Am I dreaming? What is this? It struck her as something supernatural or hallucinatory; perhaps someone had cast a spell on her and Mau as they'd slept, or else this was some sort of nature spirit that had manifested in the night. She wiped her eyes furiously and pinched herself in the arm. This has to be a dream, right? Minx cleared her throat. “Kaleb... are you awake?”
The dragon shifter had indeed awakened, and was eyeing the dancing blue flame all around her with a mix of terror and dreamy amusement. “Uh... yeah,” he muttered. “I'm seeing it...”
Minx reached out to touch the flame, to wrap her fingers around the flickering tongues that rose from her every inch, but could make no sense of the phenomenon. What's more, as the minutes passed and the two of them became used to the sight, the blue flame began to fade away.
She watched as the glow finally died out and then stood up. Kaleb had returned to his human form, and was pacing amidst the trees, visibly baffled. “What do you think that was?” she chanced. “Some kind of spell?” Minx studied the forest, seeking out hostiles amidst the trunks. “Maybe Torrent or one of his goons cast a spell on us while we were sleeping? Or... was it a ghost? A nature spirit?”
“I doubt it,” replied Kaleb with a chuckle. “If it was a spell of some sort, it didn't seem to hurt you any. And I've never known a wild spirit to behave in that way... I'm more inclined to believe it was a dream of some kind. And yet... we both saw it.” He shrugged. “What I will say is I slept better last night than I have in a long, long time.” Here, he spared Minx a little grin—half embarrassed.
Her cheeks reddened as she replied, “Me too...”
That strange pain in my chest went away, and after remaining close together all night we awoke to this blue flame. That can't be a coincidence, can it? Minx pulled her hair back and began tying it into a fresh braid while trying to work over all that had happened. No... none of this is coincidence. I think it was supposed to happen. The fact that the pain stops whenever he's near... maybe it means that dragons and Fae are supposed to be together—that the distance between us will only cause pain. That old story may be true after all... Dragons and Fae complement each other, are like two sides of the same coin, perhaps...
“Well,” continued Kaleb, stretching, “it's a new day. Maybe we should head into town and see what's been happening all night.” He nudged the dozing Faelyr with his foot, snickering as she growled in her sleep. “Mau wants to sleep in, eh?”
Mau opened one of her eyes narrowly, glancing up at him and loosing another low growl. Would it kill him to let me sleep another hour?
Come on, Mau, began the Fae huntress, it's time to head back to Pandling Grounds. We can have some breakfast and catch up with my father. There's no telling what today will bring, after all. She waited till the grumpy Faelyr rose to her paws and then joined Kaleb as he started through the trees. “I didn't hear the call to arms last night; I guess Torrent took the night off, huh?”
Kaleb nodded. “Seems so. But then, it's Torrent we're talking about. He never takes the night off. He was up to something, I'm sure.”
“How will we beat him?” asked Minx, voice low. After the great night's sleep and peaceful awakening they'd enjoyed, it almost seemed unsightly to address war, violence and the countless problems her people had been struggling against. “He seems to be ten steps ahead of us. He stays out of sight except when it's convenient for him, finds a way to the lake even when our defenses are set up to prevent exactly that. How can we hope to defeat him when he outsmarts us at every turn and our people are suffering so greatly? If we had a few thousand soldiers to spare, maybe we could tire him out, run him down, but under the circumstances...”
Kaleb mulled this over for a long while. “The easy answer is that we have to stop reacting to him,” he responded after a beat, as the edges of Pandling Grounds entered into view. “We need to respond to his threats efficiently, rebuff his attacks and make use of our limited resources wisely. But when we overreact to his little attacks and provocations, we're playing into his hands. That has to stop if we're going to get anywhere.”
“While you were flying reconnaissance yesterday, you must have gotten a pretty good idea of how many warriors still remain, right? What are their numbers like? I've been worrying about that a lot lately. If they have a few hundred remaining, then maybe we'll be able to pull off a win.” Minx gulped. “If there are more... or if Torrent can get his hands on reinforcements from far away, then I don't see how we can succeed. Even if we use our resources perfectly, he can still wear us down if his forces are as big as I fear. So... What's it look like out there? Did you get a clear idea?”
“It's hard to give an exact number, but...” He paused, looking for some way to sugarcoat his reply. “We're definitely looking at numbers on the higher end. I don't know where Torrent is keeping some of his troops; he may have hidden whole legions in forests and cave systems on the fringe of the territory. I saw a lot of smaller groups wandering around out there—and some bigger ones, too. I would be shocked if there weren't more troops hidden away, scattered here and there, and it could be that he's
