Save The Children

Stan and Mira left Wissler to travel south and find the children. Mira was confident that they were still safe, and no one had seen nor heard anything from the disgruntled villagers of Dyssa in Wissler, so Stan assumed that they would not encounter an angry mob.

They broke for the evening on the outskirts of the next town south of Dyssa, Hildag. Hilldag was built into a hill (duh) and the people were known to be aloof and somewhat unfriendly to strangers. That, along with Mira's desire to become Tulith, led them to choose a campsite far enough away from the town so as to not attract any unwanted attention.

"Do you want to get dinner started?" Stan asked Mira as she stared off into empty space. He wondered if that was what happened when she switched between Tulith and Mira, but he wasn't sure. The voice that came out a second later was Tulith, not Mira.

"It is challenging… for me to do these things… when out. Would you mind?"

"Not at all." Stan said cheerfully, and began wrangling the dinner pot and food stocks out of the bag. He had gathered some parsley along the way, which he was planning to add to the stew to make it slightly more flavorful. They had been in such a rush on the way out that he hadn't thought to get the fresh herbs.

"I must go scout for the Draag." She said suddenly. "I will leave this body. Keep it warm."

"Wait, what?" Stan asked. A woosh of air answered him, and Mira fell limply to the ground.

"What the fuck." He muttered, dropping everything that he had been holding to rush to Mira's side. She had turned an ashen gray, and he saw that she was breathing very shallowly, barely at all.

Keep it warm. Her voice insisted in his head. He couldn't tell if it was just an echo of his racing thoughts, or if whatever creature she had become was speaking to him. Or, alternatively -- if he, or she, were finally losing their minds.

With nothing else left to do, and Mira not in immediate danger, Stan dug the night rolls out of the pack and rolled one out to act as a shield to the cold, damp earth. He bent over and gently lifted Mira into his arms. She weighed next to nothing, seemed somehow lighter without Tulith inside. He set her down gently on the first roll, and then used a blanket and the second roll to cover her from feet to neck. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. He hoped that whatever Tulith was pulling right now, she would be back soon.

Is Tulith even gendered? Is Kreev? His idle thoughts meandered through his head as he went back to boiling his dinner. Surely body snatchers wouldn't only inhabit the bodies of those who shared their sex. Maybe dragons -- and whatever the fuck Kreev was -- didn't have genders at all, and just reproduced by magic? These were things that Stan wondered, but he knew that short of asking Tulith upon her return, he wouldn't be able to find the answer, say, in a book. Probably not even a shaman book, if it was as wrong about dragons as it had seemed to be.

As the beans simmered, Stan sat next to the lifeless body of his wife with his father's little book of secrets. The fire glowed dimly, but it was enough to read by. He flipped to the section on monsters, wondering idly if it held clues to either Kreev's identity or the -- what had Tulith called whatever she was searching for? The Drawg?

The monsters that we make in our heads are scarier than the ones that are in existence, but occasionally, you will stumble across a real monster in your shamanic work. Here is a list of the most common monsters and what to do about them.

Cyclops -- a giant, humanoid creature distinguished by one eye alone in its head. Cyclops are generally peaceful and do not pose harm to your civilization. If one does attack, go for the eye, then kill it with fire.

Dragon -- There exists much literature about dragons, but very little fact. They are definitely reptiles, but their core is magic. Not all dragons are carnivorous, but all dragons are deadly. Many stories have told of dragons feasting solely upon virgins, breathing fire, being invisible, hoarding treasure, and even masquerading as other creatures and humans. Dragons, when spoken to, are notoriously bad at giving straight, honest answers. If a dragon attacks, cut off its wings, then kill it with fire.

Fairy -- Fairies are occasionally believed to help around the house, but this is simply untrue. Fairies lure children into woods to feast upon their souls. To capture a fairy, you must draw a ring of salt around it while it is preoccupied with something else. After you've captured a fairy, kill it with fire.

Stan skimmed through the rest of the section, but could find no mention of a "Drawg" --- or any other spellings that he could think of. He wondered idly, with the book upon his lap, if what she had said was the name of the creature, not the… species. If that was true, then it was unlikely that his father would have any record of the beast, that, presumably, had killed him.

Suddenly, a gust of wind rattled the tree tops around Stan and seemed to pierce his very soul. The odd, tingling sensation was gone as soon as he felt it, and Mira startled awake and struggled, panicked, to get out from underneath the blankets that he had laid upon her.

