Dragon Witch ✔️

62 - Swampmares

"It's not that simple," I said at last. Shaking my head, I leaned back against a tree. "I'm a changeling."

Piper scoffed. "He doesn't care about that."

"He does. You saw him last night."

She rolled her eyes. "You were shouting about eating people. I gave you a strange look, too. So did Eva, and she adores you." She waved in the direction of camp. "Look, he has his instincts, and you have yours. You want to kill him, and he wants to fly away, screaming for his life. But neither of you are doing that."

"Because we're stuck in a murderous swamp, in a killer survival competition, on a planet full of vicious monsters."

"Deny it if you want, but you two would be perfect for each other. You're both stubborn as a galhok." Without watching where she was walking, she stepped off the dry patch of ground we were on and right into a puddle of quickmud.

In the time it took me to lunge forward and grab her arms, she sank up to her waist. A tremendous suctioning force dragged her down as it dragged me closer to the puddle.

Eva, get Kyton and Nissa over here, I shouted in my mind. Digging my heels into the ground, I struggled to stay still. Piper's arms slipped in my hands. I clamped my claws around her arms. She whimpered but didn't complain as my claws cut her.

Eva streaked through the trees with Kyton and Nissa on her tail. She grabbed the back of my shirt in her claws and tried to fly backwards, which did absolutely no good. Nissa shooed her away and took her place. That did a little good. Not enough, though.

Piper sunk another few inches, and my claws dug deeper into her arms. On the other side of the puddle, Kyton landed and held his hands out. Eyes closed, he fluttered his fingers over the puddle. The quickmud bubbled. It pulled back from around Piper, just enough so that Nissa and I could heave her out of the puddle.

All three of us collapsed on the ground. The quickmud puddle splashed back to its previous level. Nissa quickly searched through her backpack, assumably for a healing potion for the cuts on Piper's arms. I winced. They were more than cuts. Gashes--that's what they were.

"I'm so-"

Piper hissed in pain as she propped herself up on her elbows. "Don't you dare apologize for saving my life, Miss Changeling."

"Kyton was the one who-" I glanced up at the fairy in question.

He was dark blue in the face and staring intently at a nearby tree. Looking back at Piper, I realized why. From the waist down, she was coated in mud--and nothing else. Whatever had suctioned her down had pulled off all the clothes on her bottom half.

She groaned as she looked down at herself. "This couldn't get any more embarrassing."

"No," Nissa said as she pulled out a tube of something that looked like toothpaste, "but it could be worse. You could be dead. Now, I'm going to put this on your arms. It's going to hurt, and it won't heal the cuts completely. We need to conserve our healing potion for life-threatening injuries. Try not to scream."

There was no screaming involved as Nissa dabbed liberal amounts of the cream on Piper's cuts. There was a lot of cursing, groaning, whining, yelping, and hissing, though. As they worked, I got out the collapsable cauldron.

"Can you filter out the plants and bugs out of the water?" I asked Kyton.

He nodded without looking at me, so I moved to his side and held out the cauldron. With a wave of his hand, he made clean water fly up out of a puddle and into the cauldron. I went back to Piper, got out a rag, and started scrubbing the mud off her legs. I repeated that until I'd gotten her relatively clean up to mid-thigh.

By then, she was done getting her arms creamed and wrapped in bandages. Blushing furiously, she finished cleaning herself.

"Nissa, I think my clothes are in your bag."

As soon as she was dressed, we headed back to camp and finally laid down for the night.

***

Of course, getting some decent sleep couldn't be that easy. From the moment I closed my eyes, I was dragged through one nightmare after another. Countless monsters murdered me, my family, and friends in a never-ending cycle. I'd always been a lucid dreamer, able to control at least some aspects of my dreams if I concentrated, but this was something else. The nightmares were more vivid than I'd ever head, and they resisted any attempt to control them.

It was a relief when they shifted to a dream about being in absolute darkness. The silent darkness unnerved me a little, but it was better than what I'd been seeing. I stretched out my hand. As expected, I couldn't see a thing. My hand felt weird, though. Like it was too big. I touched my face.

At least, I tried to touch my face. It wasn't where it usually was. Instead, I felt a scaly neck under my claws. A thick, long neck leading to a slender dragon's head. Of course this had to be one of my nightmares. Okay, what was going to happen next? The darkness would clear, and the Dark One would appear to congratulate me for killing enough fairies to fledge, right?

I waited. The darkness stayed. So did the silence. Sitting back on my haunches, I ran a paw down my side. I was pretty big but definitely smaller than Castor. Maybe as tall as a donkey at the shoulder. My tail was easily three times as long as it really was in changeling form. That seemed like a real tripping hazard in the dark.

A little hovering light appeared in the distance. Part of me wanted to stay in the darkness until the nightmare passed, but curiosity overcame my apprehension. What would I really look like as a dragon?

I padded forward on four catlike paws. With my claws retracted, I moved silently over a cool stone floor. As I grew closer to the light, a figure appeared standing not too far away. It was Kyton. He looked human at a distance. Closer up, I saw he still had one antennae and half of his tail. His wings, second antennae, and the end of his tail were missing.

The darkness faded away to reveal a study room in the library. Piper and Nissa sat at the circular table. Kyton paced, scanning over a thick book in his hands. He muttered under his breath.

"Idiot, idiot. How could I have trusted her? She's a fairy dragon." His voice rose to a shout. "I should've known. I should've-" He hurled the book at the far wall.

It thumped to the floor, and I shivered. I'd never seen him that angry. Neither he or the others seemed able to see me.

Nissa scowled at him. "You couldn't have known. She fooled all of us."

Piper straightened in her seat and gestured for Kyton to sit next to her. Jig-jagging scars stretched up her arms and neck. I knew instinctively that they were claw marks.

Kyton shook his head. "I can't sit down. It's my fault-"

"You couldn't have known, sweetie. Come on, take a break. It's been weeks since she... you know."

'Sweetie?' Were they an item in this nightmare? That was new.

He kicked the wall so hard that his foot went through it. "Of course I know. If I'd stopped her, Sorciereville would still be standing. If I'd just let her die-"

"-you would've been a terrible person." She stood and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. "We all thought she'd taken control of her instincts. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I've studied changelings since high school. I know how dangerous they are."

Nissa scoffed from her corner. "We all knew how dangerous she was, but we ignored it. It's all of our faults. None of our faults. Either way, it doesn't matter. All we can do now is track her down and make sure she never hurts anyone ever again."