I closed my eyes, and felt a sudden surge of warmth running from the sword’s hilt into my fingers, then in the palm of my hand. It rapidly spread to my arm, and within a few moments, into my whole body. Still gripping the sword firmly, I slowly opened my eyes.

It had certainly felt like something had just happened, but upon closer inspection, my body was the same as before. I hadn’t gained any muscle, and I didn’t even feel a tiny bit stronger. A wave of dread and disappointment hit me. Nothing had happened, or at least, nothing that would help me face the guards. My body hadn’t changed; I was still Henry.

I started to panic. I had to run. I was stranded on a rock, in an unknown mountain range, and the only way out that I had planned was through these small, dangerous cliffside paths. Now that I was actually up here, however, the guaranteed escape I had imagined seemed much more difficult to pull off.

Suddenly, the sword started to gently vibrate in my hand. I looked at it, and saw that the small gems decorating its hilt had started to glow. Hope was not lost. Maybe the transformation process was only starting now, once the sword was attuned to me? The light became stronger, and I closed my eyes once again. The sword suddenly felt very heavy.

Then, just as quickly as it had begun, the vibrations stopped, the sword became less heavy, and the blinding white light I was still perceiving through my closed eyelids slowly dimmed out.

A soft voice spoke. “Wow. I can’t believe this is happening. Oh. Hello.” It didn’t belong to one of the guards.

I opened my eyes once more.

In front of me stood a woman. I looked at her for a few seconds without saying anything, trying to process what had just happened. Her hair was curly and black, and her eyes shared a similar dark hue. She wore thin and round spectacles, and her outfit was unlike anything I’d seen before. It was made up of simple and tight clothes, but silver threads were woven into the fabric to form intricate patterns, and the ensemble was strikingly beautiful. I couldn’t help but notice that she had other, non-human attributes. Short, sharp horns protruded from the sides of her head, through her hair, and pointed forward. She also had what appeared to be a furry tail that swung nervously from side to side as she looked at me with a worried face.

“Are you okay?” she gently asked. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. You just saved me.”

I was very intimidated, but I tried my best not to show it too much. I tried to respond, but my voice couldn't produce any sound that a reasonable person would have interpreted as speech.

She closed her eyes. “You’re being tracked; we only have a few minutes to attempt to get out of here. Should we save the introductions for later?”

I nodded, and we quickly stepped outside the outpost. The sword was still in my hand, but it wasn’t producing light anymore. The woman who had just appeared, however, seemed to still emit a very faint glow, but I couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t the sunlight playing a trick on my eyes.

“I will try to fly us both out of here,” she said, looking down into the void. “I don’t know how long I’ve been trapped in here, so I might be a bit out of practice, but I’ll try my best. This should be pretty straightforward,” she added with a smile.

Fly? What was she about to do?

Oh. Large, feathery wings had just sprouted from her back. Also, her entire body was starting to shift into something… different. It felt sort of impolite to stare at whatever she was doing, so I looked away for a few moments.

“So, ready to leap into the void with me?” I heard her voice ask.

The woman that had been in front of me a few seconds ago was gone, and in her place was a dragon. I knew it was still her, there was no possible doubt. The creature’s wings were the same I’d just watched spring into existence earlier, and she had just addressed me with her voice. Her body was covered in thick black fur, and though her horns had grown larger now that she was in this form, they had retained a similar shape.

Seeing a dragon was certainly not on my list of expectations for this day, or my entire life, for that matter. They were known to still exist—though in extremely small numbers—but despite this, we knew almost nothing about them, for the same reasons we had lost most knowledge about magic. To add to my surprise, I had never once heard about a human with the ability to transform into a dragon at will. My ignorance of the matter meant that I had to decide for myself whether I should trust her or not.

And I did trust her. I felt strangely safe now that I wasn’t alone anymore, and she seemed to know what she was doing. I looked at her for a while, gathering my wits, then finally managed to speak. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Great! Hop on and cling to my fur,” she said while gesturing towards her back with one of her wings. “We don’t want you falling off now, do we?” she giggled.

I stepped forward and climbed on her wing, then her back, firmly grabbing the thick fur that covered her neck. She took a few steps back, started to run, and we jumped from the rock.

The wind blew through my hair as we fell down into the void, but once we had gathered enough speed, the dragon levelled our flight trajectory. We were now cruising down the canyon, and she started to flap her wings at a steady rhythm, slowly gaining us altitude.

