Trapped in awe, Jasmine gaped up at the dragon as it descended. Just before it reached the height of the treetops surrounding the clearing, it spread its wings wide to slow its fall. Its left wing caught on the canopy and so when it landed, the dragon had to flick the broken branches and leaves off its wing with a horizontal twitch. It waited for the crash of timber behind it before it stretched both wings above its back and folded them down. Its landing had been surprisingly light aside from the bits of tree that had caught in its wing.
It stared at Jasmine with striking yellow eyes. That's when she realized why the dragon was so stunning, aside from the fact that it was a dragon. It still had all its color. Scales so dark a purple they could be mistaken for black covered its body. Its underbelly was tinted a brighter shade of purple and its wings had a leathery texture on their pitch black undersides, which Jasmine could only see because the dragon's wings were so large that they wouldn't fold seamlessly against its body. Its slender neck and tail grew progressively lighter so that its head and the tip of its tail were both vibrantly purple. Two horns extended out of the back of its angular head, jet black and dipped in gold at their spear-sharp point, and a tuft of bright, feathery purple fur ran down its back, all the way to the end of its reptilian tail.
The dragon blinked at Jasmine. She didn't know whether to move or not. Like a snake, the dragon stuck its tongue out and slurped it in again.
In a voice that was female and crisp it said, "What are you named?"
A gravelly noise escaped Jasmine's throat.
"Speak louder. I cannot hear you." The dragon turned its head to the side towards Jasmine, as if listening.
Still teetering with her arms behind her, Jasmine found the nerve to say, "J-Jas--" She had to clear her scratchy throat, "Jasmine is my name."
"Hm," the dragon scooped its neck down to meet Jasmine's eye level. "You smell of magic. Has someone cast a spell on you?"
Jasmine shrugged, which, given that she had been leaning backward on her elbows, caused that muscle-awakened, prickling feeling to launch up her arms. She tried not to flinch as the dragon reached its head closer and flicked its long, pronged tongue just inches in front of her face. She felt like an ant. The dragon was at least twice the size of Enkaiein, if not bigger. "I dunno," Jasmine finally said, quite dumbly.
Seeming contemplative with its yellow eyes focused intently on Jasmine, the dragon waited for a moment. Then it undraped its neck, straightened tall and said, "I am named Ellindris."
Rising to her feet now that Ellindris didn't seem intent on eating her, Jasmine responded with, "Hi, Ellindris."
There was an awkward few seconds when neither spoke to the other and it made Jasmine more uncomfortable than the idea that Ellindris was big enough to stomp her out of existence.
Jasmine broke the festering silence, "I came here because I need help. I heard dragons are immune to magic and there's this wizard who's trying to make the kingdoms to the South destroy each other."
Ellindris slurped her tongue again. It was impossible for Jasmine to decipher what she was thinking because, as a dragon, her face was that of a reptile: placid and structured. Her tail swayed back and forth across the ground, spreading the dirt and foliage beneath it.
"Will you help me?" Jasmine asked. Her voice squeaked and cracked.
Ellindris turned her neck away. "I will not. I do not like wizards."
Desperation surged through Jasmine like electricity. She thought of the prince, of the cat's idea that he had already died on the battlefield. She thought of Enkaiein and his prison inside Castle Albreton. She thought of the kindness Mythos had shown her, even though she was an outsider. A slave to her emotions, Jasmine couldn't stop even though she knew this was a terrible, possibly deadly idea. She yelled at Ellindris, "That's a pretty stupid reason not to help me!"
Ellindris took a thundering step toward Jasmine. "How dare you speak to me in such a manner," Ellindris said as she curled back her lips to reveal six bright yellow fangs, three on each side of her mouth, nestled into rows of much shorter, black ones. Jasmine wondered if the yellow ones were venomous. She assumed they were.
Jasmine may have gulped, but she kept her eyes focused directly on Ellindris and stood her ground, fists clenched at her sides, fighting the urge to sprint as fast as she could in the other direction. Then she said, "It's true. I could see if you didn't want to help me because I'm asking you to do something ridiculous. I could see if you just didn't like me or thought I'd make a good meal. I could even see if you just didn't want to fly all the way to Albreton. But not liking wizards is a pretty lame reason not to help me. On top of that, it's stupid! Why hate wizards when they pose no threat to you? Dragons are immune to magic anyway." Bracing herself, Jasmine shut her mouth so tight she thought she'd chip her teeth and prepared for her final moments. She hoped that somehow Ellindris would decide she wasn't worth killing. Nonetheless, she fixed her gaze on Ellindris' bright yellow eyes and she waited there, unmoving.
