Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 264

Chapter 264: Fire!
Mia had a split second to brace herself for being burned alive. The shock of it was nothing she could absorb, and her eyes involuntarily clenched shut.

The heat was enough to make her skin hurt, but not so badly as she’d imagined. Once she’d burned her hand on the cookstove, and this wasn’t so bad as that had been. That confused her. Maybe dragon fire was less painful because it was magic?

After several seconds, she pried one eye open, and then the other.

The dragons were not aiming for the humans at all. Their faces had turned downwards, propelling fire into the crack which surrounded the tree. The scar in the earth grew a little wider and a little longer, almost meeting in a full circle around the magical tree.

That confused her only for a moment. Denholm spoke, his voice quivering with anger.

“They’re… digging it up?” He gritted out. “They’re going to take it? But how?”

Mia bit her lip. Gold. The tree appeared to be gold, so the dragons, with their insatiable greed, must be trying to take it, roots and all, to their lair.

But why not just make their lair here instead? Was their wealth so unaccountably vast that it was easier to dig up this magical tree than to bring the rest of their possessions here?

They were trying not to kill it, she supposed, or they would have taken it in pieces. Denholm was right, they were breaking the earth in a great circle to surround it… like you do to a tree you’re trying to transplant.

“They must be taking it to their lair,” She whispered, forgetting for a moment that she and Denholm were enemies.

“They can’t. It must not be allowed to happen,” Denholm’s jaw clenched.

“How will you stop them?” She pursed her lips in amusement, but felt a pang. The earth shifted, and the dragon’s paused their efforts.

“Any way I have to,” Denholm glared at her for a moment before apparently intensifying his efforts at manipulating the creatures. The nearest one stretched its shoulders and groaned slightly, shaking its head and turning away.

Soon, the others did as well, looking uncomfortable and perhaps even in pain.

“I don’t understand,” Mia said.

“They will leave,” Denholm insisted. “Their goal cannot be so important that they fight through the discomfort I will make them feel in this quest.”

The woman raised one eyebrow but watched as the dragons continued to sway and growl, one lying down and rolling to its side with a heavier groan than the others.

Mia hesitated to mention the Wights that were also present in the cave. Denholm couldn’t sense them, didn’t know about them, but surely if the dragons were under their command, they would be coming to investigate quickly enough.

How would Denholm deal with them?

He was concentrating intently, so Mia moved away, slowly. She backed up to where Ford was laying on his stomach on the ground.

“Why didn’t he do this right away?” The man complained softly, and Mia shrugged.

“I think he wanted to see what they were doing first,” She whispered, reaching to help him up.

He seemed in worse shape than before, and her heart ached. Now that the dragons’ fire had stopped, the air was no longer painful, but it was still uncomfortably hot in the room.

They couldn’t stay here for long.

“We need to leave,” She told him. “No matter what happens here, I’m not sure we can make a difference.”

“Can’t you… look for a way to succeed? To stop him?” Ford asked quietly.

Mia paused and thought for a moment.

“No, I have to look for something that can be physically found,” She discovered after pushing about in her mind. “Success isn’t something you can point to or hold in your hand.”

The discovery of the tree made the involuntary draw she felt to Ford all the stronger, but as she took a moment to focus on it, her eyes widened and her face reddened.

“Oh,” She breathed.

“What?” Ford looked at her with alarm. “What is it?”

Flustered, she swallowed and tried to refocus on their current problems.

“The dragons aren’t alone in the cave. There are Land Wights down here, and I suspect they are controlling the dragons. We have to go before they discover–”

But it was too late. Before she could finish speaking, and almost as soon as she’d helped Ford to his feet, three of the creatures dropped from a tunnel high in the wall and swept towards the trio of humans.

Denholm failed to see them at first, so focused was he on subduing the dragons.

When they landed, he froze, and the dragons barreled to their feet with snarls, focusing their pain and ire on the human that had inflicted the ill feelings.

The man paled as he looked at the three vaguely-humanoid forms. They were something like ghosts, semi-transparent until their feet met the ground, when their faces became clear.

Impassively, they watched the humans with too-large black eyes with curiously white pupils.

One stepped forward, its feet barely touching the ground as long, white hair swept back in an unseen breeze that drifted through the depths of the cave. It glanced at the tree, and then at the humans.

“Purpose?”

The single word was stilted, so vaguely pronounced that it took Mia a moment to realize it was human language. As if the wight had learned to speak so long ago that it had almost lost the skill entirely.

“Pardon me?” Denholm was clearly taken aback that the mythical thing speaking at all, let alone in a way he could understand.

The wight tilted its head, great black eyes boring into each of the humans in turn. Lifting a long finger, it pointed at Denholm, and then slowly, as if communicating with someone very young or very thick, pointed at the tree.

“Purpose. Your. Purpose.” It repeated.

“You want to know my purpose here?” Denholm asked incredulously. “Simple. The tree is mine, and I intend to keep it.”