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Damien
Try as he might, keeping his calm was proving hard to do. The last thing he’d expected to see upon crossing the portal was anything that looked like him.
Earth. She said this was Earth. I’ve never heard of it. Yet we speak the same language. We look identical!
“Is there anywhere we can go?” he asked, trying to push aside all the curiosity he had regarding the unforeseen similarities between their two peoples. “Shelter. We came through in a rush, we don’t have many supplies.”
He hated to ask for assistance, but the options were limited. The dragons had scattered upon exiting the portal, and the constant winds in the mountains had already obscured much of the tracks they’d made in the snow. As it appeared, he was in charge of this last little group, the only one that had remained near the portal.
Rokh must have taken the others somewhere, but Damien didn’t know where.
“Is this all?” the woman—and she most definitely was a woman—said. Short, thick around the waist with curves in all the right places. His dragon had been admiring her figure since the moment she landed, stalking it in his mind, eagerly pushing him to get closer.
He couldn’t see much of her face, her eyes concealed behind a set of goggles that reflected much of the light. Watching, he saw her thick lips compress into a thin line, rosy-red cheeks tightening as well. Damien decided it wasn’t a look that suited her. This woman needed to smile. He wanted to make her smile.
Why do you care what she has on her face? You need to find shelter for the young, and then you need to go find Rokh and turn this all over to him.
“There are more of us,” he said reluctantly. “They came through before me, they must have scattered into the mountains. I don’t actually know where they went. Mostly young.”
Something in the woman’s body language reacted to his last sentence. Did these people have the same sort of protective desires over their offspring as his did? Could he perhaps play off that to try and find them somewhere to stay?
“How do I know you’re not a threat to me? To us?” the woman asked.
“Just the same way that I don’t know the same about you,” he replied calmly. “I don’t. You don’t. We can only trust our impressions, and what the other person is saying. I haven’t lied to you. I have no reason to. In fact, I’m more curious than anything else.”
“Curious?” she said slowly, as if not expecting that as an answer.
“What do you look like under the mask?” he asked. “Are we truly the same in appearance? We speak the same language after all. Doesn’t that make you wonder how and why that is?”
The woman paused before speaking. Although he couldn’t see her eyes, Damien knew she was giving him a long, thoughtful look. He could tell by the slight cock of her head and the general pose of her body.
After several long heartbeats in which he began to wonder if he’d made a mistake, she reached up and slowly peeled the goggles off, revealing to him that they did look the same.
He also found himself staring into a pair of the most beautiful brown eyes he’d ever seen. They were dark, so very dark as to be noticeable. Her pupils were tiny under the sun’s bright light, but it didn’t matter.
Damien stood still, unable to look away.
His dragon was going berserk on the inside. The moment he’d locked eyes with her, it had erupted, trying to call to the sky, to blast the mountain air with lightning and thunder as it proclaimed...what was it trying to proclaim?
“How many of you are there?” the woman asked.
Grateful for something other than the growl of his dragon to focus on, Damien thought back to the escape. He’d not been paying a lot of attention, too irate that he’d not initially been picked to stay and fight. Then he’d been battling the Infected. By the time he’d gotten in the clear, everyone was through. How many had there been?
“One, maybe two hundred,” he said quietly.
The woman yelped in surprise. “Two hundred? What do you expect me to do with two hundred of you?”
Damien’s being quieted as he thought the number over as well. “That’s all that remains,” he informed her. “Two hundred people, from a planetful.”
“By the Furies,” several of the other women said, looking at each other as they realized what he was saying.
He wasn’t familiar with the exact words, but Damien recognized cursing when he heard it.
It was tough for him to stay calm for long, because every moment his thoughts strayed from the catastrophe that had struck his people, they landed back on the woman in front of him, and his dragon leapt back to life. The war of the wills wasn’t something he had ever struggled with before, but Damien was being put to the test now, containing himself from doing something rash.
“Please,” he said, putting his pride to the side, thinking of those too young to fend for themselves, those who would be affected by the cold in the mountains, who could not shrug off the cool temperatures. “We won’t be a burden. We can work for it. We’ll help out. Whatever we can do. Some of us have abilities that may be of use.”
The leader of the group frowned. “What do you mean by abilities?”
Damien thought about it for a moment, then smiled. He knew the perfect way to show her. Moving slowly, he turned to his right. Gesturing with a hand, and using a bit of mental effort, he waited while the air shimmered.
The creature—he had no idea what it was, as they didn’t have them on his planet—shook its head and stamped at the ground, much the same as the airborne mounts the women had flown in on.
“You can use magic?” the leader asked warily, looking around, eyes darting from shadow to shadow as if she expected to suddenly be attacked.
“Magic?” he asked. This wasn’t a word he was familiar with. “I am of the Storm clan. The air, the clouds, the winds. They respond to me.”
The group of women talked quietly among themselves. “All of you can do this?” the leader asked.
“Some. Others are of Fire. Some are of Jade, who can control the land. Others are Frost, they can shape the snow and ice of the mountains.”
“But you. You cannot use fire?” she asked, pointing a finger at him.
“No. Only the skies,” he said.
The woman turned her back on him to talk. Damien wondered if she realized the vulnerability she was showing by doing that, or if it was a gesture of trust. These women had powers he couldn’t understand, however, and he wasn’t about to attack them.
Though that one woman seems like she’d like me to try...
He’d seen the anger on the face of one of them from the very start but had done his best to avoid looking at her. Given the situation, not antagonizing any of his would-be rescuers’ race seemed prudent. Not now, when they knew so little of the world they had just come to.
“What are you willing to offer in exchange for shelter and food?” the woman asked finally.
Damien hesitated. “I am unable to make any sort of formal agreement,” he said at last. “I am not in charge.”
“Well, who is? Bring him here then.”
He winced. “His name is Rokh. Of the Fire clan. But I’m not sure where he is. He came through first and has led the others somewhere into the mountains.” He shrugged helplessly, not knowing what else to say.
“Are you a man of your word?” she asked, the question catching him off guard.
Judging by the looks from the other women, they hadn’t been expecting it either.
“I am,” he said, drawing himself up straight, wondering where she was going with things. “My name is Damien, and you have my word we will not harm you.”
The woman studied him some more. He wondered if she was just unsure of what to do, or if she was normally this careful and thorough about making a decision.
“I cannot take you freely, Damien of the Storm Clan. There’s just too much we don’t know about you. If you come, you will come as my prisoners for now, until we can ascertain more about you and your powers.”
Behind him, he heard the others hiss and stiffen.
“Easy, Altair,” he rumbled, knowing without looking that his friend would be the most incensed of their little group at being told they were prisoners. The other storm dragon would want to fight, to show this woman that dragons were no one’s prisoners.
“But she said—”
“I heard what she said,” Damien growled, taking control of the situation. “Now listen to what I say. Calm. Down.”
The others had made him go talk to the strange women when they had appeared out of the sky. If they couldn’t handle the decisions he was making, that was too bad for them! Damien wasn’t about to go making enemies out of the first people he’d met upon coming through the portal. That was just stupid.
“Think about it from their side of things,” he said. “They don’t know a thing about us. Why should they trust us?”
“Why should we trust them?” Altair muttered angrily.
“Because we don’t have a choice,” Damien said softly, fighting to ignore the pain in his own voice. “And because, as strange as this sounds, I trust her.”
Altair said something in response, but he wasn’t paying attention. The woman was waiting on an answer from him, and he needed to give it.
“Very well,” he said. “We will come peacefully and do as you say.”
Please, he thought to himself. Don’t make this be a mistake. Please let these people be trustworthy and good.
