Wordcount: 422 words
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Summary: In which May makes a choice. Possibly not the best one, but a choice nonetheless.
NOTE: This is the first draft of a story, so it will most likely contain plot holes, retcons, and other inconsistencies. I’ll come back and fix things once the story (or arc) is complete!
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Channel Are As Channels Do
Omen and Eythan moved forward slowly, and May moved back.
“Make a choice.”
“Make a choice or we’ll just slaughter all of you and be done with it.” Eythan snarled. “There is nothing left to do but choose.”
May thought of her family and thought of her friends and thought of Baron and all the foxhawks who’d fought and died because two stupid gods made a bet.
She felt the heavy handed force of Omen and Eythan’s will, a suffocating wash of power demanding that she make a choice. It rolled over her in waves, pounding and pushing… and all of a sudden it felt very very familiar.
“Baron, feed Dawn,” and She dropped to her knees to keep from falling, grabbed onto that overwhelming wash of power, and pulled.
For a moment, the power had nowhere to go and she felt as if she would burst, and then there, she felt the echoing void of the dragon seep up through Baron to her… and she let go. The power surged through her, like the worst of the river rapids, crashing and rolling and caught in eddies around the rough edges of her skill. But it flowed.
Flowed down and down and down the link until there was a spark on the far end, a slow growing fire that surged back up though the gap, back out and into the catravens and they burned as bright as the sun for one agonizing heartbeat and then they were gone.
They were gone, but the dragon remained.
“I am awake.” Said the fire that burnt through her mind, Baron’s mind and out through their link to every humans and foxhawk, ashing the darkness that Omen and Eythan had left behind. “I am awake.”
And somewhere, out in the depth of the wastes, the earth shuddered and broke and something older than had any right to be rose out of the sands. May could see it, through the flames, and she felt Baron reaching out to her from the edges, a dark black smudge of coolness that tempered the light.
Slowly the fire died out, fading back down the channels and back into the desert. Leaving behind the impression of something very old, very curious, and possibly not malevolent.
When it was gone, she found herself leaning back into Baron who was panting and wild eyed and keening just a little in fear.
The rest of the group was staring at them in flat out shock.
“What was that?” Tom finally asked.
And May laughed.
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