Control Comes from Within

As soon as I heard the words, I felt an odd sensation in my mind. The urge to do as I was ordered was strong, a persistent, niggling bite that wouldn’t relent, like the worst kind of itch. I had never been magically compelled before, and the feeling of being made to follow orders was almost repugnant to me.

I did recognize the irony, me bemoaning the fate of being compelled to do something when I had “tamed” countless beings. But I was in almost the same position as the ones I had tamed: submit or die. Being on the opposite side of it wasn’t a great feeling.

I grit my teeth and locked eyes with my draconic mentor. I refused to believe that she was unaware of what I was experiencing.

“I have some things to say to you after this is over,” I said angrily via our mental link.

“No, you don’t. You will do as I say, or you will lose the ability to do anything. Now go slaughter those kidnappers. Oh, and no using anything in your little space,” Reela said, her words just as irate as mine. The urge reasserted itself at her instructions, and only loosened once I had taken steps to do as told.

I quickly burrowed underground using nature magic, taking care to conceal any traces of my existence from the criminals on the surface. Maneuvering beneath the ground until I was directly below the barge took a few minutes, but I worked as silently as possible, taking care not to displace too much dirt, lest the vibrations put the poachers and their security on edge.

My blood sense was actively feeding me information on the positions of every being above me, even the caged beasts, whom I could tell were scurrying around in their cages, banging against their walls in a vain attempt to break free. There were fifty humans in total, the majority doing the work of moving the cages around, while only fifteen or so seemed like combatants, based on their formation and stances. Ideally, I would be able to finish them all in one strike, but it would be prudent to have a contingency if the situation got out of hand.

My…mentor…preventing the usage of my beast space cut off a lot of my usual tactics that I would use for a large group like this, so I hastily created some blood needles as a backup weapon. For my main mode of attack, I’d probably need to go with something large…or incredibly small.

Before I could deliberate any more, I could tell via blood sense that the poachers had finished their business on the mainland and were about to depart. With less time than I would have liked, I zeroed in on all the human blood above me, mentally separating it from the sources of beastly blood, and concentrated on extracting it. I could either go for stealth or speed, but the situation required speed more. Finalizing my plan, I concentrated on all the human blood, which was slowly but steadily moving northwards, and starting to pick up speed.

Focusing on my targets and my method, I concentrated, taking deep breaths in an attempt to physically calm down my mind by working on my body. Right at the point where the poachers would be out of my range, I finally let loose a geyser of essence, enveloped all the sources of human blood I could…and pulled.

Where before I could sense multiple individuals moving around, now the only living things on the barge were those in cages. Fortunately for me, the barge lost its momentum when its operators decompiled, meaning I only had to cross a short distance to reclaim all the caged beasts, though traversing upwards through sand and saltwater was a bit uncomfortable.

“You may use your space again for now. Return here as quick as you can,” Reela said to me mentally. I was swimming to catch up to the barge, until I climbed aboard and saw the results of my spell. Blood and guts pooled on the deck, not a single person in sight. Well, not a single living person, that is. I collected all the blood in my space, as it was all ammunition I could use if the need arose. A few wind bursts later, the barge, the caged beasts, and I were back on the sandy shore, the scarlet dragonkin already standing out in the open.

The beasts were frantically trying to escape throughout the whole episode, but they quickly calmed down when they saw the dragonkin. It was annoying having to open each cage and crate individually, as there were nearly a hundred of them, but it helped that the beasts quietly and voluntarily assembled in front of the dragonkin once they were freed. My mentor spoke a few words to them that I was too far away to hear, then they were teleported away. The itch of the compulsion completely faded, marking the end of this little misadventure that improbably only took a few hours.

My earlier anger about the compulsion was still in the forefront of my mind, but it gradually settled down to a simmer from the white-hot wrath that it was before. At the end of the day, there was nothing I could do about it, other than accept it and move forward. Reela was standing ahead of me, clacking her claws together as I walked up to her.

“Well, that wasn’t completely terrible. But you have some bad habits and major changes to work on before you’re ready for real combat,” she said offhandedly. “So, how do you feel?”

