Dragon Lessons of Magic and Love

Princess Danara Inmar Eilon was looking across the table at the student and teacher as they worked on runes on paper.

Two months have passed since Kit, Rowen and she came across the wounded dragon known as Duchess Xyarra of the Swarden Clan of Black Dragons. For the first week of those months, Rowen and she were busy healing Xyarra. Normal healing spells were inadequate to heal the kinds of injuries she suffered, so Rowen, with Xyarra’s guidance worked out a runic “Restoration” spell.

To apply the standard heavy healing spells would have healed the wounds but left her terribly scarred. There would have been no way that she would have been able to fly again as a dragon. With a restoration spell, as Rowen explained it, it was like turning back the clock to a time before she was burned.

Dana wasn’t sure she understood this, but she thought that she had a gist of what he was saying.

Over the last couple months after they had healed up Xyarra enough she and Rowen were engaged in improving his ability to create items and utilize his rune powers.

Mornings were spent at the table working on runes and diagrams with the large stack of paper that Rowen created, and an interesting device called a pen used to replace a quill and ink.

Dana had decided early on that she wanted to participate in his lessons with Xyarra in order to possibly learn more herself. However, it didn’t take long for her to feel like she was over her head with the level of magic that they were working with.

The routine would be lessons and discussions in the morning then they would go outside after lunch and do practical magic and application of other abilities.

Rowen seemed to be delighted at the progress he was making and the greater ease that he claimed with the guidance from Xyarra.

The only thing that Dana experienced from this time was a growing and burning jealousy of the attention that Rowen and Xyarra were paying each other.

Dana thought to herself, “I’ve never been jealous in my life before. So why now?”

A little over two months ago, when Dana and her adoptive sister Kit first met Rowen, she had very mixed emotions about him.

Yes, she knew that he was destined to be her husband as well as Kit’s, but why does fate have it so. This was not the first time that she felt the weight of prophesy on her shoulders. Sometimes she had averted problems because of her “Gift”, however, more often than not she wasn’t given enough in her visions to avert disaster. Only mitigate it some.

She knew that, per her vision, Rowen will be a kind and loving husband and will do great things. She also knew that the remainder of Kit’s life will be the happiest she’ll ever know.

But the bitter truth is, that the vision also showed her, in its abstract way that Kit will die young and ultimately it will be her loving husband that will kill her.

This was why, at first, she had difficulty opening up her feelings to Rowen, her husband to be. She had experienced watching friends of hers having arranged marriages that were nothing more than a different level of statecraft. This was why she was viewing her marriage to Rowen as nothing more than an arranged marriage by Fate.

So why was she feeling so jealous of the time that Rowen and Xyarra spent improving his craft? Granted, Rowen has been nothing but kind and considerate to her and Kitarra. He has also been responsive to Kit’s affections despite his early reluctance. He also appears to understand that Dana has mixed emotions about their relationship, but he seems patient about her.

Xyarra stood up and stretched her tall, voluptuous body and said, “Time for a break, Row.”

She stood the same height as Rowen. Her body seemed to be shaped perfectly and her skin, now properly healed was near black in color but perfectly smooth and soft.

During the training sessions, she would hang over Rowen with her large busts resting on his shoulders when he was working out a particularly difficult runic problem. Or when he would finally understand a tough lesson, she would grab him and hold his arm and lean into him to express her pleasure with his success.

In the afternoons, Rowen and Xyarra had been working on his creation skills by making him repeatedly create the same complex objects. She appeared to be pushing him to become more efficient at his crafting and creating.

Now he was to the point where he could create five said objects at a time without too much difficulty. The items that he had been creating were golems much like Jade. Over the last two months he has created almost 100 of these golems. They were similar but still different than Jade. They were male for one thing. Second, they stood six foot six and were broadly built to look intimidating. In that time, as one of his exercises he was also duplicating Baldy so that each of these golem troopers would have their mount.

There were also mounts for Dana, Kit, and Xyarra as well.

He created clothes for them, swords, and lances as well.

The week before this, Rowen, with Xyarra’s help, created another kind of weapon for them called a rifle.

To Dana, this weapon looked like a short staff or club with a very thin metal frame and wooden handle and end.