I was screaming with joy. Feeling the weightlessness of the fall and then being pushed down onto the soft, velvety back of the creature as she straightened our course was the most exhilarating thing I had ever felt. When grabbing the sword, I would never have imagined that now, a few minutes later, I would be flying on dragonback, getting away from my dull and boring life. There was no going back anymore, and it was making me indescribably happy.

After a few minutes of weaving between the cliffs and into the rocky gorges, we were finally high enough to be able to fly above the snowy peaks. The view was incredible, and seeing the mountain range from above made me truly realise how deep inside it we had been this whole time.

“There is not a lot of room in the area to land. Where do you want to go?” Her sudden question reminded me that she had, in fact, appeared as a human during the first few moments we had spent together.

“Ermmm… Can we go back near the valley?” I timidly requested. “I think the others will leave soon once they realise the sword has been… well… taken. Maybe we could look for a place in the area to wait?”

“That sounds like a plan! We’ll get to know each other a bit more,” she responded with a cheerful tone.

She slowly began turning around, and soon enough, the valley was in sight. Before getting too close to it, though, we started to go down.

“It’s going to be trickier than I thought to find a nice spot to land,” she explained. “I can’t really slow down a lot due to the additional weight; I think it would be safer to find some sort of flat ground.”

For once, I was happy to be of help, and tuned in. “I think I know a good place for that.” I gave her some instructions, and we started to fly up the river. My hope was that we would soon find the glacier from which it probably originated.

Before long, we were there. She reduced our altitude even more, and I braced for the touchdown. She ran on the ice for a few seconds, and we finally came to a full stop.

After she’d transformed back into her human form, we sat down together on small heaps of snow to properly catch our breath.

I finally opened the conversation. “So, who are you? What were you doing inside the sword?” My mind was full of questions, but I had to know more about her first.

“My name is Lucyna,” she answered with a smile, “and as to what I was doing inside the sword, well, I was trapped in here. Possibly a long time ago, judging by the state of the outpost.”

“I see. I’m… Henry.” I’d always hated introducing myself to others. To me, it had never felt like opening up or being genuine, for some reason. “I… I know I look like a royal guard because of this uniform, but to be honest, I just kind of… quit.”

“Your outfit certainly doesn’t look like it is keeping you very warm,” she observed.

I looked at her for a few seconds and blinked. “The same goes for yours.”

“I can see why you would think that, but don’t worry about me,” she explained, “these clothes are surprisingly warm! They’re designed to… well, ‘disappear’ when I go into my dragon form. You, however, are freezing.”

She was not wrong. The sun had just vanished behind a mountain, and the glacial wind was starting to slowly pierce through my uniform.

She continued. “So, if I understand correctly, you don’t want to go back to your… colleagues. This leaves us with only one solution,” she said with a grin on her face.

Lucyna turned back into a dragon, and for a second, I wondered if she was going to light up a fire by blowing out flames, even if we had no wood at hand to sustain one, but she simply lay on her side.

“Come here,” she said, “my fur will keep you warm!”

I felt my cheeks turn pink at her invitation, but I obliged, partly because one more minute of exposure to this damned wind would have led to me losing a limb from frostbite, and partly because it did seem very comfortable. I lay against her, and she covered me with one of her wings. We stayed like that for a few moments, after which she broke the silence. “So, what is the current year?”

It was only now that it really dawned on me that Lucyna was possibly several centuries old. The legend of the sword had been around for as long as I could remember. I tried not to let the absurdity of the situation distract me as I considered whether it was a good idea to break the news to her. But since she didn't seem particularly worried herself, I decided it was best to be honest with her and answer her question.

"Five hundred and thirteen after the First War."

Lucyna’s steady breathing stopped for a few seconds.

“The First War? What do you mean?”

Oh no, I was going to have to say it, didn’t I? I tried my best to think of an answer. What she had said earlier had shattered my idea of dragons. They seemed to all be people, or at least partly so, but everything I’d heard about them in the past depicted them as a wild species that couldn’t be reasoned with.

“The First War was fought between the government and… the dragons.”

Luna_C

And that’s a wrap on chapter two! I hope you’re enjoying my first multi-chapter story so far; let’s learn more about this world and the First War in Chapter Three: The Archives, releasing on March 10th, 6pm CET!