Dragon Magic: Book 3: Prophecy of the Dragons (20 page)

The car ride home from Newport Beach proved hard, but Ben kept himself from falling apart for Andi's sake, as she likewise did for him. Neither said much, but their constant physical contact – her hand on his knee or holding hands, despite the odd feeling of the missing ring finger on her hand – kept him sane. Both reflected on what had happened, though Ben did everything in his power to keep his thoughts on the Timothy and Sasha problem, and not his parents.

After the initial breakdown, they basically succeeded at staying strong in front of the council. Angus and Ingrid had been the first to console them, telling them they should feel free to talk anytime they needed to. After all, Angus reminded him, both he and Ingrid had lost their parents to violence early in their lives together. Other council members offered condolences and thanks to Ben for making the sacrifice. They meant it with all their hearts, even that slimeball Marcel.

The plan was for everyone on the council to fan out and find Timothy and Sasha using whatever means necessary. Some had a guess on where to look and zipped out right away. Felix held back and waited until they were alone before he approached. He gave first Andi, and then Ben, a big hug.

"How are you doing Benjamin? I mean really? Don't be brave with me."

"I'm numb, but I'll be okay until this is over. I have to be, right? I don't want those two sleemos to win."

Andi rolled her eyes and kissed his cheek. "Star Wars insults to the end."

Felix looked him in the eyes for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes, I think you will be." He looked at Andi and asked, "Alexandria?"

She held up her left hand and said, "As good as I can be without my finger, I guess." She sighed and had to fight back tears. "And my ring."

"Sasha took yours too, didn't she, Benjamin?"

"Yeah. Right after Timothy bit off Andi's."

Felix was silent for a second, and then said, "You two stay vigilant. They'll know where to find you. Hopefully we get to them first, but that's not a guarantee."

"Can't you cast some sort of location spell?" Ben asked. "Something you haven't taught me yet?"

"No. By that I mean, yes, there are such spells, but the preparation will take too long. By the time I'm ready to track them, they'll have already made their move. I do have other tricks up my sleeve, though. I'll be able to sense Sasha's magic if I get close enough. I'll be back with you soon."

"They're doing something with our rings," Andi said. "But what?"

"Yeah," Ben said. "It wasn't coincidence they happened to take both."

"I wish I could tell you, but I don't know," Felix said. "Something dangerous, though. Be careful."

With that, Ben and Andi headed home, while Felix went out to help find Timothy and Sasha. Now, as they pulled into the driveway, he wanted to curl up in the driver's seat and not face any of it. At least they were at Andi's house, their place, and not his parents'. He wasn't sure how he would have handled that. How did Andi do it when she lost Cassie and Lee? He'd have to sometime in the near future, but not yet. He took a deep breath and told himself to worry about that after Timothy and Sasha were dealt with.

"What do you suppose they're doing with our rings?" Andi asked. "They better not be messing with all the shiny sparkles on mine. It was perfect the way it was."

"I don't know," Ben said, trying to keep himself brave. "Felix never taught me anything like that, and I don't think it's a necromantic power. Maybe it's something like alchemy, or maybe it's a spell in whatever discipline Sasha studies. I'm not sure what type of wizard she is, but she's not a necromancer, that much I do know. She might be creating a powerful tracking spell so they always know where we are."

Andi scoffed. "They don't need one of those. As soon as they show their ugly faces, we'll be right up in their business."

Ben grabbed her hand and kissed it. "Darn straight."

He sighed, gathered his wits about him, and hopped out of the truck. Maybe he'd head into the training room for some intense sword action. Even though their life or death fight with Timothy and Sasha hadn't been that long ago, he had energy he needed to burn off in a healthy way. It was that or fall apart into tears on the floor, and sword training sounded more productive.

As soon as they were through the front door, they could tell someone was there. Andi's nerves sizzled, and Ben knew with the slightest provocation, she'd shift at least into a half-dragon. He had his sword and shield ready, and a half-dozen spells in his mind, if not on his lips. He quietly kicked the front door shut and tiptoed towards the kitchen, Andi right on his heals.

Fillmore walked out, about to take a big bite out of a sandwich. When he saw them, his face lit up for a second, but then turned to pure terror. Ben had his sword against Fillmore's neck in an instant, and while Andi didn't bother to transform, she was in position to cause some serious damage if she chose to.

"Please," he managed to babble out. "I came for help."

"Hard to believe when you work for Timothy and Sasha," Andi said.

"I know, I know." Tears came to Fillmore's eyes, both of fear and regret. Ben shouldn't have been able to know that, but he did. A wizard guess, he supposed. "You have to understand, everything I did for them was for my mate. They'd kill her if I didn't comply."

