A Dragon's Path to Ascension Read online

  A Dragon’s Path to Ascension

  By J. C. Harker

  Uutta Toivoa, Dragons Reborn series

  Short Story

  ThinkSentient Publishing

  Edited by Brandon Michael Davis

  Copyright © 2012 by J. C. Harker

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents:

  Happiness Denied

  On The Run

  Powers Colliding

  Epilogue

  “A Dragon’s Path to Ascension” is a standalone short-story that shares the world of the Dragons Reborn (Uutta Toivoa) series. If you enjoy the story and the world, head over to http://uuttatoivoa.com for extra lore, maps, artwork, and book updates.

  The Fourth Era

  The attack on Uutta Toivoa is now legend, passed down for generations.

  Happiness Denied

  “Please forgive me, I’ll try to make this quick,” Tharia whispered, raising the sickle in her right hand. Her other hand was wrapped around a bunch of branches hanging down from the old weeping willow in front of her. For a brief moment she listened for a response—and to anyone else, the faint hum of the leaves and the deep, crackling sounds coming from the tree’s trunk would have just been the usual sounds of the forest. But to Tharia, it was the mental nod from the tree for her to go ahead. The sickle sliced through the plant with ease.

  She tied the branch pieces with a small string and strapped it to her back. Ready to move on, Tharia picked up her over-sized and already overflowing shoulder bag from the ground. She only had a few more herbs to forage before she had everything she needed.

  She left the giant tree behind and ventured back into a denser part of the forest. Rays of midday sunlight fell through the foliage high above, making it easy for her to look for the right plants to harvest. After an hour, only cloud berries remained on her list.

  Tharia stood up, stretched her back, and turned her pale face towards the sun. She closed her emerald-green eyes and enjoyed the soothing warmth for a minute while listening to the gentle rustle of leaves and bird songs. The day was so pleasant—she hadn’t felt this happy and relaxed for a long while. Her thoughts wandered back to the place she was born and to the days she had spent basking in the sun for hours while pretending to work in the orchard.

  She snapped back to reality at that memory. It was quite unusual for her to think back to those times. She shrugged and took out an apple from the pocket of her large, hooded cloak. It must have been the sunny day and the smell of spring that got to her. She took a bite and started walking toward her current home.

  Tharia reached out mentally to Dru, her dragonling, and giggled as leaves brushed against its scales, causing her to vicariously feel a sensation akin to a tickle. The small lizard was following her, flying high up in the tree tops. She withdrew her presence from the creature, letting its animal side take over. An occasional mental nudge was enough to keep Dru out of sight in case she stumbled across a villager wandering around the forest. Hidden amongst the foliage, the dragonling could easily pass for a large bird.

  After half an hour, Tharia reached the spot where the cloud berry bushes grew. She had purposefully made this the last item on her list as they happened to thrive not far from her house. The shrubs were heavy with fruit and easy to pick. The sticky red and orange juice trickled between her fingers and down the skin of her hands. Despite the easy pickings, Tharia somehow managed to snag her sleeve on the thorns while reaching deeper into the bush. The tear quickly grew, exposing her white scaled arm underneath. She swore under her breath.

  Tharia couldn’t risk anyone seeing her scaly flesh. For the last two years, the locals knew her as an odd hermit living in the forest—a druid they would reluctantly come to when desperate enough. The few lies she couldn’t avoid had made her tongue bleed. No, she definitely did not want to be recognized as the young Toivoan dragon she actually was. That would bring unwanted attention.

  As far as Tharia was concerned, she was happy with this peaceful life. Mostly self-sufficient and living off the forest, she only occasionally needed to venture into the village to barter for the few items she couldn’t procure herself. She hid Dru constantly and never left the house with more than her face and hands exposed. She even wore an expensive wig crafted from the finest human hair to cover her bald head. An uncomfortable accessory despite its hefty price tag.

  Tharia packed up what she had managed to gather and rushed to her small hut tucked away in a forest clearing about an hour from the nearby village. She pulled her cloak over her arm in case she met someone on the way, and she sent Dru ahead to wait in its usual spot overlooking the house. The dragonling always waited until nightfall before coming inside. It kept an eye out for strangers from the tree tops. Even though visitors were rare, Tharia preferred to stay cautious.

  Once inside, she dropped her bag on the simple wooden table, right next to a small pot that had violets growing in it. That was the one childhood reminder she allowed herself to keep. The fragrance brought memories of her mother and of the good times with her sisters before she was sent away to train and study with other Verdure children when she was nine. But that was all in the past, and something she so far had managed to successfully leave behind. The one thing that she refused to forget was the promise she made with her siblings: to never hurt each other.

  * * *

  Tharia stirred the soup before giving it a quick taste. She sensed Dru’s hunger rising, matching her own feelings. She calmed her dragonling, filling the lizard’s body with her mind’s presence. She would let it hunt for some rodents once the sun went down.

  She reached up to grab some herbs from the jungle of items hanging above the hearth. Careful not to knock down the string with thin slices of dry meat, she pinched a few bay leaves and some powdered pepper. It would not be long before both of them had their supper, she thought, adding the extra ingredients to her soup and covering the pot with a lid.

