When Alphonse drew his pistol, I felt my anxiety spike from my heart to the back of my throat. I reached for his arm, trying to pull him away. There was a loud, authoritative shout on the other side of the door but my focus was on the gun. Alphonse’s annoyed glare down at me was accompanied by the slightest sneer of his upper lip.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at him. “They’re just humans, they don’t know what’s going on!”
“I know that,” Alphonse snapped back. “But they’re going to ask questions and we don’t know if they’re in league with the hunters.”
I wanted to accuse him of being a wild conspiracist but, well, maybe he did have a point. I had seen weirder things before and knowing my luck, that would be the case this time around too. The best way to deal with this was to simply not deal with it. Either they had to go or we did. Frankly, at that point, I was not above jumping through the window and making a run for it. But I doubted Alphonse would have gone with that plan and I knew the cops were probably armed.
The door knocked again, each thud a countdown to what felt like imminent disaster. I opened my mouth to suggest my shitty window idea but as I did, Alphonse seized my wrist, pulling me towards the hallway. His pistol went back into its holster at his hip and I could hear his frustrated, partially-stifled breathing.
“What are you—” I started.
“They’re going to break down the door,” Alphonse said. “And they can’t find either of us here.”
“Yeah and?”
“So we’re not going to be here. According to them at the least.”
We stopped in the hallway. There was an intensity in his eyes as he reached for something on his belt. I was not entirely sure what I was expecting.
“Cover your mouth,” he said brusquely.
“What?”
“Cover your mouth.”
I started to ask him “what” again. Big mistake—in a flash, he had pulled the pouch out, throwing out a handful of blue, glittering powder. I inhaled a mouthful of it and my lungs immediately rioted. Each cough was violent, the taste of grit and dirt in my mouth. I sputtered, leaning over as my eyes watered. Thick droplets coursed trails down both sides of my face, splashing onto the ground.
“Why are you like this!?” I coughed out with a hiss.
Almost instantly, I felt something cover my mouth. Instinctively, I grabbed at it, realizing quickly that it was Alphonse’s hand. Yet as I wildly looked about, I realized that I could not see him. I could not even see my own hand as I grabbed onto him. Bewilderment flashed through my mind before it dawned on me what he had done.
“We’re invisible…!?” I whispered, the sound of my own voice muffled by his palm.
“Shh,” he said in a low voice, almost lost amid the sound of the front door shuddering on its hinges. The police had likely heard us shuffling about inside and were likely nearing the end of their patience. I heard a warning from outside—to open it or be charged with evading an officer.
“Where’s a good place to hide?” he asked me.
“The bedroom closet…” I began. “But we both can’t fit in there.”
“Only you need to.”
“What about you”
“I’m sworn to protect you. And I intend to make good on that vow.”
“I can handle myse—” I began but before I knew it, he had me by the wrist again and was yanking me along without any care for what I had to say.
Out of spite and rebellion, I dug my heels into the carpet. Yet my protest did not dissuade him; Alphonse strongarmed me towards the closet, shoving me inside. I barely hissed out a “Wait, don’t hurt them!” before he slammed the door in my face. It took a second to fumble for the doorknob, flailing my invisible limbs about until my hands finally managed to grip the knob successfully. To my dismay, it was locked—arcanely so. A series of swears swept out from under my breath. Weren’t vassals supposed to listen to the people they were employed to? Or was I not his boss until we made it to Avalonnia?
Either way, I was going to kick his ass the first chance I got. All of this insanity and for what—for fucking what at this point? My forehead gently bumped into the flat of the closet door as I sighed. What a weird position to be in but I guess I’d been in weirder spots before.
As much as I tried to make that thought into a comforting one, it was not. I listened as the front door was barged into, praying that Alphonse had enough sense to not engage them directly. We did not need to make this into another incident. We just needed to let the heat die down. It should have been as simple as hiding but I heard the first whack, echoed by the sound of a body thumping onto the floor. I grimaced; things really just couldn’t go easily huh?
“Why are you like this…?” I whispered again under my breath as a second hit resounded in the quiet of the apartment.
“What the hell!?” a brusque and rough voice yelled. “Anderson! Anderson, get up!”
