“What!? I didn’t say a damn thing about going with you!”
The words sputtered from my mouth unchecked and outraged. But Alphonse looked absolutely unimpressed by my anger.
“Well? Then what’s your plan?” he asked me, likely realizing I had none (yet). I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I’m still working on it.”
“Riiiiiiiight.”
I did not like his tone. Not in the slightest. My instincts said to turn the tables on him, to go on the offensive. And so I did.
“You really flew out here to tell me to come home? Isn’t the…” I didn’t want to say its name. Something about it felt awful on my tongue, my heart filled with such disdain that I could feel myself too repulsed to choke the word out. There were too many bad memories associated with it. I didn’t want to even think about seeing that place again. “… Manor unguarded now?”
The Manor is at least something that holds some amount of warm nostalgia.
“I left some protective wards in my absence. But I was hoping to make this trip brief,” Alphonse replied curtly.
“Isn’t that also violating the contract? Doesn’t there have to be someone ready at all times?” I pressed.
Alphonse did not hide his irritation. “Maybe if I did not have to track down a wayward heiress, I would not have to violate the contract.”
“Couldn’t you have picked any other Solaris to bother?!” I demanded. “What about… one of my cousins? Or… or my sisters…!”
I already knew the answer to that. The answer was that all of them were busy living their lives. Some of them had families now, some of them were in school or had established jobs elsewhere. But in the heat of the moment, I picked at anything—anything—to get him off of my back.
But Alphonse Ravaenu was perhaps the stubbornest dragon on the far side of the portal and he damn well knew it too. His scowl only deepened at me.
“And what has you so eager to stay, hm? I know things did not work out between you and that… organization you were working with for the past few years,” Alphonse retorted. “Avalonnia needs you.”
I had not heard that name in a while—Avalonnia. The sound of it brought a touch of sentimentality; autumn in the enchanted forest, the brisk cold of the mountain air, the glow of crystals under the full moonlight. It was a romantic thought, returning back to that broken, albeit beautiful place. But I shoved such feelings aside, blaming my recent woes for the sentimentality. I looked at Alphonse and the way he put his hands on his hips. It made me feel like a hatchling getting scolded by her mother and I did not care for that one bit.
“It doesn’t,” I replied firmly. “And who told you about what happened with my old job anyways?”
“I have my sources,” he said mysteriously, mouth curling in a cocky, knowing smile.
“You’re scary, you know.”
“Intimidating enough to sway you to come home, I hope.”
“Ha! Not quite…”
“Amalia. Really. Why do you want to stay here?”
In all actuality, I had no definable answer for him other than ‘it’s boring there’ and ‘the vibes just aren’t right’… which I already knew would do shit all to persuade him. I huffed out a sigh. If anything, knowing that dragon hunters had figured out where I live was more of a reason to leave than anything Alphonse had to say. Avalonnia was fine without someone to look after it. All the Solaris Clan really did was make sure the locals did not start civil wars and, well, that one other thing I really did not want to think about…
“It’s the Shrine, isn’t it?” he frowned at me, the name of that… that place like daggers across my skin. I flinched and Alphonse sighed. How the hell did he know…?
“It’s just some dumb fairytale,” I said to him, my words numbed as I looked out across the city. “I don’t get why we can’t just let it stay that way.”
He studied me carefully.
I scowled at him. “No one’s bothered the Shrine in years and it’s not about to get bothered any time soon. Just leave it be. Maybe if you do, people will forget about it.”
I could tell he very much did not like that. He folded his arms across his chest.
“Suppose it’s a fairytale. Then there would not be a reason to guard it. I’ll give you that much,” Alphonse responded after a few moments of quiet. “Suppose it’s not a fairytale, though…”
My jaw clenched and I felt his pressing stare.
“Then it needs a guardian,” he concluded.
That still seemed stupid to me but I decided to let the matter drop for the moment. I paced a few steps back and forth.
