Chapter 33: Walkabout (Patreon)

Note: Since I'm posting a bonus chapter on RR I'm doing the same here. Enjoy!

I woke when I breathed in water.

I had never lived near the coast. I was generally aware of the concept of high tide as a thing that existed, but that did not, unfortunately, mean that it was something that I’d thought about when I picked a place to sleep. I’m not sure what time of day it was, since I was only half awake and what little focus I had was spent on not drowning. Coughing and sputtering I made my way to the base of the cliff and settled down again. The wound on my chest stung like hell from the salt water and it took a while for that to mellow out, but I had barely gone back to sleep before I felt the water lapping at me and the wound started burning again. Around that point I was awake enough to realise what was happening, and that I had no idea how high the water was going to rise.

I groggily looked around but didn’t see anywhere higher that I could get to easily. Grumbling and cursing to myself I continued north, feeling heavy, sluggish, more bloated than I’d ever been in my life. The water was up to my belly by the time I found a small ledge with some rocks stacked beneath it, and with a titanic effort I managed to drag myself up. At that point I was at least a metre over the water. I was also completely exposed, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t fly, I couldn’t swim, and I couldn’t climb, not these cliffs and as full of fish as I was. So, I curled up and covered myself with my left wing, hoping that I just looked like a weird black rock. I napped there for a few hours, and when I woke I saw that the water was receding.

With another round of grumbling I made my way back to the comparative safety of the large rock and settled in. I figured I could sleep there for the rest of the day and wake up and move in the morning, before the tide came in again.

That was how I learned that there are two high tides every day.

*****

I woke up, sputtering, cursing, and hating the world and everything in it. The sky was dark and heavy with clouds, and even with my night vision I could only barely see where the moon was behind the clouds. The cliff was a black blur before me. With my shadow sight, however, I could see nearly perfectly as I angrily trudged back towards the ledge I’d napped on earlier.

Being repeatedly woken up had me well and truly cranky, and I couldn’t stand the idea of being half-drowned in my sleep again. I needed to get up the cliff somehow, but my wing still hurt like a bitch and I was definitely too heavy to climb. Maybe, maybe I could have done it in my old body if I found the right line, but my skills unfortunately didn’t translate as well as I might wish, especially with forty or fifty kilos of fish in me. If only my wing –

I caught myself. Stupid. I could be so goddamn stupid sometimes. When I wasn’t thinking like a human, I was thinking like a dragon. But what I needed to think like was a dragon with magic.

I looked at the wall of stone in front of me. It was tall, sure. From the ledge I’d napped on it must be ten or fifteen metres, and that was a fairly low point. But why should I let that hinder me? I had to try, right? When I’d gone through the magic gate the hole had been too high, and I’d managed it. Sure, it hadn’t been much too high, but still.

I splashed my way to the ledge and climbed up the rocks to it. Then I looked up at the distant edge of the cliff, and shifted.

I stretched. I stretched like I’d never stretched before. I could feel myself getting longer, and thinner, but it wasn’t enough. I’d gotten quite high though, and I quested along the rock face until I found a nice, big jug. I flowed over it and willed myself to anchor on it, and it worked! I relaxed upward from the ground, pulling together, then stretched again until I found an edge, then a couple of crimps, and a few metres at a time I made my way up and over the top of the cliff.

I felt extremely pleased with myself as I pulled myself together on the grassy border between the forest and the sea. I was good at climbing, and I could do magic. I was, in a word, awesome. I shouldn’t let myself forget that.

Feeling extremely smug over my accomplishment I climbed a tall tree. Climbing hurt, like everything else, but this was a place where I was guaranteed not to drown in my sleep, and finally got to rest undisturbed.

*****

I woke up in the late afternoon. Two large ships with dozens of oars were sailing by. They probably had nothing to do with me. I went back to sleep.

*****

The next time I woke up it was sometime in the morning. I felt much better. Or, at least I felt well fed and rested, and not as bloated anymore. I was pretty sure that I was supposed to meet Herald and the others that day, but I didn’t see that happening. I couldn’t fly, and I wasn’t sure that I could find the lake if I wasn’t in the air. Even if I knew which direction it was, I doubted that I could cover the distance on foot in a day. It was disappointing, but it was just one more thing that I’d have to accept.