A third strike and I heard his body crumple to the ground. After a few long seconds of silence, I heard the soft padding of footsteps. The door to the closet opened and the invisibility spell Alphonse had casted upon the both of us faded. His expression was hardened, brows furrowed.
“You really didn’t have to do that,” I said flatly, straining to keep my frustration from rising in my tone. “We could’ve just waited for them to leave.”
“And if they didn’t for hours?” Alphonse asked. “No. The best move for us to make is to simply run from this place.”
“We still have to pack!” I began.
“A damn good thing I have a spell for that too then!” he snipped back at me.
I fell silent, having no argument against that. Alphonse took that as a sign of concession and began about dealing with the unconscious officers. I don’t know what he had done to them to knock them out but I checked for pulses to make sure they were still alive. They were and I was relieved to know Alphonse at least would only be getting arrested for assaulting a police officer, not actually murdering one. Muttering a few apologies, I helped Alphonse put them in a spare bedroom I had never done much with. I felt guilty for a brief moment when I looked down at the officers but I reassured myself they’d awaken before long. We were not planning to bind their limbs or anything. If all went according to plan, they would wake up to an inexplicably empty apartment and we would be long gone.
As Alphonse magicked away all of my belongings into the bins he had bought, I stood there without much energy to do anything at all. My legs were rooted to the spot, unfeeling as the rest of me. My eyes followed the objects as he shrunk them down to size to get them to fit inside. Couches were reduced to doll-like imitations, pots and pans stacked then placed within as well. I felt useless watching it all happen and maybe I was. But all I could manage to do was cross my arms over my chest and huff out an annoyed sigh.
When he had packed away the last bit, he shrank the bins down to a small size as well, picking them up off the ground and pocketing them. He turned to me, still expressionless. “Are you ready to go now?”
As if I had a choice in this.
“Yeah,” I replied with a simple shrug, trying to play off my emotions.
“Then let’s be off.”
I walked out of that apartment, shutting the door behind me. And I never looked back, no matter the dull ache in my chest and the fear about what would come next.
It was a twelve-hour drive to where the portal was. I didn’t have a car anymore, not since things went south with my last job. As tempting as it was to take flight on our own, both Alphonse and I knew better. Two dragons sighted in the sky would invite more trouble than what we were willing to deal with. If the hunters didn’t follow us to the portal, government agents would and I could not fathom what sort of mess that would get us into. The rule of thumb was that the government told us non-Gaian folks that we could live here so long as we didn’t disturb the peace. The common Gaian doesn’t know about portals or dragons or anything like that. Or, if they do, they think it’s all fake. And we’re supposed to keep it that way or we get angry humans in suits and sunglasses knocking on our door with their paperwork and shit. Very annoying stuff that nobody had time for.
The saying in Avalonnia is “When on Gaia, do as Gaians do” and so we did just that-- we found the nearest bus station and hopped onto the next bus headed in the direction of the portal. Thankfully, the bus was relatively empty—just a few other passengers, each looking quite unwilling to make eye contact. I sat down in a seat next to Alphonse with a sigh, looking up at him tiredly.
“Is this how you got here the other day?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Proud of you for not just flying over. Speaking of flying, why not just buy plane tickets at this rate? A 12-hour drive isn’t exactly… a fun time.”
“Too many people,” Alphonse said, shaking his head. “I don’t want people to see us leaving.”
“Fair enough,” I said, my body sinking into a slouch as I exhaled. My forehead touched the empty seat in front of me. “But it seems like a pain to me.”
“It would’ve been easier if you had just come home, you know,” he reminded me and I scowled at him.
“I don’t remember you being this much of a stick in the mud, you know,” I grumbled.
“What’s made you so hellbent on getting me home, huh? And don’t say it’s ‘cause there’s no other options. I’m tired of hearing that excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse,” Alphonse retorted, leaning back slightly so that his shoulder rested upon the bus window. His pale eyes flitted over me carefully. “It’s just something I was told to do.”
What?
“I thought you served House Solaris.”
“I do.”
“So who told you to come get me, huh?”
“Your father.”
I paused and buried more of my face into the back of the bus seat. To say I didn’t want to hear that was an understatement but I was getting used to hearing things that I didn’t want to. I raised a brow at him, feeling that sort of exhaustion that transcended physical form and took nest in my very soul.
