I pause to rest my wings and get my heart rate down. This gives me the time to drop the bass out of the tantrum and transition to a calmer mindset.
It’ll all be okay.
Tanza, yes, she’s a beautiful and kind princess, but my ‘romance’ with her?
That’s like the 1999 Glastonbury Festival all over again. Tiff and I were on the outs at the time, so when I met Reese? I got so lost in her energy! Dancing to the Chemical Brothers, making out during Blondie, arguing while Paul Oakenfold spun—it was like we lived through the ups and downs of an entire relationship over the course of the festival’s three days. But once the festival ended? The connection, like vapor, vanished.
Once I was back in the States, we never even exchanged emails.
The difference with Tanza is that the kiss hadn’t been the important part. True, the attraction had helped reignite my heart, but what had truly mattered was her saving me from drowning. Her kindness during my struggles. I’d run from the potential lover, but in doing so, I’d cut myself off from the actual friend. And more than that… I’d ditched her when she’d genuinely needed my help.
I have to go back.
That Baron Absolobin character who’d tried to kidnap her? He’d try again, for sure!
I focus on my mental image of the topaz pendant and use it as a beacon to find my way back. There’s no time to waste!
I tear through the atmosphere and am guided by the pendant’s psychic pull towards the castle, but I smell it before I see it. An acrid burning smell, chemical and toxic.
What’s going on?
I’d been too focused to notice it before, but as I look again, I can see that the castle…
Oily black smoke rises from the tall blue spires and fills the air around me.
I charge in closer, and it’s apparent how wrong things are.
Before the castle had been a song woven from opulence, love, and splendor. Now that music had been obliterated.
The motionless bodies of guards litter the ground of the parapet. Broken spears and blaster rifles next to them.
Holes have been blasted into the sides of the towers.
Whole walls have been ripped from the side of the castle.
The drawbridge hangs from a single chain, still tethered to the gate; it drifts in the sea.
An eerie silence fills the air. The only sound is the rhythmic clang of the drawbridge as it knocks against the castle wall.
I drop down onto the familiar parapet, quickly change into human form, and check the fallen guards. I choke back a sob as I realize—they’re dead! Bodies already cold.
This can’t be happening… This was never what I signed up for when I started my astral travel… I’d just wanted to dance again, to live inside the music for an hour here and there, as a break from my study. Sure, I might knock around a few dark souls here and there, but that’s just another part of the party—more fun than fight.
These guards? The horror etched on their faces, the wounds burned into their bodies—those weren’t theoretical or even some kind of existential bad acid trip; they were real. Real death. Real loss.
The grimness would be overpowering if not for one thing… Tanza! Where’s Tanza?
I enter the hallway and see the guard captain who’d greeted me earlier. His ornate uniform has been ripped open by blades and scorched black from blaster fire. I kneel down to check for a pulse, but there’s none.
He’d been so formal and stiff that I’d treated him as a bit of a joke at the time… The realization is a slap in the face. These are real lives that have been lost! And I could have saved them if I’d been here!
How do I even process that?
I’d been so lost in my own loss that I’d turned off all music except for dusty old ballads. But now I needed music, not as a triumphant return to dance after a period of rediscovery, but as something to ground me amidst the tragedy, and to help me focus on finding the princess. Music helps me turn off worries and do, and right now I can’t think—I’ve just got to do!
I don’t have time to find the right track, I just hit shuffle on a playlist and Sasha’s “Xpander (edit)” comes out. The wash of synths, the snap of the bass drum—it’s what I need to get back in gear. I put the track on repeat and get to it.
There’ll be time for recriminations and horror later, right now, I can’t waste another second!
Where would the princess be? I tear through the castle hallways, but they’re an endless maze. If only I could find someone alive who could help me navigate… But there’s no one alive here.
Servants, guards, friends; the attackers had cut them all down with equal abandon.
The plucked synth melody draws me back from losing myself to further despair.
I look more closely, past the bodies, and notice that the walls have been stripped of art, and the ornamental gems torn from frames and mirrors.
After what feels like an eternity of searching, things start to look a little more familiar. I’m near where the banquet had been held! The royal family’s room might be nearby; they probably wouldn’t want long walks to dinner.
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I turn left and find a hallway in even greater disarray than the others. The smell in the air is thick and sulfurous. My every sense screamed at me to get out of there, but I held firm.
