Chapter Seventeen - Neela
The hatch we entered through led right to the cargo hold. It wasn’t a large hold, no larger than the average classroom back at school, but it was full. Boxes, bags, metal containers of some sort. Kenny, Kallun and I had trouble getting around in there, but we thankfully made it about all of a second or two of travel. I felt like a sardine in that room.
Outside the cargo hold was a small corridor, pretty much just a “here to there” type of room that led to a staircase going up. Kallun went ahead, then waved us forward. That camouflage thing was coming in handy, honestly. I wondered how Bryn could let him go so easily to help us, but he probably knew that Kallun had a crush on Kenny and wanted them to spend some time together. I wondered if he did the same for Gwen.
The next corridor was a longer one, and it looked like it extended the length of the ship. There were closed hatches and open hatchways the whole way from where we came out to the end of it, but there was no activity. Once more, Kallun scoped out the immediate area and then motioned for us to follow him into a room just a few doors away from where we’d been. After we were inside, I shut the door behind us and locked it.
The room we holed up in was nothing special, barely a sleeping quarters, but the furnishings were there. I sat down on the floor, against the wall. Kenny and Kallun both sat in front of me, looks of readiness and confusion on their faces. Kallun was the first to ask, “Now what?”
I leaned forward, trying to keep my voice down. “That thing with all the feathers and the cat head that attacked those Escorts, that was my conduit, Mithra.”
“That thing was a conduit? You’re a mage?”
“Did nobody tell you that earlier?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Yeah, I’m a mage, and Mithra’s my conduit, and the Empire captured him before we escaped Endawa.”
Kenny asked, “Why would they bring him here?” He pulled a map from his bag. “We’re here,” he pointed to the clearing we’d found the airship, “the capital’s here,” he pointed to the large golden tower drawn on the map, “and home is here,” he pointed to Endawa. If one were to trace a straight line from the capital to where the airship had landed, they’d find Endawa in the middle.
“Maybe the airship was coming from the capital to here and they stopped at Endawa on the way?” Kallun suggested.
Kenny shook his head. “That would mean they somehow kept Mithra hostage in town for days before they got here. There weren’t any airships anywhere near town when we left.”
I asked, “Does it really matter?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it does. Riley, this could be a trap. How do we know Bertrand didn’t expect us to come this way? The boss said they knew roughly what direction we were going.”
He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t want to believe it, but he really wasn’t wrong. “Then we take this carefully,” I said, “we go slowly, we keep an eye out.”
Kallun nodded. “I’ll take point. I can scout ahead without anybody seeing me.”
“And we’ll make sure none of the guards see us. C’mon, it’ll be just like that book you read in class about the guy in the tuxedo who sneaks around and fights bad guys with cats.”
Kenny looked like he wanted to throw himself off the airship. “Riley, look, I know you’re not used to this kind of thing what with having been a dragon for the first seventeen years of your life, but this is not a book! We’re not fighting bad guys with cats, we’re fighting actual bad guys with swords and spears!”
I grabbed him by the shoulder. “We’ll be fine. We have each other.” I reached around him and pulled out the sword Irvine had given us. “And you have this.”
He blinked twice. “This is a game to you, isn’t it? This is no different to dodgeball at school for you.”
I shrugged. “Well, except that the dodgeballs are swords that could kill me and we’re trying to stay out of everybody’s way and not just avoid the balls. No, actually, this is nothing like dodgeball and it’s not a game, but I need to rescue my conduit, okay?”
Kallun turned to Kenny. “I’m with your sister on this one.”
Kenny sighed. “Dad and Sharena are waiting for us in Sandhog Ridge and we’re in a goddamn airship on its way to the capital saving a cat.”
Kallun’s skin changed to mimic the room around him, which looked weird, but I was a dragon in a human suit, so I really couldn’t say anything. “Hey,” he said, “it’ll be fun.”
“None of this is fun.”
I said, “Nope, but we’re here now.”