The sounds of the city at night filled the quiet between us. My feelings swung back and forth like a pendulum between anger and despair. I could not decide which was worse—the idea of the cops carting Alphonse away (and having to deal with the legal repercussions of what had happened) or reluctantly being forced back home to deal with some crusty old set of ruins. All I knew was that a part of me recognized that Alphonse was right—if the fairytale was real, then perhaps the Shrine did need someone to watch over it. But there was no proof except stories anymore and I was not willing to commit to a lifetime of guardianship based off of old stories.
Mentally, I dug my heels in. I told myself I could not go back to the Manor. I was not cut out for that sort of life—it just was not for me. The life I had already built for myself—as in shambles as it was—did make me happy. Sort of. A bit. Kind of.
“Let’s go back to your apartment,” Alphonse said to me after what felt like hours of waiting. I nodded, eager to at least see this through to whatever end was in store.
We took flight across the city, venturing back the way we had come from. The late hours of the evening had quieted the world only marginally. There was less traffic than before but the occasional honk and screech of tires still called into the night. I heard an upbeat tune being played from somewhere downtown, the thrumming resonating in my chest and reminding me of a time that was not too terribly long ago. A sigh fell from my lips before I knew it, echoed with a tiny, instinctive flinch. Memories of boozing it up at the bars with some old colleagues flashed across my mind. I had not realized I had slowed until I caught Alphonse’s chastising glare. I sighed a second time and sulked after him. Better to not dwell on things anyways.
The apartment building was quiet when we returned. Not a cop in sight but the presumably dead hunter was also gone. As both Alphonse and I touched down near the porch, I wondered if the hunter’s friends had taken him as they fled.
Slowly, we neared the apartment door. Alphonse had his gun in-hand and I put up my fists, feeling a little useless without proper weaponry. We cracked the door open, at the ready for the worst possible outcome—an ambush. But a quick scan of the apartment revealed that our fears had not come to pass—nothing had been taken, no one was there to greet us. There was darkness and silence.
I flopped back down on the couch, aware of the beer cans strewn all over the floor and the scent of stale pizza. Alphonse shut the door, flicked on the lights (much to my dissatisfaction), and took in the sight of my sorry apartment with a standard scowl upon his face.
“This place is a dump,” he remarked.
“No one asked your opinion.”
I leaned back, resting my head against the back of the couch as Alphonse explored my very meager abode. He studied the sparse décor I had set out—fixating upon a picture of me and my two sisters in a field of flowers. Mother had forced us to take the picture when we had been young. We all wore matching lacy white and blue dresses with an impressive amount of frills. I hated the picture but the memory behind it was nice. It reminded me of a time that was far simpler.
He passed it by, looking to a small wreath I had put up. It was dusty, the white flowers partially stained. Mother had owned that at one point but it had gotten shoved off onto me when I moved out. Time had not been kind to it but it was probably the prettiest thing about my bland walls. Alphonse looked unimpressed, skirting over to the nightmare of a kitchen. I saw him pinch his nose and shoot me a tired look.
“You don’t have to stay,” I said. “I know it’s a long flight to the portal but…”
“Now, now, I did not come all this way to shoot a human and then get rushed out the door,” Alphonse retorted, his azure and violet-flecked tail flitting back and forth. One of his dark horns manifested atop of his head and he scratched it with a nail. “A bit of cleaning can fix a lot of this. And it seems cleaning is… sorely needed…”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I sighed. “And you can stay the night, I guess. But I mean it, Alphonse, I’m not going back.”
“Well, no one is staying the night here,” Alphonse retorted. “Unless you’ve forgotten there’s a mark on your head and as a vassal to House Solaris, I’m legally obligated to protect you.”
“What are you suggesting exactly?” I asked with a raised brow.
“We can rent a room in one of the human taverns,” Alphonse waved a hand dismissively.
“They call those hotels here, Alphonse. And no, that’s going to be expensive.”
“We’ve the funds of all of House Solaris-- we can certainly afford it. Grab whatever essentials you will need for the night.”
