AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But just as quickly as that thought hit, my fear of heights kicked in as we continued higher and higher.
The dragon – and I still couldn't believe I was using that word unironically – banked sharply to the left. My stomach lurched, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Heights had never been my thing, and being several hundred feet in the air with nothing between me and a very messy death but a scaled hand was not helping. My chest tightened, my breaths coming out in sharp gasps as I trembled.
Fuck. I was going to die of a heart attack before anything else. All it took was this creature opting to release me and it was all over.
"Okay, Aria," I muttered to myself. "You're okay. This is fine. Everything's fine. You're just having a very vivid, very realistic dream. You'll wake up any second now, laugh about this over coffee, and then call your therapist to get some anxiety meds."
The wind rushing past my ears almost drowned out my words, but the act of speaking, of hearing my own voice, helped ground me. A little. Sort of.
I cracked one eye open, immediately regretting it as I caught sight of the ground far, far below. Cars looked like ants, buildings like toy models. My breath caught in my throat, and I squeezed my eyes shut again, instinctively covering the scaled hands with my own. They were oddly warm to the touch, which made it all the more real to feel.
The dragon's grip on my arms tightened slightly, as if sensing my distress. Great. That was probably not a good sign.
I forced myself to take a deep breath, then another. Panic wouldn't help me here. I needed to think, to try and make sense of what was happening.
Fact: I had been attacked by some kind of shadow creature.
Fact: I was now being carried through the air by what appeared to be a dragon.
Fact: Neither of these things should be possible.
Conclusion: I was either dreaming, hallucinating, or the world had gone completely insane. Or I had finally gone insane.
None of these options were particularly comforting.
I ground my teeth as I dared to open my eyes again, praying everything would suddenly change and I’d be on the sidewalk after having some psychotic break with crazy hallucinations.
No such luck. I was still being carried over the city, the dragon’s wings beating heavily as I shook. I glanced around, the world swaying with the frantic beating in my ears, my heart ready to give out as panic tried to claim me.
A strange shimmer in the air caught my attention, making me forget my fears momentarily. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the light or something in the air. But as we flew closer, I realized it was something else entirely. A... tear in the sky? A ripple in reality?
Whatever it was, we were heading straight for it.
"Um, excuse me, Mr… Dragon?" I called out, feeling ridiculous even as I did so, but my pounding heart and the fear threatening to consume me had me needing to speak. "I don't suppose we could, I don't know, not fly into the weird space anomaly? I'm really not dressed for interdimensional travel."
Sarcasm had always been my coping method, a trait I’d inherited from my beloved mother. God rest her soul.
The dragon, unsurprisingly, didn't respond, its wings beating steadily as we kept hurtling toward the ripple.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, bracing for... well, I didn't know what. A collision? Disintegration? A wormhole to another universe?
Was this how I died? Turned to mush in a weird space-time ripple? This whole thing was impossible.
“God, if you’re there, please…” I whispered, my entire body now trembling like a leaf in a storm, ready to fall apart. I clung to the dragon’s scaled hands, holding on for dear life and praying.
I wasn’t ready to die. I wanted to maybe meet Prince Charming finally, experience real love, and have the life I wanted.
What I also wasn't prepared for was the sensation of passing through a wall of cold jelly. It lasted only a moment, a full-body shudder of wrongness, and then...
Warmth. Sunlight on my skin, different somehow from the sun I'd known all my life. The air smelled strange – sweeter, lighter, like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
I opened my eyes.
And gasped.
Gone was the city with its towering skyscrapers and bustling streets. In its place was a landscape straight out of a fantasy novel. Rolling hills covered in grass that shimmered with an almost metallic sheen. A forest spread out past them, with a fewlone giant trees that reached for the sky, larger than any I had ever seen before. Their massive trunks and sprawling canopies dwarfed the surrounding vegetation, standing as ancient guardians in this strange new world. And in the distance, rising from the heart of this foreign world, was a castle. One we were quickly drawing closer to.
No, not a castle. A fortress. Its spires reached toward the sky, twisting and turning in defiance of physics. The walls gleamed like mother-of-pearl, shifting colors as I watched.
