Chapter 14: The Bond's Price
The dream wasn’t his own. Dan knew that the moment it began.
He stood on a windswept peak, the air thin and sharp as shattered glass, watching two dragons circle each other in a sky the color of a fresh bruise. One was Dargo, his scales like polished obsidian, but younger, the edges sharper, his movements a raw, untempered fury. The other was smaller, sleeker, scales the shimmering green of deep forest canopy. They weren’t fighting. They were playing, a breathtaking, terrifying dance of diving claws and buffeting wings, their roars shaking loose avalanches of stone from the mountains below. The feeling flooding through Dan was a complex, layered thing: the thrilling heat of challenge, a profound, possessive joy, and beneath it, a thread of loneliness so vast it felt geological.
Then the scene melted, ice into fire. A different mountain, this one burning. The green dragon was gone. In its place was the smoldering ruin of a vast, ornate fortress built into the cliffside. Human figures lay still among the shattered marble. Dargo’s true form, now bearing fresh, weeping scars across his flank, stood amidst the devastation, his great head lowered. The emotion here was different. It was a silent, ringing emptiness. It was the absence of joy, the absence of fury, leaving only a cold, heavy weight of consequence. It was grief, but a dragon’s grief—not tears, but a stillness that promised future storms.
Dan woke with a gasp, his chest tight. He was in his pallet, not against Dargo’s side. The bond thrummed like a plucked wire, vibrating with the faded echoes of the dream-emotions. Across the cavern, Dargo was already awake, seated motionless by the blue hearth-fire, staring into the flames. His back was rigid, his braid a stark, dark line against the flickering light.
“You saw.” Dargo’s voice was flat, without inflection.
Dan pushed himself up, rubbing his face. “It wasn’t like seeing. It was like… being dipped in it. The first part, that was good. That was… happy.”
“A memory.” Dargo didn’t turn. “A cherished one. Her name was Seryn. The fortress was her family’s. They took her in. They were… kind.”
The weight of the unspoken ‘until’ hung in the air, thicker than the smoke. Dan understood the consequence in that second memory. The burning. The stillness. “What happened?”
“I happened.” Dargo finally looked at him, and his gold eyes reflected the blue fire, making them look like cracks into a molten core. “Her family’s kindness did not extend to harboring a creature like me indefinitely. There were… pressures. From neighboring lords. From the Church of the Gifted. They asked her to choose. She chose me. The resulting disagreement was terminal for the disagreeable.” He said it simply, a statement of fact. “Control of the bond is absolute, you said. And it is. While we are awake. Sleep… lowers certain walls. It seems my centuries provide stronger imagery than your two decades of tannin and fear.”
Dan swung his legs off the pallet, the stone floor cold under his feet. He walked over and sat on the rough-hewn bench opposite Dargo, not too close. “You loved her.”
Dargo’s jaw tightened. “Love is a small word for a bond that spanned three of your human lifetimes. It is a leaf describing a forest. Yes. I loved her. She is gone. The memory remains. And now, apparently, it is a communal experience.”
There was no heat in the accusation, only a weary resignation that was worse. Dan felt a spike of his own guilt, invasive and sharp. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know. That is the problem with connections. They are not built on intention alone.” Dargo poked at the fire with a length of obsidian. A log collapsed in a shower of sapphire sparks. “It will happen again. My history is long. Your mind is… receptive. You will witness battles, losses, moments of petty irritation spanning kingdoms. A curated tour of my regrets and a few victories, delivered directly to your sleeping mind. Congratulations.”
The self-loathing in the dragon’s tone was unmistakable. Dan had seen Dargo angry, impatient, even darkly amused. This was new. This was vulnerability, and it was being offered not as a gift, but as a warning label.
“You told me the bond was a resonance,” Dan said carefully, watching the firelight play on Dargo’s sharp features. “Between two old magics. Maybe this is part of that. Not a flaw. Just… a feature. One we have to learn to live with.”
“A feature,” Dargo repeated, the word dripping with scepticism.
“Yeah. Like your throat pouch. It’s not convenient, having a gemstone stuck in your gullet. But it’s useful. It’s part of what you are. This is part of what we are.” He was surprised by his own words. A month ago, the very idea would have terrified him. Now, it just felt like the next piece of a puzzle, jagged and complicated, but fitting.
Dargo studied him for a long moment. “You are infuriatingly adaptable.”
“I had a good teacher. Showed me that being a complex creature isn’t a curse. It’s just… biology.” Dan managed a small smile. “So, Seryn. Was she the one who taught you to cook?”
A faint, almost imperceptible snort escaped Dargo. “No. She was worse than you. Could burn water. Her talent lay in persuasion of a different kind. She could negotiate peace between warring badgers.” He leaned back, the rigid line of his shoulders softening a fraction. “She would have found you amusing. And irritating. In equal measure.”
“I get that a lot,” Dan said, the tension in the air beginning to dissipate, replaced by something quieter, more solemn. “The dream… the good part. The flying. It felt incredible.”
