I tried to get up, but realized my limbs had gone numb. Was I paralyzed? My eyelids felt very heavy. With a grunt I tried to raise myself, however, I failed and collapsed on my side. I was lucky, for I scarcely missed a nasty cut from the blade of my sword.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Help me!”

But no help came. A strong dizziness attacked me. I tried to stay awake. But my eyelids might as well have weighed a ton. I fell asleep.

***

It was a swaying motion that stirred me.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the sky. I was being carried by sirens. Four of them. Each one holding an arm or a leg. There were other sirens too moving with them. My sword was placed in a very dangerous manner along my stomach, and it was a wonder that it hadn’t fallen off.

I was about to ask the sirens to remove the sword, when they put me down. I was wholly incapable of independent movement. From what I could gather, without moving my stiff head, we were on the shore.

The Lady of the Well squatted next to me. She had a coconut shell containing red paint (though there was every possibility it was blood). She marked my face and stood up. The sirens joined each other’s hands and formed a ring around me. They went round and round, increasing their speed every time they completed a circle. A chant was in the air. First in low voices and then louder. The words were gibberish to me. The sirens jumped frequently and let out odd cries.

As the ritual progressed, I struggled to breathe. My lungs refused to fill up. I was freaking out, but only in my mind. My body lay still as a stone, oblivious to my inner panic. An invisible claw gripped my chest. The pain was extraordinary. I knew that I was dying. These sirens were killing me.

A light shone above me. It looked oddly like the rim of a portal. Was it the route to heaven? But I had two lives. I couldn’t die for real simply by dying once, could I?

An eye flashed inside the portal. A very big reptilian eye surrounded by scales. The pupils resembled orbs of molten lava. But you could tell that the owner of the eye was weak, just hanging onto life.

The light from the portal grew and grew until it was so bright that it had entirely enveloped all the sirens dancing around me. Their chant died out and it was as if they were gone.

I gasped for air, finding my lungs functionable. I sat up straight.

The reins of my body were mine again. I held my sword in my grasp. I looked around. I was in a new place. The sirens had transported me here by magic.

It was an arid location. The heat was scorching, and a hot wind blew, intending to boil me from the inside. I was in a valley of sorts. There was barely a tree to be seen anywhere. But strangely shaped hills and rock formations loomed everywhere the eye travelled, oddly reminding me of the abandoned buildings in the town.

I stood up to my feet. I was breathing with my mouth to cope with the hot air, and my tongue went dry.

I wondered briefly how I was going to get back to the island of the sirens. I quickly brushed that thought aside. I would find a way later on. First I needed to get the dragon tears I had come for.

“So where are the dragons?” I muttered. My voice sounded odd, like it had broken some unspoken rule of the desert that forbade the use of speech.

There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere. I would have to search for the reptiles. The sirens could have transported me straight away to their presence, but I guessed they considered the risk associated with doing that.

I put my brains to use and decided that I would have a better chance if I climbed a hill.

I selected the nearest hill and ascended it. A tough climb. There was no vegetation on the surface that could provide me with good footing. The soil was loose and slippery. A number of times I only barely stopped myself from rolling down the slope.

My progress was slow. But in about an hour I reached the hilltop. I felt incredibly tired. But I knew that I had made the right choice in climbing the hill the moment I saw the dragons.

The gigantic lizards were resting in the shadow of a rock formation about half a kilometer away.

Both were about the same size, not less than forty feet in length. However they were colored differently. One was brownish in appearance. This one also looked like the older of the two. I suspected I was after the tears of the brown dragon. He was more bones than flesh, and I doubted those feeble wings could take to the air.

The other dragon was black. It was in the prime of youth, and I shivered thinking how easily the animal could roast me with its flames. And with its long nails it could rip me apart like I was made of cotton.

But I was a human, and the sly human brain I possessed set to work at once, analyzing the location and searching for ways to strike without putting myself at risk.

There were boulders atop the rock formation in the shade of which the dragons were sleeping to escape the sun. If only I could drop one of those on the younger dragon…

I pointed my sword towards the dragons to see if the sword recognized their weaker body parts. But the distance in between was too big, and nothing came of it.

Could I sneak to the dragons, and attack the black beast when it was slumbering?

Doable, but far riskier than dropping a boulder.

I decided to execute the first strategy. I descended from the elevation. Climbing down was faster, but required additional care or else I would tumble down and smash my head on some rock.

Once at the bottom, I set off for the rock formation. It was an almost vertical monolith, and it took me a long time to figure out a way up.

I wished I had a scabbard, for climbing the rock face of the formation required both my hands, and I had to resort to biting the hilt of the sword with my mouth in order to carry the sword. My mouth ached, and there was always the fear of slitting my face with the blade.

Halfway up, I rested on a horizontal platform that stuck out from the rock formation like a tongue. It was only a few feet across and very narrow. Every time I looked down, vertigo hit me. The smallest careless movement on my part could plummet me to a guaranteed death.

I resumed my ascent. It took another half an hour of rigorous effort. But finally I reached the top that had the boulders. It was relatively flat and I gladly lay down and relaxed, looking up at the wide cloudless sky.

Once done resting, I crept on all fours to the edge of the rock that was facing the dragons.

Both of them looked so much bigger than they had from the other hill. Out of a curiosity to know if the giant lizards were in deep sleep or just having a light nap, I threw a small pebble.

It landed in between the duo. Barely had the pebble touched ground that the black dragon raised his head. Observing the pebble as it rolled to a stop, the dragon sniffed it. He began to turn his huge conical head this way and that very suspiciously.

***

General Information(Under influence of Critical Event):

Name: Vicky

Affinity/Inclination: Neutral One

Level: 6

2(Health/Strength): 5211/6000

Weapons: Magic Sword

Stamina: 371/600

Mana: 377/600

Spells/Abilities: nil