Dragon's Challenge - D. R. Rosier Page 0,34
and unpredictable phoenix. He could be himself in private with the princess, she loved when he was himself, but out among the castle he had to curb his dragonish instincts and act with his human ones as much as possible.
“I may have been wrong.”
Cinder raised an eyebrow, “About what?”
“I thought this whole idea was a waste of time, my kind and a phoenix could never mix. And I still believe that’s true, if I was in my true form. But in this human form I also feel human instincts and emotions which temper my reaction to you. A need to protect the helpless, even if they aren’t mine, for comparison. You’re far from helpless of course, but your emotional need calls to my empathy, even if you’re teasing is annoying as hell.”
Shar said lightly, “Hell is terrifying, not annoying,” and then she smiled at him coquettishly.
He laughed.
“I can also relate, partially, to your difficulty, which adds sympathy.”
Cinder smirked, and accused, “You like me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he growled.
She giggled, and then eyed him up and down in a way that made him uncomfortable, not that he’d every show that.
She stiffened and looked up, drawing them all to look up to.
She said, “Damnit. I thought I’d lost them.”
She hopped up on the saddle, stood, and leapt into the air. Fire flared around her body, and when it faded, he watched in awe as a bird of prey with wings of pure fire took off into the sky. Her wingspan was almost fifty feet from wingtip to wingtip, her body was physical and in a shape close to an eagle, but it was at least five feet in size from clawed feet to crest. On the ground, she’d have stood as tall as some humans.
The feathers by her neck were a bright ochre yellow orange, that deepened in the colors of fire as they moved back on her body until they were a fiery blue color with white tips. Her wings of fire were similar as well, the pure elemental fire ranging in temperature, the hottest part in the back of her wings was an incandescent bluish white.
She was majestic, beautiful, and awe inspiring, and he clenched his jaws in determination to never let her know just how awed he was in that moment.
That’s about when the them she’d mentioned came into view of his human eyes, and he felt little hands on his neck as his body vibrated violently. Maybe Cinder’s last hunt hadn’t been successful, or maybe the lesser dragons had organized a return hunt, but for whatever reason there were three black dragons in the sky.
He was sure she could take one, but three?
He stopped shaking as he cast the earth cantrip and then channeled and transmuted his magic using it as a template. He knew he wasn’t really changing magic at all now, with the more advanced knowledge and teaching from Shar he knew magic was all the same. All he really did was change the frequency of it, to a frequency that equated to what he thought of as earth magic, and what could change the earth.
It was all the same in the end, but he still tended to think of it as transmuting the magic from one kind to another, as he’d been taught since he was a hatchling. Point was, he surrounded himself with an earth magic shield that could ground lightning. Lightning was the breath weapon of a black dragon.
He dismounted with the others, and he felt Tansya’s nature magic reach out and soothe the horses and send them under the shelter of some nearby trees. One less thing to worry about. He was enraged at the sight of his instinctual enemy, but his body no longer trembled, all he wanted to do was kill them. It was a far cry from his desperation to stay in human form last time, or to be marked as a failure for not keeping his human form during his walkabout. A strict rule, that once broken would mean his life.
Nysa said, “You alright, master?”
He growled and bared his teethe at the sky, “Yes. I think maybe because of the magic, I hadn’t reached mastery level with my elements last time we faced one. I don’t need to change to tear them apart. There’s also the matter of the scales and their scent I’ve been wearing constantly for over two months. As I’d hoped, it’s made my instinct to shift far more controllable.”
Cinder flew straight up at