Chapter 566: Dragonkin

As Arc collapsed, Owyn hurried to catch her, holding her tight as he tried to look around for some way to get her to the city’s hospital. His search ended quickly as a Dragon Knight on a black dragon that resembled Ascala forced his way to a landing, shouting back at the crowd before he turned to Owyn. "Put her in the harness!" he shouted, and Owyn saw that there was something like a long bag attached to a front harness, and he slid Arc into it before grabbing on.

"What are you doing?" the Knight asked.

"I’m going with her!"

"Boy..." The knight’s face switched from anger to something else. "It’s on your head if you fall."

"I won’t," Owyn glared.

Owyn did not fall, but he did not land softly either when the massive black dragon perched on the roof.

One of Arc’s moms, Malzkael, was there to meet them, and in short order, she had a portal up that her staff used to bring Arc into a room prepared for her. But when Owyn tried to follow, she held up her hand. "You are coming with me before you fall apart."

"But Arc..."

"Will be fine. We’ve dealt with broken bonds before."

"I’m not leaving her al-"

"Look at yourself!" Malzkael raised her voice, and her magic, seizing Owyn and showing him his own arm, which was covered in dragons blood but also dripping and smoking away as parts of his skin were either clear and gelatinous or outright missing. "If you want to be there for her, you need to decide now what you become, Owyn. Or you won’t be here at all."

Owyn searched her eyes. He didn’t know... didn’t want to change himself if it meant Arc wouldn’t... but that wasn’t who she was. He wanted to be there for her. He wanted to be someone she needed, or at least could rely on. Especially now that...

"A dragon..." Owyn said. "Make me her dragon."

Malzkael’s eyes widened. "You have no idea what you’re asking."

"So it’s possible?"

"Yes."

"Then do it. We can figure out the rest later."

"So be it." She looked over and made a pulling gesture, and suddenly the black dragon roared as its blood was forcefully extracted. The knight glared at her, but she healed his dragon with another wave and blocked it with a shield when it tried to swipe them off the roof with its tail.

"Why did..."

"Do you want to be a female dragon instead?" Malzkael challenged, waving another hand to open a portal to a room completely inscribed with magic circles.

"N-no," Owyn said.

"Your loss. Now get in the damn room."

The moment he stepped in, Malzkael wasted no time handling him with her magic as she cut the clothes from his body and vaporized everything that wasn’t a part of him.

He had no time to be impressed with the speed at which she worked as she turned him face down and kept him suspended in the air, placing the fist-sized drop of dragon’s blood into a vestibule, which was next to a less vibrant container of blood. Between them, a single drop of some strangely iridescent substance glowed in rainbow colors.

"What is that?" Owyn asked, transfixed by the sheer power in the tiny drop, even compared to the dragon’s blood.

"Think of it as an accelerator. You delayed long enough, I figured I’d rather guarantee quick success with some risk instead of going slow and having you unravel part of the way through."

A portal opened, and Kordia appeared. "What did he go with?" she asked.

"Dragon," Malzkael said as she continued to work, gesturing towards the other side of Owyn.

"Does he-"

"No time. He will know if he doesn’t melt or explode."

Owyn gulped. Before he could ask how that was possible, he suddenly felt a wave of wooziness.

"What is..."

"Sorry for the asphyxiation. And the lack of anesthetic..." Kordia said.

"See you on the other side," Malzkael said, her voice already distant to Owyn’s fading senses.

Owyn awoke in a sea of silver and red. An undifferentiated mass in which he floated. Trying to move felt like straining his bones through barely gelatinous flesh. His mind had nothing to focus on but the pain he wanted to escape from but couldn’t, and for a while he writhed in agony and impotent, fetal struggle.

His cry was a weak and helpless bubble in a world that filled him with agony. But pain held too long became its own sort of background as he felt the mass around him start to accumulate on his limbs.

