Gatekeepers Book 3: Redemption
Chapter 18: Draycos's Desire

Theravor closely examined Draycos as the young man continued to lay on his palm. It appeared that Draycos was simply asleep; his chest kept rising and falling at a slow, steady tempo. The Dragon King also noticed that Draycos’s hair had returned to its original black color. Draycos seemed to be unharmed, aside from the new scars that ran across his back. Three large, jagged scars ran from Draycos right shoulder blade to his left hip, with the middle scar thicker than the other two.

It’s too bad that the wounds have already healed. If they weren’t, I’m sure Damrabe would have been able to heal him without leaving any scars. Theravor wasn’t exactly pleased that Draycos had his back ripped out by Vinkex on his account; a twinge of guilt briefly flickered in his heart as he peered closely at the dark scars. Draycos had been putting up with what he and the Dragon Council forced onto him without so much as a peep of complaint and had been hurt time and time again, which now resulted in permanent scarring.

Vinkex finally began showing signs of awareness; his body started twitching violently, as if he was suffering from a seizure. Theravor returned his attention to his enemy and took up an aggressive stance, but an unexpected voice that suddenly filled the air made him relax his shoulders once more.

“Father! Is everything going well for you?” Theravor’s son, Drax, questioned as he emerged from a cloudbank by Theravor’s side.

“So far, yes,” Theravor answered casually, rotating in the air to face his son. There was a rather stern expression on Theravor’s face as he glared at Drax. “I happened to hear from Vinzgar that you disappeared from the battlefield. Where in the world did you disappear to?” Looking Drax up and down, Theravor noticed that his son wasn’t unharmed. Some of Drax’s scales had cracked, letting blood seep out past the scales. “What happened to you?”

Drax pointed over his shoulder at the cloudbank he emerged from. A shadow shifted inside the clouds as the outline of a dragon became recognizable. Theravor’s eyes widened in surprise as Perla pulled herself away from the clouds and hovered by Drax’s side. She was also a little worse for wear; dirt and soot covered Perla from head to toe talon. The only clean part on her was around her eyes when she pulled her orange goggles away and placed them atop her head.

“I had a gut feeling that something might happen at the Vizard family residences, so I dropped everything I was doing and rushed over there,” Drax explained. “I barely made it in time before Vinkex fired off that attack a little while ago.”

“He was pretty amazing,” Perla added as she attempted to dust herself off. “He managed to minimize the damage by firing his own attack right into Vinkex’s, mostly neutralizing it. It still had enough power to destroy Pa’s cannon and make a mess of his workshop, but everything else is fine, and no one was hurt.”

Theravor sighed and shook his head. “Fine, then. But if you’re going to abandon your battle post in the middle of a fight, Drax, make sure to let someone know what’s going on next time. You caused quite a bit of stress for some of us.”

Drax scratched the back of his head sheepishly while Perla wrapped her arms around him in an embrace. “Sorry, father.”

“I hope the three of you haven’t forgotten about me.”

Theravor turned around and saw that Vinkex had finally regained his senses. Still hunched over in pain from the massive blade protruding from his sternum, Vinkex glared at Theravor as he panted heavily. Theravor noticed that the sclera in both of Vinkex’s eyes had returned to white.

“How is he even able to talk in that condition…?” Drax murmured as he pushed Perla behind his back.

“Perla, take this,” Theravor growled, turning around for a moment to hand something to a surprised Perla before facing Vinkex once more.

“Huh?” Perla looked down at her hand to see what Theravor just passed to her. “H-hold on! Isn’t this-?!”

“So, you managed to get Draycos out, father?” Drax commented as he looked over his shoulder at the limp body in Perla’s hands.”

Theravor nodded as he took a stance. “Now all that’s left to do is to win this pointless battle,” he said as his son hovered by his side. The two of them faced their foe, who now gripped the blade stuck in his body with both hands.