“We already went over the will. That wasn’t in there,” I said dryly.
“It wasn’t part of his public will. There was another, more private. It concerned the guardianship of the Shrine. He passed it to you.”
Deity above, I did not want to hear that.
“Why?”
The question slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. I should have known better than to ask, though. It’s not like Alphonse was going to tell me—hell, he may not have even known the reason for it. Dad had always been most thoughtful in his choices and so often kept his own counsel. There was no doubt if he had decided this, he had a reasoning behind it. But what that reasoning was, I could not have guessed. I was not the oldest of my siblings, nor the wisest. I was not the most disciplined and I was definitely not the nicest.
“And why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked tiredly.
“Do you know how long it takes for wills to be sorted?” Alphonse huffed, folding his arms. “Besides, I… wanted to give you the option to come back without telling you why. I thought maybe it would be better that way instead of…”
Family pressure. Still, he threatened me with the potential doom of the universe if I didn’t come back. Stupid legend…
“This is dumb,” I announced to the back of that dirty and germy bus seat. “And I can still say no, you know? I’m not bound to anything.”
Yet.
“We’ll discuss things further when we arrive,” Alphonse said, nestling further into the window. “Just keep an open mind. He picked you for a reason. Don’t forget that.”
And what reason is that? What reason could that possibly be?
“Did he tell you why he picked me?” I asked Alphonse, who simply gave a shrug.
“It’s not for me to say.”
“The hell it is for you to say. It’s not like… it’s not like I can ask him!”
“Amalia. Trust me on this one.”
Trust. What a joke.
The bus began moving and I decided to ruminate on the subject of the will silently. Guardianship over the Shrine was no laughing matter; no matter how hard I wanted to condemn people for putting such stock in a dumb legend, I understood the ramifications of accepting the position. It was easy to just think of the role as sitting in a manor and loosely monitoring the nearby woods. But Guardians were more than that. The people looked to them for so much. Guidance, support, wisdom. They were to mediate as an arbiter of justice, a voice of a god long dead.
I could not see myself as such. Not in any future. Not in any timeline.
Good or bad.
Unfortunately, when it comes to stress, I have two methods of dealing with it—stay awake for days on end in a fit of restlessness or get so stressed that I fall asleep. The latter ended up being the route I opted for, my thoughts a swirl until I fell into a state of slumber.
My dreams were the same chaotic mess I had grown accustomed to. The same sights of Avalonnia’s forests, the same murky haze in the night. The same storm, the same feelings of helplessness as it swallows everything around.
I didn’t know how long I was out before Alphonse shook me awake. It must have been only a few hours, judging by the shift in the sun’s positioning. I looked up at Alphonse, noting the concern in his eyes. The bus had rolled to a stop and all of the passengers were starting to rise with distressed murmurs. I lifted my head to peek over the seat, spying a blockade of dark-hued vehicles in front of us. They had partitioned off the entire highway, the flat of the plains stretching long and wide under a beating, merciless sun. I felt Alphonse squeeze my shoulder, encouraging me to hide behind the seat.
“Who are they? Bandit hold ups don’t happen in this realm. Not really,” I whispered.
“No one good,” Alphonse replied.
I chanced another look out the front again as our bus driver put the vehicle in park. I could hear him grumbling but that was far less concerning than the people that came out of the cars in front of us.
Recall back to the start of this miserable story, when I said that dragon hunters all look the same. The same shit haircut, the same overabundance in leatherwear. Those assholes were no different. They each sported overcoats and shotguns. Belts at their hips were adorned with an assortment of knives—for stabbing, gutting, slicing. It made my skin prickle and a lick of fire formed in the back of my throat, heating my neck.
“How the fuck did they…” I began.
“There’s a door in the back of the bus. We slip out, we fly,” Alphonse whispered to me.
“Yeah and what about these people?” I whispered back.
“They’re not here for humans,” Alphonse reminded me sharply. “They’re here for you.”
He was right. I nodded with a sigh, conceding. So much for trying to stealthily make it back to the portal.
“Do you have any more of that pocket sand?” I asked.
“A quick dosage for the two of us. It’ll keep us invisible for long enough to slip by,” Alphonse replied. “Then we go over the clouds, try to stay obscured that way. Don’t go towards any planes.”