Kallun went ahead of us, checking every room. Kenny and I waited until he came back to get us before we left, and even then we took each step like we were about to be found oud. Whatever this corridor was, it didn’t seem to be used by anyone. None of the rooms were occupied, and no one ever showed up as we made our way quietly to the next staircase at the opposite end from the first one.
This, finally, was where signs of life actually seemed to be. Once we got halfway up the stairs, Kallun stopped us and I could see why. There was closed hatch there, but the hatch had a small round porthole so that anyone could look in or out. On the other side of the hatch from us was a guard, without a helmet, his back turned. The odds were good he’d hear us if we moved any further up the stairs, or he could turn and see us as we passed by heading up to the next level above him.
Kallun camouflaged himself again and moved up to the hatch. He lightly tapped on the door, which caused the guard to turn around. Kenny and I were just out of sight of him, hiding on the half level underneath him. Kallun ducked just out of the way as the guard opened the hatch and walked into the stairway.
Getting a good look at the man, he didn’t seem to be that old. From what little I knew about the Imperial Army, people couldn’t enter service until they were eighteen, and they weren’t even out of basic training for a good year. This guy didn’t look like he was much older than me or Kenny, almost like he’d been pulled out of school, given armor and told to stand in front of a doorway.
I almost wondered if that was exactly what happened.
“Guard,” a female voice said. I risked a peek just as the guard turned around and saw Lady Cecilia standing there, another man I could barely see behind her. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He snapped to attention. “Lady Cecilia, I… I heard a noise.”
Neither of them moved, so I assumed Cecilia was staring him down. Eventually, she said, “Move out of our way, shut the door behind us and return to your post.”
He nodded. “Yes, Lady Cecilia.”
Once she and the guy behind her were inside the stairway, the guy laughed. “Wow, Lady Cecilia, you nearly petrified the poor kid.”
“Rawley, I swear to god if you don’t start taking this seriously, I’ll throw you overboard.”
Kenny whispered to Kallun, “Who are they?”
Kallun answered, “Dragonslayers Guild. I don’t know the woman, but the guy is Lieutenant Rawley, one of the best.”
Up the stairs, I heard Rawley saying, “You make me such promises, Lady Cecilia.”
“I’m serious,” she replied, “and stop acting like I’m going to take you back.”
I’m not gonna lie, the idea that these two people, specifically the one that damn near annihilated my conduit in one on one combat, having a relationship was more than a little weird. I mean, they were people, so them having those kinds of feelings wasn’t impossible, it just felt like it was.
“Let’s follow them,” Kallun whispered.
“What? Why?” Kenny asked.
“He’s right,” I said, “she seems to be in charge, maybe they could lead us to Mithra.”
“What makes you think they’ll lead us anywhere near him?”
“It’s a feeling.”
He shook his head. “This is not the right time for feminine intuition.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He sighed. “You have a point, but maybe we should split up instead.”
“What?” Kallun asked.
Kenny turned to him. “Those women they picked up, they were slaves. We shouldn’t just make this about Mithra, we should get them too.”
I knew he was right about that. Rescuing them was the right thing to do, alongside rescuing Mithra. I wasn’t sure how we’d separate the group, though. “Three of us, two objectives… who goes where?” I asked.
“Kallun can get the slaves,” he said as he put his hand on Kallun’s shoulder. “He can get in, get out. The slaves can then provide us a little distraction, because the Escorts will do their best to get them back under control, that’ll give us all the opportunity we need to find Mithra.”
“You wanna use them as bait?” Kallun asked.
Kenny shook his head. “Not bait, a distraction. We’ll make sure they all make it and make it home, but with them on the loose, the Escorts will be too busy to keep guard on anything else.”
I didn’t know how I felt about that. Just rescuing them sounded like the best thing in the world, but using them to get Mithra didn’t seem right. “Are you sure?” I asked.
He turned back to me. “We’ve gotta do something. Mithra will be under heavy guard, and we only have a few weapons.” He pointed to my confiscated axe. “Not to mention you’re not really a master at that thing.”
I held it up. “It’s an axe, you swing it.”