Fangs dripping saliva, Ellindris said in a growl, "You are nothing. You are tiny. I am Ellindris, Queen of the Dragons! I have no reason to consider the opinions of an outsider. Be gone before I decide to eat you." She made a noise deep in her throat that echoed along the edges of the clearing, a noise vaguely resembling a scoff or a grunt. It rumbled on Jasmine's eardrums. Then Ellindris turned away, taking to the sky with a beat of her mighty wings. The force of the wind knocked Jasmine over.
Scrambling to her feet, Jasmine screamed at the top of her lungs. "Get back here right now! I'm not done talking!"
In response, Ellindris spun on the air, inhaled deep enough to puff out her chest and breathed a stream of red fire down towards Jasmine.
Jasmine felt the heat before the flames reached her, painful and searing against her skin. Her lungs clogged with fear and smoke and she struggled to breathe.
Out of nowhere, the cat leapt in front of her into the fire's path. Jasmine's mouth hung open and she fell gracelessly onto her rear as the cat stood in front of her, swishing its tail. If the cat could get any whiter than it already was, it did. It glowed against the flames as they crashed down and scorched the ground around them, but miraculously, both Jasmine and the cat remained untouched. Bewildered, Jasmine rose onto her haunches and tried to catch her breath. Uneven though it was, it no longer tasted like ashes and it didn't burn her throat any longer. The cat remained aglow and stationary until the flames died down and Jasmine arched her neck to the sky to see what the dragon was doing.
Ellindris hovered, staying midair with metronomic flaps of her wings. She glared at the cat with a new kind of hatred, the kind that Jasmine hadn't imagined possible to recognize on a face so inexpressive and geometric.
"You," Ellindris growled rather than spoke, so deep it sounded like an alligator's bellow.
"Me," said the cat.
"That explains the stench," Ellindris said, fangs bore. "Leave my territory, and take your pet with you."
"Excuse me, pet? I'm not his pet."
Jasmine's comment was ignored. The cat yelled up to Ellindris when she was about to fly away, "My master apologizes for anything she did to you or your family when she was Fragmaroginog's apprentice. Also, she wishes you well and offers you all the gold in Nevramere, provided you help Jasmine."
Ellindris dismounted from the sky, landing as lightly as leaves do in autumn. "Nevramere is not known for its gold. What else is she offering?"
Jasmine was still trying to piece together what the cat had said about the witch being Fragmaroginog's apprentice. Somehow, to her that seemed unlikely.
"She offers her deepest condolences for any inconvenience and grants you the satisfaction of chomping Fragmaroginog between your very own fangs," said the cat. "But she is negotiable. If that isn't enough, I'm sure she'll bargain with you."
Dipping one strong, leathery wing, Ellindris said, "Come. We shall discuss this with my husband."
Jasmine didn't have time to question the fact that a dragon had a husband because Ellindris scooped her and the cat onto her wing. They slid down to Ellindris' protruding shoulder blades and caught themselves there, gripping her scales and purple tufts of fur with exposed claws and tight fists.
"We're flying there?" Jasmine asked, breathless already. Her heart fluttered in her chest.
"Obviously," said the cat. "If you fall off I'm not going to save you, so you'd best hold on tight."
Jasmine swallowed hard as Ellindris launched.
This was not like flying in airplanes. This was twisty and irregular and exhilarating. Jasmine screamed, out of both fear and delight as Ellindris ascended higher, drumming her wings against a downdraft. It was like being on an inverted roller-coaster; it was diving off the high board, the swimming pool replaced by an endless sky. It was terrifying and it was magic.
Eyes bulging wide, Jasmine couldn't help the smile plastered on her face, couldn't help her heart rate as it beat faster and faster. After a while, she couldn't tell how much of the thumping in her ears was Ellindris' wings and how much was her own heart, spasming against her chest. This was everything Jasmine had wanted when she first signed up for horseback riding, everything she had imagined it would be, multiplied by a thousand. She didn't care that the joints in her fingers hurt, didn't care that the cat's fur was sticking out against the wind or that whenever Ellindris took a sharp turn, her hair whipped at her face. This was freedom; this was real flight. Jasmine couldn't imagine how she mistook riding horses for something that felt like this.
"Woo!" Jasmine shrilled. If she hadn't been so caught up in the moment, she would've felt Ellindris' amused chuckle.
When they landed, Ellindris spiraled slowly out of the air before touching down. She dipped her wing and Jasmine drifted to the ground along with the ruffled, unhappy cat. If Jasmine didn't know better, she would've thought he might be sick.
The cat kneaded his claws against the rocky path on which they all stood. Ellindris folded her wings up and back and took a deep breath in before she breathed smoke out of her nostrils.