"Hang on, hang on." He muttered, dropping the book and fiddling with the blankets to free her. He had somehow hooked the corner underneath her body, and her flailing like a fish out of water wasn't really helping matters. "Hold still!" He barked at her and remarkably, she listened.

"Did you find the children?" He asked her once she was free. She sat up, worry crossing her face.

"I didn't sense them at all, but that's not who I was looking for."

"Who, exactly, were you looking for?" Stan asked. He stood up and moved to the fire, taking the pot of dinner off the fire. It was time to eat.

"Draag." She said. "The thing that killed your father."

"How do you know?" Stan asked, trying not to relay the nervousness he felt at talking about his father's killer. He had hoped Tulith would eventually tell him about whatever it was that happened. She had been annoyingly tight lipped since she had revealed herself to him.

"His stench reeks like a thousand beasts rotting in a sun filled open pit. He pierces the night sky with his screams, and he deadens everything around him. Where Draag goes, trees wilt, animals die, and humans suffer."

Stan was silent for a moment. The trees hadn't looked wilted in the clearing where his father lay. Nor had the animals been particularly silent.

"But… nothing like that seemed to be present where my father's body was…" Stan said gently, trying not to anger her.

"Things… are not always what they seem." She said. She leaned forward to touch his forehead. The world went black.

Stan was falling, but he couldn't move or scream. The  night sky raced beside him, through him, as he fell. Trees wooshed by his ears and he landed, a tangled mess, in the dirt next to an eerily blue campfire. He looked up into the eyes of a very large, very black dragon. Her sleek scales shone with an inner light, and she was long and lean, with luminescent leathery wings adorning her back. Her voice thundered in his head.

"This is the ether realm, where I was born and you will someday die to be a part of." She announced. Her voice was more fluid in whatever dream this was.

"Am I…"

"You're not dead. You're fine. Shut up." She said, sounding more like the Mira he knew and loved than the dragon towering over him. "I will show you now. What I see with the Draag."

The dragon reached out a large claw and clutched Stan's immobilized spirit body, and Stan felt -- and saw -- himself raise back up through the trees that he had just fallen through. Although he could feel the leaves, they did not seem to feel him, and did not move out of his way as they went. It was like a dream world with a little more substance to it.

The sky was an ashen gray with a dull red orb hung from high noon. Stan wondered if it was the moon, or just some weird piece of the experience.

"Here is where it starts." Her voice was in his head, his heart. She didn't point with her massive other claw, but Stan could easily see what she meant. The trees they had come from were dark but had a distinctive shape and lifelike energy to them. The trees below them were a black mush, like they had been wax statues melted in the heat of the day.

And then the stench hit him. It was, indeed, the smell of a thousand dead sheep rotting in the open sunlight, or a whole fishery gone sour. Had his ethereal body known how to retch, it would've done so all over the death and destruction below him. But he was paralyzed, with only his senses to keep him company.

"How far does it stretch?" He asked in mind speak, and she answered him as they flew deeper into the rotting hell below them.

"It's like a belt, it goes from between Dyssa and Wissler both east and west, and starts to wrap south. That's as far as I've tracked it. The thing about Draag is that he's actually a rather small beast, and it is only when he eats that this happens. So although his effects are easy to see here, it is more challenging to find him."

"How can I help?"

"We stick to the plan." She said. She banked a curve and began flying back, presumably towards where they had come from. "And after we return Rufus and Freya -- wherever they are -- to Dyssa, and put your villagers in their places, we will find the Draag before he finds us."

"Is he looking for us?"

"Dragons and shamans are delicacies to something like him." There was an edge of fear in her spirit voice. As odd as that sounded. Stan felt the uneasiness grow as the world went black again.

Stan blinked and the vision was gone like it had never been there. Tulith sat back with a smug expression on her face. Stan scowled at her.

"Could you … warn me, or something, when you're going to do some crazy shit like that?"

"Sorry." She didn't sound sorry at all. "I felt like showing was better than telling."

"Uh huh." Stan grumbled and scooped some dinner out of the pot and shoveled it into his mouth.

"So your father -- you found him in the middle of that death and destruction." She said as Stan chewed. "The only thing I don't know how to explain is what you said you saw -- the big fat black thing with wings -- because that is not what the Draag looks like."

"What is the Draag supposed to look like?" Stan asked between mouthfuls, and Mira's face darkened.