  She sat at the table and placed a small box on the wooden surface. From it she took out a needle and thread. Relaxed, she pulled up the sleeve of the sweater she had put on after coming home, and she gently began mending the tear in the shirt underneath. Patience was her best weapon. After a few decades, with practice, her power and skills would raise enough that she wouldn’t have to hide any more. Just like aunt Floresta, whom her mother often spoke about when Tharia had mentioned her lack of interest in Ascending.

  “After a certain point you become too strong,” she used to say. ”The young ones won’t challenge you and dealing with hunters stops being a problem. The Council even lets you communicate with your family again.”

  Tharia’s mom had shown her some of the letters. Floresta had also pretended to be a druid and it was over fifty years before she decided to come out. After that, she took the town nearby, as well as a hefty plot of woodlands, under her wing. If Tharia could just stay hidden, time wasn’t an issue for her kind.

  She finished mending her shirt but couldn’t quiet her mind, so she figured some house work might help. Tharia got up from the chair, walked over to the cupboard, opened it, and took out a simple, ceramic plate. She was about to carry it to the table when, startled, she dropped it. The pottery hit the floor and shattered into pieces, but she didn’t care. With two quick moves she pulled up the loose sleeves half covering her hands. She had to make sure she wasn’t imagining things in the dim light.

  But her worst fears were confirmed—faint emerald-colored runes appeared on the skin of her hands one at a time. They pulsed in a slow rhythm, appearing and disappearing in different places. This
meant only one thing—another Toivoan was near.

  Tharia panicked. Unsure what to do, she grabbed a knife and threw her cloak over her arm. Looking through Dru’s eyes she could see the coast was clear, so she dashed from the house toward the nearest group of trees.

  Out of sight at the bottom of a large pine, she struggled with her sweater. For a brief moment, as she tried to take it off, it got stuck over her head. The shirt underneath had a wide opening in the back that exposed plenty of scale-covered flesh and the thick, bulging scar that ran along her spine. She scrunched the sweater into a wooly ball and, twisting her arm backwards, she pushed the sweater against her back. The scar split open and her hand, holding the clothing, went inside. Tharia’s skin tingled as she felt her arm move through the Azure that filled the space within. She gently moved aside a few gem stones, careful not to push them beyond her reach, and dropped the sweater. She didn’t want to leave it behind in case someone tried to track her.

  She called down her dragonling.

  “Bond,” she mentally commanded Dru.

  The small lizard landed on her shoulder and spread its body along her back. The scar burst open, swallowing the dragonling into the pouch hidden within. The creature’s tail hung outside, as the opening sealed up around its body. Tharia felt the warmth of the returning dragon essence and swung the tail that was now part of her body from side to side. The scar formed a cross shape over her shoulder blades, stretching to the sides and allowing the wings to spread. The dragonling turned its head sideways and disappeared underneath the scar tissue. Only a single eye remained visible, staring into the distance. She stretched the wings and blinked with the lizard eye. Bonding always made her feel so complete.

  She swiftly half flew, half climbed to the top of one of the large trees overlooking the hut and clearing. Leaves and small branches hit her face and arms, but she just wanted to get as high as possible, fast. Once seated between the branches she wrapped herself tightly with the cloak to hide the continuously brightening glow coming from the runes. She whispered to the tree, pleading for it to help hide her. In response, several of its larger branches wrapped around her obscuring her from view.

  Hopefully this other Toivoan won’t know where I am straight away, she thought. If she was to run, she wanted first to know who she was running from.

  Minutes dragged on as she waited and her stomach started to grumble. She wished she had grabbed some food when she left the house, but it was too late for that now.

  “How could I have been so stupid and ignore all the warning signs?” She wondered. She hadn’t thought about her homeland for months. “I should have known better.”

  Her feelings intensified. She was beginning to wonder if her decision to wait in the tree tops was a mistake. The mild interest and pull she had sensed earlier turned into a calling. She felt drawn in one direction, urged by the dragon essence flowing inside her. It took a lot of her will not to jump down and start running wherever her senses might take her. She shivered and a few beads of sweat rolled down her forehead and dripped from her nose.

  Then the feeling stabilized. Tharia guessed her pursuer must have stopped, likely waiting for dusk to even out their chances. A few more minutes passed, and as the sun disappeared from her sight, she felt the power inside her cool down. The light glow of her pulsing runes slowly shifted from green to purple.

  A moment later a figure emerged from the woodlands coming from the direction of the village. This one did not bother to hide her origins. She was average height and slim looking, very much like Tharia. The white scales, exposed on the girl’s arms, glistened in the fading light of dusk. Her hands and face also had a faint purple glow as symbols flickered on the skin. But what caught Tharia’s attention were the dragonlings perched on the other girl’s shoulders. Not one, but two. Tharia let out a gasp and covered her mouth. She was dealing with a half-Ascended one.

