Tavia had always been the good child. Tavius used to say it was only fitting, given how much he and Libby rebelled against their mother. "Someone has to balance the scales," he'd say.
Tavia did a lot of balancing.
"Have you made any calls?" Redbud asked tersely from the passenger seat, looking remarkably less regal covered in soot and blood. Her sword lay against her knee, scabbard missing, and there were wrinkles around her mouth that hadn't been there last week.
"Yes, of course." Tavia couldn't call on support as efficiently as her twin, but she was good at managing situations that weren't her fault. She hadn't had any experience with forest fires and the escape of her slightly-homicidal elder sister, but a lifetime of dodging death attempts made her very flexible.
It also made her very paranoid. Sometimes, that turned out to be a good thing.
"Fire brigade is an hour out, at the least. The PR team is already coming up with the official statement. Imogen will email it to everyone as soon as it's ready." She caught a glimpse of August in the rear view mirror, his face slack and soft. "TT, can you check on Baby? Make sure he doesn't have smoke inhalation or something?"
An aspen groaned and teetered towards the narrow road, branches bright orange with fire. Tavia jerked the wheel to avoid it. Redbud gripped the dash, knuckles white and a hiss escaping between her teeth, and the guys in the back shouted as burning leaves and ash swirled overhead. A few branches bounced off the tailgate, throwing sparks and flaming twigs into the bed. They jumped up, slapping at their pants, but Tavia was more worried about the truck's paint.
Will have to get it redone. Again. Maybe I should buy another truck? I really like this one, though. I'm not supposed to get attached to things. How old are these tires? What if I get a flat? I just replaced them—
"Tavi..." Tavius rasped, looking mostly unrecognizable with his hair undone and his whole body painted white-gray with dust. No one would have guessed they were twins now. "Sonya...Sonya..."
"Who?" Tavia could hardly hear him over the roar of the truck. Should've listened to Redbud and got a sports car. But she wouldn't have been able to haul six people out of a burning mountain in a Maserati, now would she? "TT, can this wait until later? I'm kinda..." She swerved again, this time to dodge a panicked bear that was sprinting down the road. "...busy."
She overtook the bear easily and couldn't help but watch the animalistic terror on its face as they passed by. Then frowned in confusion when the animal dug in its back end, wheeled around on its rear legs, and bolted the way it had come.
"TAVIA!" Redbud screamed, slapping her palms against the dash again. "STOP!"
Tavia punched her foot against the brakes. The truck jerked, the brakes skipping with complaints. The orange ABS light flickered on the console. But the vehicle stopped, the rear end wobbling slightly. No one was pitched through the windshield or out of the bed, thank goodness. All the same, Tavia's heart thudded with sudden panic.
How many accidents a year are caused by not wearing a seatbelt? Isn't it a crazy bunch?
Redbud screeched again.
"What, Mom?" Tavia turned to the front, then jumped back against her seat, a surprised shout coming forth.
A quarter of a mile down the road, hovering in the air, was a dragon.
A literal dragon.
It was huge, about four or five times the size of the truck. Bigger. Spiky brown scales sheathed its face and back, while its belly was a deep, pitch black that reflected flashes of red and yellow from the burning trees. The membranes of its wings were thin and gold, shot through with dark spiderwebs of veins. The tail was longer than Tavia would have expected, easily three times longer than the rest of the dragon's body, and long enough that it dragged against the pavement.
The dragon slowly lowered itself to the road. It was remarkably more limber than its size would have suggested; its wings didn't make very much noise and its landing was rather gentle, maybe even dainty. There was nothing 'gentle' about its face, however—glossy black and brown scutes, topped with a menacing crown of bone-white antlers, the tips stained a noxious blue. Its eyes glittered, red and malevolent, and when its jaw dropped open, it exposed a half-second flash of a blue-skinned mouth rimmed by sharp fangs and terrible teeth.
It crouched on all fours, its clawed feet flexing with impatience. Tavia noted with some anxiety that the claws were also white, tipped blue.
Tavia nearly screamed when a hand came around her front, pinning her to her seat. But it was her twin. By instinct she relaxed a little. Then started to panic again, because...dragon!
"Don't freak out, Tavia, please." Her brother begged in a whisper. "Calm down. Calm down."
