Page 12 of Of Empires and Dust

Ella nodded. “The first time, I shifted with an owl. Its ribs were crushed and I…”

“You died. That’s a rough first time, but you were lucky.”

“I didn’t feel lucky.”

“This isn’t a game,” Tamzin said, gesturing at the world around her. “If you shift with a creature’s soul and that creature dies in the mortal plane, it can harrow you, it can scar you, butit won’t kill you. But if your soul dies in here, your physical body will waste and wither like a hollow shell left to rot, your soul cut adrift, unable to sense or feel or touch. Time unending. There is no worse fate. Many of our kind have met their end this way. Without a guide, without someone to teach you, Níthianelle is the most dangerous place in existence.”

Tamzin looked towards the sky, then dropped to the ground, folding her legs beneath her in a single smooth motion. She gestured for Ella to sit across from her. This time, Ella obliged.

“What do you know of what you are?”

Ella looked at the dirt, shaking her head absently. “Nothing. Not truly. Until recently, all I’d heard of druids were stories. I still don’t know if that’s what I am, but?—”

“It is.” Tamzin leaned across and rested her hand on Ella’s knee. “You are what our kind call a Blooddancer. A druid of the warrior blood. In millennia past, we were the guardians of the gods – Fenryr, Kaygan, Dvalin, Bjorna, Vethnir… There were more once upon a time, so many more. And as our gods died, so did we.” She squeezed Ella’s knee. “Youarea druid. Simply proved by the fact that you are here. But even if that were not so, I can feel it in your soul.”

She leaned back, once more staring up towards the canopy with a broad smile on her face. “There is so much to teach you. So much about our people, our history, our gods. It’s been many years since we’ve found new blood.” She opened her palms. “Where to start?”

“You can start with what happened to me and who else is looking for me.”

Tamzin nodded. She pressed her two hands together, leaning forward and resting her chin on her index fingers. After a moment of silence, she lowered her hands. “Your mind was fragmented. Split and shattered. It is something that happens to young Aldruids who run before they can walk or older oneswhose arrogance outweighs their ability. You pushed yourself too hard, and now… now the tether between your body in the mortal plane and your soul in Níthianelle has been torn.”

That familiar drowning feeling washed over Ella, her lungs struggling to draw breath, her heartbeat faltering. “What does that even mean?”

“What’s the last thing you remember before this place.”

“The battle…”

“What battle? Where?”

Ella hesitated for a moment. “In the Darkwood. The Lorians were attacking the city.” Ella’s hands shook, and her voice trembled. “Calen needed me. He was going to die… I had to do something…”

Tamzin leaned forwards once more, clutching Ella’s hands between hers and looking into her eyes. “Ella, I need you to breathe slow. Look at me. Look into my eyes.” She slowed her voice, emphasising each word. “What did you do?”

“Calen needed me…” Ella repeated, staring into the whirling blue of Tamzin’s eyes, black slits staring back. “The dragons… I could feel them. I could feel the hollowness in their hearts. They were missing pieces. They wanted to fight. Every piece of them wanted to, but they couldn’t. It was like they were frozen. Afraid, alone, filled with rage…”

“You shifted with a dragon?”

The shock in Tamzin’s voice set a panic in Ella. “Five.”

“That’s not possible…” Tamzin let go of Ella’s hands and leaned back, staring at Ella as though she were Efialtír himself. “Even just one would have ripped your mind to pieces.”

In that moment, Ella realised how truly foolish she had been. She did not understand anything about Níthianelle, about her abilities, about who she was. She had reached into those dragons’ minds without understandinganything.

“Not even in the legends passed down have I heard of an Aldruid shifting with a dragon. There are tales of people who tried and of how the dragon’s spirit tore them apart. It’s no wonder you were fragmented…” She leaned forwards, eyes wide, curiosity in her voice. “How… how did it feel?”

“Terrifying.” Ella thought back to that moment. “They were broken somehow, damaged. They held so much sadness in their hearts it almost broke me too. But when they let me in, when our souls were joined, it was as though together we were almost whole. Not quite, but almost.”

“Incredible.” Tamzin stared at Ella, shaking her head, her shoulders slumping.

Ella thought back, remembering how it had felt when her mind had connected with those of the dragons. How she had seen through all their eyes at once, how she had felt the power in their muscles, the beating of their wings.

Memories flooded back. Dragons crashing against dragons. She remembered burying her talons into a dragon with shimmering silver scales, smashing its skull into the side of a cliff, ripping it to pieces, the smell of ash and char filling her nostrils, the iron tang of blood on her tongue. Then she remembered dying, again and again and again.

“I felt them die,” she whispered, just loud enough for Tamzin to hear. “Each one was like a bone snapping, like a shard of me splintering.”

Tamzin nodded slowly. “That’s how it happened. When a Blooddancer shifts and experiences too much trauma before they’re capable of handling it, their mind fragments and cracks. When that happens, their soul is sheared free from their body, connected by only the loosest of threads. You didn’t just run before you could walk, you flew.”

“How do I… How do I fix it?”

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