  Mesmerized, she watched her kin reach the house. More sweat formed on her forehead. She clenched her wet palms on nearby branches, physically resisting the urge to run down and face the girl. This was exactly why she chose her solitude instead of chasing power, but the others just couldn’t leave her alone…

  Her thoughts were disturbed by the sound of a broken twig directly below. Someone else was sneaking toward her hut. Looking closely, she spotted several dark figures moving in the direction of the clearing.

  An arrow flew from behind a tree straight into the Toivoan at Tharia’s door. It went through the girl’s side, causing her to shriek in pain. Startled, the dragonlings on her shoulders took to the sky.

  The girl turned toward the area where Tharia was hiding only to be hit by another arrow, this time in the shoulder. More followed, but by then she was prepared. She shouted a word in Draki and flicked her hand at the approaching arrows, which fell to the side as if straw blown by wind.

  “Come out and stop fighting like a coward.” The girl’s voice sounded annoyed.

  Tharia realized the girl must have thought it was her shooting. The other Toivoan, hissing from pain, frantically pulled at the arrow stuck in her shoulder.

  Any confusion was quickly cleared up as the group lurking in the shadows between the trees stormed straight at her—approaching from several directions with wild screams and weapons raised.

  Both dragonlings immediately dove down to protect their human host. Their cries echoed in Tharia’s ears. One went for the face of the mercenary who was spearheading the attack. The other one smashed claws-first into the back of a tall thug, the impact causing them both to crash to the ground. The dragonling did not wait for the man to recover and was already gnawing at his shoulder as it reached for his throat with its claws.

  The other dragonling wasn’t so fortunate. The mercenary leader dispatched it with a single, vicious blow, and it only managed to leave a few claw marks behind. Tharia realized then that the mercenaries must have known what they were hunting.

  The dragonling breathed its last, and then the little lizard burst into a swarm of small white worms that writhed on the ground. A piercing cry of pain and anger came from the other Toivoan. Tharia cringed—that could have been Dru down there. The second dragonling faced a similar fate as one of the other mercenaries stabbed it in the back to rescue the creature’s latest victim.

  The other girl, surprised and weakened by dusk and the loss of her dragonlings, only managed to take down two of her attackers before the rest surrounded her. Tharia counted seven mercenaries still standing, and that one half-chewed man lying on the ground but still moving. Her kin pulled out a lightweight sword and was trying to fend the attackers off with the blade and with words of power. Unfortunately, it looked like her talents lay elsewhere. And though she had grievously stabbed one of the men, the rest were upon her as she tried to choke the leader with magic.

  A mighty blow to the knee with a club and a stab in the side forced the girl to the ground. Even hidden away high in the tree tops, Tharia heard the sound of bones cracking. Like a pack of rabid dogs, the men kept kicking and stabbing the girl. The attackers obscured Tharia’s view, but the screams filled her imagination with plenty of unpleasant images. She also felt the pull towards the other Toivoan lessen, likely a sign there wasn’t much life left in the girl.

  That’s when Tharia noticed that dusk had finally passed and night was taking over. Her purple runes faded into an obsidian color, and she felt the strength of her powers return. For a brief moment Tharia considered giving in to the much weaker calling and joining the action on the ground. But then she noticed a faint blue glow coming from the middle of the fight and she recognized the other Toivoan as a night healer. Tharia felt petrified, even if she fought off the six remaining mercenaries, who could say the half-Ascended wouldn’t just consume her. After all their fight would be about actual power and not just physical strength.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud banging noise that came from inside the hut. The soup! The distraction was enough for the other girl to grab two of the men and
instantly freeze them into ice statues. She was about to lift herself on her trembling arms to grab another, when the pair behind her skewered her simultaneously with their weapons.

  Tharia heard a wet splash as the body fell into the pool of blood beneath it. She watched the remaining men immediately move away, leaving a few meters between them and the corpse. The body on the ground part burned, part froze, the effects spreading through the nearby grass accompanied by a crackling sound. Flickers of strange energy surrounded the area for a brief time.

  “They know about the Tempest?” Tharia wondered. She was more and more convinced these weren’t just some random bandits. But when she saw one of the men start gathering the white worms from the dead dragonlings into jars, she knew she couldn’t just sit there and wait for them to leave.

  Moving quietly in the forest was like second nature to her, even with her daytime Verdure magic dormant. Tharia swiftly approached the edge of the clearing. With the kitchen knife in hand, she judged her chances. At least she wasn’t distracted by the presence of the other Toivoan anymore.

  Without making a sound, Tharia bolted toward the man with the jar. He had his back turned to her, and the only other person nearby was the wounded thug trying to deal with his injuries. Both were easy targets. She was only a few steps away when the gatherer noticed her. Tharia pushed herself off the ground and with two flaps of her wings was beside the man before he could turn around. A swift thrust of her knife between his ribs left him gurgling and choking on his own blood.

  The other man managed to stand up already and was closing in on her quickly with a sword in his uninjured arm. After pulling several times at the handle of her knife, Tharia realized it was stuck in the body. She let it be and turned to face her opponent. As he took a swing at her, she shifted her position to use her left arm as a shield.