Page 40 of Dragon Valley
“How can I become worthy?” I screamed into the cold forest air. “I’ll do anything.”
To become worthy, you must See.
A flash of heat burned me from within, then immediately disappeared. It took me a moment to realize that all physical sensation disappeared. I was no longer hungry or cold. I couldn’t even feel the ground beneath me.
How do you expect to See without opening your eyes?
I cracked my eyes open, fearing I would see the same empty blackness that would mean I was dead. But no, I saweverything.
It was impossible to comprehend. I saw all of the past from every perspective up until the present moment. I saw the entire world from the sky as if I was on the back of a dragon the size of the moon. I saw through the eyes of other dragons in the valley— hunting, sleeping, flying.
The death and destruction of Tannia’s civil war hit me with incomprehensible anguish and pain. Sons and fathers not just killed, but massacred. Towns raided, mothers and daughters raped and then killed. I saw it as a pervasive evil sweeping across the country, an evil that laid waste to everything it touched.
And it set its sight on Dragon Valley.
“No! We can’t let it come here!” I tried to scream but no sound came out. Did I even have a mouth or a body? “We never should have let those insiders in! I knew it!”
Without warning, everything went dark again and I was back. My stomach cried out with hunger. I shivered against the cold.
You fool. You did not See. You are not worthy.
* * *
Somehow, I lived through that night. And with the little strength I had left, I snuck up on a sleeping lone wolf and strangled him to death. I thanked him for his warm pelt as I said a prayer for his spirit to enter the afterlife. I think that was why the Dragon God gave me another chance.
Death must have purpose. Senseless death cannot go unpunished.
“Yes!” I shouted at the empty air around me. “Yes, I agree! Please allow me to See again!”
He didn’t come to me again until the next day, when I had enough strength to carefully skin the wolf and prepare every part of his body for either meat or tools. Out of nowhere I was whisked away again. This time, all the images and sensations were slightly easier to process.
“Nadi!” I gasped with the mouth I didn’t have.
I saw her kneeling before a woman with long, blonde hair. The woman wore a jeweled crown and wielded a long heavy sword. Nadi bowed her head and the woman tapped each of her shoulders with the flat end of the sword.
It appeared to be some kind of ritual or ceremony. But had it already happened? Where was Nadi now?
More images played out before me, too fast for a human mind to decipher but something told me I was no longer human. She rode Dusa with a hard, angry expression as she yelled a command. Fire and bloodshed. A landscape of flames as far as the eye could see. It was violent and merciless, but it was just. It paid for the senseless deaths of innocents.
I saw her in bed with a man, moaning with pleasure as he thrust against her. Another man cupped her face and kissed her. Neither of them were me.
In that moment, the human emotions of jealousy and possessiveness felt petty and beneath me. Just too… human. There were too many important things at stake, such as the massive amounts of senseless deaths across the country going unpunished.
And then I felt it.
I wasn’t in her body but I could feel her heart, her emotions and desires. She was falling in love with someone but she still loved me. Every day she rode Dusa over the forest, hoping to see me come out alive.
This other person she loved made her feel happy and warm. He watched over her and kept her from being lonely. Dusa even let him ride her!
“Thank you,” I said or thought to the Dragon God. “Thank you for giving her someone to love and be with her. If I’m not at her side, I just want her taken care of and happy.”
I returned to my body more gently that time, but still took a gasp of air like I’d been holding it. The ground was cold and hard beneath me, but I had a wolf pelt to keep me warm and some meat in my belly. My body needed nothing else.
Now you are beginning to See.
16
NADIYAH