He gently pushed it down. “Still, we need to be damned careful, and a distraction will help us.” He turned back to Kallun. “Can you do it?”
Kallun shrugged. “I can search for where they are. But they’ll sure to be under guard, too.”
Kenny reached into his bag and pulled out a small dagger. “Take this, use it on the guards.”
“Are you saying I just kill them?”
“No, nonononono, I’m saying… just… like...“
Kallun smiled. “I’m joking, babe, I know how to take people out of commission without killing them. The boss doesn’t rely on me for this kind of thing just because I’m a chameleon.”
“Did you just call me babe?”
That question was answered when Kallun reached over and planted a light kiss on Kenny’s lips. I think I felt my face turn the brightest shade of red. After that, he camouflaged himself and made his way up the stairs quietly to the next level.
Kenny looked at me with absolute surprise on his face. I just shrugged and said, “What? I told you he was into you.”
Kenny and I carefully stayed behind Cecilia and Rawley, but luckily we didn’t seem to be headed for the heavily populated part of the airship. I saw a couple guards, but Kenny kept an eye on them and we didn’t run into anyone. I honestly didn’t understand why there weren’t more soldiers on board. Kallun had said this was the Dragonslayers Guild, did that mean they didn’t need a full complement of soldiers?
Either way, I wanted to get in, get Mithra, and take these guys down a peg. Maybe if a dragon slew them, they’d learn that we weren’t just something to hunt and kill. Granted, I was a human at the moment, but still. I wanted to kick their asses, plain and simple.
As we made our way through the ship behind the two will-they-won’t-they knights, I felt something… odd. Something was there, something was talking to me. I didn’t know how I recognized whatever I was feeling as talking, but I did. It was weird. Was this a mage thing? Was it just because I was close to Mithra again? That could make sense, but I didn’t think that was it. I needed to find out where that was coming from.
Kenny was just down the corridor from me, peeking out around a corner and watching Cecilia and Rawley. I didn’t want to ditch him, it was a shitty thing to do, but I needed to find out what that feeling was and why it was calling out to me. If I was lucky, it would lead me to Mithra. If not, maybe it would lead me to something useful anyway.
I slipped into a different corridor. This one was short, with only two rooms opposite one another. I looked inside one room and saw it was a simple sleeping quarters. A desk, a cot, a closet. There was a book on the desk that had a naked girl on the front of it, which I just ignored. Must have been Rawley’s quarters, based on how he kept trying to flirt with Cecilia. I opened some drawers on the desk and couldn’t find anything useful except for a nice looking knife. I grabbed it and slipped it onto my belt.
Next I went across the corridor to the other quarters, obviously Cecilia’s. The two rooms were laid out exactly the same, but there was nothing in the room to suggest anything about the woman staying in it. The bed was neatly prepared, the closet had nothing in it and the desk looked very unused.
I felt that thing again. It was stronger here, in this room. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from specifically in the room, but I knew it was in the room. I had a sense that coming in here was something I’d been meant to do. I looked in the closet again, but nothing was there. I opened the desk drawers and found exactly what I found in the closet. Cecilia didn’t even leave weapons in her quarters like Rawley did.
Under the pillow on the bed I found a necklace.
It was a simple blue gem on a chain, but there was something familiar about it, as if I’d held this very necklace before. As if I’d worn the necklace before. What was it? Where had it come from?
The Dream! I’d worn it in the dream!
It meant nothing to me at the time. I was wearing an entire outfit I’d never worn before in my life (what with the limited experience with clothing), something like a long white dress and matching gloves, but I’d worn that blue gem in the dream. A gift from Cres…
No, not from Cres. I didn’t know him well enough (or really even at all) for him to have given me any gifts. What the hell was it with that dream?
After all this self-reflection on a dream I desperately wanted to forget, I realized that the feeling of something talking to me had completely vanished. It was too strong a coincidence to say it wasn’t the necklace that had been talking to me. It must have some sort of magic power to it, or something. Just another thing I’d need to ask Sharena about when we caught back up to her, obviously.
