It couldn't be.
Fragile Ring of the Intrepid Traveler: When equipped, allows the user to vanish and reappear at any visible location within 30 meters. Costs 5 Mana. 4/4 uses remaining.
"Can I see that?" I asked Sil, holding out my hand.
He carefully dropped it into my palm without showing any concern I might pocket it—a bad idea when you're dealing with a dragon—and I brought it closer to eye level, dismissing the System window and the information it offered. It was nothing more than a distraction at the moment.
Four uses wasn't very much. But the low cost made it very enticing to toy with. I could probably slip it onto my finger and vanish before Sil even knew what happened. But could I take Ophelia with me? And even if I could, how would I get her away from the soldiers that followed alongside the moving wagon?
It was too risky to test right now.
There was something else extraordinary about the item, too, at least based off the description that the System had fed me. This was the first time I'd heard of any magical items being discovered that offered the ability to move through reality in such a way. If it worked the way I assumed it did, then that meant it was similar to the ancient power that my father and the first dragons had used thousands of years ago to flee our dying world.
As far as I knew—as far as any of the imperial historians knew for that matter—we'd lost all knowledge of that power the moment that the portal to our home world had shattered. It and hundreds of thousands of dragons had perished in the blink of an eye. A loss that we'd felt for centuries. One that my father had spent his last thousand years trying to save humanity from.
I peered down at the ring, taking note of the tiny, almost hairline fractures that ran across its surface. They glowed very softly—so softly that I almost didn't notice—and the ring had that worn appearance of something forged long ago.
"You should put that away," I told Sil, offering it back to him. I was tempted to claim it for myself, but given our current predicament, I didn't need Sil turning on me, too. The last thing we needed to do was let that ring fall into the hands of the empire's soldiers.
I watched as he shrugged and the ring vanished from his palm. How had he done that? Was the voice he heard similar to the messages the System provided me? Why had his face shifted the way it had?
Dozens of other questions roared through my mind, each one begging for answers. But I couldn't voice them. Not now. Not in the back of an open wagon, surrounded by enemy soldiers. So I forced them to the back of my thoughts, instead turning my attention back to Ophelia as I spoke again.
"What do you know about that ring?" I kept my voice low as I met Sil's eyes.
"Nothing. The voice doesn't tell me anything about the items that it gives me. Would be nice if it did. This is also the first time that it has given me something like this. Usually it's a sheet of music or something like a tonic."
I cocked my head to the side. "You can't…?" How did one phrase the next part of my question? I could be coy, try to play it off. No, it was best to just be blunt. "I used a skill called [Insight] on it. You can't do something similar?"
"Wait, you can hear the voice, too?" His eyes brightened, like he'd finally found something he'd spent most of his life looking for.
I shook my head, watching that brightness slowly die in his eyes. "No, it's not like that. Mine gives me messages, in a strange window-like thing that only I can see. It's hard to explain."
I waited for him to accuse me of being crazy, despite already admitting that he was the one who could hear voices, but the accusation never came. Instead, he seemed to grow distant again. It was a look that I'd seen many times on the faces of soldiers who had lost comrades in battle and was alone with the weight of the battle pressing down on him.
It was also very strange to see on his perfectly sculpted face. The lack of wrinkles almost made him appear as if he was stone. Trapped in some artist's idea of what perfection must be.
"That ring could very well be part of our escape," I said, hoping the news might perk him back up.
It didn't seem to make much of a difference. He turned away from me slightly, leaning his back against the bars again, his head falling backwards gently so that he was looking up at the wooden roof of the wagon.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"I always knew I was different." His voice was quiet, almost impossible to hear over the sound of the cracking whip, the bellows of the beasts driving the wagon forward, and the wooden wheels as they clambered over the road. "My mother used to tell me I was destined for great things. She believed in fate, you know? Really believed in it."
His eyes fluttered closed as he spoke. Soft music began to flit across the air. My eyes widened and I looked around, worried that someone nearby might hear the sound of the music. But nobody reacted. Was he playing it just for us? The music was something of his doing. I'd come to that conclusion during his ritual move outside of the courtyard.
"What happened to her?"
His shoulders slumped, a half shrug. "She was killed like everyone else I know. Soldiers came in the night, burned the entire town to the ground because we wanted to rule ourselves."
