Fight or Flight

Chapter 1

Enola

Traces of panic and fear from a familiar nightmare faded away as I slowly woke up. It was comfortably dim in my cavern, with only the soft glow of a few crystals embedded in the ceiling providing any light. I yawned and stretched out, spreading my pink wings out towards the stone walls as I pushed the last bits of sleep out of my groggy mind. I lay in the gentle glow for a few more minutes while I prepared to face the day... then I pushed myself to my feet and began plodding through the tunnels that made up my den.

Glowing crystals lined the walls I had patiently dug out long ago, creating rainbows of gentle color as I walked along. My lair had been a mine at some point – humans had once dug into the earth to harvest the magical crystals around me – but it had been abandoned long ago, in some silly war between two humans squabbling for territory. One of the sides had destroyed the entrances to and records of the crystal deposits, and it had been forgotten. Until I had found it again one day and dug out enough of the passages to make it livable again.

Aside from the gentle light the crystals provided, they also generated a constant 'hum' of magical energy that even I could not miss. That had taken a bit to get comfortable around... but now it was familiar to me. Pleasant, even. The sense of magic was all around my lair, and traces of the crystals' energy clung to each one of my scales.

It made for a wonderful cover.

I went through the familiar morning ritual of mentally practicing various spells I knew. I juggled a few of them in my head – the spell for knitting a broken bone, the spell for dulling pain, the spell for blocking infections – though I didn't actually cast any of them. The mental effort of thinking through multiple spells kept me occupied until I turned a corner and arrived in the tunnel leading to the entrance. There were no crystals here – the crystals would not grow this close to the outside world, and it had been too much of a bother to move any crystals here – so I plodded along in the familiar darkness for a few moments. Then the tunnel began to grow brighter, and a few steps later I emerged into sunlight.

The sun was already very high in the sky. I sighed as I looked up at it. It was almost noon, or maybe a little past it. I had overslept again. It was not like I really had anywhere to go to, or that I needed to be at by a certain time... but it was still a bad habit to get into.

My stomach rumbled, letting me know that my oversleeping meant I had gone too long without eating. I could walk to the nearby lake and wait for a large enough fish to wander close to the shore, or wait for a goose to return to the shore for a nap. My stomach was not happy at the idea of going even longer without food while I waited to find something easy to catch, though, and gave me another angry rumble.

I sighed again. I would have to go flying if I wanted to find something substantial enough to fill my belly any time soon. The muscles in my wings started to ache just at the idea.

The faint hum of magic finally broke into my thoughts. It was hard to pick out under the constant humming of the buried crystals in my lair, especially with how out of practice I was at using my mage senses, but it was different enough to be noticeable. I looked down from the sun and over at the single blue crystal I had set into the sloping hill that covered my lair. The crystal glittered a little brighter than it usually did, and I reached out to touch it.

A decent amount of magic had been stored inside the crystal. Close to the limit of what it could hold, actually – about what a dragon would normally generate in a week. A simple spell had been woven into the crystal by another dragon long ago, back when I had first placed it at the entrance to my lair, and now I felt it faintly brush against my dulled mage senses as the enchantment hummed with an eager purpose. Someone had left me a message.