C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

To my great satisfaction, the head I’d been hanging on to flopped down in a convincing approximation of lifelessness. Possibly it would pull itself back together, but that was a problem for when it happened. No longer stymied by its weight, I slithered and wriggled forward. Dragon teeth slid off my scales and shields, making uncomfortable sparks but not quite managing to hold me.

The ground was warm. Hot, even. Sun-baked-stone hot. I bet dragons liked that as much as snakes, but the dragon had feet and I had a fifteen-foot-long belly pressed against all that cozy warmth. I didn’t think snake eyes could cross with pleasure, but mine nearly did anyway. I hissed, more to wake myself up than anything else, and coiled up as tight as I could so less of me was on the nice warm ground. There had to be a hot springs or a lava bubble or something beneath us to make it that warm. Not that Ireland was well-known for either of those things. But then, the bleak hell dimension I’d accidentally visited while trying to fight the wendigo had some lava-bubble-like aspects, and I had the uncomfortable feeling we were closer to that place than I’d like us to be.

My blunt nose hit the ground at the end of all that contemplation, and the dragon jumped on me like the vulnerable prey I was. I flattened and, shields or no, felt cartilage crunching under the monster’s weight. The idea that my shields were weakened by my warmth and contentedness swam through my mind. A dragon’s head, all glazed eyes and lolling tongue and torn-out throat, flopped into my vision. It was cooler than it had been, details fading, which probably meant I’d managed to kill one-third of the beast. Too bad about napping through the encore.

Caitríona stalked up and hit me in the face with a snow flurry.

Shocking cold ripped me from my stupor. I surged up, shaking my head—my whole upper half, since snake heads weren’t hooked on the way human heads were—and spat a forky tongue at my cousin.

She blanched, body heat visibly paling, but she stood her ground, hands lifted in the heart of a tiny snowstorm. I hissed again, ready to have the interfering little human for lunch, but one of the dragon’s still-living heads struck at her and I remembered what I was there for.

Lack of ears or not, I certainly felt Caitríona’s screech as I launched myself over her head to meet the oncoming dragon. The snowstorm stopped, but I was full of vim and vigor again, ready to take the fight to the mat. Caitríona disappeared from my awareness, presumably having ducked under me and sensibly run away. The dragon and I met in midair above where she’d been, and I swallowed its head.

I didn’t exactly mean to. It was just a rattlesnake’s attack came in the form of gaping jaws, and none of the dragon’s heads were very big. It was like the mass of a normal one-headed dragon’s head had been split into three, which meant my head was bigger than its, and my mouth opened a whole lot farther. It all made for an unfortunately literal head-on collision.

For an instant there we both froze, the dragon mid-fiery-belch, me as bug-eyed and freaked out as a snake could get. Then the dragon finished its burp and fire shot down my throat. I had no voice to scream with, and even if I did, I had a mouthful of dragon stifling the sound. Pain and outrage were expressed by my rattle suddenly sounding like a buzz saw preparing to cut the world apart. I thought swallowing fire like that should probably kill me. I also kind of thought, well, insides are wet, probably it’ll just quench the fire, and by some faint grace, my power responded accordingly. Possibly being shapeshifted gave me access to my internal magics, since I was no longer fighting the good fight against the werewolf bite. There was an argument, then, for staying shifted until we got out of Gancanagh’s territory alive.

Which was a questionable outcome, just then. I had no incisors, just two great long fangs, so biting the thing’s head off wasn’t an option. I was grateful for that, really. Swallowing fire was bad enough. I could not imagine the grossitude of a gullet filled with dragon blood.

The dragon, not at all happy with having one of its two remaining heads swallowed, began thrashing and bellowing. It had feet. I didn’t. It could get purchase on the ground. I couldn’t.

I went whipping around, hanging on to a dragon’s neck for dear life. My rattle was going full bore thanks to the dragon’s ministrations: I, certainly, wasn’t the one shaking it. The peat-bog earth was softer than I expected, my body whacking divots out of it as I was slammed up and down. The remaining head kept lashing at me, trying to break through my shields and scales with teeth or fire, it didn’t care. I wanted to bite it, too, but I was afraid to let go of the head I had. It’d taken a couple minutes to suffocate the other one. I didn’t want to release this one too soon and earn only a reprieve, not a victory, against the beast.

Power tingled along the entire length of my spine. I opened my eyes—I hadn’t even known they were closed—and saw absolutely nothing of where it was coming from. Magic didn’t have a visible component most of the time, even if I wasn’t relying on a snake’s heat vision. I could See power in a sort of uninteresting grayscale when snakeshifted, but I was more than a little concerned about what triggering the Sight might do when I was eyeball deep in dragon and Rattler was somewhere in the dark of my mind making sure I didn’t lose control over the shape I currently held. I got bashed into the ground again, bit down harder and decided unless something actively attacked I would assume the upsurge in magic use was from somebody on my team.

Méabh justified that decision by sweeping in and decapitating the head I’d captured. The headless neck fell away and the remaining living dragon head screamed while the rattlesnake part of my brain automatically swallowed. The human part gagged and choked, but it was too late. I had eaten a dragon head. Whole. That was going to cause some serious, serious problems when I turned back into a human, which idea was horrible enough that I gagged again.

Snakes, it turned out, could regurgitate. I’d had no idea. I had also never been so grateful to learn something so disgusting. I spat out a dragon’s head, stared at it and shuddered all the way down the considerable length of my body. I could’ve stayed there the rest of the day, gagging and being grossed out, but Méabh yelled. The sound reverberated off my skin and I glanced up to see her charging the last dragon head with all the enthusiasm in the world. I sprang after her, foregoing the whole biting scenario to wind myself around the beast’s body and haul its head back to expose what I hoped was a vulnerable throat. I was no boa constrictor, but snakes were all muscle, and the dragon was in sorry shape. Méabh, still yelling, struck off the remaining head, and the entire monster collapsed into waves of deep red, almost black, magic. Dissolved, just like the Red Cap had done. I landed in the dirt and magic with a crash while Méabh staggered a few steps back, her body heat peaking and fading as adrenaline crested, then drained away.

Rattler whispered Sssuccesss at the back of my mind, then nudged me. I clung to the idea of my own shape, and slid toward it, shedding the rattlesnake shape as I became myself again. Pain flared in my arm again and I clutched it. I thought you said success?

We defeated the dragon, did we not? he asked irritably, which was fair enough. I sent a wave of apology at him, and he slipped away, leaving a sense of weariness behind. I’d been asking too much of him the past few days. We needed a break, he and I.

A break we weren’t likely to get. Caitríona said, “You took off all your clothes and turned into a snake. ”