Instead I tried to go as straight away from the coast as I could. By my reckoning I shouldn’t be more than a few kilometres into the forest, which would put me far to the southeast of my cave. I suppose that I could have just stayed where I was until my wing felt better, but quite frankly I didn’t feel like it, and I wanted to get home to my hoard. My meal and my triumph over the tides and the cliff had left me full of restless energy, and if I couldn’t fly then I would damn well run.

Since my whole left side was probably one big bruise under my scales from being smashed on the rocks by an angry sea, I soon slowed to a walk, letting me breathe at a rate and depth that didn’t cause me constant agony.

The forest was dotted with small villages, so I knew that I had to be alert for the sound and smell of people, especially now that there was a bounty out for me. Other than that it was just a walk in the forest. I’d gotten pretty used to the huge forest that covered everything I could see from Karakan in the south to the northern horizon, and from the sea in the east to the mountains in the west. This part had more conifers than leafy trees, but other than that it was pretty much more of the same. I amused myself by gently flexing my wing, and trying to remember curses in the local language as pain shot all the way to my back.

I didn’t find any villages, but I crossed some smaller roads, some barely more than paths, so I knew that I passed near some. I smelled plenty of boar, deer, and rabbits, and other scents that I didn’t know which animal they belonged to, but since I had just eaten I didn’t pay them much attention. I did smell a bear at one point, and kept my senses peeled for that. I had no desire to run across something like the giant bear all those days ago. Though, to be fair, I had no idea if the deer and boar I smelled were giant monsters, so I might get run up a tree anyway.

My enhanced endurance let me walk almost all day, but I rested when I needed to, drank when I found flowing water, and slept in a tree when it got dark.

The next day I reached the main road. I don’t know if there were fewer bandits on the road since the raid – I sure hoped so – but I think that there were more people on the road than there had been. Not having any other destination in mind I followed the road north, heading for the lake. For once I actually had to be a little careful when crossing side roads, checking both directions carefully before scurrying across.

It took quite a while, but I got to the lake in the afternoon. People had been using the camp site again. Recently, too. I could see where the grass had been flattened, and there were fresh, if cold, ashes in the fireplace. There was no piece of precious metal on the tree, but I decided that I’d gone far enough for the day and settled myself in a tree that overlooked the camp. There I dozed away the afternoon, and the evening, and when no one came, the night as well.

*****

I woke very late the next morning – closer to noon, really – feeling disappointed. It wasn’t fair, I knew that. I was the one who’d missed the agreed meeting, even if it wasn’t entirely my fault. I guess that I’d hoped that Herald at least would stick around, just in case. And I’d wanted my money bag and the firesteel she’d gotten me, but it was probably for the best. I wouldn’t be able to carry them anyway, if I needed to go shadow again. But Herald had a life to live, just like the others, and they probably had a lot of questions to answer after bringing the blank-faced population of half a village into the city.

I hoped that those people had recovered, and it wasn’t something permanent. Sleepwalking the rest of your life just didn’t sound very pleasant to me.

I stuck around the rest of the day and through the evening just in case, but instead of anyone I wanted to see a completely unfamiliar group of people arrived to set up camp. It looked like a trader and some guards, but I didn’t stick around for a closer look. I didn’t want to share the campground, and since there was no point in staying I left my tree and continued making my way west.

This far from the coast I could see the mountains every time there was a break in the trees, which let me see some of the landmarks I’d used to navigate. The peaks, gullies and valleys didn’t look that different from how they looked from the air, and I was pretty sure that I could find my cave. It would take another day at least to walk to the foot of the mountain, and then I had no idea, but what else was I going to do?

I considered trying to hunt before I got home. I probably should, rather than struggling to get up to the cave and having to go back out immediately. But if I was going to hunt I’d rather do it closer to home, so I could sleep it off in the cave. And maybe my wing would be alright soon, and it wouldn’t be a problem. Mostly, I think, I was trying to find excuses to get back to my cave and my hoard. Counting back I had been away for over a week now, and I felt a need, an almost physical pull drawing me back. I wanted to see my hoard, to feel it and smell it, to make sure that it was safe. The last few days I had become more and more conscious of what Valmik had told me, how gremlin nests could seemingly appear anywhere there was a decently large cave. I was getting anxious. When I thought about it, though, all I got from the dragon was a kind of dismissive disgust. She had clearly not been impressed last time we faced the things.

