The week is a blur. Lilly gave us the run-down on her freedom to join us, Olly and I sparred regularly after my tasks were done, and all through the days, I feel a wariness growing inside me. I’ve been waiting for the question to come up, especially now that Lilly is here, but gratefully it had not yet been asked. Until today.

  We’re sitting around the table eating a hearty breakfast—Olly had brought down an elk this morning, so we’re eating fresh meat alongside my usual fare. He used the ability he’d gained from the local thorny flowers to bring the creature down -- a fact that made me feel a little bit queasy. I’ve been nicked by the things in the past and each time has been a terrible experience of soreness, overtightened muscles, and full-body pain -- even through my scales! But after a thorough inspection, I find no traces of either the crystal or poison essence the plant is known for, so I acquiesced and went ahead with cooking in earnest.

  Olly's settled into a method of eating that I’ve been trying my very best to not show displeasure at. He eats about half of any food normally, and then slowly and methodically picks up pieces in his right hand to absorb them. He’s claimed that using one or the other leaves him feeling out of sorts. All absorption filled him up, but felt distinctly unsatisfying despite having far greater tangible benefits. On the other hand, exclusively eating normally left him feeling lethargic and vaguely sick: doubly so if he happened to have been practicing with his newfound “access” to magic. Increasingly I’m wondering just how his arm processes what he eats into such complex forms of essence so easily, but no amount of reading by either of us has turned up any information. It’s been a frustrating dead end for me. Olly, on the other hand, has been reading a new book from my collection every handful of hours -- he consumes them at a rate that is absolutely incredible, and seems to retain them with an eidetic level of recall.

  Meanwhile, Lilly is sitting on a little chair I carved out of a cork years ago, and making constant small adjustments to everything within reach. A pinch of conjured salt here, a thickening agent there. Once she’s satisfied with the perfection of the meal, she drags over a sweet biscuit with honey drizzled atop it to her chair and starts to delicately rip off pieces and eat them -- delicately in the sense that she manages to keep looking delicate, not that she’s not tearing into the biscuit like a feral monster. After the effort of using her magic to improve the food, she looks exhausted, but it doesn’t slow the assault in the slightest.

  I, however, am just idly moving my food around my plate, having finished the meat and now feeling that the rest of everything looks unappetizing. Lilly speaks up, “So, when do we leave? Not that I mind being here and just having fun every day, but I think we should probably start the adventure soon. Olly has learned about all he can from everything around here, I think. And we're definitely not going to rekindle his memories sitting in a forest. ”

  Looking over at him, he’s looking down at a spare journal that he’s been writing in compulsively. I’ve taken a peek periodically, and it’s plain as day that Olly is definitely right-handed… He’s been making notes for every bit of information he gleans when absorbing things, how satiating each of them were in various quantities, what spell effects each could replicate, and myriad smaller details as they struck him. The process looks more than a little awkward, since he can’t ever hold the journal and a pen at the same time. I don’t know if he was much of a journaler before this happened, but he’s definitely taken to it well, and he’s been happier since he started. That alone made it well worth the “loss” of one of the birthday journals Lilly had given me in years past. “That the case, Olly? Starting to get antsy?” I follow a little too quickly, “But I would rather not rush you. If we need to spend another few days, we can.”

  He looks up from the journal, peering over its top at me. “I can say confidently at this point that I’ve written down everything I could think of or find, alongside you both filling in more out-there blanks like the well, what a shrine is, among others.” He places the pen down as he idly sticks one finger from his right hand into a jug of water. I struggle not to shudder as I watch it be drained of everything that makes it…what it is, leaving behind that featureless white powder which he’ll eventually go rinse out. “I am really curious about those deeds. You said one is for a nearby city, and the other could be anywhere. At the very least, I couldn’t find the name of the place in any of your books. I’m hoping if we can get to the nearer one, maybe that’ll help me glean some information about myself—owning land doesn’t seem like a small thing.”

  I feel my heart drop, “Yeah, you’re right. Then let’s set a day for it. Two days from now?” I offer, somewhat hopefully.

