Chapter 1 - Lana
Lana woke in the fog again.
As always, it took her a few minutes to get her bearings. She’d been having these dreams all her life, but never often enough to actually grow accustomed to them… they were so unlike the dreams she usually had, which flitted from subject to subject as rapidly as her mind did. When she dreamed of the fog, she always stayed in the same place. And while her usual nightly dreams were populated by an ever-rotating cast of the people she spent her days with, when she dreamed about the fog, she was always alone.
Not that they were nightmares, of course. Somber and eerie, absolutely, and there was something mildly unsettling about the way the forest around her was barely visible through the thick gray mist, but nothing bad ever happened. She simply awoke, wandered through the fog for a little while, then woke again in her own bed. Grimacing a little at the damp touch of the mist on her face, Lana got to her feet, feeling pine needles crunch and break as she took a few steps. They were always curiously detailed, these dreams. Sometimes she wondered if she ought to talk to someone about them, about what they could mean—but something would always stop her, or distract her, and the dreams would fall to the bottom of her list yet again.
Besides, there was only one person she could think of who’d have any useful insight into what the dreams could mean, and her father was the last person Lana wanted to talk to right now. These days, it seemed like every conversation they had ended in an argument. Better not to even start. No doubt he’d find some way to connect the dreams to their family’s big magical destiny, and Lana wouldn’t be able to stop herself from rolling her eyes, and then the shouting would start and she’d end up moving halfway across the world again just to get away from him. That was the holding pattern they’d been in for as long as she cared to remember. If dragons were good at one thing, it was holding grudges.
Lana’s hair was falling in her face, and she pulled it automatically behind her ears into her customary ponytail, grinning a little as she realized the dream had come complete even with the spare hair tie she always wore around her wrist. Shame it couldn’t extend the same attention to her surroundings. There were shadowy figures in the fog, moving just enough to distinguish themselves from the surrounding darkness, but Lana knew from experience that trying to get any closer to the shapes was a fool’s errand. Ominous, but harmless. That was always the general vibe here, in this strange pine forest she toured a few times a year in her sleep.
Still, something felt different this time. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but something was making her scan the foggy forest more intently than she usually did, study the craggy bark of the trees she was passing more closely, listen more intently to the muffled, quiet sounds of the forest around her. These had always been uneasy dreams, but this time Lana was finding that unease beginning to tip over into something like dread, some gut instinct sending the kind of shivers down her spine that she usually associated with shifting. That was strange, too. Her dragon always slept right through her dreams—shifters didn’t transform when they were asleep. Ancient defense mechanism. And a useful one, too, given that Lana usually slept in her human shape, and in rooms not large enough to accommodate the sudden presence of a twenty-foot dragon. So why was her dragon stirring now?
The snapping of a twig in the distance, and Lana was suddenly alert, adrenaline coursing through her as she whipped her head in the direction of the sound. Wake up, she thought to herself, dread giving way to fear as the sound came again. Her dragon was wide awake now, the magic tingling beneath her skin. At a moment’s notice, the transformation would rip through her, soft skin giving way to scales and claws and fangs… always a comfort, to have that kind of firepower so close at hand. But how could that be? She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.
Unless—
But before Lana could give the matter any more thought, the splintering of wood pulled her attention immediately into the present moment. A tree barely twenty feet from her had been demolished, crunching and snapping beneath the weight of a great, dark shape that her mind couldn’t quite get a grip on. At first glance, it looked like a huge shaggy beast—like a great bear, perhaps, though it was far larger than any bear she’d ever seen—but the more she looked, the more she couldn’t reconcile that image with the shape ahead of her. Was it the fog, playing tricks? There were too many limbs, somehow, and the angles of them were all wrong. Something like a mouth opened in what might have been the creature’s head, and the low roar she’d been anticipating was instead a high, keening wail that covered her whole body with goosebumps. Fear had well and truly taken hold of her now. Everything about what she was seeing right now was wrong.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she muttered, pinching the skin of her forearm with one shaking hand. The dull shock of pain did nothing to alter what she was looking at… but at the sound of her voice, a different part of the creature snapped around in her direction, and she felt another lurch of horror as half a dozen glittering black eyes opened, seemingly randomly distributed across the surface of the limb.