With a low growl, the metal cracked in Vinkex’s hands, before shattering into small fragments of light that floated down to the ground below like stardust. Vinkex sighed deeply as he began to run a talon along his wound, which closed up as his talon ran across the open flesh. When he finished treating his injury, he cracked his neck a few times before shooting a glare past Theravor and Drax directed at Perla, or rather, what was in Perla’s hands.

“That damned brat,” Vinkex hissed, rubbing his sternum with the palm of one hand. “He wasn’t able to use his own magic while I was assimilating him, but when the process had progressed far enough, he was able to tap into my own magic reserves and tamper with the spell I tried to cast. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“That just proves how much you continually underestimate your opponents, especially Draycos,” Theravor growled. “If you thought the boy would just let you assimilate him and not fight back, you couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“If there’s one thing the members of the Dragon Council have learned about Draycos, it’s to never underestimate him,” Drax added. “When he says he’s going to do something, he will do it.”

Vinkex continued to rub his sternum as he rolled his right shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. Keep saying that I underestimated my opponents in this battle, if it makes you feel better. I’ll admit, I’ve made more than one mistake in my rush to reach my goal, and I’ve paid quite a heavy price for them all now, especially since I’ve lost my stopgap for keeping the drawbacks of the sealing curses at bay.” Vinkex finally finished stretching and glared intensely at Theravor and Drax. “This just means that I can’t afford to make any more mistakes. Time to take things seriously now, I guess.” He began flexing his talons as an eager light filled his eyes. “I’ll shred the three of you to ribbons and take Draycos back before the drawbacks kick in.”

“What’s this about?”

The sentence was so abrupt and unexpected that the three dragons about to engage in combat flinched and looked around in surprise.

“What the hell…?” Drax muttered, glancing around. “What was that just now?”

“Here,” a small voice said behind Drax and Theravor. The two turned around and saw Perla was staring at Draycos, who hadn’t moved at all.

“It was Draycos who said that just now,” Perla said, peering at Draycos. “I think he was talking in his sleep.”

“Are you kidding me?” Drax snorted, shaking in head in disbelief. “We are at the climax of the battle right now, and he goes and ruins the mood just like that….”

Theravor slapped Drax on the shoulder. “That’s what you’re concerned about?” he growled. “I thought I taught you better than to pay attention to such unnecessary things.”

At that moment, a sudden flash of pain hit Theravor with enough force that it took the Dragon King’s breath away. Light-headed, he placed a hand on his head as his vision darkened and blurred. It felt like someone was driving a spike of ice directly into his brain. He could see Vinkex, Drax, and Perla share similar reactions.

It seems that someone is attempting to siege a mental assault on everyone. But why is Vinkex also suffering from it? Those were Theravor’s last thoughts before his vision darkened completely.

After a few seconds, his vision grew clear once more, but an unfamiliar scene greeted his eyes. He sat in a chair at a table set up on the side of a bustling city street. Buildings lined the side of the street, and every now and then, some sort of moving contraption the likes of which Theravor had never seen before moved up and down the street. Humans milled around him, wearing clothing he was unfamiliar with.

“Draycos?” a surprisingly close voice questioned. “Are you okay?”

Surprised, Theravor turned his head and saw a young human woman sitting across the table from him. The early afternoon sunlight filtering through the tree foliage above made the girl’s waist-length black hair shine like gloss. With a start, Theravor recognized it was the girl he had seen in Draycos’s memories when he and the Dragon Council viewed them over two months ago. He opened his mouth to ask the girl what was going on, but an entirely different sentence came from his mouth.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied with a sigh, speaking with the same voice as Draycos. Startled once more, Theravor realized he had no control over his actions, as if he was trapped inside another body.

Theravor, or rather, Draycos, shook a piece of paper he held in one hand at the girl. “Anyways, back to this. Why did you suddenly give me a bucket list to fill out, Iris?”

Iris smiled slightly. “Well, I was thinking about my mother again this morning,” she started. Draycos stopped shaking the paper and looked at Iris seriously. “She died so suddenly, she didn’t have a chance to do anything that she could have wanted to do before passing on. So, I thought about writing a bucket list for myself, in case I’m ever told I’m going to die sometime.”

