Chapter 4 - The Northwest Path

"Designated Zone 7-Alpha remains unmapped per territorial agreement with hostile entities. Personnel are advised that unmapped does not mean safe."

�" RC3 Border Patrol Manual

 

The trapline came up empty for the third morning in a row.

 

Lavender crouched in the snow, studying the undisturbed trigger mechanism of her best snare. The bait was still there, frozen solid now, a chunk of dried fish she couldn't afford to waste. No tracks around the site. No sign anything had approached in days.

 

Brute sat behind her, breath clouding in the predawn cold. His ears rotated, tracking sounds she couldn't hear.

 

"Something's wrong," Lavender said.

 

The usual hunting grounds had gone quiet. Two weeks since her trip to the Market, and the animals had started vanishing. First the rabbits, then the groundhogs, then even the half-starved foxes that usually competed for her catches. The prey had moved. Something had driven them off.

 

The food stores in the hut would last maybe another week. After that, she'd need to travel further, hunt new territory, or starve. None of the options were appealing.

 

Brute growled, low and soft.

 

Lavender straightened, hand dropping to the knife at her belt. The dog's attention had fixed on something to the northwest, beyond the tree line that marked the edge of her usual range. His hackles hadn't risen, but his body had gone rigid in a way she'd learned to take seriously.

 

"What is it?"

 

He glanced at her, then back to the northwest. His tail tucked slightly. Uncertainty, from an animal that rarely showed any.

 

The northwest path led into territory she'd never hunted. Her father had warned her away from it years ago, citing unstable ground and dangerous wildlife. Now that she was older, she suspected other reasons. The northwest ridge bordered dragon territory. Every trader who'd ever passed through the Barrens had stories about the creatures that hunted in those mountains.

 

But the game had fled somewhere. And the northwest was the direction opposite the Authority patrols Milesa had warned her about.

 

"We need to eat," Lavender said. "The usual grounds are empty. We could check the northwest ridge, see if the animals moved in that direction."

 

Brute whined. A questioning sound.

 

"I know. I know it's dangerous." She looked at the empty snare, the frozen bait, the trackless snow. "But so is staying here and starving."

 

The dog held her gaze for a long moment. Then he turned and started walking northwest, picking his way through the snow with deliberate care. Willing to go, but not happy about it.

 

Lavender retrieved her bait and fell into step behind him.

 

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The terrain changed as they climbed.

 

The gentle rolls of the Barrens gave way to sharper inclines, rocky outcroppings jutting from the snow like broken teeth. The trees grew sparser, their trunks twisted by decades of harsh wind. Ice sheeted the exposed stone, treacherous underfoot.

 

Lavender stopped to catch her breath at a natural shelf overlooking the valley below. The Barrens spread out behind her, a patchwork of white and grey extending toward the smudged horizon. Her hut was invisible from this height, lost among the hills. The Market would be somewhere to the south, but she couldn't pick out any landmarks.

 

She'd never been this far from home.

 

Brute circled back to her, nose working the air. His unease hadn't faded. If anything, it had grown worse as they climbed. He kept glancing at the shadows between rocks, ears swiveling toward sounds Lavender couldn't detect.

 

"Talk to me," she said. Ridiculous, speaking to a dog. But the silence pressed down, heavy and watching, and she needed something to fill it.

 

Brute's tail wagged once. Then he turned and continued climbing.

 

The tracks appeared an hour later.

 

Lavender almost missed them; her attention focused on the treacherous footing. But Brute stopped so suddenly that she nearly walked into him, and when she looked down, she understood why.

 

Something had walked through here. Something large. The prints pressed deep into the frozen ground, melting the snow into dark pools that had refrozen into ice. Each print was longer than her forearm, splayed at the front where claws had dug into the earth.

 

Her breath caught.

 

Dragon tracks.

 

She'd never seen them before, but the shape was unmistakable. Four toes, each ending in a gouge. A deeper impression of where the heel had struck. The stride between prints was longer than Lavender was tall.

 

"How old are these?"

 

Brute sniffed at the nearest print. Looked up at her. His expression - if a dog could have expressions - seemed to say too recent.

 

Lavender studied the tracks. They led upward, toward the ridge, disappearing into the rocks above. The ice in the prints had formed a thick crust. They had to be at least a few days old. Maybe more, in this cold. But not ancient. Not safe.

