The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 86

Part 14

They chatted about the same things they normally talked about as they cooked and ate. At her request, Karzog finished most of the cooked haunch as well as the rest of the deer, since Helemia couldn’t eat more than a hundred and fifty grams of it right after breakfast. It didn’t seem right to leave any of it uneaten.

“Mmm, that was so good, and I’m so full!” Helemia chuckled as she cast a Cleaning on herself and her sword.

“Mmm, me too.” Karzog agreed with a huge grin as he rubbed his bulging belly. He released a huge burst of intense fire and kind of swirled it around his mouth as he did so, reducing any food particles between his teeth to ash, blowing them out, and freshening his breath. “We’ll have to take it easy on the flying, or I might just burst!”

Helemia giggled. “Good point. Maybe we should do the dragon thing and just lounge in the sun after eating. We can fly later if you’d like.”

“Sure, I’d prefer that, actually.” he nodded as he led the way outside.

There was a place in front of the cave that was large enough and flat enough for him to relax on his belly, and he did.

“And now I have a surprise for you. Close you eyes.” she mischievously instructed.

“Okay.” he laughed, and did as she asked.

She cast a careful spell, and it took a few seconds.

“Okay, open ‘em.”

He did, and his jaw dropped in stunned surprise. He couldn’t even talk for a few moments, while Helemia grinned and posed for him, turning this way and that, and fanning herself with her wings. She had become a young female dragon about three-quarters his size. Her belly and the underside of her neck and tail were the same very light, almost-white pink that her skin had been, while the rest of her was the same glossy black that her hair had been, and her eyes were the same dark violet.

Even when he finally could speak, it took him two tries as he started, stopped and reconsidered, then spoke. “Helemia. Fire. You’re prettier than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Thank you Karz, that’s sweet.” she giggled. “Now just one more thing.” she said as she cast on herself again, then spoke in Draconian. “A complete, improved version of the Draconian Translation for Humanoids spell.” she growled, then gave her wingtips the little wave that was a dragon’s version of a giggle. “Complete with body language and non-vocal communications.” she added as she lay down and cuddled up to him. “Of course I already knew how to do it, but I’ve been working the knowledge of it that we got from Kragorram into a spell, and that was the first test-casting.”

“Hey, it’s not an Illusion!” he exclaimed in Draconian as he felt her warm touch. “What a great job of Shape-Shifting!”

“No, it’s not Shape-Shifting yet.” she revealed. “I got a lesson on that from Theramin. The size difference is a real challenge. If I was good enough to do a complete Shape-Shift already, which I’m not, I could only be a little tiny dragon that weighed about eighteen kilos, the same as I normally weigh.

“You can’t make the extra weight out of magic, it would take way, way too much energy. Ask Yazadril about it sometime, you won’t believe how much magic it takes to make even a tiny bit of material.

“So that means that the easiest way to do it would be to just become a little dragon, and then eat a lot and grow bigger magically, but that would take a long time. Yazadril actually did that once to disguise himself as a Sylvan, and it took over a year just to triple his weight. It would really take a long time for me to grow to be a full-size dragon, and it would take just as long to shrink back to the normal me again.

“When we get out of here I’ll have to find out how Zarkog grew so much, and how fast he did it. He might have a viable method I could use.

“The only other way to do it is to grow the body magically during the Shape-Shifting process by adding material to it with the same basic composition, basically from food products. Then when you change back you’re left with this big pile of body material, and you want to put it somewhere safe because it’s easier to use it again the next time you want to grow than to start from scratch again. And it’s really, really complex. Quewanak says that one of the gargoyle gods knows how to do it, but no one here does, so that’ll have to wait.

“Anyway, this is just a full-sensory Simulacrum, only with my humanoid body held inside my dragon head, so it feels like my psionics are coming from the right place, and I don’t have to worry about what’s happening to my body when I’m like this. I worked on it a lot to get it just right and to make it feel really natural, and I took a good Reading of Povon so I’d have some idea of what it’s like to be a girl dragon. It’s… It was the best I could do.”

As she fell silent he realized that she’d been babbling in an unconscious effort to cover her own nervousness, and it made him consider for the first time how she might be feeling about their situation.

“You’re very beautiful, and you’ve done a wonderful job of it.” he assured her. “And I hope you don’t mind my saying that you seem to understand how I’m feeling more than I do. It seems like you were expecting my gift, and that you’ve done a great deal of preparation and work on changing your form…”

“I was, and I did. Well I wasn’t expecting a dead deer exactly, but I thought it was likely that you’d do something like that soon. I’m… I’m proud to be your special friend, Karz, and I hope we can share more private times together. But I’d like to keep them just that; private. I’m making sure that absolutely no-one knows where we are or what we’re doing, not even Quewanak or my brother, and I’d like to keep it that way for a few years.”

“Sure, but… My special friend?” he cautiously asked. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?”

“Be serious Karzog, neither of us are close to puberty yet!” she protested, laughing but sounding scandalized.

“Ah, good, I hoped you weren’t saying that yet too.” he stammered. “And I’m very glad and proud to be your… special friend. But you’re saying that in the years ahead…?”

She took a deep breath, and let it out in a ring of yellow fire.

“Oh well done!” he enthused. “There’s no way I could tell that wasn’t real! And it was very pretty.”

“Thanks. And yes. In the years ahead. Six had a prophesy about it years ago, and now I’m sure it’s true. You’ve dreamt about me, and I’ve dreamt about you, and it’s not just psionic leakage, I’ve checked for that every way there is. When a young male dragon leaves a gift of fresh prey for a young female, it’s an instinctual act of courtship.”

She took another deep breath, and turned to meet his gaze squarely. “I am your destined mate. You are my destined love. Over the next few years, we will surely fall deeply in love with each other.”

She held his gaze until he answered.

“You’re right. Somehow, I know you’re right.” he agreed.

Then he suddenly stood and flared his wings as he paced back and forth a bit. “But I don’t understand!” he exclaimed in confusion. “How could this have happened, and what will we do? How can we have a life together like that?”

She was silent as he paced for a few more seconds, until he stopped and looked at her again.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry Karz, but I really don’t know. We’ll just have to take it as slow as we can, and do our best. As strange as this seems to us, it’s going to seem even stranger to everyone else. That’s why I want to keep it secret. I’m not ashamed of loving you, Karzog, and I wish we could proclaim it to the world. But you know a lot of people are going to take it the wrong way. Probably most of them.”