Stena

Once she had been led to the meditation chambers, Stena was looking forward to a little bit of alone time. Not that Vyne was annoying or anything like that, but after so many awful days of stress, Stena desperately just wanted some time to be alone and recharge herself.

"Will you be alright?" Vyne asked, already one foot out the door.

"Yes, I'll be fine." Stena said, trying not to sound like she hadn't told him the same thing multiple times already, considering she really hadn't; she was just feeling snarky. "Truly, thank you for today Vyne."

"It was no trouble, Stena. I'll come and retrieve you tomorrow morning when everyone returns for normal training."

"Thank you. I'm honestly not sure I could find my way back to the training cavern, so that's appreciated." Stena said, thinking about the maze they had strolled through to get there.

"I had a feeling." Vyne said, but somehow it didn't sound as patronizing as Stena would have expected. "I'll see you in a few hours. Good luck."

"Thanks. Good night." As he stepped out the door, Stena was mildly confused by his wishing her luck, but put it out of mind.

The meditation halls in the Elders' compound were very well appointed. Stena wouldn't call them extravagant, given they were still fairly sparsely decorated due to their purpose, but she had honestly expected a practically bare stone room like the training room had been.

Instead, each of the eight or ten - she hadn't actually counted - rooms were prepared for longer stays. The room she was left in had Arrays tucked away in one corner for storing food and producing water, along with a cabinet for cups and plates. In the center was a simple but comfortable cushion with a massive, plush blanket draped over it, making the potential space to rest your body quite large.

She figured that if she moved the cushion out from under the blanket, the blanket itself would probably be sized for a dragon to rest on. A smaller one, anyway. And given the predominantly green and brown color scheme in the room, she suspected that Vyne's dragon form wasn't as big as Vale's was.

Putting that thought out of her mind, she gulped down two large cups of water from the Array before she settled on the cushion to meditate and Cultivate.

It didn't take very long before Stena decided that Vyne had been entirely correct in what he had said earlier in the night; now that she felt well rested and somewhat refreshed, her Cultivation seemed to flow particularly easily. Her focus wasn't perfect, but it was far better than it had been for the past several weeks, and she felt oddly settled.

As she Cultivated, she became increasingly aware of just how close to the peak of the Earth Realm she was. Her Cultivation gains were trickling down to nearly nothing at this point, because after months of dragon training, she was pushing against the natural boundary of her Realm. She could feel her core straining against the amount of Qi she was pushing into it, and although it wasn't painful, it was still uncomfortable, like she had spiritually eaten too much.

Hours passed by easily at first as she sat and Cultivated. But eventually, as she got further from that calm, rested state she had started in, her doubts and errant thoughts began to return. They were easy to shake off at first and keep focused, like whispers, but steadily grew until she felt like she had no choice but to acknowledge them.

You're not good enough.

Cierra is so much better than you.

Even Kord finished his training already, and he started after you.

Stena did her best to deal with the intrusive thoughts, but they still stung. Even if she knew they weren't true, or that they weren't actually a problem in the first place. As she did her best to continue Cultivating and ignoring the thoughts, her negativity surrounding them turned to frustration.

She was tired of it all. Even if all of these thoughts weren't something she could shake, she was tired of letting them rule so much of her life. Vyne had helped her process some of her issues, at least a little, and recognize how much of these thoughts were just her dragging herself down. Even if she couldn't control that subconsciously, she could at least recognize logically that she was being unfair to herself.

Now, with her body about as well-rested as it had been in a long time, her depressive and negative thoughts weren't sticking so much, instead stoking a fire within her.

Why did she have to sit here and listen to all of this negativity that was swirling within her? Vyne had been talking with her for months about acknowledging that she was having all of these negative emotions, but not accepting them as raw truth. And while she was equally sure that processing these feelings in a calm way was what Vyne would have preferred for her, she wasn't capable of that quite yet.

Instead, for the first time in a long time, she got mad. Full-on angry. She was mad at herself for thinking all these things. She was mad at the feelings themselves for being so all-consuming. She was mad at the world for allowing her to even feel this way to begin with. And that emotional turmoil stoked her anger hotter, and she pushed her Cultivation harder in response, as if the frustration at everything was making her tighten her grip with unvented anger.

"Oh, wow. You really do just entirely lack control, don't you?"

The sudden voice nearly shocked Stena out of her concentration entirely. She nearly had to bite her tongue to remain steady, but she still opened her eyes to see Cierra pacing around her. She must have been glaring daggers at her sister, because Cierra just laughed. The sound annoyed Stena in that moment immensely.

"Yes, I'm sure that anger helps you a whole bunch, doesn't it?" Her sister teased. "If you get angry, you don't have to get so sad! And you can even use anger as a weapon to throw all your frustration at others! How exciting."

Stena said nothing, trying to keep a steady hold on her meditation and Cultivation technique, but this distraction was going to be too much for her. She knew that, but couldn't manage to disengage from whatever foul thoughts had conjured her sister for her.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"You know," Cierra continued, walking a loose circle around Stena, "if you could harness all these emotions - especially this anger - you'd be much more powerful than you are? Maybe not as powerful as me," she snorted, "but still. Maybe more than Kord, at least."

That was, apparently, a cue for her brother to step in. "No, not as good as me, either." He said from behind her, but stepped into view. "I finished the dragonbond already, remember?" As he pointed it out, his draconic scaled form flashed over his body briefly, as if in boast. "You're far too behind to catch up to me now. Some older sister you turned out to be."