However, Rowen demonstrated the use of this weapon by holding it backwards from what she thought it would be used and working some kind of lever on the bottom of the weapon then looking along the weapon with his eye he pulled something on the bottom of it and there was a loud boom.

The bottle he pointed the weapon at shattered into thousands of pieces.

During these months, Dana had seen Rowen cleaning another weapon much like it but different. Kit had told her about how he used these weapons to kill the Woague.

She was impressed that something like that could kill a Woague at distance.

He tried to explain to her what the process was and she kind of understood that the powder would burn very quickly and push the bullet down the barrel of the weapon and propel it at a very fast speed to the target.

She also remembered the day before, Rowen and Xyarra had a little argument about, as she said, him becoming too dependent on his rifles whereas his runic spells were most assuredly more powerful than those.

Rowen leaned back and pushed himself away from the table, but he looked to be still looking at the runic spell that he had been working on.

Xyarra looked at him and said, “Now, now Row, sometimes you won’t get it until you take a step back.”

He nodded and said, “Right.” And he got up out of his chair.

Dana decided that she wasn’t about to let this newcomer weasel her way into Rowen’s heart without resistance.

So, she said, “Rowen, do you mind if I have a moment alone with you?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Xyarra said, “Alright, I’ll be fixing some of that wonderful sausage that you made for lunch while you two have your intimate time.”

Dana shot Xyarra a poisonous look as she conducted Rowen outside.

Xyarra responded with a pleasant smile and she put her arms out to her sides in a “Come at me” pose.

Once outside Dana and Rowen walked along a bit towards a particularly colorful stand of rocks that had drew Rowen’s attention early when they first got there.

Dana was weighing out what she wanted to say and do to move against Xyarra. She wasn’t sure if she could pull it off because Xyarra had so many advantages in her “human” form. Add to that, she had already established a quasi-relationship with Rowen via the mind bridge or as Rowen called it, telepathy.

She was also sorting out her own feelings during the short walk to the rocks.

Once they arrived at the stand of rocks, there was a natural bench created by a boulder that had fallen over. She sat down and motioned for Rowen to sit next to her.

He sat down and asked, “Okay, what is it?”

She bit her lower lip, a habit she had when she was nervous and then she said, “You and I need to come to an understanding about our relationship.”

He smiled and said, “Yes, I agree. I know that you have been holding back something and you and I haven’t taken any time to sort out our feelings about each other.” He looked her in the eyes and said, “I too have been holding something back. Something that I need to tell both you and Kit.”

She was surprised about how intuitive he was. He always seemed oblivious about some things, but he obviously was aware that she was going through something. She was also intrigued at what it was that he was holding back.

“And what is it that you are holding back my dear?” she asked sweetly.

“I really should tell you and Kit at the same time. I’ll tell you what, you tell me what you have to say and if I think that it’s pertinent, I’ll let you know.”

She nodded and said, “Alright.” Then she looked off towards the south and the rest of the plateau. She then said, “I know you noticed that I have been standoffish since we met, I have a reason for that dear Rowen. Being as old as I am, I am not easily excited about romance and such things. On top of that, I have had the weight of prophecy on my shoulders my whole life.” She then looked him in the eyes again and said, “Please forgive me but, I looked at our impending marriage as not unlike a political arranged marriage.” She had an apologetic look in her eyes.

Rowen nodded and said, “I understand. Well, I would never hold you to a marriage not of your own free will. I don’t believe in such things. To tell you the truth, I was resistant to all this talk of marriage because it felt like an arranged marriage to me too.”

They both saw Kit and Jade approaching from the distance and they could see that Jade had a rather large looking animal carcass over her shoulder.

Rowen said, “Looks like their hunting was successful.”
“Yes it does.”

Rowen went on, “With Kit, I couldn’t help but fall in love with her. And not just with her physical beauty but her deeper inner beauty.”

Dana smiled and said, “Of course it helps that she couldn’t keep her hands off of you.”

Rowen smiled but looked down at his feet with an embarrassed look on his face and said, “Actually, that almost scared me off of her. You see, in my life before I came here, I never had any women that were interested in me. I never had a girlfriend. I had several crushes on other girls, but no one appeared to be interested in me.”

“Crush?”