"Your mate?" Andi asked. "How come no one has ever met her? Or even heard about her?"

Fillmore blinked back more tears. "She's in a state of living death."

Ben glanced up at Andi, who shrugged. Yeah, he sounded sincere, but they had no real way of knowing without a bit of magical help. "I'm going to scan you," he said. "If you try to hide anything, or I come up against any obstacles, we're going to assume you're either lying, here to trap us, or both." Of course, even after a scan, Sasha's power could still be in there, but he had to hope his own magic would detect it. It hadn't with Andi, though maybe it did. His magic might have made him uneasy around her without doing so overtly.

"Yes, please," Fillmore said, hope flooding his face. "I won't hide anything. I want away from those two. I liked Trent and Heidi, your parents, I really did. I didn't know they were going to kill them, I swear. Look inside me."

Ben's grip on his sword tightened with the mention of Mom and Dad, but Fillmore's words kept the blade at bay. This was so far removed from the slimy little dragon they'd previously met that he thought this might be the real Fillmore. Only one way to find out.

As he readied to scan him, Andi whispered, "Be careful," and he nodded at her. It was good advice. Maybe Sasha had hid some sort of mental bomb inside Fillmore's mind or soul. Maybe without Fillmore realizing.

Ben's magic entered Fillmore to ferret out any sense of a lie. As promised, he received no closed doors, nor did any foreign magic assault him. As he dug, all evidence pointed to Fillmore speaking the truth. He did want to distance himself from Timothy and Sasha, and he did have a mate lying in a coma, a living death sleep. He even felt bad about the way he talked not just to Andi and Ben, but to almost all of the dragons. His past and the circumstances which brought him there came to Ben all at once in a jumbled mass, and he pieced them together in a narrative he could follow and show Andi. With that, he was convinced Fillmore was on their side now. He let up from his scan.

"Andi and I need to talk," Ben said. "This won't hurt." Before Fillmore had any chance to reply, Ben ran a sleep spell over him. He slumped over in the unnatural magical slumber.

"I felt your surprise," she said. "Good or bad?"

"Good, I think. He didn't obstruct me at all, and he did seem to hold some detest for Timothy and Sasha. And I saw all about his mate. She really is in a coma of sorts, and has been for a long time. Like, eons. Timothy and Sasha have kept her alive, but either won't or can't wake her up. That's why Fillmore has been serving them. They've threatened to let her, and him, of course, die if he doesn't stay with them, doing their bidding. And that's also why he put on the sleazy act. He didn't want anyone to find any of it out for fear Timothy and Sasha would kill him and his mate."

"That's awful. Even if it's true, though, can we trust him? You couldn't sense Sasha's magic in me."

"No, I couldn't, but I knew something was wrong. This time I can not only tell everything he's saying is true, but something's pointing us to trust him. There's no way we should, but…"

Andi shrugged. "If you're sure it's not Sasha putting that into your head, maybe we should."

"I don't know. I feel that if it was Sasha trying to trick us, I'd be able to tell now." He shook his head. "I think we should help him. We can revive his mate like Timothy and Sasha won't."

"So what's that story? Did they put her in that coma?"

"That's why I put him to sleep. I can show you."

Andi found herself in a dark area, like a cave. There didn't seem to be much to the place. She couldn't tell if it was made of natural rock, molded stone, or even simple cloth. Ben stood next to her, but he was also right beside her somewhere else.

"Where are we?"

"In his memories," Ben said. "Or we will be. While I was scanning him, I put this together so we can watch it like a movie."

"I can sense you in two places. Wait, you can take memories and make them into movies? That's totally cool."

"Yeah, but you're the only one I can show."

"I'm the only one who matters anyway," she said. She reached for him, where he should have been, but found nothing physical. So in the world of memories, wherever it was, they couldn't touch. That was no fun.

"No doubt about that. As for the two me's you feel, one is my actual body in the living room, and the other is in a small sliver of my consciousness here in Fillmore's head. I can sense two of you, too, by the way."

"Okay, so what are we going to look at? I mean, I'm assuming it'll be Fillmore's mate, but what about her? Is this where she gets put in the living death?"

"Yeah. Ready?"

She nodded, and the world popped around her. If this was like a movie, she wanted to find the theater, but there was none. Like with the memory disc or when Rico showed them Mom and Dad's history, they stood in the middle of it all.

This was a throne room, and she felt the stone under her feet and the warm sun shining through the large window on the outer wall. She smelled the various odors wafting through the room, mostly a flowery scent that masked other unpleasant stenches that permeated everything. The other scent that vied for her attention was the smoky smell of a used fireplace, one that was so large that it took up most of the inner wall. It was at least a hundred feet long and ten feet high, more than big enough to keep the room toasty warm even in the darkest of winters.