  “Why do you want to wait so long, Ayre? It’s not like two more days is going to change anything around here. Everything’s been the same for like twenty years! Two more days won’t affect that.” Lilly indignantly retorts. She’s been growing more and more impatient over the course of the week. I’ve really never seen her so stir-crazy before. But I suppose now that she’s been granted freedom, she really wants to exercise it.

  Olly raises a hand, “I’m in no rush, really. If Ayre wants a couple of days, she can have a couple of days. I’m already taking so much from you, I don’t feel right trying to make you move any faster than you’re comfortable with.” He shrugs, “Besides, maybe we should smoke the rest of this meat for the road? That’ll take a day or two.” He gives me a smile.

  Feeling great relief, I thank Olly for his understanding and apologize to Lil for the delay. “I’m going to go tend to the shrine. You both finish eating, I’ll clean up when I’m back.” I give a little wave and head out the now-properly-reinstalled door, shutting it softly behind me, and head around the cabin to the cave mouth nearby and my tool rack. On lifting the lantern from it, I realize I’m effectively out of oil—down to the dregs at best. “I… I can go without it for today. I’ll keep the last of the oil for the…last day. I’ll just use my eyes this time. Not a problem.” I take a couple of steps into the oppressive darkness. My eyes rapidly adjust, leaving the world drawn in stark red and black hues. An elemental serpent’s dark vision is typically colored by their elemental affinities—with mine being fire. Firesight, as my Ma called it, lets us see by the ambient Ignia in the dark. It usually provides enough illumination to work by, depending on how much Ignia is around. Most days, the cave is about as bright as a night with one of the full moons in the sky, but I lose some detail and depth perception with the shift.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Once I cross the actual threshold and am far enough in to no longer see the cave mouth, I come to a stop and close my eyes. Standing there for a little bit, I draw in deep breaths that steadily become more shallow with each passing moment. “Make light. You can. Fire and air, equal mixture, light. Just… Call fire. It’s easy. You just have to do it.” I hesitate, caught between an inhale and an exhalation, sitting in that inbetween space that feels almost like drowning. “Just call fire! It’s in your blood! Fire!” I feel just as well as hear my own voice in the back of my head, but when I try to inhale, to shape my Breath, all I can call for is air essence. As always, my fire fails to spark.

  I let out a shuddering breath before forcing myself to walk onwards, counting my steps in the dark with eyes shut, something I’ve done over the years when torches or lantern oil runs low. My heels clack against the stone with every step, filling the space with a constant patter of marching steps. Even, consistent, but always building until I eventually come to a stop, with each of my echoes following suit moments after, coming to pay their respects alongside me all of these years later.

  With great reluctance, I force my eyes open, readying for the worst part of coming down here in the dark. The moment they crack open, I start to see red. Guttering red. Angry red. Like molten…copper. Opening my eyes the rest of the way, I see the cave, bathed in Ignia. It is almost blinding as it pours through my parents' personal sparks into the space, making the cave take on the appearance of a molten cavern in my mind. The essence itself fountains out from two locations in a deluge. Directly in front of me, where the remnants of my Pa’s scales remain forever molded into the floor, and off about twenty-five feet behind me and to the left, where my Ma’s final Breath remains.

  Two gates from old dragons, one of the main reasons that our kind have made themselves so scarce in the world alongside other elementals -- Hydras, Lungs, Leviathans, Phoenices and countless others. Any capable warrior who felled one of our kind would surely have taken these Gates for themselves. But that thing with the hateful purple eyes prevented its followers from doing so, all while staring at me in the alcove. I never understood why, but over long years I’ve come to assume it was just an act of malice. Leaving me with a permanent reminder of what happened here. It was a cruel thing, so it makes as much sense as anything.