I grimaced. I’d likely been the one to order the execution of his home…
"I'm sorry," I said softly. The words were so quiet I wasn't even sure he heard me.
"But, it doesn't matter. They're gone and I'm here now. That's why I have to keep doing whatever I can. That's why I can't end up locked in a cage like this."
I understood the sentiment. Being caged in any way had to be maddening. I'd been lucky enough to never feel the walls closing in on me in quite that way. Now, though, sitting in the back of the wagon, those iron bars the only thing keeping me from my freedom, I missed the feeling of my wings stretched out in the wind even more than I had before.
I let my own head fall back against the bars, trying not to lose myself in the memories of the wind rushing past my face, the coolness of the clouds brushing across my scales, as the rocking of the wagon lulled me back to sleep.
*** *** ***
I awoke with a start sometime later, after the wagon took a particularly nasty bump that caused Ophelia's head to jostle out of my lap. I managed to catch her before she could smack against the floor, and when I looked closely she still appeared to be breathing.
I let out a long sigh and looked around. The wagon had come to a stop, the soldiers that had been walking with us slowly began to form a circle around it. Smoke rose above the trees nearby.
"I guess we're here," Sil said, standing against the side of the bars.
It was just about impossible to tell exactly where here was. I looked around the place that we'd stopped. There were tall groves of trees all around us, which meant we were likely still in the forests that could be found to the west of the capital.
We'd only been traveling three days or so—probably around four now given the way the first moon was already starting its climb to the peak of the sky—but that still put us a good ways inland from Caelthara. I still wasn't sure why the woman who had taken my place had decided to send us west, but perhaps it had something to do with her plans to move the capital further away from the coast. Or maybe everything I'd read in that room had been a lie meant to send me in the wrong direction.
She'd clearly know we were coming. That was the only thing that made the lack of guards make sense. She'd wanted me there for some reason. And now she wanted me here.
The soldiers finished forming up and then several of them parted as a particularly large man who looked to possibly have some giant blood running through his veins, stepped into the clearing. He crossed the distance with quick, easy strides, his gleaming armor a mirror for the sunlight as it started its descent toward the horizon. He carried a large halberd in one hand, the polearm taller than he was.
Without a word, he stepped up to the back of the wagon and fumbled with the gate, the hinges squealing as he pulled it open with one hand.
"Let's go," he said, his voice gruff, like rocks grating against my eardrums.
Sil was the first to move, following the man's directions as he hopped out of the back of the wagon. I couldn't blame him. Getting out of a cage, even if it meant walking into another one, was at least some form of freedom.
"I'm going to need help with her," I called out to the muscular man when he turned back to me.
His lips shifted into a frown. "She hasn't awakened the whole trip, she's as good as dead. Leave her and come. Now."
His voice deepened even more on the last word of his command, the authority washing across the soldiers that surrounded us. Many of them stood straighter afterward. That meant he was someone of importance to this group—likely a commander or general.
"I won't leave her." I said, channeling my own air of command and authority. I raised my chin high, keeping my gaze glued to his. Unwavering despite the way my heartbeat pounded in my ears, threatening to give my true feelings away.
He stared at me for a long moment before taking a step backward and motioning to two of the soldiers behind him. They rushed forward, clambering into the wagon. They didn't draw their swords. There wasn't much point to that. I had nowhere to go.
The first one to reach me grabbed for my shoulder, his gauntleted fingers clasping tightened, drawing pain out of my shoulder. I tried to pull away, to hold on tightly to Ophelia's body so they couldn't pull me away, but the second soldier reached me and slammed his fist into my face hard enough to make me black out for a breath.
I was already being hauled out of the wagon, Ophelia laying discarded where I'd been cradling her body in my lap, by the time I came to.
"No!" I yelled, trying to push away from them as panic bubbled up in my chest. "Please. Please bring her with us. She's fine. I know she is."
The commander, or general, I still wasn't sure which because his armor didn't have any markings on it, took another look at her and then at me. He shook his head and motioned for another of the soldiers to enter the wagon.
"Take her to the healer's tents and see what they can do." He turned his attention back to me. "Put her with the others. You want your friend helped, then you better do her work, too, while she’s healing up."
The two guards that held me by the arms responded in unison. "Yes, sir, General." Then they dragged me away from the wagon, the soldier carrying Ophelia's unconscious form disappearing from view as they carried me down a path and around a grove of trees..