The Clan of Outcasts [Season 3]

Part 37: "Lady Two-Bloods"

The White Castle (North) Three Years Prior... (*Scene continued from Part 22: "The Winds of Change")

Memories swirled in flares of blue around Erlis... The sight of Korsan and Jaran watching her with growing concern soon engulfed by the light of the sun, the colors of everything leaping out so brilliantly that the whole world seemed hazy... she'd never noticed the taste of the air before, nor the feel of every single thread in her dress, nor even the incessant clamor of nature surrounding them, closing in on them... She couldn't feel her legs... she vaguely recalled stammering out the word "Help..."

And the next thing she knew, everything vanished in a wave of blue light, and a sudden fatigue settled into her whole body. Erlis did something she hadn't done in a long time: she caved. She withdrew into herself, the part that was still a dragon on the inside.

The outside, she reasoned with herself, that was where the Elvish blood is changing me, altering me first in appearance, but the more it seeps in, the more it changes... When my heart no longer beats with Dragon blood, will I be cured of my Gift, or will it replace the healer's touch with something more akin to its own nature?
She hadn't quite reasoned it out before she regained consciousness, and everything she experienced in her dream faded to the deepest recesses of her mind from whence they came. It was another two days still until she had enough strength to walk, but as soon as she could, there was only one place Erlis wanted to be, and one person she needed to talk to.

Tristan, the redheaded wind-puller Velora had recruited to her Forest Rangers, snapped to attention when the tall, black-robed woman stormed toward the cluster of buildings forming the Ranger Service Head Offices.

"Hello, Lady Erlis! To what do we owe the--"

"Velora!" Erlis roared with dragonish fury. "We need to talk!"

Tristan raised his hands, and a thick gust of wind blew Erlis' hair back from her face. "Please wait a moment, while I check to see if the Warden is taking visitors--"

"She's taking me!" Erlis snarled, shrugging off the gust of wind and stepping forward. The rebounding blast of air pushed Tristan back a few paces, and blew the door of Velora's office open. Erlis strode right inside.

Velora had been staring at a large map of the forest posted on the wall. When Erlis walked in, she only had time to turn around before the imposing woman had her face just inches from Velora's own.

"This is your fault!" Erlis thundered. "You let them change me! You're the reason I'm sick!"

Velora's face tightened, and her gaze hardened in the face of this fury. "I seem to recall you being fatigued by the action of getting out of bed at one point--and yet you seem to have made it all the way here from the White Castle without much effort. It certainly looks like the remedy worked."

"Remedy, my eye!" Erlis backed off, only to pace the room in front of Velora, who sank into the chair standing behind her desk with all the decorum of a court justice. "That was no remedy... just trading one internal conflict for another!" She bared her teeth and ran her hands over her arms. "Ever since Jade took Troy with her back to Justicia, I thought I'd gotten a handle on it..." she said with a shudder. "I had spent all my life wearing ugly scales, I didn't want to return to that if I could help it..." Her lips twitched into a sneer. "But the trouble was, I couldn't help it. Every time I healed someone, every time I used my Gift, there it was, the sleeping dragon within, pushing and yearning and stretching to burst out to the forefront again."

Velora yawned and wriggled her head. Fur broke out over her face, and her mouth and nose elongated while her ears shifted upward to two furry points at the top of her head. The wolf-head nodded to the troubled healer and with another shake, Velora shifted back into her human self to speak.