Suddenly a hand clamped itself around my mouth. Before I had a chance to really panic, Kenny walked around in front of me, holding a finger to his mouth in a shush gesture. “What the hell?” he whispered.
After answering him through his hand for a second, he finally removed it and I said, “This thing started talking to me,” and held up the necklace.
“A necklace talked to you?”
I shrugged. “It’s probably a mage thing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever, just, c’mon.”
For whatever reason, I slipped the necklace on. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
We traced his steps back to where he’d realized I wasn’t behind him, which was just outside what looked like a conference room or something. It took me a minute to realize it was actually the officers’ mess hall, assuming what I’d been able to read in those pirate comics was right. There were three people in the room: Rawley, Cecilia and a cook bringing them food. They didn’t appear to be saying anything to one another, and the cook slipped away just a moment later.
After leaving two extra plates.
The reason for the two extra plates was revealed just a second after I spotted the plates as two people, both women, walked down a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor. We just managed to duck out of the way before they saw us.
I couldn’t tell who they were because they were wearing hoods, but one of the had a sword and the other a bow. Both were dressed… weirdly for people on an airship, I supposed. The one with the sword, walking in front, was wearing a corset that greatly emphasized her breasts and a skirt short enough that every inch of her legs were visible, except what was covered up by the high heeled boots she wore. Her arms were bare, save a pair of gloves. The one with the bow was a bit more covered up, though she still felt the need to leave her shirt open enough to expose her cleavage and while she wore shorts they were still short, the only thing covering her legs where thigh high boots without a heel.
Thinking back to Rawley’s quarters, I couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t dressed that way just to catch him off guard.
They both entered the officer’s mess and sat down across from Rawley and Cecilia. From where Kenny and I were, across the corridor in a small storage room, we could see and hear everything.
“It’s been a long time, ladies,” Rawley said, trying to turn up the charm to eleven.
The one with the sword pulled her hood off and I resisted the urge to yell out to her. Merissa had some scarring on her face, but it was definitely her. God, hadn’t I gotten enough of her recently? “Skip the flirting, I don’t have relationships with humans,” she spat at him. “You two should be happy enough I’m even here.”
Cecilia slipped a piece of steak into her mouth. “From what I’ve heard, you are the lucky ones. The dragon girl nearly killed you.”
Merissa motioned to the archer. “Neela wasn’t there, so I was the only one nearly killed. Still, the girl’s power wasn’t that strong.”
“She tore down a building,” Rawley said through a mouth full of ham pulled straight off the bone. “I’d call that pretty strong.”
“Unimportant. What is important is that you need us for something.”
“Yes,” Cecilia confirmed, “specifically for dealing with the conduit.”
“You have the dragon’s conduit here?”
“We do. It’s locked up just a few rooms away, and being very uncooperative. It killed one man and nearly killed two others. I managed to subdue it, but there’s no guarantee that will last.”
Merissa leaned forward and rubbed at her chin. “This is why you wanted Neela.”
Cecilia nodded. “Her power is renowned throughout the region.”
Merissa turned to the other elf, who still hadn’t removed her hood. “You can do it, can’t you?”
Neela looked at Rawley first, then Cecilia, then Merissa. I couldn’t really see her face, but there seemed to be some sort of uncertainty in what I could see. She looked down at her hands, then back up at Merissa. “I think so,” she said, the voice of a girl not much older than me.
I saw a look of anger briefly flash across Merissa’s face, but I don’t think Rawley or Cecilia did. Neela did, though, as she turned away just after that and lowered her head as if she were about to be punished in front of everyone. What the hell was the deal there?
Merissa looked back to the two Dragonslayers. “It’ll be done, as promised. The conduit will spill everything it knows about the girl and then it’ll spill so much more.”
Cecilia nodded. “Good. We’ll have it ready for you in about an hour. You need to break it before we arrive at Myzacile, otherwise the mind rapers in the Emperor’s Palace will take over.” She smirked. “And I don’t think the local law in Peresten will be at all sorry that you two will end up being destroyed along with it.”
