Page 73 of I Married A Syllen

“We need healers!” I shouted.

“Togar, go awaken them at once, and take them to the temple,” Athusa ordered.

“Right away!” Togar replied before rushing outside.

“These tree stumps are heavy,” Mirella said pensively. “And based on how hard it was for Nym to awaken the Kalrins at the garden, I suspect it will be difficult to get the queens to stir so we can take them to the temple.”

“Correct. We need to carry them still attached to the stump,” I replied grimly.

“If we placed them on a hover cart, Cedros could open a portal directly to your temple to get them there faster,” Mirella suggested timidly. “Would that be acceptable?”

“So long as it doesn’t harm them, do what is necessary, Caliadne. You have my permission,” Athusa said forcefully.

Technically, since we were in the Ungaro territory, Athusa had the authority to make such a call without consulting us first. Under the current circumstances, as the survival of so many queens directly impacted our tribes as well, we should have had a say in the matter. But the queens seriously needed immediate assistance. We would welcome whatever allowed us to accelerate the process, even off-worlder technology.

“I’ll get the hover carts,” Lily said before running out of the cave.

“We will need the coordinates of the temple,” Maeve said apologetically.

“I can give them to you,” Mirella replied.

She tapped on her bracer, and Maeve’s beeped seconds later.

“Got it!” Maeve said before showing her bracer to Cedros.

He nodded.

To our utter shock, his golden scales darkened as plumes of dark smoke rose from his skin. Cedros grew exponentially, nearly tripling in size while his features changed to be even more lizard-like but with a massive jaw big enough to swallow me whole. I yanked Mirella’s arm, pushing her behind me as I took a defensive stance, just like the other Syllens.

“It’s okay,” Mirella said in an appeasing tone, even as she stared in awe at the beast Cedros had turned into. “He’s not going to harm us.”

“She’s right,” Maeve said reassuringly while patting Cedros’ arm to show that he was indeed no threat. “This is his battle form. He cannot speak words while in this form, but he understands everything we say. He’s just a lot stronger like this, which will help us move them more easily.”

I swallowed hard, feeling beyond overwhelmed by all of this. The top of Maeve’s head barely reached the middle of his thigh in his battle form. He was too big to stand fully erect in the cave. Instead, he was standing on all fours like a fantastic beast.

Lily returned with two hovering platforms in tow. She smiled upon seeing Cedros in that form, further confirming that we had nothing to worry about.

“That’s a brilliant idea!” she said approvingly while staring at the giant.

Silencing my misgivings, I walked up to the closest queen and started lifting up the tree stump she was attached to with the help of Orian and Athusa. Despite our substantial, combined strength, it took a great deal of effort to get her on to the platform. The soreness from the bruises and injuries we’d sustained during the collapse made our task even more arduous.

As if in complete mockery of us, Cedros sat back on his haunches and reached for two of the stumps. He grabbed one in each hand and effortlessly lifted them before laying them down onto the cart. In the time it took us to tackle a second one, he moved all the others with the ease of someone picking up a handful of pebbles.

That task completed, he flicked his right wrist, and a portal opened directly in front of the temple. In an ideal world, the magical window would have opened inside the temple itself. But I suspected that it would have required him to see the inside or for Mirella to have given him those specific coordinates. Either way, his abilities once more save us an incredible amount of time. Had we transported the queens by our own means, it would have taken about an hour to load the stumps onto a Wonthonna, and at least another hour—if not more—for the beast to walk back to the temple.

My fellow Syllens hesitated, understandably unnerved by the prospect of crossing through a portal that never should have been possible. As I already experienced it, I boldly stepped forward. Mirella followed behind me after using a vocal command to get the carts moving as well. Reassured by seeing us reach the other side unscathed, my companions also walked through the window.

Their murmurs of wonder at being back in the village and on the steps of the temple would have been amusing under different circumstances. But we couldn’t dally. I rushed up the steps and opened the heavy double doors of the temple.

Despite being shaped like a hand on the outside, once you entered the temple, a large Oval room greeted you. A recessed pond occupied the center of the room. A Mother Tree towered over it on the opposite side from the entrance. The intricate carvings on the walls had been precisely calibrated to create the perfect resonance based on the songs we sang.

Norak and Urthan were both lying at the feet of the Mother Tree, submerged just below the surface of the pond. With every veris on their bodies now linked to the Mother Tree by her roots, they benefited from the emergency healing she could provide until our healers took over. That she didn’t rustle her leaves in a panic upon our arrival indicated that both patients—especially Norak—weren’t in critical condition.

Although off-worlders would normally never be allowed within this sacred sanctum, no one blinked when Maeve, Lily, Cedros, and my mate followed us inside.

“We must place the queens in the healing waters,” Athusa said to Cedros.

The giant dragon—as Mirella had described him—immediately proceeded to move them with the same swiftness as in the cave. The roots of Mother Tree stretched around the two wounded males to go further into the water and narrowed the closer they got to the stumps. Vines extruded from the tips which connected to each stump.