  I kneel before the standing stones, trying to shut out the sounds of burning, the sounds of melting and dripping that haunt me here and in my dreams so often. Clasping my trembling hands before me, I speak aloud, “Ma, Pa, I’ll be leaving soon.” The words hurt to say out loud, adding some weight to the decision that until now, I’d not spoken. “I’ve found someone who needs my help, and Lilly is adamant to come along as well. I’ll be safe, I think. I hope…” I open my eyes to look at the stones bathed in firelight and see the copper glints in the corner of my vision. I snap my eyes shut again, drowning out the fire by clenching them shut as hard as I can, “But… I’m afraid. If I leave you here, with your Breaths untended, what will happen? Anyone could wander in, following the source of power and just take you, take what I have left of you, and I would never know.” I feel dampness at the corner of my eyes and try to will it away, “I could stay and let Lilly and Olly go alone. They’d do well together, I think.”

  I wait, holding out for a response I know will never come, “What good would I even be? I’m a dragon with no breath! I bring nothing to help them apart from a spear. Between Lilly’s magic and whatever Olly’s got going on, they’re way more capable than me. I’d just drag them down.” The words pour out of me, giving voice to things I’ve been avoiding thinking about for a decade and more. “I’m good for this. I can keep the shrine safe. I can make sure everything is neat and tidy. Orderly,” I fully lose control, letting emotions I’d bottled up for so long finally break free. A flood I’d been stemming with routines. A tide I broke with order. “But I can’t even do that right! I have to fight to stay here. I want to go find those people, that thing and set things right, but I can’t. I’m not good enough!”

  I hear myself all but shouting through tears, totally overwhelmed by everything. “And all of these problems are so petty. Olly has lost everything he’s ever had. Me? I’m struggling to sit still and shine some rocks every few days. It’s ridiculous. But that's all I’m good for…” My voice is coming out ragged, in between coughing sobs. “I just feel so pathetic. I’ve never grown past that day. I’m the same cowardly little girl hiding in a corner watching her family burn.” Each word is a dagger and every syllable twists them and drives them deeper, “I come back here expecting something to change, but it never does—it can’t! The past is the past, but it's always been my now.” I slump forward the rest of the way, placing my scaled forehead against the cold stones and wrapping my wings and tail around me as tightly as I can, trying to be as small as I can. “If I’m small, then it’s not my fault. Nobody can expect someone so small to be strong enough to make a difference. So that’s what I’ll be.” I find myself unable to say anything more out loud, just trying to form coherent thoughts in between now-painful sobs. My lungs burn, my throat feels hot and raw, and I realize that my forehead on the stone floor isn’t cold. It’s hot. I feel like I’m burning up, and I hear the occasional tss tss tss of my tears evaporating.

  The heat building in my core, my vessel, my heart, and lungs is confusing, terrifying. I think back to Pa' being unable to actually loose his breath and sit up, wrenching my eyes open to see the room is…dark. “How can the room possibly be dark? It’s never been devoid of their Breaths. Even before their deaths.” The thought is cut short as I refocus on this building pressure somewhere deep inside of me. I feel it and remember the moments following, grabbing Olly’s hand. “I used the Breath, didn’t I? Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t even realize it…” I try to concentrate on the things I felt then, not the panic, not the memories, but the power. I had been in need, and it came to my call.

  I draw in a breath. The Breath. But it goes nowhere, there’s no Ignia remaining in the room. Looking inside, viewing my vessel through my mind's eye, I see what I’ve always seen, a guttering campfire acting as the representation of my connection to the Breath Divine. Never able to burn bright enough to do anything meaningful. But on either side of it, I see two far smaller, but incandescent flames, poised around the campfire as though resting for the evening. They feel scalding hot, but familiar, comfortable. Their heat washes through me in a moment of connection that I’ve longed for my entire life. I open my eyes and look to where my parents’ fell and see that they’re not there anymore.

  I smile, maybe the first real one in a long time. A serious smile, tasting small bits of ash and brimstone licking between my jagged teeth. I throw my head back, and what begins as a roar is quickly cut short by a sharp exhale. I empty my lungs of years of self-inflicted torture at mindless routines.

  I Breathe for the first time, and the world around me ignites.