Minglings - Book 3 chapter 14: Memories

A quiet hung in the room as Mason thought about what he'd just read and seen.

So, did more people appear then or now? he thought, thinking back to just after he woke. There really had only been a few people… hadn't there?

"So, what do you think?" Sandra said as she moved beside him.

"How long have you been here?" Mason replied, not sure how to answer her question.

"Here? A month… perhaps a little longer. The first weeks were chaotic," Sandra said as she turned and walked away.

"Let's go somewhere else. This place is depressing."

Taking a final look at the murals, Mason nodded as he followed her back out of the room. His mind kept spinning through what he'd read, and he absently followed after Sandra. Only when she hopped in the air and flew back up the massive cavernous room did he snap out of it enough to follow her.

Jake is going to be so sad, he suddenly thought, as he realized the chance of his family being here would be small. He thought about his own mother but barely felt anything. Before he could worry about that again, Sandra flew at a stone balcony, folded her wings, and plunged through into the room beyond.

Showoff, Mason thought with little force. He landed on the balcony edge and walked inside slowly, noticing a large round stone platform that somehow made him think of a bed and a higher, square one with some books on it.

"Take a seat," Sandra said as she curled up on the round bed.

Mason snorted as he looked around at the almost empty room. "Sure.."

He moved to the other table, took a glance at the books, and wondered why he was still surprised that it was in English. Propping himself up against it, he turned to find Sandra staring at him.

"So. How much did you change?"

Mason blinked, the question catching him off-guard. "What do you mean?"

Sandra looked at him, and for a moment, he saw her old self, the annoyed look that said he was an idiot.

"Your mind, emotions, how you think about the world. How much did it change?"

Ah, like that…

He'd thought about it a great deal when he was in the desert, but he hadn't really needed to articulate it before. After a few moments, he gave the dragon equivalent of a shrug, deciding to just go with what he'd thought about mere minutes before.

"I don't seem to care about what happened to my mother, but for some reason, I care a lot about Jake. The idea that Earth is gone hardly bothers me, though I know it should. I get angry easier… no, probably just as easy. It's just that breathing fire on stuff makes it more apparent."

"Do you feel smarter?" she asked as her eyes narrowed.

He snorted. "Hard to say. There are no tests here, and I'm not really interested in mental calculus."

Sandra was quiet as she seemed to ponder something.

"How much fire can you control? Are you able to do more than breathe it?"

"What is this? A job interview?" Mason snapped, suddenly annoyed. "You show me all of that stuff, and now you just wanna talk about if I can throw a fireball?"

"Can you?" Sandra asked, leaning forward.

"I don't know! I've never tried!"

Sandra nodded again, looked around, and pointed at the far wall.

"Try it now. There should be barely enough fire-mana for you to draw in. Clench that muscle in your stomach repeatedly to draw it closer. Than, just focus it into a ball. It should ignite, and make sure you-"

"Are you blood serious?" Mason grunted as he stared at her in disbelief.

"Yes. It's important! Humor me!"

Mason stared at her for a few long moments before shaking his head.

Was he seriously going to try this now? Yes, a tiny voice in his mind whispered before adding that he should have tried before.

Taking a deep voice, Mason flexed the odd muscle. Well, he didn't really think of it as odd anymore. He'd toyed with it while in the desert but never liked what he was doing now.

Within moments he felt his hungry rear back up, and he was just about to stop when he saw tiny specs of burning red ember fly through the ground. It wasn't a lot, but even this was enough to surprise him. As it touched him, he felt it flow through him, and small aches and pains that hadn't registered before soothed.

"Don't just take it in, or you can't use it," Sandra hissed.

Mason shook his head in surprise. "You can see them?" he asked, pointing at a few specs of fire-mana as they drifted towards him.

"No, but you seemed to unwind, which usually happens. Just try to draw it but don't absorb it into your body. That only works if you are filled."

Wondering why he was even playing along, Mason clenched his mana-muscle again, and a loud rumble came from his stomach.

"Wait! Stop!" Sandra said as she surged up. "Are you hungry?"

Mason blinked at her, staring to wonder if he should ask her how much she had changed.

"You better believe it! I'm almost starving," he grunted.

"Dammit, you fool," Sandra snapped as she got up. "Why didn't you say so?"

Mason let out a loud laugh. "There we go! I wondered what had happened to you, playing all nice."

"I am nice," Sandra snapped. "When I'm not trying to deal with- Ah, dammit. Nevermind! Just stop. We will continue after you have eaten."

While Mason snorted, wondering who made her the queen, Sandra got up and walked to the balcony.