The jab from Kord wasn't as bad as Cierra's, but it still hurt. She had to focus and swallow hard to remain in control and not lash out, but she could still feel the chill run up her spine as she fought down her urge to bite back.

Kord snorted, seeing her not willing to rise to his provocation. "How well behaved."

"Indeed." Cierra said. "It's really quite remarkable, actually. She's always 'Oh, I'm so sad, boo hoo', but hides it behind a fake smile." Stena met her sister's eyes as Cierra moved in and leaned in close. "Why does she hide it, do you think?"

"Oh, I can imagine a few reasons." Kord said, looking up at the darkened, distant ceiling. "She's embarrassed that she's so inadequate? Or, perhaps, she's just lying to herself?"

"No," Cierra said, her voice a little quieter with implied threat, "I think it's because saying it out loud makes it true. Right?" She stood back up straight and threw her arms wide. "After all, when you finally admitted it out loud, things started coming true even faster, didn't they? You told Vyne you were worried about getting left behind, and then it happened."

"Oh!" Kord laughed. "That's true!"

"And that's also why she's never so much as mentioned her other main fear." Cierra said tauntingly, looking down at Stena. "The one so…deep seated that she can't even mention it."

That made Stena go cold. Even among all of her constant worries and negativity, there was one thought that she actively buried. She never even gave it a moment's thought, because she simply couldn't deal with it. She knew it wasn't true, and unlike her inferiority complex, it wasn't something she could really affect. So she had taken Emery's lesson and applied it vigorously in this case: Don't worry about things you can't do anything about and focus on what you can change.

None of that was apparently enough to stop that final, unspoken fear from materializing in front of her with Cierra and Kord.

Stood a little ways behind them, looking at Stena with a mix of disgust and disappointment, were both of her mothers. Emery looked about ready to dismiss Stena entirely, the disappointment in her expression melting into disinterest. Avuri turned away from her, as if not wanting to even look at her anymore.

Stena felt like she was going to be sick.

"Ha. Look at this. Even in her living nightmares, they don't even need to speak." Kord said, pointing lazily at their parents.

Cierra just shook her head in disappointment. "It's sad, isn't it? How broken do you need to be to worry about this sort of thing when the people themselves tell you over and over and over again that they'd never leave you?"

"It is sad." Kord agreed. "What's even worse is that it still all comes back to you in the end, doesn't it, Stena? This is no problem with anyone else. It's just. You."

Stena could feel bile rising in her throat. There was something about this that felt too real. And as she watched her mothers both turn away from her and walk away, she desperately felt a desire to scream. To scream and wail and beg them to stay, to not abandon her.

It was a fear so deeply buried that she didn't even really understand where it came from. Unlike her inferiority complex, which she logically understood and could pinpoint the moments where it began, this fear seemed practically unfounded.

Stena had never really been abandoned. Even when Emery and Avuri rescued her, it wasn't because she had been abandoned. Her family had been killed. She may not remember them much anymore, but she knew that she had been loved then. Probably. And, perhaps more importantly, Emery and Avuri had never once given her the impression they would ever abandon her.

This particular fear had seemed to sprout from nothing at all. But it was also one of the things Stena feared most. She had eventually vowed to herself to never acknowledge it, deciding it must just be an offshoot of her inferiority complex.

And yet, here it was, being shoved in her face by two of her own siblings. And her mothers were on the verge of simply walking away without a word.

But Stena was frozen to her spot. Now that she actually wanted to respond, to say something, say anything, she found she couldn't. Something was stopping her from reaching out, in the same way she had always stopped herself from doing so on all but her worst days.

She was completely trapped in her own skin, stuck in her Cultivation position, seated neatly with crossed legs. She couldn't even reach out to her parents, let alone get up and chase them.

When Emery finally seemed to lose interest in waiting for Stena to react at all and put an arm around Avuri's shoulders to walk away, something in Stena snapped.

She would not sit here and let them walk away. If she had to bare her entire soul to them to get them to stay, she would. She would share every embarrassing feeling, every awful thought, every paralyzing fear she ever had with them. But she needed to move forward.

She needed to do something.

Whatever it was that was holding in her place shattered. She tried to leap up and reach forward toward her parents, but her legs got tangled and she pitched forward. When her face slammed into the blanket-covered ground, she remembered where she was. The room was still dimly lit, with no windows to let any natural light in.

And Stena felt absolutely, revoltingly disgusting.

Her face had landed against the blanket, but there was a foul smelling sludge that seemed to coat the blanket where she had landed. In fact, it felt like her entire body was covered in the stuff, and she felt awful. Even being completely drenched in sweat never felt this bad.

Before she had a chance to extricate herself from her awkward, fallen position she heard a bit of laughter from the far side of the room behind her, where the entrance was.

"You know, Vale had warned me that his daughter was a little crazy and liked to leap before she looked."

The voice was calm, but carried a distinct undercurrent of pride and joy. "Like mother, like daughter, I suppose." Vyne chuckled.

Stena's legs were too tangled and numb and tingly to stand, so she just rolled over. When she felt the squelch of whatever she was covered in against her back, she scrunched her nose in disgust again. "What happened?"

"Do you really not know?" Vyne asked, walking into the room.

Stena did know. She just wasn't sure she believed it. "I'm just…not sure…" She stammered.

Vyne got close enough to loom over Stena. She could see his pleasant smile, as well as his nose squeezed shut in a distinctively inhuman way, as if he had muscles to hold his nostrils closed. "Welcome to the Sky Realm, Stena."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.