“I’m not stupid,” I huffed quietly.
The bus driver went to open the door and talk with the people outside. Alphonse and I seized the opportunity to slip out of our seats and go back towards the rear set of doors. They were still sealed but a rough shove against them forced them open. I hopped out into the blazing sunlight, squinting as I looked back at Alphonse. He joined me on the road, fishing out a handful of the blue powder from his pouch. Alphonse drew his hand back to loose the spell upon me…
And then the sound of gunfire rang out. A single shot. Someone inside of the bus let out a high-pitched scream. My heart jolted, eyes snapping wide. Alphonse looked back over his shoulder, fangs slightly bared in disbelief and aggression.
It took a split second to register what had happened.
The bus driver.
I did not say a word to Alphonse. I just ran for the front of the bus, racing parallel to its side. I could hear him call my name but my legs moved without a second thought. My fear captivated me, possessed me.
But so did my anger.
When I made it to the front of the bus, the driver was laying face-down in a puddle of his own blood. I could not tell if he was alive or not—he was unmoving and the red around him seemed to blossom further and further across the pavement. One of the hunters stood in front of the rest, a lady with a wide-brimmed hat, a set of curly strawberry-blonde hair, and sunshades that obscured much of her facial features. The pistol was still in her hand, lowering as she leered down at her victim. Upon noticing me, she aimed it at my chest, ruby-red lips twisting into a pleased smile.
“Such weak bait and yet it scores the biggest prize,” her voice was melodic yet cold as ice. “Hello there, dragon. I do hope you’ll come quietly. The people on that bus are depending on that.”
I saw two of her men point the barrel of their guns at the bus. There was another fearful scream from within. It should not have surprised me that hunters would hold their own kind hostage. As greedy and wrathful as dragons can be, humans can be just as disgusting, just as cruel.
The bus driver groaned softly and I realized there was still time left for him, even if it was quickly slipping away. He lifted his head, the side of it soaked in the blood that had sprung from his bullet wound. I couldn’t tell where she had hit him but I assumed it was somewhere in the torso. His eyes were what caught me—so wide and filled with such a piercing fear. What a waste. What savagery. The senselessness of it all stoked my anger from a sizzle in my chest into a white-hot fire that ran through my veins.
Inhale. Exhale. It was easy to get lost in anger. I needed to think. I needed to take every step with care.
I did not know where Alphonse went but I could only have assumed he was nearby. There was not a damn chance he was going to let me dive into this by myself. I put faith in him and trusted he would be there to strike when I needed him to.
“Put the gun down,” I said to the lead huntress. “I don’t want to do this. Just let me help him and I’ll look the other way if you leave.”
“She thinks she’s in any position to negotiate?” scoffed one of the hunters. “A bullet between her eyes’ll solve things here and now.”
While a part of me had futilely hoped that they would take the chance I was giving them to leave, a wiser part of myself knew that they would not. I drew in a breath. It had been a long time since I had faced danger like this. I wondered if my body still remembered the dance. Or perhaps all of those beers had destroyed the dragon I had once been. Either way, we were about to find out, potentially at the cost of that poor man’s life.
“You’ve a handful of seconds to comply,” the huntress declared. “Or I’ll make corpses of them all. And I swear to that, dragon.”
I did not pray often in those days. I still don’t. But for a moment, my mind directed a short plea to that sad god that had died long ago.
Give me enough time to do this and save him. Please.
Magic can feel like a lot of things when you reach for it. It can feel like warmth and love. It can feel like bitter sorrow. It can feel like a searing fury. When I beckoned for it on that day, it answered with outrage, a yearning for justice and light. It filled my mind, filled my heart, and I drank deep of its intoxicating power.
Once, my people were the voices and hands of a god that no longer walked this world. And maybe I would say the divine dragons of the modern age were far removed from what we once were. Yet persisting through the ages was something undeniable etched into the fiber of my being. It was a need to right this wrong and a need to protect. Nothing could suppress it. Nothing could reject it. So I did not and I adhered to every bit of me that screamed to fight.
I exhaled out a shuddering breath from my lungs.
“People like you…” I began, eyes sweeping from the bloodied bus driver to the hunters in front of me. “Really don’t deserve second chances.”
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