As Lana stared down the monstrosity across the foggy clearing of the forest of her dreams, two things became clear to her. The first was that however many lucid dreams she’d had about this forest, what she was experiencing right now was absolutely not a dream. The second was that her life was in danger—and right now, that was going to need to take priority over the dozens of questions that the first realization had raised.
The creature was on the move. It was enormous, parts of its bulk brushing past the canopy of branches above them, but despite its size, it moved with an unnerving speed. But Lana was still faster. As quick as breathing, she let loose the magic that had been trembling under her skin and felt the familiar comfort of the transformation rip through her. Glossy, metallic scales rolled out across her body and she felt her limbs stretching and enlarging painlessly, great wings punching out through the skin of her shoulders and spreading wide enough to brush the trees on either side.
The monstrosity—for that was the only thing she could think to call it—barely seemed to register that its fragile human-shaped prey had been replaced by twenty feet of snapping, hissing dragon. It was hard to read emotion or even intention into the beast’s movements, so alien was its anatomy, but there was something at least suggestive of anger in the way it struck her a glancing blow with one limb. The blow would have torn her fragile human skin to shreds, but the thick scales rendered the strike harmless, barely even unbalancing her. Hissing, she reared up to her full height, wings flaring out behind her, making herself as large and imposing as she could. Funny, how these instincts came back to her so readily. It had been decades—maybe even centuries—since she’d been in any kind of scrape like this one. These days, her world was safe. But her dragon hadn’t forgotten how to handle an enemy.
Not that she’d ever fought anything like this before. Her brassy roar barely seemed to faze the monstrosity, which hadn’t retreated at all after its first strike had proved unsuccessful. She scanned it rapidly, unable to comprehend its anatomy, her mind racing as she tried to work out what she was looking at. It didn’t seem to have a head or even a torso or midsection that would make sense to strike at. It was just limbs and jutting fur, its movements wrong and alien, as though even its relationship with gravity was somehow wrong.
And as her horror built, the beast surged forward again.
This time, it struck her half a dozen times, limb after limb spinning out of the fog to strike and disorient her. The impacts were harder than the first, knocking her off-balance, and she could feel the hard clunk of claws scrabbling for purchase on her scales. Hissing, she recoiled, wings flaring, instinctively sneaking a glance at the canopy of tree branches above her. Could she escape? Hard to tell in the dark and the fog—she might end up hopelessly tangled in the canopy. Still, that might be a better option than staying down here with this thing. Lana roared again as another limb came whizzing at her, and she parried the blow with a slash from her own razor-sharp talons. Fur flew, and she felt her claws slice through something flesh-like. Something splattered against the forest floor, and she growled her triumph, studying the beast for signs of pain or fear… but it showed no indication that it had even noticed the wound. Fear pulsing in her belly, Lana lashed out again, harder this time, putting the full force of her draconic body behind the attack. There was another sickening splash of blood, followed by a dull thump as—Lana’s stomach twisted—the creature’s amputated limb dropped to the ground.
That high, unearthly keening sounded again. Was it too much to hope for that the creature was frightened? It seemed to have dropped back a little, though the confusion of limbs made it hard to make out exactly how much ground she’d gained. Not enough, she decided. She’d wounded it, but there was no way of telling how badly. Killing it may not even be possible, let alone necessary. She might not get a better chance to escape.
So she leapt into the air, her wings powering her upwards … and despite the seriousness of the situation, Lana felt the familiar rush of giddy joy that always came up when she took off. Dragons were safe in the air. Wasn’t that why they had wings? She struck the canopy, dodged between the branches, tucking her wings close to her sides as she used her claws to drag herself through the dense canopy above her. She’d be safe in the sky. Get some distance from this bizarre situation, figure out just how the hell she’d ended up in what was clearly no dream but instead a horrible reality—
But then she felt a blinding, searing pain shoot through her body. With a shriek, she twisted and writhed in the treetops, panic blinding her as she tried to get away from the unmistakable sensation of jaws digging deeply into her hind legs, yanking her down, down, back towards the forest clearing and the beast beneath… still shrieking, she scrabbled fruitlessly at the branches, trying to find something to clutch hold of while the monstrosity dragged her inevitably downwards. There were still tree branches clutched in her talons when she came crashing down to the forest floor, and she could feel her back legs and tail were slick with blood from multiple wounds that had been gouged into her flesh.
