Page 56 of Unbound

There's a long pause. I sense it struggling somehow, as if each word comes with a cost."You... weakened it in the lake. For a time."

"Weakened what?"

Instead of speaking, it turns slowly so I can see the largest patch of that mist-like... nothingness. The thick serpentine shape of its body seems to fade and drift up in smoke all along its right side.

The dragon's eyes close briefly, as though in pain. When they open again, I see the madness swirling deeper, threatening to consume what lucidity remains."You can run, angry human. I can hold it off for a time. Only a time."

Angry human? Seriously? I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of the nickname, but the danger is still too real.

I study the creature before me, seeing beyond its terrifying appearance to the ancient intelligence trapped within. Something about its suffering calls to me, resonates with a part of myself I'm only beginning to understand.

I know I should run. I should take its offer and not think twice. Except…

"Can I help you? Somehow?"

"You must run,"it roars in my mind, and now I feel as though I hear two voices. One is wise and old and the other is deep and bestial, twisted and terrible.

"And what happens to you if I run? Why did this... other thing inside you want me dead? Was it because I can hurt it?" I desperately flip through my mental catalog of everything I've read so far in the unbound book. Countless passages talk about how unbound have the power to unmake or to ether. To draw energy of all sorts, and how this was a gift and a curse. It still doesn't make complete sense to me, but I know what I've already seen.

In the lake, I pulled something from this creature. Whatever I did let an intelligence shine through. So maybe I could... do more.

The deep blue eyes flash, and ink-like blackness swirls within. Its body shifts, head lowering as it begins to pace and circle me, long body stretching out as it walls me in.

"Run... little one, before you are destroyed."

"No." Pulse racing, I push down my terror and reach a hand up for its large snout. With one snap of its massive jaws, it could destroy me. I brace for the pain, but only feel my palm land softly on the scaled surface between nostrils that trail steam.

A rush of sensation and power passes into my hand. My body wants to draw it in, to try to absorb it like I did in the lake.

The dragon breathes out heavily, as if my touch is both a relief and something to struggle against. The heat of its breath and the scent of salt water and sea life washes over me, but I don't pull my hand away. I drive my focus deeper.

And then I feel it. There's an inky film coating everything within the dragon. I could draw the power and maybe some of that stain with it, or I could try to draw only the stain itself.

I close my eyes, struggling to grapple with forces I barely understand as I reach for the corruption within the dragon. And I pull.

Nausea rocks me as the first waves of it enter my body.

Fuzzy images and memories that aren't my own flash through my mind. Ancient battles. Elementals fighting elementals. Then the first tethered primals. A powerful woman and a smaller version of the serpent I see now. The two of them fighting side by side for centuries. And then…

Betrayal.

Broken tethers. Broken oaths.

Everything after that is twisted by the black film, and I sense the tragic awareness of an ancient intelligence confined in its own mind—unable to reach out and stop its own body from wreaking havoc for centuries Of watching powerful friends and allies suffer the same fate.

But that corruption is reaching into me, now. It's trying to slither under my own skin and coat me. Claim me.

"Unbound,"the voice comes into my head more clearly than before."You will destroy yourself if you don't release it. Use your gift. Channel it away from yourself as I cannot."

My mind is already slipping, but his words register. I try to not just draw in the sickness like poison from a wound. I try to push it outward. To vent it.

Tendrils of black drift out of my body, curling like snakes.

They try to slither back into my body, to drive themselves under my skin. But the dragon closes its eyes and breathes out. Cool, refreshing magic washes over me and the black tendrils flake away as they flow from me.

I lose all sense of time as I keep pulling from the beast and it keeps washing me in that refreshing magic. Minute by minute, I sense the water dragon diminishing in size, but I also feel the corruption fading both from it and from me.

I can’t say how long passes before I realize I'm no longer looking at a massive, corrupted dragon. Before me stands a sleek, powerful water elemental, perhaps a third of its former size but whole again, its scales gleaming like polished sapphires in the strange light. Its eyes are clear now, revealing an intelligence and wisdom that takes my breath away.

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