"Draag usually take the shape of whatever they're killing. So it should've appeared as a shaman, or at least, humanoid, if it was feeding on your father's corpse."

"What if I didn't see that? What if I saw something else?" Stan asked. Mira shrugged.

"It could be possible, but I've never really seen other magical creatures feeding on Draag leftovers before."

"Okay, wait." Stan said, looking at her. She stopped mid-chew of her food and he gestured that she should continue. "No, keep eating. Just I have to ask something. Draag. Is it… one thing? Is it a name? Or is it a type of creature? Like, you are A dragon, but your name is not dragon."

"Draag is Draag." She said, shrugging. "It is different."

Stan realized then that dragons could be infuriatingly complex, crooked, and annoying. He sighed, perhaps a tad too dramatically.

"How. How is Draag different?" He insisted. He took another spoonful of food.

"Draag comes when… world is out of balance." She settled on the words.  "Draag comes when magic is dying. Draag is predator but also… scavenger. Draag doesn't eat… meat. Draag eat souls."

The words had a chilling effect on Stan. Draag eat souls. Echoed in his mind.

"Does that mean that my father's soul is gone?" He squeaked out, and Mira shrugged.

"No way to tell … certain. But Draag feast on the unrighteous, and your father had… wronged many."

Stan was no longer hungry. The thought of his father resting with his ancestors was one thing. But true death? That was only spoken of in whispers.

"Sorry." Mira's hollow apology bounced from his ears. "I try… avoid saying."

"It's not your fault." Stan said, but his heart ached for the man that had never seemed to love him as much as he could.

Stan and Tulith passed the evening in silence after that. Stan sat with the book for a while, then gave up and stared at the fire. Tulith seemed to not want to do any sort of dragon thing, so she too, sat there in silence, with some sewing on her lap.

It was almost a normal night, were it not for them being in the forest, exiled from town, with some semblance of impending doom bearing down upon them. It made sense, then, when Stan tried his best to pick up the conversation as they were settling into their sleeping sacks.

"So what is Kreev, anyway?" He asked as he crawled into the sack beside her. She laughed at him.

"It's been bothering you all day, hasn't it?" Sometime in the intervening silence, Tulith had slipped back into Mira's skin more fully. Her totally 100% not dragon voice warmed his little aching heart.

"Yes." He admitted. He snuggled into her warmth, the little spoon to her big. The smoldering fire was barely giving off light now, but he could feel her breathing in time with his. Even if she was a dragon in human skin, he liked her. The silence stretched out for far too long, and Stan wondered if she would share with him her secrets.

"The closest phrase that humans have for him is a unicorn." She broke the silence with a deadly serious voice. "But it's not… humans have it wrong." He could tell that she was struggling. He turned a little to look at her with disbelief.

"You're screwing with me." He announced. "I thought dragons weren't funny."

"Oh, come now. I have made you laugh many times in these past years." She elbowed him in the back. "And I'm not screwing with you. Kreev is a unicorn. But what has made it into children's fairy tales is not the truth. And the truth is probably not in that little book you guard so seriously, either."

"So he's not a one-horned horse that only spends time with virgins?" He asked and she laughed. She propped herself up on an elbow.

"Oh, he is." He could see her face in the dying fire light. "But he's also more than that. Unicorns aren't exactly horses. More, demons in horse bodies."

"That can also inhabit human bodies?"

"Yes. But not like… he's not a demon in a horse body. It's just it looks like a horse in its true form, but it likes to eat virgins, not spend time with them. That's the part that the fanciful tales leave out."

"How exactly does a creature make a living on virgin flesh?"

"Dangerously." She admitted. "They burn bridges wherever they go. No one wants to lose a child."

"So that was the, teeth?" He asked after a moment. She made a grunt of agreement.

"They're not very pretty creatures." She said. "I'd much rather be a dragon."

He laughed at that. "Aren't you a little bit biased?"

"Well, of course." She snuggled into the warmth of his body, wrapping her arm around his chest and giving him a good, solid squeeze. "But I do believe you would choose dragon over unicorn as well."

Stan felt a mixture of trepidation and arousal. He knew she was being lighthearted, but her true form and power hung over him like a cloud.

"I do believe I would." He said. His heart was racing. She moved closer to him, leaning more of her weight over top of him. "Though I'm not sure I have much choice in the matter."

"You don't." Her voice was decisive. She leaned down to kiss him.

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