She gulped. Calm down? How was she supposed to calm down when there was a dragon right there? There weren't supposed to be any dragons in the US! Yet the forest continued to burn on either side of the creature, framing it and drawing emphasis to its size and terrifying power. Yes, that was a dragon.
I need my medicine. That dragon could kill them if it wanted to, and more likely than not, it would get away with it. Pay a fine, maybe get a slap on the wrist, but not much else. One did not really chastise a dragon, after all, not if they didn't want their entire country razed to the ground.
Her gaze flashed to August. He was her baby brother, her responsibility. She couldn't—
"Tavia!" Her brother snapped, his voice hushed. "Don't. If you think like that...just don't." What he implied was better left unsaid: If you think of it killing us, it will.
She tried to breathe. She really tried. Her hands started to sweat, the leather of the steering wheel turning slick under her grip. There was a bottled water in the center console, and she hastily took it out. Her fingers shook as she unscrewed the lid, but that was more nerve at being caught than the dragon. Hell hath no fury like a mother catching her daughter...
Better not finish that thought. Redbud couldn't read minds, but Tavia didn't want to tempt fate.
She gulped. Coughed. It'd take a few minutes, but the routine was working already. Tavia's breathing slowed, and she was able to look at the dragon without losing her head.
Redbud had gone eerily quiet, her eyes wide as saucers. Apparently Tavia wasn't the only one shell-shocked by the situation. Tavius was shaking slightly, which didn't do much for Tavia's own confidence, but she couldn't think of what else to do. Her instinct was to freeze, like prey caught in the headlights of a predator.
I am prey. This is a predator, she realized.
The truck bounced slightly as weight shifted in the bed, but Tavia couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes away from the dragon. A part of her was convinced that if she did, the beast would be inspired to pounce and eat the truck whole. Shoes slapped against pavement, and Tavius cursed, forcing Tavia to look anyways. Two of the guys in the back had dismounted. One of them had her spare rifle, the one she'd kept in the toolbox in the bed, and was aiming it down the road.
At the dragon.
They're not planning on shooting it, right?! She thought, sucking in a hot breath. Then choking when she recognized the grim determination on their faces. They are!
The dragon's eyes flicked to the men, and it dipped its head closer to the ground. Its lips peeled back, showing another teasing hint of those teeth, and a thin, sibilant growl rolled from its throat. A warning. To emphasize that it was a threat, its wings unfurled with a snap, tips pointed straight at the sky and membranes flared. An effective threat, Tavia thought, because now it looked twice as big.
They're going to get us killed. Her eyes strayed again to her siblings, accompanied by a flash of indignation on their behalf.
The dragon's shoulders arched, and it roared, a blistering noise that made Tavia clap her hands to her ears. It was so loud, pressing against her eardrums until they felt like they might burst, and before she had a chance to recover, the dragon lifted its head and opened its jaws again. Except this time, rather than a roar, flames poured forth, aimed straight at the truck.
Everyone screamed, but the smaller of the men outside jumped straight into the flamethrower's path, throwing up his hands. The ground trembled, then tore, and dirt-clod roots erupted from the ground, climbing straight up like a rising wall. The fire collided against it with a crash, some of it splashing over and around the edges, but the majority of it clung to the earthen mass, greedily licking at the roots but also extinguishing itself against the dirt.
"Tail!" the other man shouted, just as a serpentine shape dashed around the side of the wall. The tail was capped with white bone, the sharp tip glistening with bright blue liquid. Even an idiot could see it was venomous.
The white-haired man crossed his arms in front of him, and another tangle of roots emerged from the ground and encased him in a protective ball. The tail glanced off the roots, then quickly wound around the ball. It lifted up and smashed the ball against the ground. The other man screamed, not noticing that the dragon was climbing over the root wall, craning its neck over the rim and opening its mouth for another blast of fire.
The truck would be swallowed up in the wave, Tavia knew, and then she and her family would die.
"Tavia..wait, no!" Her twin gasped, scrambling to hold onto her as she wrestled free of the seatbelt and kicked the door open. He shrieked, pulling at his hair, before struggling to clamber out after her.
"I've got this!" She called over her shoulder, waving her arms over her head at the dragon. "Hey! Hey, you! Over here!!"
