Tatiana - Imperial Ruler Of Dragon's

Chapter 2

Standing in the middle of a foggy forest in nothing but my pyjamas, I look around in confusion, wondering if am dreaming. I pinch my arm as hard as I can and felt nothing so it must mean this whole weird scenario isn’t real.

Looking around again I smile at how calming the forest seems even though it’s dead in the night.

The moon shone brightly through the starlit sky and cast an eerie glow on the entire forest, but when the wind caressed my skin and made the trees sway in dancing motions everything almost feels… tranquil.

Taking several steps forward, I smile in amazement when my sight happen on a bunch of fireflies roaming around the forest. They glowed brightly in a variety of colours that made everywhere almost seem ethereal.

I let out a soft laugh when a purple firefly casually lands on my nose, before flying off to join its friends as they all flew away into the distance.

I didn’t want to lose them so I followed, ignoring the under bush tugging at the ends of my cotton trousers.

Concentrating on the fireflies, I didn’t notice the root sticking out of the ground and my leg got caught beneath it, letting out a scream of surprise I fall face down into the soil with a grunt.

Grimacing in disgust when as I spat out sand and grass, my chin bleeding thanks to the scratch it got from a stone. Groaning, I sat up and rubbed my bleeding jaw, looking up to see an enormous oak tree a few feets away.

The tree stood in the middle of a large clearing, with 2 monolithic stone pillars known as obelisks standing on opposite sides like a gate. Embedded into the soil, to the side of the obelisks is an elevated slab of stone with alien symbols craved in clearing writing over the surface. I have no idea what they mean, but somehow it feels like the incomprehensible words is a warning to those seeking entrance.

Turning my attention back to the tree, the branches causes me to tilt my head back in wonder due to its wideness and towering height, it practically looms, casting a formidable shadow despite the darkness of night. Frowning, I take notice of two girls kneeling before the tree with heads tilted back and hands raised to the sky.

They’re both dressed in a backless dress with thin straps, only the one on the right is in a white dress while the other to the left is in a black dress.

“Hello!” I call out to both of them, and neither reacted. “Hey, you two over there. Helloooo!”

I sigh when I continued to receive nothing but silence. What a strange dream. I study both of them, not wanting to move an inch from my spot due to unease, and my eyes caught onto the large tattoos on their backs.

Squinting, I inspect their tattoo’s of a large balance scale instrument which spans along the entire length of their backs. Resting on the first pan, I can pick out what looks like a Black Phoenix hovering mid-flight with its feathers spread and coated by blazing light.

And on the second pan appears to be a white wolf with strange designs running along with its large form. And wrapped around the beam in the middle is something… I can’t make out. Maybe it’s a snake.

I make the decision to step forward and try to get a closer look, but before I can a large hand suddenly grabs onto my left shoulder, and I couldn’t help but let out a piercing shrike of fright when I turned around.

*~*~*~*

I sat up with a scream leaving my lips and Katrina jumps out of the bed in a fighting stance, her face startled in a picture of panic. Seeing her like that pulls me from my nightmarish daze and I start laughing in hysterical amusement.

Turning to stare at me with a puzzled frown, she begins to relax when she realizes there isn’t any danger.

“What the hell Tatty?” She asks in bitterness, eyes flying to my alarm in anger. “It’s 3:00 in the morning!”

“A-am so is so s-s-sorry,” I persist to laugh, practically whizzing as I tried and failed to rein in my amusement. She rolls her eyes in irritation and slips back into bed, a pretty scowl on her face. “But yo-your f-fa-face-”

“Is there a reason why you screamed like a hyaena with the vocals of a banshee?”

Shrugging, my amusement fades as I fall back with a sigh. “Had a strange dream.”

“Really,” She perks up in excitement, patting the bed she motions for me to sit upright. “Tell mama Kat all about it.”

I turn to her with a brow raised. “Mama Kat?”

“Oh shut up and just tell me!” She demands, and with both hands raised, I do exactly that. “So you never saw the last tattoo?”

“Nope.”

“Well, this is odd.”

“I know right, why couldn’t I dream about winning a gold medal at the Olympics or-”

“There should have been one person in your dream, but what puzzles me more is who the hell grabbed you. Try to think back and see if you remember what this person looks like?”

“Huh?” I gaze at her in confusion. “What do you me—Aaaahhhh… Holy s**t!” I shrieked in alarm.

I tremble and ache, stifling my wail by slapping a hand against my mouth in other not to wake my parents. Bolting up to a sitting position I feel tears cloud my vision as sharp pinpricks shoot down my spine.

For several minutes it felt like hot lava had just been pored over my bare skin, spreading rapidly with the creeping feeling of something imprinting itself on my body.

“What’s wrong!” Katrina exclaims in panic.

“Do-d-don’t know, b-b-but my back is h-hr-hurting.” I moan in pain, biting down on my lower lip with a sob.

More tears roll down my face as I clench my hands around my comforter and lean forward to grip it into tight fists. Taking in a deep breath, I turn to her and say through clenched teeth. “Down talk so loud, I don’t want to wake Brian or my parents.”

Rolling her eyes, she closes them and mutters something beneath her breathe that I couldn’t quite grasp. Her hands spread out as her mutterings gained speed and I could be wrong, but I could have sworn I saw a small wave of air follow the action and spread around the room as if being covered by a warm cloak.

Shaking off my crazy thoughts, I pull my shirt over my head when the pain began to subside to a throb. Trying to look over my shoulder, I tensed in worry when Katrina released a choked sound, her eyes widening in horror.