He wondered what she was going to do when he saw her draw a deep breath.

No, she can't be-

"Bring me enough food for two!" Sandra roared, loud enough that it could wake the dead.

Mason flinched as the sound reverberated back into the room, and he rubbed at the sides of his head. He was hearing ringing sounds, and he was pretty sure he saw a few thin crack lines on the nearby wall.

"Dammit, couldn't you have… I don't know, just gone and get it?" he muttered.

"No," Sandra said as she sat back on the bed, looking at him.

"Is that your ability? Shouting really loud?" Mason continued, opening and closing his maw to try and get the horrible beep from his ears.

"That and a few other things," Sandra said as she sighed again. "Listen. I'm sorry for being so short. It's just… I never expected to see any of you again. Not when I figured out how far we are from where we started."

"Wait! You know where we were before? Where Jake is?"

"Yes and no," Sandra said.

"But didn't you just…" Mason stopped, his voice trailing off as he saw her shake her head.

"We are too far away, and even if we weren't, I'm pretty sure Jake won't be there anymore."

Mason clenched his jaw to stop himself from shouting questions. He grunted, a trickle of steam rising from his nostrils before he managed to calm down.

"Why wouldn't he be there?" he snarled. Fine, perhaps not that calm.

Sandra stared back at him, and he suddenly realized that there were tiny sparks of silvery light that moved through the black of her pupils.

"You haven't noticed it yet?" she asked before shaking her head. "Never mind, I can see you have no idea what I'm talking about."

Mason rose and glared at her. He had had enough of this.

"Why don't-"

"What do you think happened in the murals?" Sandra snapped.

Mason blinked, then shook his head, trying to recall what he'd wanted to shout at her. His mind felt foggy, and his hunger was growing increasingly hard to ignore.

"The murals," Sandra asked. "What do you think they mean?"

"It seems obvious," Mason muttered as he slowly lay back down.

I need to calm down… but that bloody hunger! And she's being-

He cut the line of thinking short. What had she asked?

"Well, if I believe everything that's on them, it means that the other, and apparently larger part of humanity, got moved here way before us. Like three thousand years or more. And they had an even worse time than we had…" Mason said as he went through the image and text in his head.

"And apparently they wiped out all of those fantasy races, like dwarfs and elves and stuff."

Mason shook his head, about to continue, when he smelled something sweet and spicy. His head snapped up just as wingbeats came closer. A massive shadow appeared at the entrance as a large dark gray and brown dragon landed. It was carrying a-

"Basket?" Mason snapped as he moved closer to the drool-inducing scent wafting from the basket.

"Queen Sandra," the dragon said as he put the basket down and bent his head in greeting. He took a quick look at Mason before turning around and jumping back out.

"Queen Sandra," Mason muttered as he almost ran to the basket. It was almost the size of his chest, with two handles sized for dragon claws on each side. The top opened up, and inside he saw two chunks of steaming flesh, pale fat running through it like marble.

With drool running across his lips, Mason grabbed one and bit inside. A delicious heat permeated his mouth, and his mind went blank.

–

"Mason… half of that was mine!"

Mason looked up, his mouth filled with hot, greasy meat, realizing the basket was almost empty, except for a few slivers and a few thick bones. Staring at his hands, he saw they were covered in grease and blood. He swallowed the last meat slowly, relishing it as it disappeared into his stomach.

"Right," he muttered, stepping back and licking his claws clean.

"That's disgusting," Sandra snapped. "Whatever… and let me guess. You didn't hear anything of what it just told you?"

Mason cocked his head, thinking back and trying to recall what had just happened. All he could come up with was eating something that was both hot and spicy and seemed made exactly as he liked it.

"Nope," he finally said.

He felt much, much better with his stomach full. The nagging anger and annoyance were almost completely gone, even when he thought about what he'd seen on the murals.

Sandra let out a weary sigh, but as he looked at her, he saw a slight grin and a sparkle in her eyes.

"So… you were saying?" he asked, grinning back.

"Ugh. Fine. Remember how you said you weren't sure you could believe those murals? Well, I just told you that most of the information on it seem roughly correct. There are thousands of books in the library, many diaries written by the different dragons that were here. Some have far more detail, and although there are some inconsistencies compared to the murals, most confirm what you just read."

Mason walked to the bed. "Move over. I wanna sit," he said.

Sandra's eyes widened, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to disagree. Then she just sighed and moved a bit to the edge, leaving a little less than half of the stone bed to him.

He climbed up, then lay down, staring at her.

"Any idea when that last mural was made?" he asked. "That would give us a rough estimate of how much time has passed."

