Page 52 of Season of Naga: Volume 2
I thrust aside these thoughts and focus on the power still building within me. If I am truly the air elemental foretold in ancient texts, if this power is mine to command, then I will use it to save her now, and find a way to thwart the prophecy's dark designs later.
I extend my hands toward the pit where Serin disappeared, concentrating on the sensation flowing through my veins. The wind responds immediately, but wild and undirected, creating a chaotic vortex that flings ash in all directions rather than clearing it away. Too much force, too little control. I grit myteeth, forcing myself to think clearly despite the panic still clawing at my throat.
I close my eyes, visualizing the ash beneath the surface, how it surrounds and crushes her. It fills her lungs with every desperate breath. I imagine the air currents as extensions of my fingers, as delicate and precise as a surgeon's tools. When I open my eyes again, I sweep my hand in a more controlled motion. Palm down. Fingers spread.
The change is immediate. The wind obeys with newfound precision, driving into the pit in a tight spiral that clears ash with methodical efficiency. I can feel the resistance as the air currents push against the densely packed particles, and I can sense through some new awareness the varying pressures and depths as clearly as if I were touching them with my own hands.
The pit begins to empty, ash flowing away in streams that defy gravity, riding air currents I somehow know how to manipulate despite never having done so before. It is intoxicating, this power, this ability to command an element.
But there is no time to savor the discovery. Each second that passes is another second Serin spends without air, another second closer to death. I intensify my focus, driving the wind deeper into the pit, seeking her.
My scales prickle with growing awareness of the air's movement around me. Through me. As though I have gained an entirely new sense. I can feel the currents changing direction at my will. I can taste the subtle shifts in pressure as I direct them with increasing precision. The wind howls now. A focused cyclone spirals downward into the pit, lifting ash in a perfect column that rises twenty feet into the air before dispersing.
The pit clears further, revealing a shaft at least fifteen feet deep, possibly part of a collapsed tunnel system from before the Great Burning. My breath catches as I sense a disturbance in theair flow near the bottom. Something is disrupting the currents, something that is not ash or stone.
Serin.
I narrow the wind again, focusing it with laser precision on that anomaly. The ash shifts, and for a moment, just a moment, I glimpse darkness against the gray. Hair. Her hair, still recognizable despite being coated in ash. My heart hammers against my ribs as hope surges through me with almost painful intensity.
"Hold on," I whisper, the words carried away by the wind I now command. "I am coming for you."
I adjust my coils, bracing against unstable ground. The power within me grows with my confidence and focus. The wind forms a precise tool, a scalpel of air that carves through ash with accuracy.
More of her becomes visible: an arm, the curve of her shoulder, the line of her back. She lies motionless, curled as if sleeping, though I know it is the posture of someone who fought for air. The sight renews my determination.
I will not let her die in a place created by our species' mutual hatred.
With a growl that starts deep in my chest, I thrust both hands toward the pit. The wind responds instantly, swirling around her body in a protective cocoon before lifting upward. I focus part of my consciousness on her airways, sensing the deadly ash packed in her mouth and nose. With a twist of my fingers, I create a gentle vacuum within her, coaxing the particles outward like poison from a wound. Gray plumes escape from her airways as the air current gently, inexorably raises her toward the surface.
As I work, the truth of what is happening settles into my bones like shards of ice. The air elemental awakening. The prophecy is unfolding exactly as foretold, with me cast in a role I never sought nor wanted. Right now, in this moment, nothingmatters except the limp form rising from the ash grave that nearly claimed her.
When she is close enough, I reach out with trembling hands and gather her from the air current's embrace, cradling her limp form against my chest. The moment I have her secure, my concentration breaks, and the wind dies suddenly, ash raining back into the pit with a sound like the softest rainfall.
"Serin." Her name escapes my throat in a raw, broken sound I have never heard myself make before. "Serin, breathe."
No response comes from her still form. Her body lies motionless against my scales, chest unmoving, lungs silent. Her lips, blue-tinged and parted slightly, remain frozen in that final desperate attempt to draw air where there was none.
As the ash falls away, I see what the pit has done to her. Thousands of microscopic cuts crisscross her exposed skin, each one beading with blood to create a grotesque pattern across her flesh. The glass shards embedded in the toxic substance have sliced her as efficiently as any torture device, death by a thousand cuts that would have been excruciating had she been conscious to feel them.
"No," I growl, the denial ripping from somewhere deeper than thought. "You do not get to die.”
I tilt her head back and press my mouth to hers without hesitation, forming a seal between my mouth and hers. I force air from my lungs into hers, watching her chest rise with the pressure. When I pull back, the air escapes with a soft hiss. Again and again, I establish a rhythm, breathing for her when she cannot breathe for herself.
With each breath I push into her lungs, the copper taste of her blood seeps between my lips, mixing with my own where the ash has cut my face and mouth in my panicked search. The flavors meld on my tongue until they become a single essence Ican no longer separate. There is symbolism there that I do not have time to examine.
"Breathe," I command between rescue breaths, my voice raw with emotion I have never allowed myself to show. "Fight, Serin. Come back to me."
Her face swims before me, overlaid with memories of her in the grotto. Her eyes bright with desire, lips parted in pleasure, and body arching beneath mine as we defied centuries of hatred with each touch. The contrast between that vibrant woman and the still form beneath my hands now tears at something fundamental inside me.
I press my lips to hers again, tasting ash and blood, and the lingering sweetness that is uniquely Serin. I force air into lungs that refuse to work on their own, silently promising anything, everything, if only she will draw breath again.
After what seems an eternity, something changes. A spasm runs through her body, small but unmistakable. A sound emerges from her throat. Not breath, but a ragged, broken sound that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. It catches halfway, dissolves into another bout of coughing, but it is breath. It is Serin, fighting her way back from death's threshold.
I gather her against my chest, cradling her head against my scales as each breath comes easier than the last, though still punctuated by coughs that rack her small frame. Blood from the countless tiny cuts soaks into my scales, marking me with her essence as surely as she has been marked with mine.
"I have you," I whisper against her hair. "You are safe now."
Her eyes flutter but do not open. Consciousness has not returned fully, but she is breathing. She is alive. The relief is so intense it borders on pain, a physical sensation that makes my scales shift and my tail coil tighter around us both.