For the first time that morning, a ghost of Dargo’s usual dry humor touched his eyes. “It is. One of the few pure things left in this world. The weight of the air, the balance of the thermal, the earth spread out below like a living map.” He looked at Dan, a speculative glint forming. “You want to feel it.”
Dan’s breath caught. “What?”
“Not a memory. The real thing. Your control is sufficient. The bond is stable. And you are, despite your best efforts, no longer fragile.” He stood, a sudden, fluid motion. “It will be practical. A different perspective on the terrain. Strategic. And it will give you a new sensory baseline—perhaps it will give your dreaming mind something other than my antiquated pain to feast upon.”
“You’re going to take me flying.” It wasn’t a question. A wild, thrilling panic buzzed in Dan’s veins, part terror, part exhilaration.
“I am going to allow you to attend me while I fly. There is a difference. Do not fall off. I have grown accustomed to your chatter. Fetching a red smear from the valley floor would be inconvenient.” Dargo was already walking towards the cavern’s great opening, the wind whipping his braid. “And bring your own warmth. My back is not a hearth.”
Minutes later, Dan stood at the mouth of the cave, the world falling away into a dizzying abyss of clouds and sharp, snow-dusted peaks. The wind screamed, carrying the scent of ice and distant pine. Dargo had shifted, his massive form blotting out the light, scales drinking in the weak sun. He lowered a foreleg like a ramp.
Climbing onto a dragon’s back was nothing like Dan imagined. It was all shifting plates, seeking purchase on ridges of scale, the sheer, living power of the creature thrumming beneath his hands and knees. He settled in a natural hollow at the base of Dargo’s neck, gripping a scale ridge as he’d been instructed.
Ready? The word formed directly in his mind, a silent rumble through the bond.
Dan squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open. He pushed his own answer down the connection, wrapping it in a feeling of fierce, trembling determination. Ready.
With a surge of colossal muscles, Dargo launched himself into the void.
The world dropped away. Dan’s stomach lurched into his throat, a scream stolen by the roaring wind. Then they were climbing, powerful wingbeats driving them up, up through the cloud layer. Damp mist enveloped them, then broke, and they were in blinding, silent sunlight above a rolling sea of white.
The fear evaporated. What was left was awe, so vast it hollowed him out and filled him with light.
Dargo leveled out, gliding on an endless river of air. The bond was wide open, not with memories, but with pure sensation. Dan felt the delicious strain of tendon and sinew, the subtle adjustment of each wingtip to catch the current, the cold, thin air filling immense lungs. He felt the joy of it, a clean, predatory, magnificent joy that had nothing to do with destruction and everything to do with absolute, boundless freedom.
He laughed, the sound whipped away into the sky. He couldn’t help it.
Below, the world was a painted miniature. He saw the dark smudge of the forest where he’d been hunted, the glittering thread of a river, the distant, worrying geometry of a walled town far to the south. It was a map of his past and a puzzle of his future, all laid bare.
Strategic enough for you? Dargo’s mental voice was a low, satisfied thrum.
It’s… Dan had no words. He sent back a blast of pure, unadulterated feeling—the vertigo, the scale, the breathtaking beauty.
Yes, Dargo replied, and the feeling that came back was not an echo of ancient grief, but a simple, present, and startlingly warm agreement. It is.
They banked, turning a wide, lazy circle. Dan, emboldened, leaned slightly, looking down the dizzying drop to the cloud-sea. For a fleeting second, he didn’t see a monster beneath him, or a guardian. He saw a partner in the silence above the world. The resonance between their magics hummed, not as a tether or a burden, but as a shared frequency, tuned to the same wild, boundless sky.
He knew the dreams would still come. The memories of loss and fire were part of the creature he clung to. But now, he had this memory too—the wind, the height, the shared, wordless understanding of flight. It was a counterweight. It was something new to build on, a foundation not of stone, but of air. And for the first time since his powers had manifested, the future didn’t feel like a closing tunnel. It felt, impossibly, like an open sky.
The descent was a controlled fall, a surrender to gravity that made Dan’s knuckles bleach white against the scale. They sliced back through the cloud layer, the world resolving from white void into stark, familiar granite and the dark mouth of the lair. Dargo landed with a final, ground-shaking thump that vibrated up through Dan’s teeth.
Dan slid off, his legs instantly buckling. He caught himself on the cavern wall, muscles trembling with a phantom memory of flight. His ears popped. “I think I left my stomach up there.”
“It will rejoin you. Or not. Less to feed.” Dargo shifted mid-stride, not breaking momentum as he walked toward the obsidian hearth in human form. His movements were effortless, but Dan, through the bond, sensed a deep, pleasant fatigue in the dragon, like the satisfying burn after a long run.
