Vola. Light came in through his moving lips and fell upon the small circular tube Vola was searching for. It snapped closed after a quick intake of air.
Vola centered the core where the tube would open to take in another breath. If she missed, both of them would slide into the awaiting acid.
Suviklarg let out another hiss of anger. The windpipe opened and Vola shoved the core in. The hissing stopped but the thrashing of the head intensified as the serpent suffocated. She hung on as best she could. One hand slipped off the core but with her feet between the teeth, she kept herself and the core in place.
The serpent’s head slowed to spasms as he struggled for air. A new, acrid scent filled her nostrils. What felt like liquid fire attacked her feet and legs as the serpent’s acid worked its way through her clothing and onto her skin.
Vola’s scream filled the fleshy tomb and drowned out her thoughts. More acid secreted into the serpent’s mouth covering more of her body with the burning pain. Moments stretched into eternity.
Suviklarg’s head shuddered. The periodic spasms of the serpent’s muscles slowed to twitches. With a crash, all movement stopped. Vola was on her side still holding the core in place, trapped in darkness and silence. The tongue had stopped moving. As the acid continued to eat away at her clothes, she knew she’d killed the last dragon.
###
Time passed in agony as the serpent’s acid ate away at Vola’s clothes and skin. As the clothes succumbed, more fresh skin flared in pain. Despite the damage, she could not move. Frozen in fear, she waited for the twitch or muscle spasm revealing life in Suviklarg’s body.
The silence had become deafening. The pain in her head from her master’s intrusions was gone. She heard nothing. Her heart filled with the forbidden hope.
The rancid air had become stale from the struggle and it was getting more difficult to breath. The acid continued to chew away at her skin and the scent burned her lungs. The pain in her feet wasn’t there any more. Either she was becoming numb to the pain or nothing was left to be dissolved.
Vola tensed as she slowly moved one of her legs. The whole foot flared with intense pulses of pain. Pain was good. Pain meant she still had a foot. Pain meant she was still alive.
Vola pushed her hand through a gap in the fangs to pry open the dragon’s lips. A small hole let in the volcano’s sulphuric air and a dim column of torch light that survived the battle.
The lips were difficult to move. Soon it would be impossible. The petrification of the other magical creatures began soon after death. Suviklarg’s weakened body, without the cores’ magic, must have begun transforming to stone before suffocating.
Vola punched the dragon’s lips to make another breathing hole. Pain shot up her arm as the lips remained as they were. They had lost their leathery texture and turned to stone. The smooth texture of the tongue was no longer soft, but a rough surface of countless shards of new crystals.
Vola had smashed her way through enough carcases to know what was coming. The crystals on the tongue had already doubled in size.
Her heart raced as she struggled to evade the growing crystals. She failed to keep her breathing regular. The quiet resolve of self-sacrifice had died with Suviklarg. Vola wanted to escape, to live. The crystals pierced through her robes and scraped her skin. New thoughts of death pounded her brain.
Crystals now cut through her remaining skin. Her blood freely ran along the length of many shards. The fear of dying gripped her heart.
Each new piercing released a flood of images, now flashing through her mind faster than she could comprehend. These memories were foreign to her. Each were more vivid than those from the dead familiar. She could feel her senses become stronger and sensitive. Each new crystal made the following cut more painful.
Strong emotions overwhelmed her fear of dying: anger directed toward an ungrateful slave, desperation as he waited upon a golden horde for a slave who might not return in time, and panic when she kept the last core away from him. She had seen memories of the dead familiars before when a crystal cut her. Suviklarg’s final memories mixed with hers overloading her consciousness.
Vola screamed from the pain of a thousand cuts. The sensation of burning acid was gone. It was replaced by the heat and pressure of a volcano. The crystal shards sank deeper into her skin. The squeezing pain mounted. Breathing became impossible.
She felt a change in the energy from the crystals. It weakened slightly. One of Suviklarg’s organs had died. The sensations decreased again, and again. She thought of how nature did not care what happened to her. A powerful new core would form from Suviklarg’s remains and no creature would be able to use it.
She struggled to forestall the inevitable, working to get further down the throat. Her survival instinct took over as she pulled one arm over her head. The skin was marked with countless lines of crimson and her whole arm dripped red. Acid burned in each one like a hot knife drug through her arm. She grabbed a fang farther down the side of the mouth to help her maneuver her other arm above her head. Broken shards remained in the cuts on her stomach. She could see them embedded in her arms.
The space she created by moving allowed another moment for breathing, but that space soon was soon filled.
The growing crystals closed off the beam of light. She groped through the fallen darkness with grasping fingers for anything helpful in surviving a little longer.
The power she felt flooding into her body stopped. The last of the dragon’s organs had finally died.
###
Vola’s body felt different than before.
Her hand fell upon the core she’d used to kill the serpent, still lodged in Suviklarg’s windpipe. When she touched its surface, the soft orange glow appeared, a beating rhythm to match her heart. Vola’s eyes widened as light refracted through the constricting crystals. A confused hope filled her heart as Suviklarg’s memories overwhelmed her mind.
When she placed her other hand on the core, strange sensations shocked her body. The blood-filled cuts on her arms glowed as light pulsed from the core up her arms and through to the rest of her body. The slick acid burns covering her legs illuminated the surroundings with the power from the core. The light increased until it blinded her.
A new wave of shocking pain caused spasms to course through her body. The petrified flesh around the her shattered.
Vola pulled the core closer as if through mist. Thousands of cracking crystals doused her like a rainstorm. The crystals piercing her chest dissolved away. The dust fell as a suffocating blanket. The flood of her master’s memories subsided.
Not daring to let go to the glowing orb, she stood up. The serpent’s fangs holding her prisoner shattered across her back as she stood. She emerged and took a deep breath of the disgustingly wonderful volcanic air.
Vola felt the weight of the core resting in her hands. All of the stone remains of the deer had shattered away. An enormous, unpolished orange gemstone remained. New memories formed as she pondered the depths of the stone’s beauty.
Balancing the gemstone in one hand, she drew shapes in the air with the other. As a new light grew from the gemstone, power caressed her body.
She traced more complicated shapes in the air, the gemstone’s power at her disposal. It gently floated out of her hand. Both arms waved through the air, her fingers making new, more intricate patterns found in the transferred memories.
She rose from the serpent’s mouth. Her arms gestured into larger swaths through the air. The movements of her hands, wrists, and fingers felt like feathers bending the wind to her will. They moved with the grace of hundreds of years of practice. The glow from the gemstone enveloped her as ecstasy coursed through her body.
After a moment that ended too quickly, the glow faded and Vola slowly descended to the cavern’s floor. When she caught the gemstone in her hands, she knew the magical power it stored was gone, but the magic in her heart filled her soul.
Vola turned to see Suviklarg’s corpse continue to crumble to dust. She knew no core would be found in there. She was the last living thing in Suviklarg when he died. All of the power of the dragon was now within her. She was something new.
She inspected the rest of her body through the shredded rags that survived the acid. The dissolved skin was restored with no traces of the acid’s devastation. Her legs and arms were smooth and free from the countless cuts from the crystals that had almost crushed her. Even scars from the years of slaughtering familiars were gone. The taint of slain familiars no longer stained the light brown wool of her repaired robe. As she stared at her unstained hands, a long forgotten smile appeared.