“What is it?” I whisper, fearful of her response, but rather than respond she quickly scrambles out of bed to disconnect her cell from the charging cord connected to my wall.

Hurrying back to bed, she slips in beside me and shakily takes a picture of my back. Slowly handing the phone over to me, I reach out for it as my heart raced in trepidation and stare at the screen in bewilderment. The sight of my red, slightly bleeding back looks like I’d just undergone a nasty scarification procedure rather than have a tattoo imprint itself on my skin.

But what horrifies and mystifies me the most is the fact that, just like the dream I had, the tattoo on covering the entire length of my back is of a black scale with two pans of equal weight suspended in the air from the ends of a beam.

On the first pan is the same rising phoenix covered in black feathers with strikes of red running across it’s a body like static electricity, and igniting the ends of its feathers in an orange blaze is a large sun behind the phoenix.

Being weighed on the second pan is a domineering white wolf with illuminating blue designs running along its body down to its four paws, and coiled on it’s the forehead, between its eyes down to its snout is a third eye.

To make things even weirder is a golden dragon wrapped around the beam of the scale, holding up the suspended pans, with its head raised and familiar amethyst eyes pinning me with an intense gaze that made goosebumps rise on my skin.

Unable to comprehend how this is possible, I inch my hand over my shoulder just to know if it’s there, only to let out a yelp when Katrina slaps my hand away. “Don’t touch, it’s still too raw.”

“You see it too?” I whisper in shock, peeking at her over my shoulder, and she nods in silence. Letting my gaze fall back to the screen of her phone, I let out a sob. “What in the f*****g hell is going on?”

“Look,” Katrina clutches my head, sharply turning it around so I could face her. “I’m going to tell you something that sounds ridiculous but you have to listen carefully without disrupting me.” I tried to say something in response but she raised a finger to cut me off, giving me a stern look. “I want complete silence.”

I make a zipping motion over my lips. “Uhmm, do remember how I up and left last year for boarding school and how I’ve been acting strange ever since?”

I nod.

“Well, your dream and tattoo kind of have something to do with it. I don’t know if you remember, but the fairy tales your mother used to read to us when we were kids-”

“You mean the ones about changeling’s?” I asked, unable to help myself, and she gives me the stink eye. “Hey, you asked?”

     Rolling her eyes, she continues. “Yes, I am. Except, the story human beings created are not real facts. The truth is, these human babies aren’t exchanged for faerie youngling's but rather, the soul of a faerie baby is placed in the body of a Human host to ensure the survival of their race. A century ago, there was a long-suffering war in the Fae realm and due to the explosive curse of a very powerful Sorceress, the offspring's of many Fae’s started to die within a few months after birth. Many mothers couldn’t handle the heartache of losing their child so they destroyed their souls and faded into nothing along with their children. To stop the rapid dwindling of their young and females, the Fae’s found a way around the curse and saved their people through the help of a Mage. They preserved the souls of their children in the bodies of human babies, but with every upset of nature’s balance, there are repercussions. And unfortunately for the fae’s, about 60% of these babies died because their souls rejected their host’s body.”

“Katrina, hmm, thanks for the fairy tale 101, but can we get serious here. The throbbing in my back is starting to increase and am doing everything I can not start screaming in pain and wake up everyone.”

Exhaling a breath of frustration she roughly twisted my back to face her and laid her hands on the scarred skin, I yelp at the feeling of her cold palms and pushed my chest forward in an attempt to pull away. “What the f**k Katrina, that hurts?”

In pain, I tried to get away but she held me in place by grabbing my left shoulder with her other hand and holding me still with inhumane force.

In shock and confusion, I try harder to get away but my strength is no match for her hold. Is she popping steroids now, how can she be so b****y strong? “Will you just stay still!”

Since struggling only made the pain worse, I listened to her snapping demand and frowned when she started muttering incomprehensible words again. A few seconds passed before I felt a soft, cooling sensation spread over my skin, granting me immediate relief. Mesmerized and shocked by her actions, I blinked a couple of times as my mind tried to wrap around what I just felt.

“H-ho-how d-did you-”

“Magic,” She shrugs. “I’m a Healer, a white witch if we’re being technical.”

“A what!”

“You heard me the first time.”

Lifting her shirt over her head she turns her back to me and despite the black lace b*a being in the way, I stare at the tattoo of a Triquetra Wicca symbol imprinted on her pale skin in disbelief. Just like mine, it’s large and spans down the entire length of her back.

I unconsciously raise my hand to touch it but before my palm could make contact with her skin, she pulls her shirt back over her head and turns around with a sigh. Snapping me from my daze.

“This is what I’m trying to tell you Tatty. Out of the percentage of human babies that survived from the merging,” She indicated between the both of us with a finger. “You and I are one of them.”

"W-wh-what?"

  “Well, we’re more of an extension but that isn’t important right now. Last year when I turned 16, I had the same dream you had but with only one girl in a white dress. My tattoo as you’ve seen is of a golden triquetra symbol on my back. For every faerie child that underwent the merging when they turn 16, they become changelings. We all have the same premonition dream and then when we wake up, there’s a tattoo on our backs to indicate what kind of fae or... non-fae we are. When it happened to me, I went ballistic and unintentionally sent an electromagnetic blast at my keeper. I almost killed him too.”

And as she started to narrate her experience, I stopped listening. Completely.

I simply stared with a blank expression, doing nothing and I mean nothing as she rambled on.

I didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even breathe, which probably explains the burning in my lungs and my body’s desperate need for air right now.