And he remembered that when he had arms to hold he’d carried someone he deeply cared about to a place to heal...

The same place he was in now, he remembered.

He tried to recall her name... his name? No. He was him and she was her.

His mind coalesced around this first identity, reminding him he was, or had been, a giant. She was a being he’d never heard of before... Here? Where was here? No. Focus. She was a metatron.

She was Arc. He loved her...

In his fetal primordiality, he lost the ability to lie as the truth bloomed with every remade sinew and neuron.

Concepts of body whispered in his silver-red biome, from voices outside yet inside his brain and his body, enforcing their understandings upon him and comporting him to their will because he lacked his own right now.

He lacked his... name...

No.

He was Owyn. And he had told an angel to make him into a dragon.

Owyn... he soundlessly said his own name, pressing the labial glide into the world of flesh and silver.

Realizing he had a tongue.

He felt his teeth and they were sharp... but then dull... then sharp again.

He pushed his bones into the mass and had the realization of his own hands existing. He swam his legs but they were not yet his to escape with, and the force holding him in place firmed its grip and fed him magic in merciless doses of necessary pain.

A searing agony ripped along his spine as it found itself, reconnecting, stretching, popping, snapping, reconnecting. Pain upon pain upon pain.

He was Owyn. He was a giant. He could do this... he was doing this for her.

He’d asked an angel to make him into a dragon... what a terrible angel she was to do this to another being.

He hated her. He wished he could claw his way from his prison just to rip her wings off... And with that hate came a bubbling compression in his chest, a burst of sound that ripped through his prison only to be forced back into place by the magic of two far superior predators.

He was Owyn. He was a dragon. He would not be prey!

Remember Arc, idiot!

The voice, the words... they had meaning. They forced a reformation of his frontal cortex... what a strange concept, a place in the brain just for language. But then again brains were still a mystery to most healers... but not here. Not in Norneau.

Not in its hospital... where he was...

I’m being reborn... he realized.

The destabilization of his inner gate had occurred because of a particular set of circumstances... contact with monster flesh, passing through... the Veil? The concept slid off his mind because the angel did not understand it beyond its function. Slow down time within its domain. Keep Kir trapped, but relatively happy.

Kir... Arc’s father.

Metatron. Angel. Demon. Demon Lord. Lord of the House of Stars. Birther of Arc. The girl he loved...

Owyn remembered to fear him. Then he let the thought return to why he was here.

He was Owyn. He was a giant becoming a dragon. He would end up somewhere in between, but also able to be both.

The place his gate had been connected to was a place of flesh. A place of potential being that had to be separated from its universe to differentiate itself. To be a dragon and remain Owyn, they would experiment.

The angel assured him he would be fine.

He tried to think back at her, to ask if she was alright. His Arc... No. Not his. Arc did not desire to be owned; she was like many of the giant women where he’d lived... before Norneau and her. She was independent. Strong despite thinking herself weak. Able despite thinking herself crippled by her lack of magical acumen.

He focused on her. On how he would tell her and... Raven. Such a strange, dark creature, Arc’s other claimant... No. There would be no claims.

He would not... could not dare to own such a creature...

He would not allow another to think she could do so.

But the dragon inside him wanted to...

He was Owyn. He needed to be Owyn.

Not a dragon or a giant. Owyn...

A drop of creation was added to his soul, and Owyn ceased to be anything...

He awoke to the sensation of a gaping hole inside himself... He felt so very, terribly empty...

"Finally," the angel... Malzkael said. "How do you feel?"

Owyn’s bleary eyes resolved a face above his... then another with fox ears.

He blinked and focused, and hands were there... only...

"Are these my hands?" he asked, staring out at the black scales that faded towards his elbows. The long, clawlike nails.

"Congratulations, Owyn. You’re the first dragonkin to exist in almost seven-thousand years," Malzkael sighed. "Again, how do you feel?"

"Oh," he said. "I feel hungry."