And the damage here… It’s not just blades and blasts that caused this. They’re ragged and vicious, like the claw marks of some ravenous beasts!
Monsters?! I suppose if I can be a dragon… I press pause on the music, suddenly needing to be alert to every sound. It’s silent for now, but I steel myself in case I need to transform suddenly.
I’m not sure how that would work, between the high ceilings and wide halls, I could fit, but my wings would be constrained… Well, I could worry about that if the need arises.
Nearby, twin doors wrenched from their hinges lay on the floor next to a large entryway. I carefully walk through the archway into the wreckage of what used to be a bedchamber.
Then I hear it! A little whimper comes from a fallen armoire. Someone’s there!
I tear the doors off, and there, huddling trembling in a pile of luxurious gowns, is Miss Gloria Porta! She’s alive!
It’d been ten minutes since Gloria burst out of the dresser and into my arms. I know that feeling—the adrenaline crash after a disaster, where your body forgets how to be still.
“It’ll be okay,” I repeat over and over, a mantra to help her through the worst of it. They’re the same cliche yet honest words Dad used to whisper to me every night.
My words break the dam. Her whimpers crest into sobs, then crash into powerful howls of loss.
“It’ll be okay, Gloria. You’re safe now. You’re safe,” I assure her, hoping that it’s the truth. The fact that nothing’s attacked me goes a long way to convincing me it is.
“I-it was… It was terrible,” and her words break off into another round of sobs. As anxious as I am to know what’s happened to the princess, I don’t want to rush her. I stroke her hair gently and wipe tears from her eyes.
Eventually, she starts talking, and this time the words pour out one after another in the cold voice of a police responder. I knew that feeling too, the separation of your mind from body from heart—compartmentalizing to get through the worst of it.
“They came the morning after you left. We were at a loss about where you could have gone, but once the ships showed up, they took over all conversation. So many of them on the horizon, and none of us knew what they were here for; we hadn’t seen a fleet of that size for many years. I was doing the Princess’s hair when the castle shook. I was thrown off my feet, and she fell to the floor. I remember thinking how helpless she looked. I’d never thought that before. We had no idea what was happening, but Princess Tanza, her shock didn’t last long. She ordered me to join her in the safe room.”
“A safe room?” I ask, my spirits buoyed that there might be a real chance of survival.
“It’s where the royal family and their attendants are meant to go if anything bad happens. Well, I ran with her, but th-then…” Her voice cracks, the ‘police responder’ mask crumbling under the memory. “Raiders. Wearing black armor, terrifying like demons… They started firing a-and… so many people… I’d never even seen a dead body before…” Her eyes, so full of mischief and life the last time I’d seen them, are now shattered and hopeless. A part of me mourned her loss, even as I’m speaking to her
“The Princess? Did they take her?” I ask.
“I don’t know… We got separated, and I didn’t, I didn’t see. I’m so sorry, I failed,” she says as a fresh wave of crying washes over her.
“They didn’t get her,” a new voice cuts through the air. I look over and see Tanza! She stands in the doorway, wearing torn clothes and holding a large laser blaster.
“Princess!” Gloria shouts as she rushes over to the tall woman. As much as it should give me a boost seeing her, all I feel is guilt.
“I-I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” I start, but the Princess cuts me off with a sharp glare—her red eyes burning with a righteous fire.
“Save your apologies,” she orders. “This is about so much more than your disappearance.”
I nod mutely. She was right, there’s too much going on to make this about me.
“What is it about? What’s going on anyways?”
“The Baron… Over the past year, his jealousy and greed have eaten him alive… I’d never have thought him capable, but he must have signed a pact, because Hellhounds joined the raiders. Only a demon can summon those,” she says with a sigh. “It’s terrible. And the fleet? I thought he was just greedy for their gems, but the fleet alone would have cost more than he’ll make. What’s he after?”
“Did he—? Are they—?” I don’t quite know how to ask it, but Tanza gets what I’m implying.
“They were captured, not killed. They must be on his island.”
“Tell me where it is, and I’ll go,” I say.
“No, we’ll go!” she insists. “I’ve broken in dolphins from the North Seas; riding a dragon shouldn’t be any more difficult than that.”
“Huh? You want to ride me like a horse?” The idea shocks me, but I guess it’s not that absurd, given my current reality. “You want a mount? You got one. Lead the way, and we’ll take down this fucker!”