She looked around further, and the thrones on the far side of the room caught her eye. Neither was a match for the fanciest thrones she'd seen in pictures, but these were still intended for royalty. The wooden frames were painted gold and adorned with jewels and gems of every color. With her lust for all that was shiny, Andi could tell the paint was that and not actual gold, but the gems and jewels were the real deal. Pelts that looked like they were worked to the height of comfort were draped over the actual seating area, not covering up any of the decorations. As she stared, wishing she had one of her own, figures appeared in the thrones, as well as all around the room. This must be where the memory began.

A dragon, Fillmore, turned from the window. His young, so young, face, maybe fifteen or sixteen in dragon years, held much worry. "What do we do? They're driving our army back." She wasn't sure if he was addressing the king and queen sitting in the thrones, or the dragon and guard, his parents, standing next to them.

"We do nothing," the king said. "We need patience and faith. If our army can't restrain them, the castle guards will. They're my elite troops, and they know how to spring plenty of surprises from our castle's defense system."

"You know if we intervene, their mages will have the spells to deal with us," his father, the dragon, said. "Not like earlier in the war when we had our way with them."

A young woman, Fillmore's age, ran in. She wore a long flowing dress of silky materials studded with the same types of gems and jewels that adorned the thrones. She stood almost the same height as Andi, and had long curly brown hair to go with her bright brown eyes, which, at the moment, held a good deal of fear. Though there was no way for Andi to know at present, this was Mila, Fillmore's mate, and the princess of this small kingdom, which was currently in a fight for its very existence against a much larger neighboring kingdom looking to swallow it up.

"How do I know all this?" she whispered to Ben.

"You have access to his memories. Or this one, at least. The spell I cast lets you know whatever you want or need to about what's going on. As long as Fillmore knows, anyway. It's all in his mind, after all."

That made sense in a weird sort of way. She turned her attention back to what was going on. Fillmore now had fear coursing through his veins, as she would have had Ben rushed in in a similar state.

"They've breached the castle walls," she said to her parents. Mila then looked at Fillmore, more fear than ever bleeding off her, before turning back to her parents. "A powerful wizard is leading the charge. He's decimated our elite guards, and is now heading up here. What are we going to do?"

This time the queen, Mila's mother, spoke. "Fillmore and Barlan will transform into dragons to fight, while you and Winnie will assist. And don't forget your father and I have both taken up arms plenty of times in the past. The six of us will kill this wizard, and the kingdom will rally behind us. All of that is only if the invaders can get past the guards outside the door."

"Bravo," the king exclaimed. "Spoken like a true queen of Tezuwyne. To arms!" The king and queen rose from their thrones and armed themselves with short swords and small shields.

Fillmore's father transformed into a magnificent green dragon, while his mother pulled out two small hand axes. Mila rushed into Fillmore's arms, where they shared a quick kiss and a few whispered words before readying for battle themselves. Fillmore, like his father, became a green dragon, and while he wasn't as large, held all of the splendid brilliance. Mila rushed behind the thrones and pulled out a short bow and a quiver full of a dozen or more arrows.

Andi wondered what she and Fillmore had whispered to one another, realized she could find out, but decided against it. Who was she to pry into their words of love? She wouldn't be keen on letting others hear what she and Ben sometimes said to each other.

A crash sounded outside the door, and then silence followed. After a few seconds, which seemed years longer than that, the door exploded. Once the smoke cleared, a man in long black robes stood in the rubble. He had a thin, rope-like brown beard with specks of gray peppered through it, and wore a pointed cap atop his shaggy hair. With that getup, he looked like the stereotypical bumbling wizard, but there was nothing bumbling about him. No, he wore his mastery of the dark arts well, and even Ben bristled at the evil exuding from him, though this was nothing but an ancient memory.

"Did you look into Fillmore's memories for this guy?" Ben asked.

"No, not yet. Big news?"

"You could say that. He's a mercenary who, earlier in the war, helped this kingdom. Fillmore's guess is that the other kingdom doubled or tripled the payment to get him to swap sides."

"Yeah, that's what mercenaries do," Andi said. "They aren't loyal to anything but money."

The combatants eyed each other, neither yet making a move. Fillmore and his father stood in the front, while Mila nocked an arrow into her bow and stood up on her father's throne to get a better shooting angle. The other three stayed in the middle, but looked more than capable of handling themselves in a fight. The wizard eyed each of them.