Ellindris said, "It is good to be home." She walked on all fours towards a gap in the rock wall before them, stepping gracefully over the sharp, jagged boulders that clustered the path, which was wide enough to accommodate two dragons at once. The path was outlined in trees and greenery. It sloped upward, a river void of water. Occasionally, Jasmine would lose her footing and send a conglomerate of pebbles, stones and gems tumbling down behind them. The color-stealing spell didn't seem to affect this place. The rocks, gemstones and crystals that bedded the path were lustrously hued, all in a miscellaneous, haphazard arrangement as the sun shone bright upon them. The cat and Jasmine's clothes, however, remained white and gray, respectively.
The cat's pounce presently sent a handful of purple and red gems rolling down the path. "Keep up," the cat told Jasmine, without bothering to look back at her.
"Yeah, yeah," Jasmine replied under her breath. Even so, she hastened her pace, bestirring herself clumsily higher along the pathway.
Ellindris halted a dragon's stride away from the break in the rock wall, where the foliage ended and the rising stone broadened into the landscape on both the right and the left. Waiting for Jasmine, Ellindris hooked her neck and stared back down the path. Jasmine hurried under the dragon's gaze and found herself out of breath when she reached the break in the rock wall.
The cat waved its tail, seeming apprehensive. "I will wait here," it said.
"So be it," Ellindris remarked. Then she entered the wide crack with Jasmine following her tail.
They went in silence for a while with neither having anything to say to the other. Jasmine licked her lips and glanced up at Ellindris.
Ellindris said, "Is there something you wish to say?"
"I, um, not really," Jasmine said, "I'm just not used to it being so quiet."
"I like the quiet," Ellindris confided, "It reminds me of the olden days, when my kind could wander without the worry of knights and wizards."
Jasmine loped over a particularly obtrusive bit of rock that poked out of the right side of the wall. Not paying attention to where she would land, she slipped on a pile of emeralds and nearly fell flat on her face, but Ellindris caught her in her wing.
"Watch your step," said Ellindris.
"Sorry," Jasmine said as she righted herself, "I mean, thanks."
"You are welcome."
Something occurred to Jasmine. "I thought dragons were immune to magic?"
"We are not immune to everything."
Jasmine watched her feet, thinking this over as they made their way so far into the gap that the entrance became invisible. The crystals and gems were much larger now, in bigger piles and heavier clumps, heaps so large they seemed to be climbing up the stone walls of their own accord. Jasmine spotted more than a few gold and silver goblets in one pile, along with crowns and tiaras of all shapes and sizes in another.
An earthquake of a grunt shook her out of her thoughts. Ellindris unfolded her wings as best she could in the narrowing pathway and roared in response. Jasmine nearly fell over from the sheer volume but managed to catch herself before she did so.
A skulking figure manifested in the shadowed space in front of them, large as Ellindris, if not a little taller. Jasmine strained her eyes to see it better. Emerging from a dark corner was another dragon, a white dragon with teal wings that had matching teal fur running down its spine. Its horns were pure white, as was its belly and its tail. But its face, neck and back were patterned in craggy teal stripes. When Jasmine saw its bright blue eyes, they looked surprisingly kind. A tuft of white fur hung from the dragon's chin and semi-translucent teal whiskers emerged from its cheekbones, billowing in the gap's abiding draft. The gems and crystals clinked and clanged under the white dragon's weight as it stepped into the light and the air adopted the smell of cinder.
"My love," said the white dragon, its voice a clear but masculine timbre.
"I am home," replied Ellindris. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment before embracing, their necks intertwined like woven rope. When they broke away from each other, the white dragon nuzzled Ellindris' snout before it focused its attention on Jasmine.
"Who is this you have brought?"
"Uh, I'm Jasmine," Jasmine said and gave the white dragon the tiniest, meekest wave as a greeting.
Bowing with its wings held high, the white dragon said, "Hello Jasmine. I am named Kurventhor. You may call me Kur if you wish."
"Okay," said Jasmine.
Ellindris spoke up before Jasmine was able to, "Jasmine has requested our aide. She wishes to help the kingdoms to the South."
Kur shifted his tail to one side, looked between Jasmine and Ellindris a few times. "Do you want to help her?" He asked Ellindris.
"Yes," Ellindris said, not missing a beat.
"Then why are you asking me?" Kur said, sounding confused, "Go ahead if you want to. You do not need to ask permission for everything."
"I only thought you might have wanted to know." If dragons shrugged, Ellindris then did so.
Jasmine couldn't help thinking that this was like watching a married couple in a sitcom. She stifled a smirk.
"In that case," Kur said in a booming dragon's voice, "Shall we be off?"
Jasmine jolted upright in surprise and delight. She hadn't thought it would be this easy. When this had all begun, she figured she was dragon fodder for sure. Now, seeing these two great beasts before her, baring their teeth at each other as if smiling and affectionately nudging each other's noses, a glimmer of hope made its way into her heart.
When Ellindris dipped her wing, Jasmine climbed gratefully onto her back for the ride.