Draycos fiddled with the corner of the paper as he thought about how to respond. “That’s irrational,” he said at length. “Most people aren’t told things like that, unless they’ve developed cancer or something. You’re perfectly healthy; what’s the point in doing this?”

Slap.

“Ow!” Draycos yelped, flinching backwards after Iris slapped him across the face. He stared at Iris with a surprised expression. “What was that for?!”

Iris, on the other hand, looked ready to blow a fuse. There was a big smile on her face, but Draycos could tell that she was ready to hit him again at the slightest provocation. “Draycos, it doesn’t matter that it’s irrational,” she said in a sickly sweet voice. “It’s the thought that counts. So go ahead and write your bucket list.”

“Okay, but what am I supposed to write?”

“Huh?” Now it was Iris’s turn to look surprised. She tilted her head to the side in confusion. “You do know what a bucket list is, right?”

“Of course I do!” Draycos snapped.

“Then just write down what you want to do before you die.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t really have anything that I want to do.”

Iris just stared at Draycos with a blank expression for a few moments before placing her head in her hands and sighing. “You’re impossible,” she groaned before placing her head on the table. “I know you grew up differently than most people, but don’t you ever think for yourself?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’re weird,” Iris responded.

Draycos chuckled softly to himself. “Thanks for stating the obvious, Iris,” he remarked as he leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the sky. The two were quiet for a few moments before Draycos spoke up again. “You know, come to think of it, there is one thing I’d like to do, if I’m ever given the chance.”

Iris perked up and cocked her head to the side as she looked at Draycos with narrowed eyes and a slightly annoyed expression. “Oh, really? What is it?”

Draycos glanced down and looked directly into Iris’s eyes. “I’d like to see the northern lights.”

“The aurora borealis?” Iris questioned, surprised. She sat up and took her smartphone out of her purse. She turned it on and pulled a picture of the northern lights up on the screen before showing it to Draycos. “This is what you’d want to see before you die? Really?”

“Yeah,” Draycos answered, nodding his head.

“If you just flew up to Alaska at some point during the winter, you could see them whenever--”

“I don’t walk around with a pot of gold in my pocket all day, unlike some families I could mention,” Draycos interrupted, giving Iris an intense stare. Iris stopped speaking with her mouth frozen open before turning a deep shade of red and glancing away. Draycos sighed. “I don’t have the money to pay for an expense like that; the government stopped sending me support after I graduated from high school. That’s why it took me three years after graduating to start college, when I won that scholarship lottery. It’s taking most of what I earn from my part-time job in the city to pay for my food and college supplies.”

“Sorry,” Iris muttered in a soft voice, not looking Draycos in the eye.

Draycos laughed. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, trust me.” He looked back up at the sky again. “It’s just, well, I guess that seeing the northern lights is probably the closest thing to a dream I have.”

“Well, why don’t we go see them, then?” Iris suggested.

“Huh?” Draycos looked at Iris again with a somewhat irritated expression. “Weren’t you listening to me? I just said that I--”

“It doesn’t have to be your money that pays for the trip,” Iris interjected. “Why don’t I take you up to Alaska this Christmas?”

Draycos was stunned speechless by what Iris just offered to do. “I-I don’t think that would sit right with me, having you pay for something I want to do and all...” he finally managed to spit out after a moment.

“Don’t worry about it; I’ll suggest it to my dad to go there on Christmas vacation.”

“That’s the other problem; how are you gonna convince your overprotective dad to let me, a guy with a mug like mine, to go on a family vacation with the two of you?”

“...That will take some work,” Iris hesitantly admitted.

“Anyways, let’s forget about this now,” Draycos stated, crumpling up the piece of paper he still held into a ball. “We still need to get some practice in for our performance next week.”

“I didn’t tell you to crumple up the paper!” Iris snapped.

“Oops, sorry,” Draycos apologized, grinning sheepishly. “Guess I got a little carried away there…”

The two looked at one another for a few moments before they started laughing out loud, their laughs ringing up and down the street.