Merissa’s brief anger appeared again, but just as quickly disappeared. “You should know that conduits are quite resistant to the mind rapers. If an elf can’t do it, they can’t do it.”
Rawley laughed, spitting out some of his food onto Neela. “Please, that’s half the fun.” He wiped his mouth but didn’t even consider helping the elf girl in front of him. “The stronger the fight, the more satisfying the victory.”
“Quiet,” Cecilia said to him, not even turning away from the elves. “Conduits may be resistant, but elves aren’t.”
Merissa stood. “I trust quarters have been prepared for us,” she stated, not even suggesting it was a question.
“Of course. Two rooms, one deck down, you’ll have a guard on you at all times.”
Merissa shook her head. “No. One room. For my sister’s benefit.”
Rawley burped. “Whatever. Just means we only need to spare one guard.” He waved them off. “Head downstairs, knock on the door, the guard there will lead you to where you’re going. We’ll give you a call in, oh, say an hour and a half.”
“Of course,” Merissa hissed, the contempt barely even trying to hide this time. She turned to Neela, “Come, Neela.”
The two elves walked out of the mess hall and just a few minutes later, Cecilia and Rawley stepped out and went the opposite direction. After another few minutes, Kenny and I were alone again.
“Isn’t that the elf you and Gwyneth were dealing with back in Peresten?” he asked me.
“Yeah. Did you get the idea she didn’t really care too much about her sister?”
“Whaddya mean?”
He must not have seen what I saw, then. “Forget about it. Just, we need to get to Mithra before they do.”
He nodded. “Yeah, and I’ve got an idea.”
I blinked twice. “What?”
He took out another dagger (where was he getting those?) and popped open a crate. “I saw this while they were talking, we’re in a room full of their armor.” He pulled out a chestplate and slipped it on over his shirt. “If we just suit up, we can go anywhere on the ship and nobody’ll notice.”
I asked, "Don't you think they know exactly how many soldiers are on board?"
"Rawley and Cecilia, maybe, but they probably don't actually know every soldier. And even if they do see us, they won’t have had time to do a headcount of everybody because there are bound to be people assigned to areas they’re not interested in going to.”
I sighed. “Alright, so we pretend to be soldiers. Then what?”
“We can get to Mithra and sneak him to a lifeboat or something before we find a way to land the ship.”
That seemed like a good, simple plan that didn’t have a whole lot of chance at failing. Naturally, I figured we were going to get caught. After all, the school thing was just go in, sign some papers, leave. I ended up destroying a damn building and hurting people instead, just because of those damned elf bitches.
Actually, that made me think of something... “You go find Mithra,” I said, “I’ll meet up with you, but I need to go find out why the Empire needs those elves.”
He looked confused. “Why? If we get him off of here before they get a chance to do anything to him, what does it matter that they’re on board when we get out of here?”
“Because, whatever it is Merissa seems to think that girl can do, it seemed like she didn’t want to do.” I reached into the crate and started putting on the armor that fit best. There must have been soldiers my size in the Imperial Escorts or something. “Maybe if I talk to her, I can convince her not to do it.”
Kenny sighed. “I’m probably not gonna be able to stop you, am I?”
I finished adjusting the armor, then slipped on a helmet and said, “Nope.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “Just be careful.”
I nodded. “Right. Don’t fuck up.”
“Don’t fuck up.”
I was a tiny bit worried that carrying around an axe would draw some attention, but I saw at least a couple soldiers carrying one, and no one in general batted an eye in my direction. Maybe Kenny’s little scheme would work out perfectly after all. That was probably an invitation for fate to screw us over big time, though. Dammit, I needed to calm my thoughts.
That alone wasn’t difficult. Three guys tried to hit on me as I made my way through the ship to the room the elves were being stashed. Baby, it’s just you and me on this airship, and it’s a looooong way to Myzacile and Are you a member of the Guild because you’re slaying my heart and dragon me right into you, honey were probably the funniest pick-up lines. I couldn’t even remember what the other guy said.
