Draven Ashborne's Arc

Chapter 3 of 17

Draven followed the dragon's trail to a wide cave mouth ringed with rough stone and dead vines. The passage inside pulled his eye toward the deep woods beyond. Green vapor curled from the dark, thick and sour. He chewed a frostbloom leaf. Cold ran down his throat, but the heat under his skin barely dimmed. He waited. It did not sink. The curse pushed back harder here than the herb could hold. He chewed a second leaf. Then a third. His hands still shook. Scales pricked along his forearm. He counted the leaves left in his cloth. Six. He had no idea how many the cave would take before the change broke through anyway. The vapor coiled closer, and his blood answered it like a call. A cold wind cut across the cave mouth. Frost spread over the stone at his feet. Seraphina stepped out of the trees, white hair loose, scales bare on her neck. She had pulled him human once with her hand on his throat. Now she looked past him, at the green fog, and her jaw went tight. "How many did you take?" she asked. "Three. It's not enough." "It won't be." She knelt and touched the crawling vapor. Ice crusted where her fingers met it, then cracked and hissed away. "This is the curse itself. Bleeding out of the ground. The closer the dragon, the more it leaks. Frostbloom can't out-chill this." Draven's knees buckled. Smoke leaked from his mouth. Scales climbed to his elbow. "Then I turn," he said. "Here. Now." "Not here." She pressed her palm to his neck. Cold flooded him. The scales stopped, halfway out, locked between skin and change. He hung there, half man, half dragon, and it hurt worse than either. "I can't hold you and fight the fog both," she said. "You have to choose. The herb keeps you human and it's failing. Wear the collar and you feel nothing, but you can't fight. Or drop the herb and let the change come." He stared into the green dark. The dragon was in there. Every leaf he ate made him weaker for the meeting. He thought of the collar in his pack, cold and quiet. He thought of what he had come to kill. He spat the frostbloom onto the stone. "No more," he said. "I stop fighting it." Seraphina's hand tightened. "You'll lose yourself." "Then teach me what you did. You never lost yours." He gripped her wrist. "Cool me while I turn. Not to stop it. To ride it." She went still. Then she nodded once. "It might kill you." "The herb kills me slower." She set both hands on him and drew the heat down. The scales came. This time Draven did not fight the burn. He breathed through it, cold and fire at once, and stayed awake inside it. The change took him. He did not fall.