My mouth opened automatically in protest but I realized some battles were not worth fighting. We could have put up protective wards and saved ourselves the cash. Most hunters could not out-magic a dragon, much less two adult ones. But I had already spent too much of my night bickering with Alphonse so I relented, dragging myself to the bathroom.
It was a mess within there as well, the trash nearly overflowing and the sink dirty. Suddenly, I felt self-conscious about it, taking a moment to scrub some of the grime out. But I stopped when I realized it was not worth it—not right now. My body ached with exhaustion and a steady throbbing in my head was starting to sour my mood. I grabbed my toiletries and shoved them haphazardly into a bag before proceeding to the bedroom.
After sifting through the piles of clothes on the ground and the few still hanging in the closet, I put together some semblance of an outfit for the next day. Everything went into a plain black backpack, which I sat on the mattress. I reached under the bed for a moment before pausing, remembering that what I was looking for was no longer there. Instead, I grabbed the backpack and slung it over my shoulder.
By the time I had made it back to the living room, Alphonse had already begun doing the dishes. He looked angry as he did them, picking away at old bits of food with his nails transformed into draconic talons. His nose wrinkled and he looked at me.
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
A knock came at the door. Alphonse’s eyes and mine locked for a moment and I wondered if perhaps it was the local police having returned to the crime scene to interrogate us. He lowered the plate into the sink carefully and I cautiously made my way to the door. Another knock came and I balled my left hand into a preemptive fist just in case it was another ne’er-do-well hunter looking for a new prize on their mantle.
I opened it carefully and the familiar whirring of small wings zipped past my right ear.
“Well LOOK who decided to show back up!” huffed that irritating pixie from before. “And here I thought I was going to have to spend the night in the bushes. Pah!”
“Oh. It’s you,” I said flatly to her then looked at Alphonse. “Blame him for what happened.”
“Excuse me?” Alphonse huffed.
“He’s not the one that threw me out the window!” the pixie pointed an accusing finger at me.
“You did what!?” Alphonse asked.
“I just wanted to drink and be miserable in peace,” I replied. “You’re lucky I don’t toss the both of you out the window.”
“With those shrimpy arms? I’d like to see that,” Alphonse snorted.
“You didn’t pay me nearly enough for this, Ravaenu!” the pixie commented, looking to him angrily. “I may be small but those bushes had thorns! I got poked in places that I didn’t think could get poked…!”
“Spare us the details,” Alphonse grumbled then perked up. “Wait. You were in the bushes that entire time then? Did you see what happened with the hunters?”
“Oh they ran when the humans with the flashing lights showed up,” the pixie said. “But one of them dropped something shiny. I took it ‘cause I thought it might be worth something on the market…”
“Dropped something…?” I echoed, brows raised.
“Let’s see it,” Alphonse said, holding out a hand.
“Uh-uh!” the pixie replied, wagging a finger at him. “I’ve had it up to here with you dragons. You can look but it’s mine. Finders keepers!”
“No one said we were going to take it,” I sighed.
Alphonse scowled. “Very well. Let us see it.”
The pixie snapped her fingers and her new prize appeared. It floated in front of her, rotating slowly. I squinted. It was a small trinket, a silver coin with a strange engraving upon it. I drew closer, as did Alphonse, the both of us watching as the coin hovered just in front of both of our noses. Upon its surface was the image of a snake. It stared at us with its cold, lifeless eyes, an arrow trapped in its jaws as venom dripped down into a puddle around it.
I don’t know why but looking at it unnerved me. The serpent’s eyes bore so deep into mine that I felt my breath catch in my throat. A shiver ran from my skin and fled deeper still into my body, down to my bones.
“A hunting clan’s sigil,” Alphonse remarked.
“Do you know it?” I asked him.
“No. Do you?” he looked to me.
I wanted to have recognized it but the truth was that I had never seen that symbol before. Not in all of my years on Earth, not after so many encounters with dragon hunters. I shook my head.
“No.”
Alphonse exhaled loudly. “We will look into it later. For now, we should leave.”
This time, I did not protest.
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