There was one guard standing in front of the door to the elves’ room. The woman looked like she’d rather be anywhere but standing in front of the door to a room with two elves in it. Hopefully it wouldn’t be hard to convince her to leave.
I stepped in front of her and saluted. “I’m here to replace you,” I said in my most authoritative sounding voice.
She rolled her eyes and slipped her helmet on. “Good. I’m tired of being around these disgusting pointy ears. I hope the Captain lets us kill them when we reach Myzacile.” She lightly punched me on the arm. “And drop the fake confidence act, kid. The guys on this boat just look at you like meat in a can.”
I nervously chuckled. Not on purpose, that was completely just me doing that because my little ruse just worked perfectly. After she was gone, I sighed and stood in front of the door, which I realized wasn’t even a door but a doorway. The elves didn’t even get a shred of privacy, it seemed.
“You’ve been quiet since we got here,” Merissa said. I had to realize for a second she was talking to Neela and not me. “Did you sleep well while I was away?”
I shifted my stance so that I could look inside the room out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t think they could see me doing it. Neela was sitting on the bed, completely naked. She wasn’t really looking at Merissa, but she seemed to be waiting for something.
“I did,” she finally answered. “You didn’t tell me you’d be dealing with a mage while you were there.”
Merissa dropped her corset top. “Please, I didn’t know. And even if I had, what would you have done?”
Neela almost looked as though she were about to be slapped in the face. Instead, Merissa sat down on the bed beside her and started… caressing Neela’s thigh? What the hell? “I don’t know, but… I could have been there for you.” She started to reach for Merissa’s face. “Mended your face.”
Merissa grabbed her sister’s hand and started suckling on her fingers. “My face is none of your concern, dear sister. Better to show the scars the dragon girl gave me as a reminder, so as to keep the wound fresh.” She reached out and gently pulled Neela’s face to hers. “One day, we’ll find her again and I’ll let you do everything you want to her.”
Neela looked nervous, concerned. “I don’t know what I want. You say she attacked you, but when I look through your memories, she doesn’t appear to be doing anything correctly. She clearly didn’t know what she was doing.” Her eyes lowered. “And if you hadn’t been attempting to betray the syndicate, nothing would have gone wrong.”
Merissa reached out and grabbed Neela’s breast. She squeezed so hard I almost felt it. “Hold your tongue, sister! I don’t need to remind you that my actions were for your benefit.”
Through gritted teeth, Neela said, “I didn’t want that. I was fine where we were.”
Merissa finally let go of her sister’s chest and stood up. “So you believe. You would have wanted death had we stayed there any longer.” She reached into a trunk and retrieved a tunic with an open chest. How she managed to keep herself from flopping out of it was beyond me. “We’ll speak of this again later. I’m going to see the conduit for myself, and then I’ll allow them to send for you.”
“I wish we didn’t need this,” Neela said as she hugged her knees to her chest. “I wish you didn’t need to be what you are.”
Merissa leaned over and kissed her sister on the lips. Once they broke away, she said, “Never worry, dear Neela, we’ll come out on top when all this is over.”
For a second as Merissa passed by me, I thought she recognized me, but the moment was fleeting and in all honesty she never even looked at me. I breathed a sigh of relief when she was gone.
“You don’t need to worry about her, she didn’t recognize you,” Neela said.
“What?” I almost yelped.
“You’re the dragon girl,” she answered. She was in the middle of putting on some clothes. “The mage.”
I looked around and made sure none of the soldiers were looking in my direction, then stepped into the room. “How do you know that?”
“Merissa and I were speaking in elvish the entire time and you could understand us. No one knows elvish anymore, but that necklace you’re wearing only works when it’s in the possession of a mage, and the odds that you’re just a random mage on a ship that’s also carrying a conduit are slim.” She pointed to my helmet. “You can take that off. I want to see your face.”
I sighed, then pulled off my helmet. “You didn’t tell your sister, did you?”
She shook her head. “Our link only goes one way.” She sat back down on the bed. “It didn’t used to be that way, and I still don’t know if she realizes it isn’t.”