The dragon, of course, ignored her, eyes tracking the dark-haired man. He was still focused on the tail, which continued to shake and slam the root ball like a toy. Blue saliva dripped from the dragon's open mouth, the same shade as the liquid that tipped its antlers, claws and tail. Where it dripped onto the ground, faint lines of smoke curled. Great, venomous and acidic.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, Tavia shouted again, "Look at me! Don't you want to kill me? I bet you're going to kill me!!"
As if its head was being tugged by a string, the dragon's gaze swiveled onto her. The red lamps of its eyes were illuminated with reptilian malice. Dropping the ball of roots, it reared its head like a snake preparing to strike. Tavia lifted her rifle to her shoulder, pointing the glowing reticle of her red dot at center mass. She flicked the safety with her forefinger.
Deep breaths. She'd never fought a dragon before. Guns weren't renown for taking down train-sized monsters, either. But if she lived...Libby's gonna be so jelly. This brought an unbidden quirk to Tavia's lips as she readied to pull the trigger.
But her twin crashed into her, throwing them both onto the pavement with a shout. "Tavia! Don't! Stop it!" His hands fluttered on her face, desperate to dampen her power, but he should've known better.
Cursing, she managed to shove her finger free of the trigger before anything stupid befell them both. Not that her efforts mattered much; they were both going to get themselves killed for sure now.
"TT! What the he—"
The dragon tensed, coiling like a spring, and its muscles were so large that Tavia could see them bulge and ripple even from fifty feet away. With a snarl, it pounced. The front claws outstretched like a feline's. She shrieked, as did her twin, and they both curled around each other. She felt weightless for a second, as if falling, and experienced the distinct feeling—again—that she was going to die. It was a slow thought, a clarity that seemed to bring time to a standstill as her mind raced through all the matters she'd left unfinished.
I have a date with Kulline week after next. There's an appointment with the Winter King day after tomorrow. I haven't seen Libby. Baby's got a girlfriend and I want to see him get married—
There was a whistle, shrill and strident. It cut through the dragon's roar and made Tavia's ears throb.
An enormous pale blue shape collided into the dragon's side. With a boom, the monster was thrown off the road and into a stand of burning pines. The trees buckled under the creature's enormous bulk, crashing and cracking into tinder, and new plumes of fire burst upwards to celebrate the dragon's violent landing. The reptile roared and thrashed, its tail whipping back and forth, legs kicking air and wings flapping. Its roar was pure, unmitigated fury.
Her heart racing, Tavia and her brother peered at the creature that had interrupted the dragon's advance. The closest description she could approximate was if a dragon was also an octopus—a thick, sinuous neck with a bright pink hood and a innumerable amount of tentacle-like limbs, colored white with rings of purple and black. Each tentacle was webbed to its neighbor by fluorescent pink membrane, terminating in a three-clawed affair that was neither hand nor foot. Blunt, pink spikes jutted from the center of each ring, and its underbelly was colored a pastel shade of pink and dotted with dark red suckers. As it wended through the air, the suckers tightened and contracted like small, gasping mouths, rings of teeth hinted within. Though not quite as big as the dragon, it radiated an otherworldly danger that would make even Libby hesitate.
Tavius shuddered, staring at the creature. In a quavering voice, he murmured, "S-Sonya?"
Seated atop the creature's head, her legs wrapped around the single spike that crowned its temple, was a young girl in black. She cradled a garish staff to her chest, staring at the dragon while her mount grinded its white beak and uttered a series of ominous clicks.
"Sonya!"
The girl's gaze flashed down for a fraction of a second, then away. What Tavia saw in the young woman's eyes was something dark and cold.
"Who is that?" Tavia murmured, her voice trembling.
Her brother didn't answer. The dragon managed to roll itself onto its front, clawing back to its feet. Without hesitation, it leapt straight for the octopus creature. Tavia came to uncomfortable realization that she and her twin were directly in the dragon's path.
❁
Thank you for reading! Please leave comments, constructive criticism, or vote if you enjoyed it.
A/N: Based the dragon's scutes off the Javan mudsnake. Also, two words...octopus dragon.
Chapter was too long, so it's been split in two.