"According to Midnight, at least a thousand years have passed since Harim died," Sandra replied, staring at him.

"Harim?"

"The dragon that made the murals. He was a massive gray and brown dragon with a very strong regeneration rate. We think that this might be why the sleep came to him at such a late time," Sandra replied.

"So, how old is Midnight?" Mason asked as he tried to sort his thoughts.

"He isn't sure, but probably fifteen hundred years old. He is already starting to sleep longer, though his body is still strong."

"Great… So when we get old, we are going to die by sleeping? Doesn't sound too bad."

"You are assuming we live that long. Remember that big monster flying above us?"

Mason shuddered as he looked up at the ceiling.

"Right. That guy… So, how did the hound find this place in the first place?" Mason asked, realizing there was nothing about that on the murals.

"We don't know, but Midnight says he appeared four hundred years ago. A massive army of Kobolds chased after him while he rampaged along the coast, laying to waste dozens of towns and two major cities. Midnight says the empire's mages somehow managed to fend him off, but we think that's because he is wounded."

Mason thought back to the massive dragon, trying to recall what he'd seen. It didn't take much effort, as the image seemed burned on his face. Pale eyes with a red glow and dark gray scales that seemed covered in dust. Whole sections of its hide seemed to have missing scales, exposing necrotic rotting flesh, while the corner of one of its wings had been missing.

Weird how well I can remember that, Mason thought before nodding to Sandra, who was quietly waiting.

"Yeah, when I saw it, it was covered in what looked like old wounds that hadn't healed. Really? It looked like half a-"

"Zombie. Yeah," Sandra said as she nodded her head. "I wasn't sure, and with nobody here knowing anything about undead… Didn't you tell me you saw a zombie back on Earth?"

Mason wanted to whistle as he remembered Jake and his small adventure in the hospital. It seemed so long ago now. "Yeah, a normal one, though."

"Right. A normal zombie," Sandra said sarcastically. "I think it might have something to do with that soul-sickness the Antraci told us about."

With his stomach filled again, Mason felt his mind run along smoothly, connecting the dots, and he huffed. "You think that The Hound is soul-sick? Perhaps even creating more?"

"It makes sense, right?" Sandra said. "That thing is way older than any other dragon."

"Yeah, but didn't he talk before?"

Sandra shrugged. "Perhaps it happened after? It's hard to find any information about the second war. Just what is here. The Kobolds call it the Great Betrayal and have spun all kinds of weird tales around it involving dragons. As you read before, they seriously hate us by now and blame anything on us."

"Yeah… they didn't seem to like me much when I saw them," Mason said with a shrug.

"They what?" Sandra snapped, rising half upright. "The kobolds saw you?"

"Don't act all prissy," Mason said with a shrug. "It was way before we came here. At the edge of the desert. Besides! I didn't kill them, and-"

Sandra jumped up and began passing through the room with a head like thunder.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she growled. "That means they are going to send even more of their armies here to find us!"

"Yeah… and?" Mason asked, unsure what she was afraid of. He had seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of dragons here. What were a few kobold armies going to do?"

"And? And? They have bloody mages! Weren't you listening?"

Right, she did say that Mason thought as he frowned. Still...

"Strong mages?" he asked slowly.

"Mason. They are mages that can hold back The Hound. What do you think?" Sandra asked before continuing her stomping around.

"Can't we find another place to hide?" Mason asked as he thought about the massive size of the continent.

"Maybe… but we haven't had time to scout the whole continent," Sandra grunted. "I've only been in command for a month now, and-"

"And how did you do that, exactly?" Mason asked.

Sandra stopped and turned back to him, shrugging.

"They think I can lay eggs."

–

Jake leaned to the side of the column, holding himself in place with his hind claws. The table before him was covered by plates with different types of fish, shellfish, and colorful-looking coral.

"That will be three Taznir stones," said a young blue and purple dragon with pink eyes. She was staring at him, and if he had been back on Earth, he was afraid she would have asked for his autograph.

"Three? Ugh…” Emma said before taking three small, beautiful orange gems from a bag she had slung across the shoulder. It rested on her side and reminded Jake of a fanny pack. He grinned again as he thought about that. He couldn't wait to show Mason… Dragon's with fanny packs?

"Thank you," the purple and blue dragon waitress said, taking one more look at him before turning away.

"What were those?" Jake asked.

Emma's sad, wistful look lasted for a few more moments before she sighed and turned to him.

"Taznir stones are what people here use for currency. You can earn some in school if you manage to do something above what they expect, but mostly I got mine from working in the city," she said.

