Breath (Scales 'n' Spells 2)

Red meant fire dragon. Baldewin had mentioned that the Burkhard Clan was a Fire Dragon Clan, but the information hadn’t really sunk into his brain until this second.

He was being carried off by a member of the Fire Dragon Clan.

Holy shit, he was flying!

Tori tore his eyes away from the dragon to find they’d climbed even higher, as the dragon flew them farther away from the heart of the city. He was taking him out of Helsinki, rather than just away from those mages. Where the hell was this dragon taking him? He wasn’t some yummy dragon snack or a shiny trinket to be tucked away in a hoard!

Not that it mattered where the dragon might be taking him. The only problem for Tori was that they were flying. He didn’t fly. Not by plane. Not by hot-air balloon. And definitely not by freaking dragon.

He didn’t like heights. Didn’t like anything that took his feet off the ground.

Tori made a sound akin to a dying whale being anally violated with a coconut tree lit on fire.

“Down! Down! Down! Need to go down!” Tori shouted at the top of his lungs. He kicked his legs and lifted his knees. He was dangling from the dragon’s hands. What if the damn thing dropped him? Don’t move. Don’t kick. Don’t even wiggle. If he shook loose and the dragon dropped him…

Tori chanced a glance down at the ground that was rushing by them. Building tops. They were high enough for him to look down on the tops of office buildings. Nonononono. This would not do.

“Put me down!” he shouted again, trying to raise his voice above the cold wind rushing past his face. Maybe the dragon couldn’t hear him. This had to be the same dragon that Baldewin was traveling with. Warin. Yes, his name was Warin. He wouldn’t dare fly Tori all the way back to his clan in Germany. Not like this.

The dragon bent his neck and cocked his head so he could look at Tori as he continued to fly. One large, blue eye blinked at him, and for a moment, Tori had to wonder if he looked like a particularly tasty morsel dangling from his claws. Fantastic. He was now a road trip snack. Fine. It was better than flying.

“We’re going where it is safe. Baldewin will meet us,” the dragon said in a deep voice that reverberated in his massive chest like rolling thunder.

“Don’t care. Put me down.”

“Not yet.”

“No! You don’t understand. I don’t like heights. Put me down. Put me down. Put me down.”

The dragon cocked his head again, this time the opposite direction, before turning his attention back to the sky. Clearly, he’d decided Tori was talking nonsense and would simply be ignored.

“Put me down! Put me down! Put me down!” The words had become a chant that Tori repeated until he grew hoarse. He kept his eyes trained up at the sky and the dragon’s stubborn head. It was easier that way to imagine he was only inches off the ground rather than many hundreds of meters.

They didn’t travel long, though Tori was pretty sure it was just a hair shy of forever, before the dragon shifted the flap of his wings and started to descend. Tori clenched his eyes shut, not wanting to watch the process. And then the dragon released his arms. He sucked in a breath to scream, but before a sound could leave his lips, his feet landed on the ground. He’d dropped less than half a meter.

His knees buckled, and Tori didn’t even try to catch himself as he crumpled onto soft, cool, green grass. He ran his trembling fingers through the blades, letting his fingernails dig into the dark soil. Ground. He was on the ground. He touched his forehead to the lovely earth and swore to never ever leave it again. Never, never, never, never was he flying again. The only thing that could convince him to leave solid land again was a lobotomy.

Stupid dragons.

Yes, maybe they saved him from the mages who were trying to kidnap him for whatever scary reason.

And yes, maybe they helped him escape a whole lot of questions from authorities.

But all of that was never an excuse to scoop a poor person up and fly them across the city in the air. People were not meant to fly. If they were, they would have been born dragons.

Soon he would have questions for the dragons, but right now he just wanted to hold the earth and whisper sweet promises of never leaving it again.

“You could have fucking told me that the Jaeggi are the ones kidnapping mages!” Tori snapped as he put a key into the lock on his motel door.

Baldewin did feel a little contrite about that, but in his defense, how was he to know that Tori would stumble across them soon? “I couldn’t tell you in that setting. You were so sure the Jaeggi were allies. How would it have sounded if I pointed a finger at them, claiming them as the enemy?”