Horror gripped her as she finally whipped her sinuous neck around to see what had taken hold of her. Yet another of the creature’s limbs, thick and hairy, had lashed itself around her hind legs—but that wasn’t the source of the pain. No, that had come courtesy of half a dozen more limbs, each boasting a jaw full of long, curved teeth that seemed almost purpose-designed to lift up her thick scales and pierce the soft skin beneath. Operating on pure instinct now, she thrashed her body like an alligator, wings flaring, hind legs kicking out wildly at the monstrosity that even now was pressing its advantage. It barely recoiled, though the tentacle-like limb that had wrapped around her did loosen. Triumph, still mingled with horror. Lana yanked her hind legs free of the creature’s multiple sets of jaws, roaring with pain as she felt the curved teeth snap and splinter, flared her wings—she had to get out of here, had to get as far as she could from this beast before it killed her—
Adrenaline surging, she beat her wings furiously again, desperate to get in the air. She was aiming for the same place in the canopy she’d tried to flee through before. But this time, she hadn’t even gotten off the ground before the monstrosity struck again. And this time, there wasn’t going to be a quick recovery. Lana screamed her fear and fury as sharp claws raked through her wingsails in a dozen places at once, tearing the fine flesh there to ribbons. The effect was immediate. Even through the overwhelming pain, her main impression was the horrific sense of being grounded. With holes like these in her wingsails, she’d never be able to fly.
And that meant she was trapped down here, at the mercy of this beast that seemed to have more limbs than she had teeth. Her fear and anger were beginning to be colored by real desperation—more than she was proud of. She growled and snapped, coiled herself up into a tight ball, snapping at the beast as its horrible limbs came in closer and closer… but even now, she could feel herself weakening, feel the loss of blood taking its toll. The despair grew stronger. She was so utterly, utterly alone out here, facing off against this thing. Being alone had never been a problem for her before… she was adragon. She was the most dangerous creature on Earth.
But that thought was going to be little comfort when this multi-limbed monster put her down like a dog. There was something deeply horrific about it—not just the way it looked or the way it moved, but the merciless, almost automatic way it had put her down, pulled her out of the air and torn her wings to shreds like it had done the same thing a thousand times before. Maybe it had. Maybe it had killed a hundred dragons just like her. Maybe she was about to be the most recent victim on a long, long list… and she’d never know what the hell it was that had killed her.
The roar of her own blood in her ears gave way for just a moment to the high, distant sound of howling. If it hadn’t been for the way the monstrosity seemed to freeze in response, Lana would have imagined she was dreaming it.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?Noneof this was a dream.
Chapter 2 - Seth
So much for a quiet patrol.
Seth gave the signal the moment the high keening reached his ears, but he needn’t have bothered. The squad he was patrolling with knew these trails as well as he did, and they knew the sound of a beast that had cornered its prey. He felt the comforting thud of his four paws on the trail, felt the reassuring brush of his squad’s minds against his as the six of them took on their wolf forms. Their true forms, some wolves called them, though Seth found that distinction unnecessary. He was just as much himself when he was wolf-shaped as when he walked on two legs. Calling one or the other his ‘true form’ would be a little like calling one of his hands his ‘true hand’.
But with that high, unearthly keening echoing in his ears, he knew which form he wanted to be in. Hundreds of pounds of muscle, a jaw full of snapping teeth, and the eyes and ears of his pack to rely on. The six of them exhaled as one wolf, then breathed in again, taking a few heartbeats to adjust to the connection, to the jostle of thoughts, to the slight disorientation of seeing the situation through six pairs of eyes.