I walked through the night. I had never been a night owl in my old life, but now it felt surprisingly natural. The darkness and the cool air relaxed me, soothing my nerves and my sore flesh, and when dawn came I climbed a tree and slept the day away, continuing into the hills the next evening.

I had a lot of time to think during the days when I was walking back to the mountains. I tried not to, mostly, because I might have gone out of my mind with boredom, but when I did my thoughts were about who I was. What I was, and where I was. I wasn’t sure how long it had been now, since I woke up in the cave. More than a month, I was sure of that. Every time I slept, I woke up just where I’d been. I dreamt about my old life often enough, but I couldn’t remember having a dream that might have been a moment of waking up in the “real” world. And while there was a lot of strange stuff going on here, it had never had a really dreamlike quality to it.

I was becoming more and more accepting of the idea that whatever had happened to me, this was real. A different reality, a parallel dimension, a different time or a different planet. It didn’t really matter. It was as real as my old life, and I should expect things to ever change back to the way they had been.

It was usually around there that I didn’t want to think anymore, but as I walked into the hills that night I forced myself to press on.

If I accepted this, that this was the world and the body that I was going to live out the rest of my life in, I had to learn to actually live in it. My experience at the coast had made me realise that I was still thinking like a human, and while that was good sometimes, it limited me. I had been coasting on the dragon’s instincts, and while she had helped me survive it wasn’t enough.

Other than the times when I got to feed my addiction to all things shiny, the happiest I had been here was when I got to spend time with Herald. Maybe she was special, or maybe it was just because she’d accepted me so fast, but what it showed me for sure was that I needed companionship. I had always been a social person. I did stuff alone sometimes – that was how I’d ended up here, after all – but I loved hanging out and talking to my friends, or meeting new people. I needed it, and that hadn’t changed. Hell, I’d been stalking people on the roads and in their villages just to… what? Feel like I was part of their lives? Feel like a person? But how was I going to feel like a person as long as I spent all my time alone in a literal cave, hundreds of metres up a mountain side, or sneaking around the forest?

I didn’t have any answers. But I knew one thing. All the people I liked, except for one little girl, were in the city. I could get in and out easily enough. I was sure of that. It was getting around and staying hidden that might be a problem. So I needed to learn, and adapt.

I could do magic. I could move around soundlessly, and I could make myself almost invisible. I could even mess with shadows, making them darker and pushing them around a little. But I had a nagging suspicion that I’d only scratched the surface of what I could do. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might be able to climb a near vertical cliff until I absolutely had to.

The crux of it was that magic wasn’t natural to me, and so it didn’t come naturally. When I needed to solve a problem I had to actively remind myself that “Hey, this is something you can do.” What I needed was to make it second nature. Like, for example, climbing a damn tree hurt right now. It hurt a lot. Why didn’t I just shift and flow up? It would probably be way easier than climbing a cliff, with all the branches. What else could I do? How long and thin could I get? What was the smallest hole I could get through? I really had to get serious about exploring these things, because not using my magic, actual, real life magic, to its fullest was a ridiculous waste. It was like not flying if you had wings.

Assuming you hadn’t sprained one of them by stupidly flying into a boat at about 50 kph, that is. I finally understood why tall chimneys had those little lights on them.

And the body I was in, that was a whole other thing. I had gotten used to it, and how to move in it, but much of that was thanks to the dragon that I shared it with. And that was something that I hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring out. She didn’t seem particularly bothered to be sharing a body with me, even with me in the driver’s seat. But judging by her reactions, everything that was strange to me, the magic of this world, was natural to her, and because of that I couldn’t help but feel that I was the plus-one in this shared body. That I was somehow possessing her, like a confused ghost pr something. No matter how okay she seemed to be with the situation, it made me uncomfortable. It was a little like if I had taken over someone’s house one day, and all they did about it was to hang around and make helpful suggestions.

Until someone tried to break in, that is. That’s when the claws came out, and I stayed behind her.

Analogies aside, I wanted to know what had happened. If I had possessed this body, I wanted to know what she’d been doing in that cave, and how I’d ended up inside her. For that I really only had one way to go, but even the thought of going back down into the pit in my makeshift treasure room made me feel sick. The dragon, to my surprise, was even worse. Whenever I thought about the place I felt waves of anxious dread leak in from her, and I wondered what had happened there to make the proud creature so nervous. Besides possibly being possessed by me, that was.

Exploring the cave would have to wait.