Dan pushed off the wall, his own exhaustion a buzzing, joyful thing. He stumbled to the fire-pit and collapsed onto a fur, staring at his hands as if they might be new. “The way you feel the air. It’s not like seeing. It’s like… you’re holding it.”
Dargo fed a log to the blue flames. “It is a substance. It has currents, weight, texture. You learn to read it, or you fall.” He sat opposite Dan, stretching his legs out. “You did not scream. Much.”
“I was busy not dying.” Dan hugged his knees, the cavern’s chill beginning to seep past the adrenaline. “Seryn. Did she fly with you? Like that?”
The silence stretched, filled only by the fire’s crackle. “Yes,” Dargo said, the word final. He picked up a discarded whetstone and a dagger, the rhythmic shhhick-shhhick of steel on stone filling the space where more words might have been. “It is a different thing, sharing that. It makes the sky feel… occupied. In a tolerable way.”
Dan understood he’d been given something monumental. The flight, the admission. It sat between them now, another kind of shared space. He changed the subject, grasping for the practical. “That town to the south. The walled one. Is that… a problem?”
The whetstone paused. “Lyra’s influence stretches that far. Possibly. It is a trade hub, pious and proud of its Gifted citizens. You would last an hour before someone sensed the old magic in you and tried to burn you as a heresy.” Shhhick-shhhick. “Or worse, tried to recruit you.”
“Recruit me?”
“Your kind of power, untethered from their gods, is a threat. But a contained threat is a tool. They would break you to a bridle first. Your fire would light their pyres. Your metal would build their cages.” Dargo tested the dagger’s edge with his thumb. “It is a common fate for those who are caught.”
The cozy aftermath of the flight curdled. Dan saw the map again, the town no longer just a geometry but a hungry, distant jaw. “So we avoid towns.”
“We avoid everything,” Dargo corrected, but it sounded less like a decree and more like a shared frustration. “For now. Your power needs to become more than parlor tricks and emotional grounding. It must become instinct. Faster than thought. Or avoidance becomes impossible.”
He placed the dagger down. “The hunters that found you were middling at best. Poorly coordinated. Next time, they will send better. Or Lyra will send something else. Her curiosity is a slow poison.”
Dan stared into the blue flames, feeling the truth of it. The open sky was an illusion if you couldn’t defend the space you occupied within it. “Teach me, then. Not just control. How to fight with it. Really fight.”
Dargo’s gold eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Finally. The tedious foundation is laid. Now we get to the interesting part.” He stood, retrieving two roughly forged short swords from a weapon rack. He tossed one to Dan, who fumbled but caught the hilt. It was heavier than it looked. “Metal manipulation. You can feel its history. Good. Now, feel its potential. A blade is a promise. Persuade it to keep a different one.”
The next hours were a brutal, clattering education. Dan learned to feel the stress points in the crude steel, to nudge the molecular structure just so. He turned a parry into a sudden, shocking brittleness, causing Dargo’s sword to snap with a loud ping on the third clash.
“Better,” Dargo grunted, tossing the broken hilt aside and grabbing another. “Now, do it when you’re not thinking about it. Do it when you’re bleeding.”
He stopped pulling his blows. A shallow cut opened on Dan’s forearm. The sting was bright, immediate. Panic flared, and with it, his magic lashed out—not at the blade, but at the buckle on Dargo’s weapon belt. He fused it solid, a lump of useless metal.
Dargo stumbled, thrown off balance by the sudden weight shift. He looked down, then back at Dan. A slow, approving smile touched his lips. “Instinctive. Misplaced, but instinctive. You targeted an inconvenience, not the threat. But the speed… that is the seed.”
They cleaned up after. Dan’s body ached in a hundred new places, a catalog of his failures and the one, bright success. The cut on his arm was shallow, cleaned and bound with a strip of clean linen. Dargo worked in silence, his fingers surprisingly deft.
“You’re not what I thought you’d be,” Dan said, the words leaving him without permission.
Dargo didn’t look up from his knot-tying. “I am exactly what you thought. A monster. I have burned cities for slights. I have hoarded treasures that drove kings mad with wanting. I am centuries of wrath and pride.” He finished the bandage and met Dan’s gaze. “But I am also my word. And my word is on you. That makes you mine to protect. It simplifies the calculus.”
It wasn’t warmth. It was something harder, more durable. A statement of fact. Dan found he preferred it. It felt real, like the stone floor and the ever-present scent of ozone and smoke.
SLEEP CAME EASY FOR BOTH THAT NIGH AS THEY LAID ON THEIR NEST OF FURS.
The exhaustion was a physical blanket. Dan didn’t dream of dragon memories. He dreamed of air currents and the subtle, metallic song of stressed steel, his mind practicing even in the dark. Across the hearth, Dargo slept deeply, the stern lines of his face smoothed by rest, one hand resting on the stone floor as if feeling the heartbeat of the mountain itself. The bond between them hummed, quiet and steady, a resonant frequency tuned not to the ghosts of the past, but to the quiet, collected potential of the night.