Darkbeam Part I

Chapter 4

I used to get an overwhelming nauseated feeling whenever I entered my dorm.

I’d recently moved up to the seventh floor. Lucian had demanded it. He’d ordered Master Longwei and the rest of the board to make the room change the minute he set foot on Dragonia Academy soil. He wanted me to be his roommate. Wanted me close.

Yay me.

It was hard to get used to at first. Most of the time, I wasn’t okay being that close to him. His light. I doubted I would ever get used to it.

The one good thing from my failed claiming was that I could breathe in my room for this first time in ages. My stomach didn’t churn, and I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up my organs.

I’d just returned from View Top Mountain. I had to check and see if the trees I’d planted were taking root.

I needed a shower. It was where I could think, where I could be myself, and where I drowned out its voice. Most of the time.

Today was different, though. I struggled to calm down. Knowing what the beast was after this time... It was insane.

She was three hundred years old. She would probably just laugh in my face if I tried anything.

“Dude,” I spoke to myself softly in the mirror. “C’mon. Focus.”

It had been going on like this the entire f*****g day. I couldn’t stop thinking about Irene. She was what the beast wanted now. Given enough time, I would soon see things its way.

I took my shirt off and turned on the faucet. I crawled out of the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower.

Water cascaded over my head and bare back. It felt warm, but it wasn’t. My body ran exceptionally hot; cold showers were the key to regulating my temperature.

My snow ability hadn’t manifested yet. I don’t know when it would.

The only abilities that had shown themselves were my lightning, fire, acid, and a tiny bit of healing. It was the weakest one of them all.

Constance, my mother’s identical twin, was the Academy doctor. She predicted that gas would be next.

But it wasn’t mine just yet.

My throat felt thick and sore. At times it felt as if I was breathing fire. But I wasn’t. My fire wasn’t like the Sun-Blast or Fire-Tail’s flame. When my fire touched living things, they died. It was like a disease; it spread and didn’t stop. No cure. No hope to survive. The only thing it targets could do was turn into piles of ash.

When I first received the ability, I struggled to control it. Whenever I sneezed, flames would shoot out of my throat. It had felt as if I swallowed lava on a daily basis.

I had that same burning feeling in my throat, now. The gas. It was like chloroform. People who weren’t immune to it would suffocate and die.

It had a green shine to it. When contained or if it was trapped in a room it actually formed a thick green smoky substance.

It was the only ability that could cause this sort of pain within me.

The snow had other qualities; I couldn’t wait for it to show itself. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel this hot on a daily basis.

A longing crept into my soul. It was starting to suffocate me.

Without Lucian my room was too quiet. I didn’t want to think about him. I pushed him to the back of my mind.

I had the urge to stretch my wings and feel the wind in my face. I had to get out of here. If only for a few hours.

I got out of the shower, didn’t even properly dry myself, and opened the window. I stepped onto the ledge and leaped into the night.

The pull always came first. Like a shift in personality, anatomy, and DNA, all together. Whatever kept me human was shoved back, and the dragon moved into place. It didn’t hurt like it had the first time I transformed into my human form and back to my dragon self.

It was now just a pull.

Then the crackling of bones. The rip was next. The flesh didn’t really tear; it just morphed and stretched until it took the form of scales and wings.

The entire world shifted from big to actually kind of small in less than five seconds.

My dragon lungs opened and I breathed in the fresh air. For a second, everything was good.

“Kiiiillllllll.”

My nightmare just started.

I usually didn’t remember what I did when I was in my dragon from. But lately I’d been aware of a lot of things while the scales were still out.

The beast was letting me see more. As if I needed to see more. I didn’t know how this worked. A part of me wanted the beast; another hated who I was when it came out.

But right now, I felt free. So alive. My need for darkness and evil, my need for blood, drove me forward.

I didn’t care anymore. My conscience was switched off. I had my needs and they needed to be fulfilled.

All I knew, the way I felt in this moment was one reason I hated shifting into a dragon.

The Dragonians had a great way of explaining us. Our human sides and dragon sides. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

We weren’t exactly like the literary characters they referred to us as, but it was pretty close.

I was now Mr. Hyde. I liked the control, liked to make havoc, liked to take what wasn’t mine, liked all things dangerous and evil, and just being free… If that meant Hyde must come out to play, then so be it.

Dr. Jekyll was long gone.

Still, that analogy wasn’t spot-on. Dr. Jekyll was still in the same room; he just didn’t care. Or maybe he was equally evil. I didn’t know which theory was true, and at this moment, I really didn’t care.

I was the beast, whether I wanted it or not. I did love everything I was and everything I did when in dragon form.

The switch that connected my moral soul to my conscious self was off. And nothing could switch it back on. Not until the human shifted back.

I knew what would happen when the human returned. Everything I was going to do tonight would hit me full in the face and I would drown in a pool of guilt, regret, and emotions. Or as the beast liked to call it, weakness.

Morality would come back, right and wrong, all the basic crap of life and the regret over what I was about to do. Knowing this was never enough for me to control my behavior as a dragon.

That was why I started mentally separating the human from the beast. Sure, it wasn’t healthy, referring to my true self as a separate entity. But it was the only way to deal with my s**t whenever I was in human form, the weaker form.

A part of me wanted to stay in this form forever. Another, well, it didn't matter which form I was in. I still loved my family. I didn’t want my mother to lose the last bit of hope she had left.

My father? I gave up on him the day he gave up on us. Ever since his rider’s death he hadn’t been the same man. It was like all life left him, like part of him died with the king. He was dark, and he had taken it out on his family one too many times.

I was done pretending he was still the dragon he used to be. So I didn’t pretend anymore.

My thoughts sometimes wandered back to the night everything changed.

How did my father escape? Did King Albert force him to leave, or did he flee like a coward?

I doubted the latter. My father was many things, scaly and deceitful among them, but he was no coward. He’d loved King Albert. He would’ve done anything for his rider, even died.

Thoughts of my father aside, if it weren’t for my mother, I would’ve given up a long time ago. Her love and fervent belief in my redemption was what made me keep fighting.

Plus my sister’s kindness and big heart. I hadn’t seen her in such a long time.

My family made me want to fight, made me want to be good.

The glint of a knife caught my eyes. The moon gleamed on Baldarian steel, and it blinded me for a microsecond. Even though the blade was miles and miles below me, my vision was sharp.

Two people on a pier extending over a lake.

They were fighting.

One was stronger than the other. They were quarreling about some moral standard that had gone s**t-ways.

I started to rejoice as I saw the first stab. Blood pooled onto the ground. The weaker one cried for help. The one with the knife clamped his hand tightly over his mouth.

The loser’s arms waved vigorously, in and out, in and out. He was still fighting, trying to block every blow but eventually couldn’t fend off the attacks anymore.

His arm fell limply on the pier.

The thud vibrated through my bones, even at such a great distance. My hearing was just as perfect as my vision.

The other, still gripping the bloody knife, dropped the corpse of his vanquished enemy into the water. He threw in the knife afterward.

I finally darted down to the docks.

A voice from deep inside begged me to stop one last time. But my conscience was gone.

Game on.

Kiiiillllllll.