"There's just one sort?" Jake asked, recalling they had all been the same, peach-sized shape.

"No, there are bigger ones, but those are used for different things," Emma said as she took a small bit of flesh, chewing on it with what looked like relish. "Their value is determined by the energy in them. Mine were mostly almost empty, which makes them the lowest in value."

Jake nodded as he took a slice of flesh with tiny bits of what looked like vegetables over it and some type of sauce. It tasted, unlike anything he had ever had before, the structure like a combination of fish and soft fruit. It was also probably one of the best things he had ever had.

He quickly grabbed another slice, noting Emma's worried look.

"What's wrong?" he asked, holding back from eating the bite.

"If you eat too much too fast, you can go feral," she said. "It's normal to eat slowly."

Jake blinked, stared at his hand, and finally took another bite.

"So, what have you been doing here besides going to school and earning Taznir stones?" he asked.

Emma's eyes began glittering as she looked at him. "I was trying to get enough currency for my own room! I have to share the one in school with a few others, and it's really annoying. Did you know some dragons snore? It's really loud!"

Jake grinned as he looked around the rest of the restaurant. The entire side was open, showing a beautiful view of the city, while dozens of pillars stood near the walls. Dozens of perches, almost like those meant for birds, sat everywhere, and as he watched, he noticed that none sat exactly below or above another, creating a nice spiraling effect. A lot of other dragons, most smaller than him, were perched around, eating and chatting with each other.

"It almost looks like…" Jake whispered before holding back.

Emma froze, staring at him with wide eyes. He realized she'd been talking non-stop, mostly about other dragons, areas of the city that had good but cheap rooms, and which jobs paid a lot.

"I don't remember much about it anymore," Emma whispered sadly.

Jake saw her eyes had turned distant, and her lips were drawn across her teeth tightly.

"I remember mum…" she whispered. "Before she died."

Jake froze, staring at her quietly. She'd never spoken about her mother, just some hints here and there.

"It's weird," Emma whispered. "Before, I could never talk about her without getting so angry and sad. And now?" She shook her head, looking up with a sad smirk. "Now I remember her as if she wasn't my mother… as if she was just some sad lady that got shot in the middle of the street during a robbery."

"That's horrible," Jake said, and he put his clawed hand over her smaller one. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Emma shrugged, took another bit of fish, and nibbled on it. "Sure. I guess. Mom had me when she was really young, but unlike what everyone thought, she didn't crash and burn. I heard those stories… but she had a good job. Something with numbers, I don't remember."

Jake sighed as he saw Emma's face drawn out in a frown as she seemed to try and recall.

"It's fine. I'd probably not know what it is she did anyway," he said softly. "So, she was a good mother?"

"Yes!" Emma said, and this time there was some fire in her eyes. "She took really good care of me! I didn't… didn't know that then. But after she got shot, I had to go into the foster system. I heard from the others and from.." she shook her head. "It's hard to remember. So many things are fuzzy. I know really bad things happened, but when I mingled, the other.. I took her memories, and we left mine behind."

Emma frowned as she took another bit of fish, chomping on it harshly.

Jake shivered. Had she left her memories behind?

She changed more than I did, he thought, suddenly worrying again. What if Mason had gone through a change this serious? What if he didn't remember him? Was that why none of the others came back? Maybe Sandra and Willson didn't remember?"

"I don't remember her name. I don't remember her face. Just her voice… soft and gentle," Emma said, almost seeming as an answer to his fears.

Before he could say anything, Emma looked up at him. "Do you remember?"

Jake sighed and nodded.

"Tell me about it?" Emma said as she leaned forward, her eyes glistening. "About Earth and your family?"

"Alright," Jake said.

"I would prefer you didn't do that here," a soft voice came.

Jake turned around, his scales itching as he searched for the voice. It took him a few seconds to find a nearly black dragon leaning against the pillar behind and above him. It was bigger than he was, and its dark eyes gleamed with a silvery light. Meeting Jake's gaze, the dragon leaned forward and fell towards their perch, causing Jake to be ready himself. His mind grew cold instantly as water mana around him solidified to white eyes, which rushed into him.

The black dragon landed beside him and raised a scaly eyebrow.

"No need to get all anxious," he said. "I'm Zendrin. Lady Talia asked me to keep an eye on you."

Jake slowly became less tense as he saw the dragon make no motion to attack. Emma seemed calm, not showing any fear, just a mild surprise.

"Why don't you finish your meal? For one like you, that shouldn't take too long," Zendrin said.

"After that, I'll bring you to meet Lady Talia."