The Cataclysm (Anastasia the Nonbinary Dragon)

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Revi the gold dragon was tall and imposing.

He was in human form, not dragon form. But it was as though he were wearing hard scales, glinting and rigid. He cast an ominous shadow at the door to the throne room.

Mildred was the first to recover her voice and yell, “Revi? How dare you show your face here! Where is Ana?”

As always, Ero couldn’t help but admire his cousin’s boldness, though he considered himself bold, too.

Revi glanced at her with a fixed smile. “You have no idea, fair maiden. You have no idea what we all did, for the good of the kingdom.”

Queen Freya gawked, her silver locks flowing in the air. “What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?” She cast a scornful look at him.

The gold dragon shifter smirked. “We’re approaching the dawn of a new era. It’s time to demolish the old and welcome the new.”

He sounded like a mad cultist or something similar. Ero wouldn’t be daunted by him, though. He stood tall beside his cousin.

But just as he was feeling smug over the gold dragon lord, he felt a tremor beneath him. In disbelief, he watched as the ground began to shake and crack.

“Everyone, evacuate the palace!” Freya exclaimed.

No one needed to be told twice. Ero took a glance up at the ceiling; it was adorned with the most beautiful decorations imaginable — and it was splintering. There was no time to think about why or how.

A crowd of people rushed to the exits. Pieces of the floor above crashed down, crushing some of the dragon shifters. All Ero could do was run. At first, he ran after Mildred. But they were separated when a piece of flooring collapsed in front of him, blocking her from his view.

He couldn’t see Revi anymore either, not that he cared about that asshole’s survival.

Then, a slender hand reached out and clutched his. It was Princess Teefa. Her smile was warm and kind even in the midst of the chaos. “Come on. Follow your Auntie Teefa.”

Mesmerized, Ero could only accept. Especially as he didn’t know the palace well enough to find another exit. It struck him that he had never really interacted with Ana’s mothers before.

The Dragon Princess held his hand with a ferocity that didn’t match her exterior. A split second later, a huge chunk of wall fell down right where he was an instant ago.

The calf-shifter breathed heavily, and he called out, “Where is Ana?”

Princess Teefa didn’t answer, but she hefted the boy onto her shoulders and dashed out of the palace. She was such a delicate-looking woman; it was hard to remember that she had dragon strength.

All around them, dragon nobles and other species swarmed around, fleeing the area. The earthquake continued even outside of the building. But it moved more slowly outdoors. Many of the dragon shifters began to morph into their dragon forms to fly away.

Teefa suddenly halted and asked, with a deadly calm, “Ero, do you trust me?”

The calf shifter hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes,” he whispered.

The dragon woman grinned, and at once, she looked both dangerous and reliable, just like her child, Anastasia.

In a moment, Teefa’s form warped until she became a gorgeous purple dragon.

It felt strange to ride on an adult dragon, after his experience riding on the much smaller Ana. But it was no less comfortable. She was warm beneath him as she kicked off and soared into the sky.

Ero gazed down at the palace below. The building was in ruins now, all that grandeur wiped out in a mere few minutes. Even the ground outside was ripped up and destroyed.

***

Mildred once again found herself riding on Lance, who had shifted back into a blue dragon. She grumbled, “Why am I with you again?”

Demiel, Lance’s brother who was flying next to them, answered first. “Better to come with us than to be martyred down there.” The dragon pointed with his snout to the wreckage below.

The cow shifter could hardly look. It was too sudden, too devastating. She closed her hot eyes for a moment. “Did nobody know this was going to happen? Surely the mighty kingdom can’t collapse that easily, both literally and figuratively.”

The dragon under her rumbled with a thoughtful tone. “I doubt that the kingdom would collapse figuratively as well. This bloodline of dragons is particularly strong.”

Mildred winced. She shifted her legs uncomfortably on his rough scales. “But how is this seismic catastrophe even possible? I would have thought that Queen Freya would have magical protections, at least.”

Demiel snorted with amusement. “That’s what you would think. Sometimes I can sympathize with Anastasia. The palace gives you a false sense of security. We would ironically be safer out there in the wild, even back in the Valve.”

She huffed, her chest heaving with the rapid onrush of cold air. “So are you taking me to the Valve?” Her words were even sharper than she intended.

The dragon brothers were silent for a moment, before Lance replied, “At first, we wanted to, but it’s better to fly somewhere farther away from that.” He grinned. “Would you miss your husband?”

Mildred grimaced and gripped the dragon a little tighter. “I don’t really want to think about my husband. But I do want to see my daughter again.”

Demiel laughed and shook his head. “Your marital dramas are amusing. Relationships sound like nothing but trouble.”

Mildred shrugged her shoulders, not knowing what to say to that. “Why can’t we even look for Ero? He is my cousin, after all. What about Lucille or Mateo?”

Demiel and his brother exchanged another glance. The former sighed while the latter remained silent, his wings swept out in a graceful arc.

For a while, there was nothing but quiet from Mildred. Then, she asked with a tremor in her voice, “What happened to them?”

Lance said, “Do we really need to have this discussion? There was so much falling debris that killed a lot of people.”

“So you have no firm evidence,” Mildred said.

Demiel cut in, “I wouldn’t hold out hope if I were you. Most people, especially those with no flying abilities, got crushed in the commotion. Much better to cut your losses and fly away with us.”

Tension rippled through Mildred’s body. While she was grateful that they had saved her, she didn’t enjoy how she was basically held hostage, no matter how they framed it. She would bide her time for now. As her Auntie Lucille had said, don’t argue with a dragon when you’re high up in the sky and riding on their back.

***

Ero was flying high in the sky on Princess Teefa’s back. He asked, “Where are Princess Leyla and Queen Freya?”

The purple dragon beneath him stiffened. “I’m not sure I will ever see them again. I didn’t see them fly from the palace.”

Ero frowned. “But there were so many people. How do you know? Maybe they escaped and you didn’t see.”

Teefa sighed. “Maybe. But I dare not hope.” Her voice became a little more assertive. “For now, all I want to do is to get you to safety.”

Ero felt wary all of a sudden. “Where is safety?” His suspicions increased. “And where is Lord Revi?”

Teefa let out a little sigh. “Revi is not the monster you think he is.”

Before the calf shifter could respond to this, she dove down like a comet.

Not too long ago, Ero had plunged down towards the earth like this, but on Anastasia’s back. Perhaps Teefa was more experienced in her flight, since Ero didn’t feel as dizzy or panicked as he did the first time Ana dove with him. Or maybe he was still too much in shock to feel anything more.

He was flabbergasted, however, when he saw her swoop down towards Revi’s mansion. It was oddly untouched by the earthquake. In fact, the grounds outside the palace proper were unscorched and whole. This contrast to the devastation earlier was eerie. It was as though it had all been a nightmare, except it was real.

Before he knew it, Princess Teefa landed on the ground, set him down, and shifted back into human. She fished out a key and fit it into a lock. Ero wanted to ask how she came to possess the keys to Revi’s mansion, but he restrained himself for now.

The smell in the apartment was putrid. But the stench wasn’t of rotting corpses like he had feared. Instead, the air tasted of sulphur.

Teefa cursed and raced up the stairs. Ero could barely keep up with her long strides.

She got up to one of the top floors of Revi’s mansion, and in the middle, was a gaping hole. Teefa gripped her fists and started shaking. Ero had never seen the Princess look so furious before.

He moved closer towards that hole — more like a crater — and saw a staircase leading down into the darkness.

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