“Your link?”
She nodded. “Our love.”
“Your… you mean like a kind of sisterly bond sort of thing?”
She shook her head. “No, our actual love for one another. You should know, it’s common for mages to form a link to the one they love.”
I think I was almost starting to understand. “I don’t really have anybody like that. And, honestly, I’m still not sure I get it or that I want to.”
She nodded. “I understand. It’s not something most understand. Merissa doesn’t seem to anymore, either. More than I care to admit, I see her looking at men like she used to look at me.”
“Let’s just…” I wanted that discussion to end quickly. “Let’s just move onto how you knew it was me now.”
She shrugged. “It was obvious. I’ve been able to feel your presence since I came onto the airship, and I saw you watching us talking to Lady Cecilia. I didn’t tell Merissa because it doesn’t matter that she knows.”
“And does that mean you’re going to stop us from rescuing Mithra?”
She giggled, then stopped herself. “I’m sorry. I haven’t laughed like that in a long time, but your conduit’s name is cute.” She started to blush. “It’s been a long time since I had anything to laugh for.” She quickly composed herself. “I’m not going to harm him, I never was. My power is too strong, to devastating. I merely told Merissa that I could do it, but to break into your conduit’s mind on this ship would destroy us all.”
Okay, that was unsettling. “Destroy… as in, like, kill us?”
She nodded. “The amount of magic necessary to keep us in the air mixed with what my power does and the conduit’s own natural power would overload the engines as well as all of our bodies. The only thing left of this ship,” she pointed to my necklace, “would be that necklace.”
I audibly gulped. “So… what are you going to do?”
She shrugged again. “It’s nothing to worry about now. The answer will come to me at the appropriate time, as it always does.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. That was good. I didn’t havta worry about my conduit dying. I still didn’t know what to think about Neela, but at least she seemed like a decent person. I was still confused about her and Merissa’s… relationship, their link and all sorts of other things. More importantly, I still didn’t know what was going to happen.
“Look, Neela,” I started as I sat down beside her and took her hand, “you seem like such a different person from your sister, why don’t you leave her and find a better life?”
She shook her head. “That’s not possible. Though now only one way, our link is still too strong. If I’m away from her for too long, it’s not merely physical pain, but a draining. Elves are immortal, but when we bond to someone, especially as Merissa and I have, that bond is our life. The only way to change that is sever the bond at both ends or form another bond.”
“You mean, if you’re not in the same place for too long, you actually start to die?”
She nodded. “Not just that, but everything that makes me who I am fades. All that will be left is an empty shell, soulless. I’ve seen it happen to countless others, and I worry every time Merissa leaves that it’ll happen to me. This last time was the worst, because I felt every bit of her pain when you destroyed that room.” She touched her face in the exact same spot where Merissa’s scar was. “I healed mine, but she won’t let me heal hers.” She touched her stomach. “And there are other things that I wasn’t even capable of healing.”
That was almost unsettling. Had I caused more damage to Merissa than I thought I had? “I know you love her, but you know she doesn’t love you as much as she used to.” I gently squeezed her hand. “Would you consider leaving with my brother and I once we free my conduit?”
She looked into my eyes, then down at my hand. “As much as that seems like the more reasonable choice, it’s not the right one.” She touched her chest. “I will leave Merissa when the time is right. When I do, I’ll seek you out. I already know you to be a friend, a kind person.”
I smiled. “Thank you. I guess I can’t ask for anything else.”
She nodded, then tapped at my helmet. “Put it back on. Someone’s coming.”
I quickly slipped the helmet back on and stood up just as Rawley and an Imperial Escort walked into the room. “Alright,” he said, “Lady Cecilia wants the, er, guest now.” He turned to me. “You wanna take her to where the conduit’s locked up?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. Um… where is that, again?”
He sighed. “I swear to god… one deck up, the brig. We have door markers for a reason, kid, remember to read them every once in awhile.”
I chuckled nervously. “Yeah, uh, sir.”