“Oh, sorry. It’s a slang term that means one sided love.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I had no experience with women and their attention. Then to have such a beautiful woman just be so amorous about me…well quite frankly it scared the hell out of me at first. Before, the only time a girl paid me any attention was because they wanted something from me.”

“Ah, I see.” Dana looked thoughtful then asked, “But now you do love her, do you not?”

“Yes, very much so. It is you that I don’t know how I feel. In my world, as you know, we don’t have polygamy, not legally anyway. We’re fairly evenly matched in numbers between men and women so there is no need for polygamy. The major churches of my world also felt that it was wrong, religiously speaking. With that in mind, I would be perfectly content with having only one wife. As a matter of fact, I told myself a long time ago if I ever do fall in love, there would be no way I would ever be untrue to her and sleep with another.”

He gently took both her hands in his and said, “But then here I am being told that I’m marrying you as well and it’s okay. The part of me that made that commitment to myself so long ago is confused by the fact that I still find myself drawn to you as well.”

She nodded and asked, “But if we were in your world, you would still be true to Kit?”

“Without a doubt.” He then released her hands but still kept his on top of hers and said, “So, if you feel like you and I getting married is an arranged marriage by fate then I won’t hold you to it. We’re supposed to have free will here, right?”

She nodded and a whole world of emotions just crashed in on her. But instead of confusing things further, it only proved to clarify things.

She was the one to take both his hands this time and said, “I no longer feel that way. If you’ll have me, I hope to be your wife too.”

He nodded and appeared to be overwhelmed with emotions.

She then pulled him close to her to their eyes were mere inches apart and she said, “I can count on you to not have any relationships with any other women that Kit and I both don’t approve of, right?”

He shook his head and said, “Of course. Like I said, I made a commitment to myself that I would be true to whomever I were to marry. I would never cheat on you two.”

“Good, then your relationship with Xyarra is only that of teacher student, right?”

He looked shocked at that question but said, “Of course. She’s a dragon, I don’t even think that she’s interested in me anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful but…” he shrugged.

Dana got a triumphant look on her face and she thought, “I beat you dragon lady!”

The four of them, Kit, Xyarra, Rowen and Dana ate the sausage that Xyarra had heated up. Jade was outside field cleaning the buffalo that Kit had shot with her new bow that Rowen had made for her.

Dana decided to let her hair down and was flirting with Rowen throughout lunch.

Kit saw this and smiled broadly.

When Rowen wasn’t looking, Dana looked at Xyarra and stuck her tongue out at her.

Xyarra just languidly shrugged and her eyes said, “This isn’t over yet.”

As they were finishing lunch Rowen said, “There is something that I need to tell you about myself. I am not sure why I kept it back but here goes. Of the gifts that the Guardians gave me, there’s one that I feel like it’s more of a curse than a gift. However, in order to facilitate me in completing my mission the Guardians made me immortal after a fashion.”

Xyarra just leaned back smiling with no surprise on her face.

Kit and Dana looked shocked and Dana asked, “What do you mean, after a fashion?”

“Well, it’s like this. I can be hurt and even die. But my life force is linked to the Green Moon that orbits the white moon. If I’m killed, then after three moonrises or one full orbit of the Green Moon then I will be resurrected and made whole.”

Dana and Kit both looked at each other. Dana was the first to speak, “This must be why my visions showed me that I would not out live you.”

“Right.” Rowen looked thoughtful.

Kit asked, “Was this why you were reluctant about accepting my sister’s prophecy about our marriage?”

“No, not exactly. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. The reason why I was reluctant…” he explained to Kit what he had said to Dana earlier.

Dana thought to herself, “One of my reasons for being reluctant to let my feeling for Rowen grow was because my visions showing that I would not outlive him. I thought that that meant that my life would be shortened like my sister’s.” she shrugged inwardly

Xyarra said, “Now that you have your relationship issues sorted out. It’s time to go outside and continue our routine.”

“Right!” Rowen said enthusiastically.

“Row dear, do please go ahead and I’ll help the ladies with the dishes.”

“I think we have enough troopers for now, so I’ll make them more rifles. Don’t you think?”

“Right, you go ahead. I’ll join you presently.”

Rowen nodded and put his coat on and went outside.

Xyarra looked at Dana and Kit and said, “Now that we have the man out of the picture, you two and I need to have a heart to heart.”