| Tasha scanned the forest and saw the small lake that was about a mile away from Grandfather's house and found what she was looking for. Banking downward, I stopped a few feet above the ground before landing on the shore, claws sinking into the muck. "If you ever try to approach Sayt like that," Der said, not opening his eyes from his sleep. "You'll be dead before you draw your next breath." The white dragon was curled beneith a tree who's branches were hanging in the water, causing small, silver ripples to spread outward across the lake. "True...but I don't think I'd be flying to meet Sayt so calmly," I smiled back and stayed where I was, knowing that the older dragon was more temper mental towards humans. 'Hell, towards everybody...' "Where's Taka?" Der's scales flushed a rosy pink but he didn't open his eyes. "It is improper for an unbounded couple to sleep near one another and they are not family," he said heatedly and I smiled, taking his comment as an 'how the hell should I know?'. "Don't after all this time, you consider her family?" "Did you come here to ask a question, or come to talk to me about ShaTaka?" Der asked, pinning me with both ice blue eyes and I continued to smile. "A little bit of both but mainly the first," I replied, still on the shoreline a good twenty feet from Der. Der finally looked at me like I was a person and not just a human. "You sit so far away from me yet you do not smell of fear," he said softly and I nodded. "I don't fear you, Der. I trust you. However, I know that you don't care for humans and so I respect that by not invading your space." Surprise crossed his reptilian features before he smiled. "And to think, others might consider you the Devil. Come, sit with me, tiny warrior," he rumbled and I got up, sitting in front of him with my tail tucked under my rear end and my wings tight against my back. His breath moved the fur on my body but I didn't mind; it was warm in the slightly chilly air of the Nivta night. "That's what I came to you for," I started and shut my eyes briefly. "Amber called me 'Natasha of the Death Wolves' and said that I was her Queen. I don't understand, I'm not a werewolf like she is and I'm not dead." Der rolled over on his back, looking for all the life of him a giant cat. A giant cat with wings, scales, and a forked tongue but a cat never the less. "You are all the things she says you are. Since you are the most powerful shapeshifting humanoid and you shift into her animal to call, the wolf, you are her Queen. You are the WolfAngel of Death even though Sleeping Panther calls you the WolfAngel of Fire." When I gave him a quizzled expression, he smiled. "He thought that the 'Death' on the end of it might upset you." Sighing, I lowered my head. "He was right," I whispered. "So where am I from?" Laughing, I thought about the comment and muttered, "'Who made me? And what was I made for?'"* "For fighting. For being the dark half of Judgment's scales," Der said simply before looking at me seriously. "You are of half Underworld, half Nivta blood and Will is half Earth, half Nivta in heritage. Your powers of fire come from the fact that part of the Underworld exsists on Nivta, a place that's called, roughtly translated, 'The Dead Zone'." "So I am...from the Underworld? I'm an evil demon?" |