 

Her father's warnings echoed in her head. “The dragons don't hunt humans often, but they don't need to. One glimpse, one wrong step into their territory, and you'll never come back.”

 

She should turn around. Go home. Figure out another solution to the food problem.

 

The heat stirred in her chest.

 

Lavender froze.

 

The sensation built slowly, a warmth spreading behind her ribs that had nothing to do with exertion. The magic was responding to something. Reaching for something. She clamped down on instinct, and the pressure behind her eyes flared in warning.

 

"Not now," she whispered through gritted teeth. "Not here."

 

The warmth persisted. It pulsed, rhythmic, like a heartbeat that wasn't hers. Something ahead was calling to it. Drawing it out.

 

Brute pressed against her leg. His body was tense, every muscle coiled, but he didn't try to pull her away. He was watching the ridge above with an intensity that bordered on reverence.

 

"Do you feel that?" she struggled to get the question out.

 

The dog's tail swept once across the ground. Confirmation.

 

Lavender stood at the edge of dragon territory with magic thrumming in her chest and a choice to make. Forward meant danger. Answers she might not want. Confronting whatever was calling to the fire in her blood.

 

Backward meant safety; the hut, the Barrens, the slow struggle for survival that had defined her life since her father died. Meant never knowing.

 

She looked at the dragon tracks. At the ridge rising above. At Brute, who watched her with eyes that held depths no ordinary animal possessed.

 

"Something's up there."

 

Brute didn't move.

 

"Something that knows I'm here."

 

His tail wagged again. Slow. Patient.

 

Lavender's hand found the knife at her belt. The blade wouldn't do anything against a dragon. She knew that. But the weight of it in her palm was familiar, grounding. A comfort. A link to the father who'd taught her to survive.

 

"One look," she said. "We climb to the ridge, see what's there, and leave. Nothing more."

 

She started climbing.

 

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The sun had begun its descent when she reached the ridgeline.

 

The view stole her breath. Mountains rose ahead, their peaks lost in clouds, their slopes carved by ancient glaciers into bowls and valleys that held shadows even in afternoon light. Snow clung to the heights, brilliant white against grey stone. The wind keened through gaps in the rock, carrying a cold that cut deeper than the Barrens' chill.

 

Dragon territory. The true beginning of it. Everything below had been buffer, transition, a grey zone between the human world and something far older.

 

Lavender crouched behind a boulder, scanning the terrain ahead. No movement. No sound except the wind. The magic in her chest had settled into a low hum, still present, still reaching, but no longer urgent.

 

Whatever had called her was close. Waiting.

 

Brute slipped up beside her. His heckles had risen, but his growl stayed silent. A warning without sound.

 

"Where?" Lavender breathed.

 

The dog's nose pointed toward a formation of boulders fifty yards ahead. Nothing visible. Just stone and snow and the deepening shadows of late afternoon.

 

She watched for a long moment. The cold seeped through her coat, numbing her fingers even inside her gloves. Nothing moved. Nothing gave any sign of life.

 

Then the light shifted.

 

A patch of stone that had seemed grey a moment ago gleamed purple in the dying sun. Iridescent. Scaled.

 

Lavender's heart stopped.

 

She was looking at a dragon.

 

The creature lay curled among the boulders, wings folded tight against its body, head tucked beneath one foreleg. Its scales ranged from deep purple to brilliant green, the colors shifting as the light touched them. It was smaller than she'd imagined, perhaps twice the size of a horse, though even at rest it radiated a presence that made her bones ache.

 

It was sleeping. Or seemed to be.

 

But beneath its body, a dark stain spread across the snow. The creature's breath came shallow and uneven. One hind leg jutted at an angle that suggested damage. Something was wrong with it.

 

The magic in Lavender's chest flared.

 

The dragon's eyes opened.

 

Gold, molten, depthless. They fixed on her across the snow, and the world narrowed to two points of light that seemed to see through skin and bone and all the walls she'd built to hide what she was.

 

A voice filled her head. Ancient. Sardonic. Laced with pain.

 

Well. That's interesting.

 

Lavender couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stare at the creature that had seen her magic and known her in a single glance.

 

You should run, little flame. But something tells me you won't.