Page 22 of All Out of Flux
Like I said. Too sweet. These monsters had ripped up his insides and tried to claw their way out of his skin and here he was defending them. Or at least one of them. He hugged his arms around the front of his belly, rocking back and forth.
“Listen to me talking like they can’t hear what I’m saying, what I’m thinking. Honestly, I’m not sure I care about that anymore, anyway. If they don’t have me, then they can’t manifest in reality.” Leon looked up and blinked. “Can they?”
Roscoe rubbed his chin and nodded. “Sure, they can. But remember that the reason they need you in the first place is to throw everybody else off the scent. These Emanations look like they come from you, not from the dragons. For all intents and purposes, the damage they deal would be your responsibility, remember?”
“Yeah,” Leon said quietly. “I know that. It’s weird. They’re inside me, but I can’t feel them just now. Tired from fighting to take over me, maybe? Dunno. But until this is all sorted, I guess I should stop trying to Emanate at all.”
I reached for his hand and covered it in mine, a wave of relief passing over my body. “That would be for the best. For now. Until you figure out what’s actually going on. It’ll be fine. You’ve got other tricks up your sleeve, right?”
Leon turned his hand up, lacing our fingers together as he shot me a bashful, sticky smile. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
I reached for a napkin and wiped a croissant flake away from the corner of his mouth. In any small way, if I could help him, if I could make him feel better — that was all that mattered.
“There’s just one thing that we need to straighten out,” Johnny said. “Roscoe was reading up on the dragons and he pieced something together. It isn’t a pretty picture.”
As if I could feel any worse. Leon’s forehead creased with concern. An awful sensation stirred in my belly.
“I’m not sure if you realize this,” Roscoe said, “but almost every dragon you’ve worked with so far has been an agent of the apocalypse.”
My stomach dropped. I opened my mouth, closed it. I opened it again, but the words refused to come.
“Is that true?” I asked, searching both their faces. “Leon, did you know about this?”
Still at a loss for words, Leon stared at the table and shook his head.
Ross sighed. “I’m afraid it is. Bakunawa is known for eating the moon, at least in the myths. Tiamat herself is the leader of a coalition of supernatural entities, nearly all of them related to apocalyptic agendas in one way or another. The Great Beasts, they call themselves.”
“How did I forget about that?” Leon said. “How could I forget? Was I so starstruck by meeting Bahamut that I completely spaced on his actual role in the old legends?”
“And what was that role exactly?” I asked.
He bit on the back of his hand, something I’d always found so attractive about him, but now it worried me. He turned to Roscoe for a response, as if afraid to answer for himself.
Roscoe took off his glasses and sighed, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. “According to legend, Bahamut carries the world upon his back. The stories differ. There’s a bull on his back, an angel on the bull, and it’s the angel who actually carries the world, or something like that. The point is, when Bahamut shrugs, the Earth trembles.”
Silence fell over the table. I swallowed in silence as I exchanged cautious looks with the others, my coffee mug cooling under my hand. So I asked, because no one else was talking.
“What happens if Bahamut is really allowed to manifest his power?” I shook my head. “For that matter, why are these dragons specifically coordinating with one another?”
“It could be that we’re blowing this out of proportion,” Johnny said. “Don’t look at me like that. Devil’s advocate, because the alternative sounds so much worse. They’re all sea dragons, aren’t they? Maybe that’s as simple as it gets.”
Leon stood up, his hand slipping out of my grasp, his chair sliding and squeaking against the floor. I didn’t like the look of grim determination that had suddenly found its way to his face.
“I have to commune with them. No. With her. Tiamat owes me some answers.”
Three more chairs scraped against the floor as the rest of us rose from the table, each warning Leon against the very idea. He looked around in annoyance, confusion, struggling to follow the threads of what we were trying to tell him.
“Absolutely not,” I said, louder, loudest, making damn sure to make myself heard above all the others. “She’s lied to you once, she’ll lie to you again. Hell, maybe she’s been lying this entire time.”
Leon stared at the backs of his hands, his shoulders sloped, looking so sullen I wanted to reach out and wrap him in a hug.
“At least give it time,” Roscoe said. “You’ve only just had to deal with the physical repercussions of keeping the sea dragons within yourself. I’m not an expert by any means, but personally, I’d stay away from dealings with supernatural entities for a little while.”
“You guys are right.” Leon sighed, shrugged, then sat back down, reaching for his coffee. At least we’d mollified him for the moment.
Still, it felt as though we’d left the worst unspoken. Tiamat maintaining her deception or piling more lies onto Leon’s plate was one thing. What if she somehow tricked her way into occupying his body, too? Was there any room left in there?
What if it killed him?