“Hungry and annoyed?”

She barked out a laugh. “Well, if you really want, you can have something to eat, though I wouldn’t recommend it. What I meant was how do you feel after killing humans for the first time? It is your first time, right?”

…Huh.

I really tried to process the fact that I didn’t feel much from killing fellow humans, and what that said about me as a person, but I just…didn’t care. I didn’t feel nauseous, like the first time I had to fight off the voranders, nor did I feel sorrow at crossing some arbitrary moral boundary. I didn’t even feel anything close to fear or trepidation at slowly turning into someone that I wouldn’t be able to recognize. All I felt at that moment was anger.

Anger at the dragons as a whole, who unilaterally decided that for the sake of the world, I needed to be leashed.

Anger at the scarlet dragonkin in front of me, for taking entirely too much pleasure in seeing me struggle against my metaphorical leash.

Anger at the poachers and the king, who were just overall assholes that made my life harder.

But mostly, I was angry at myself. At the end of the day, everything was my choice. If I were smarter, or more cautious, or more paranoid, I probably could have avoided getting into this entire situation in the first place. Sure, there were external factors, but I was simply reacting to whatever situations the world threw at me without cultivating a sense of foresight to determine the effect of my actions. I was shortsighted and didn’t think things through.

In short….I was too passive.

“Yes,” I curtly replied, closing my eyes to try and gain some semblance of control again.

“Hmph, you’re acting too calm for someone who’s been through what you have,” she said. After a moment of silence, she continued. “Looks like you’re doing this the hard way.”

I opened my eyes at her declaration, almost afraid of what was to come as I saw that unrelenting reptilian face. “I’m begging you to let me rest first.”

“No,” she mercilessly countered. “I want you as desperate as possible. I need to break you before I can fix you. While I might not be the best of mentors, you don’t seem like the easiest of students, either. Not to mention that you don’t even need to rest right now. Trust me, you’ll want to be as angry as possible for this.”

I couldn’t help but shudder internally when I saw the almost predatory gleam in her expression, and I didn’t need mastery of foresight to know that I had an unpleasant experience lined up for me. It also didn’t help that I felt the vow take effect as soon as I heard Reela say the words ‘trust me’, making me feel more inclined that she was trustworthy. It was unsettling and unpleasant, and simply keeping the effect at bay was a constant mental struggle.

“For what you’re about to face, you can use anything in your space, no limits, but you can’t hide in there if things get hard. I’ll be watching the whole time, but don’t rely on me to save you. I don’t want you to get used to having safeguards. Oh, and…try not to die, alright? It would make me look bad if I got known as the fool who let her first student die on the first day of training.”

Before I could even form a question to ask her, she snapped her fingers and I felt myself being teleported once more. I was becoming more familiar with the sensation every time I experienced it, and I had the vague feeling that there was something I could interact with, but the feeling died out as soon as I reached my destination and looked at my surroundings.

Any anger I felt at Reela for dropping me here without a moment’s notice was immediately suppressed, as I genuinely feared for my life, and did my best to not vomit at the smell.

My first instinct to dive into my beast space was suppressed by the vow, and my blood sense alerted me to just how many beings were nearby. Before I could be attacked, I unleashed hundreds of voranders from my beast space, commanding them to form a perimeter around me, slaughtering and butchering whatever was in my vicinity. Cries and roars immediately filled the air, as I began erecting stone walls around my position….only to realize that my nature magic had nothing to utilize. I took a perfunctory look at the environment for something to use, but held little hope.

Despite the sun being out, the area was devoid of warmth, as the canopies of dead and blackened trees covered the sky, their gnarled roots doing their best to spread out and cover the cracked and brittle soil, any nutrients having been plundered long ago. Bodies and carcasses of all kinds of animals were strewn about everywhere, in various stages of decay. In the distance was also a deep hole in the ground where unholy screeches and noises could be heard, though I did my best to shut it out, knowing what I knew about my current ‘training ground’.

I was in a goddamn vorander nest.