"It gets murkier. Guess who introduced this mercenary to Mila's parents in the first place."

"Who?"

"Timothy and Sasha."

Andi gasped. "Did they get him to change sides?"

"Fillmore doesn't know. He doesn't think so, but it wouldn't surprise me. If this is the company they keep, have kept for centuries upon centuries, none of it's surprising, is it? In this memory and in our time."

"No. I wonder how many underhand schemes they've orchestrated over their lifetimes."

Before Ben could answer, the fight started, though massacre was a more apt description. The dragons both unleashed their breath weapons, but the wizard blocked the acid streams and deflected them onto the king and queen, who melted on the spot. Before the thought that her parents had been burned alive even hit Mila, she was snatched up by an invisible hand of force and thrown face-first into the brick wall behind the thrones, her bow breaking and the arrows in her quiver scattering all over the stone floor. Fillmore took a step towards her, but a quick roar from his father brought him back on task. The two dragons launched forward, while Fillmore's mother threw both hand axes with expertise precision. The wizard blinked out of existence and reappeared behind them in front of the thrones. The dragons snapped at nothing, while the axes flew through the door and clattered against the wall on the other side of the hallway. Before they could turn around and face their enemy, he shot a bolt of energy into Fillmore's mother's back. It burned a hole right through her, leaving her gaping at it for an instant before she dropped dead, as did her mate. Fillmore flew into a rage, but he didn't make it halfway across the room before a hammer of force smashed into him, sending him skidding across the throne room floor, unconscious. The wizard moved forward, ready to end him, when a voice called out, "Stop!"

The wizard looked up, and Timothy and Sasha stepped into the throne room. Though they were much younger, Sasha wore her familiar disdainful scowl. The wizard shrugged and backed off.

"You've won your employers the war, so no need for another insignificant death," Timothy said. "These two could be useful. Sasha?"

"How are we seeing this if Fillmore's knocked out?" Andi asked.

"The power of the subconscious mind," Ben said. "He doesn't even know about this, but his mind recorded it."

Sasha stepped forward and rose a hand at Mila's prone body. Both she and Fillmore jolted, but with a wave of her hand, they stopped. Mila didn't breathe, but Fillmore's huge green belly still moved up and down. It was shallow, but he showed life.

"I've torn out her soul and tethered it to her corporeal form," Sasha said. "She's alive, but barely. I don't have the power to put her back in, but…"

"But we don't want that anyway," Timothy finished. He turned towards the wizard. "Thank you, my friend. Go collect your reward. If you can, give us another few minutes before you send the soldiers in to claim their new kingdom."

The wizard nodded and smiled, which was an unpleasant look on his face. "Thank you for all your help, my friends. We will meet again."

"Yes, we will," Timothy said. Andi couldn't tell by the tone of either of their voices if they were sincere or passive-aggressively threatening each other.

Once he was gone, Sasha shot a bolt of force into Fillmore. He woke at once and transformed back to human. "What happened? I…I can't feel Mila." His face crumpled, and he was seconds away from losing it. Andi wouldn't blame him one bit.

Timothy put on a mask of pure sympathy, and put a comforting hand on Fillmore's shoulder. Andi wanted to punch him right in the nose. "The wizard killed her, but Sasha was able to tether her soul to her body."

"I can't put it back, but she'll live." Sasha's sneer grew a little less pronounced. That was her idea of comforting back then? At least she'd gotten better at that as the centuries moved on.

"There's a prophecy that states a dragon and his guard will become the most powerful duo in the multiverse," Timothy said. "No one is aware of it yet, but Sasha and I are the subjects. Once we're powerful enough, Sasha will be able to insert your mate's soul back into her body."

Sasha's sneer came back in full force. "But when we obtain such power, our last thoughts will be on those such as you. Unless, of course, you promise to serve us in any way we so require and desire. In exchange, we'll keep you both safe, and I'll bring her back to a proper life as soon as I can."

"Serve you?" Fillmore asked, a frown on his face. Neither Timothy nor Sasha said anymore, and their silence seemed to unnerve him. After a few seconds, Fillmore nodded and said, "Yes, it's a fair exchange. Anything for Mila." He pushed himself to his feet and bowed before them. The scene went dark, and Andi and Ben again stood in the black cave of Fillmore's mind.

"So he doesn't know," she said. "He thinks the evil wizard killed her, when it was actually Sasha."

"The other evil wizard," Ben said.

"Will he remember when he wakes up?"

"Normally it would stay locked in his subconscious," he said. "But there's nothing saying I can't unlock it for him."

"I owe you a big kiss when we're tangible again."

"Speaking of which, ready?"

"When you are."