FicWad

They were coming from the direction of the town. I abruptly became aware of the worsening storm. The wind had become a great gale; trees were bent backward from its force. Lightning forked downward, seeming to converge on a point below the shrine, right where the town lay.

I picked myself up and ran out of the forest. I slid on a patch of loose earth and hit the ground, barely managing to keep from tumbling the rest of the way down, but the bolts of pain shooting up my arms were forgotten at the sight laid out before me.

The storm was raging right above the town. Huts and fences rocked dangerously on their bamboo posts, and even buildings made of stone trembled in the onslaught. The buntings that had been strung up over the streets waved helplessly, and the rice-paper flowers were torn right off and flung about. The waters of the river beyond the town roiled madly, tossing fishing boats like little bits of paper. But the most riveting sight was the plaza. Light--cold, violet light radiated from a point where the stage would have been, flowing outward in ever-growing waves. Storm clouds whirled tightly above it, and as I watched in horror, the light seemed to reach up and pull the lightning down from the heavens. The crackles of electricity and the sudden flare of the light hurt my eyes, and I had to look away. And that was when I saw the creature.

It circled above the town, making rainbow shards bounce off its scales as it wove sinuously in and out of the clouds. It was huge! The serpent-like body could have coiled itself around the mountaintop, and any one of its claws could have speared through a carabao with room left over for a horse. Its scales were a pure, iridescent black except for its pale gold underbelly, the golden spikes running along its back and the wide golden fan at the tip of its tail. Delicate gold fins curved outward from the black mane adorning its massive head, blown back from a reptilian face with trailing white whiskers. It cut languidly through the air, oblivious to the electricity crackling around it in jagged lines.

So beautiful/. The completely irrelevant thought flashed through the gray fog of fear. /So utterly beautiful, and so infinitely dangerous.

It twisted gracefully then swooped low over the town. It opened its jaws wide, displaying rows of saber-like teeth, and shot a stream of blue-white fire from its mouth. Houses and buildings exploded, and the screams reached a fever pitch. With my fear-sharpened senses, I could hear my brother's harsh commands as he and the other warriors ran for their bows and shot at the monster, but the arrows merely bounced off the creature's scales like so many flies. With an earth-shaking roar, it swept over the town again, leaving several more blazing trails in its wake.

"No!" I gasped, watching the townsfolk dash about in panic. "No, don't! Please stop!"

I ran down the slope, waving my arms wildly to catch the monster's attention, which only goes to show how stupid I could be. To my profound horror, the tactic worked. In the space of a heartbeat, the creature seemed to hang in mid-air, its enormous head swinging in my direction. My stomach dropped as slitted golden eyes, as bright and pitiless as the sun, pierced the distance and found me. I stopped dead in my tracks, literally frozen in terror.

And heart-stopping recognition.

My lips moved, shaping themselves around a name I now knew better than my own, but my voice refused to work. Perhaps if it had, the story would have turned out differently. Instead, I stood there as dumb as a rock until the moment passed beyond recall.

The glowing orb in the plaza suddenly erupted, spiraling upward and outward in an explosion of light, fragments of purplish white light whose fluttering movements reminded me of butterflies. Swarms and swarms of butterflies. The magical insects spread throughout the town then past it, pouring in waves over the river, beyond the rice fields and over my head to a point in the middle of the mountain--in short, just past the boundaries of the town. When they reached their destinations, the butterflies melded together to form a pale violet semi-transparent globe over the town. While all this was happening, the still-blazing core shot up to around fifty feet and took the form of a woman of such unearthly splendor that it hurt to look at her. Blue-black hair streamed out behind her like a veil cut out of the night-sky; icy violet eyes glittered in a classically oval face. She wore a skin-tight band of cloth the same color as her eyes over her breasts, topped with a loose short robe made of sparkling gauze, while a long, flowing skirt flared from a silver belt studded with amethysts. Most stunning of all, however, was the gigantic pair of violet butterfly wings spread open at her back. The woman was more than just beautiful; she was Beauty incarnate.

"The Lady," I whispered. "The Diwata of the Mountain."

As I fell to my knees to pay homage to the vision before us, an arrow launched itself from the town, speeding toward her. Likely one of Habagat's trigger-happy friends, overcome by his fear. With alarming speed, the sky-serpent moved, shielding her with its body so that the arrow bounced harmlessly off its scales. The action was completely instinctive, and revealed more to me than any explanation I could have endured listening to.

You have ten days.

I gasped as the low, melodious voice filled my head. The Diwata spoke not to our ears, but directly in our minds. I had no doubt everyone could hear her as clearly as I could.

Ten days to lift the curse. Prove to me that you are worthy, and I will stay my hand. If you have not by noon of the tenth day, my punishment shall fall upon you like rain, and the earth itself will forget that you and your town have ever existed.

At that, the giant butterfly wings fluttered, and in a burst of gold and violet light, both the Diwata and the sky-serpent disappeared. As did the storm, as abruptly as it began. The enchanted dome remained, but that too gradually faded away.

Heartsick and deeply shaken, I pushed myself up and headed back to town to lose myself in the panicked chaos the Diwata's verdict had caused. My chest hurt with every breath, and I couldn't seem to focus on the drawn faces and frantic cries around me. My question had been answered, although not in a way I would have chosen. A dragon! I thought numbly. No mere prince of the /engkantos after all. Skyblade was a /dragon!

And not just any dragon. Skyblade, my best friend and savior, the man I loved with all my heart, was none other than the Guardian of the Diwata of the Mountain.

It all made sense now. Everything Skyblade said. As the Guardian, he was bound to the Diwata by a covenant as strong as any force in both the mortal and spirit worlds. His life was pledged to her. He protected her, obeyed her, honored her--he guarded the entrance to her realm after all. More than that, the lore said that the bond between the Diwata and her Guardian went beyond that of mistress and faithful servant. The Diwata and her Guardian were consorts. Mates. Lovers.

He said he loved me. I couldn't have dreamed that up, nor could I have imagined the regret and longing I saw in his eyes. He loved me, but he was right. I could have no part of him; he was never mine to begin with, not even in my dreams. And the insanity of it was that nothing had changed. I still loved him, dragon or not.

And in ten days, the man I loved more than life itself would come at his mistress' bidding and destroy us all.