Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

realize that at first. I thought someone was using it to get to me.”
    “Someone was,” he said dismissively, getting to his feet. “Are you willing to try, Tully Sullivan?”
    I flinched at the sting that accompanied my name. “Yes. I owe it to Jim. So long as you’re sure that with you focusing the magic, Jim will be changed back.”
    “My powers have not yet begun to diminish,” was all he said as he gestured me toward him, placing his cold fingers at the base of my neck. “Proceed.”
    I closed my eyes and turned east, beginning the call to quarters. “Air surrounds thee.”
    Dr. Kostich, his fingers still on the back of my neck, turned with me as I faced south. “Fire fills thee.”
    “Oh, great, this is the one that left me naked before,” Jim complained. “Ash, you better have a blanket handy just in case.”
    “Quiet, demonic one,” she snapped.
    Kostich and I turned north, then west. “Earth nourishes thee. Water gives life to thee.”
    I faced Jim again, opening my eyes and pulling as hard as I could on Baltic’s fire. “Demon in birth, demon in being, by the grace within me, I release thee from thy form.”
    For a second, nothing happened. Jim stood with a frightened expression on its face; then the same rushing sensation of power flowed over and through and inside me, wiping out everything I had been and would ever be, before ebbing away to an abyss of emptiness.
     
    The man looked at me with an expression of mingled annoyance and patience. “You are making a habit of this, daughter of light.”
    I sat up, eyeing him. He looked familiar somehow, his eyes infinitely wise, his face that of a man, and yet there was a sense of something other about him.
    “Are you here to see my father?” I asked, confused about who he was. I glanced quickly around the room, startled to find other people present, a man and woman in strange clothing and a large black dog, all three of whom were staring at me with expressions of stark disbelief. “I’ll fetch him for you. I think it’s him you wish to see, my lord . . . er . . . I’m sorry, but I seem to have lost my wits this morning, and don’t believe I was told a mage was coming to see my father. What is your name, sir?”
    “I am not a visiting mage,” the odd man said, holding out his hand to me. I took it and rose to my feet, the world spinning for a few seconds before it settled down. “You are important to me, daughter, but I cannot keep rescuing you. You must find your own path, and not rely upon me to help you again.”
    I put my hand to my head, my brain swimming at both his words and the strange surroundings in which I found myself.
    “Fires of Abaddon,” someone said. “Has she, like, reverted to her old self?”
    “Hush, Jim. Um . . . Mr. First Dragon?” The woman, dressed in an odd shortened tunic and leggings, gave a little wave to the man who still held my hand. “I know Ysolde has a bunch of questions about what you want her to do, and since she seems to be a little out of it, I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I asked them.”
    The man cast a glance at her, repeating, “She must make her own path.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “A life was given for yours once, daughter. Do not repay that debt with failure.”
    My mouth dropped open as the man shimmered with a bright silver light, as if he was suddenly made up of a thousand raindrops shining in the sun, the drops glittering brightly before dissolving into nothingness.
    “By the rood!” I gasped, waving my hand through the air that had just held the man. “I must tell Papa about that! Even he can’t turn himself into light drops!”
    “I would find this tedious except for my interest in elemental beings such as the dragon ancestor,” the tall, thin man with washed-out blue eyes said. I didn’t like him. He eyed me as if I were a bucket of slops. “Now that he is gone, however, the charm of the situation fails to engage me. Aisling Grey, please remove my former apprentice.”
    “You can’t just throw her out like that!” the woman said, rounding on the man. Her, I liked. “She was just killed a few minutes ago! Killed because of your magic, I’d like to point out!”
    “Someone was killed?” I asked, looking around, feeling more than a little dizzy, but if there was a body lying around, I wanted to see it. I’ve always had a ghoulish fascination with them, much to my mother’s dismay. “Who?”
    “You,” a man’s voice said, and my jaw dropped again