Free Veiled by Silvina Niccum

his arm and pulled him
up to the rest of us.
    The dragon’s wings were now
flapping and we barely missed them as we flew straight
up.
    We had scarcely cleared the
top of the wings when we heard some weird noise coming from within
the dragon.
    “ Stay together!” the
Second One’s voice warned. “We are Legion,” the united voice of the
dragon repeated.
    We kept flying as fast as
we could, and the dragon was now in hot pursuit, flying swiftly
after us. We had no chance of out flying the dragon. It was too
fast for us, but we still flew on in spite of evident
doom.
    It was about to take the
last plunge and overtake us, when the dragon began writhing with
unusual force, missing us by inches. Something or someone from
within was trying to get out, and was causing the dragon to go into
spasms. We took this opportunity to fly off, only turning once to
see if we were still being chased.
    “ What the…?” Max exclaimed
as he saw us flying out of the planet, being chased by the
dragon.
    “ No time, let’s go!” Alex
shouted and grabbed him by the robe and pulled him and Celeste
close to our little cluster.
    “ NO!” The dragon’s voice
was thunderous. “We are…”
    The tail of the dragon
twisted to one side and the body jerked to the other, the head
swinging from side to side unnaturally. Then something burst out of
the head and the whole dragon exploded into smaller pieces. The
spirits that made it were being thrown in all directions and the
dragon fell apart.
    In the distance we could
hear the Second One laughing. His laughter was a strange mixture of
rage and pleasure.
    We flew straight to the
gathering place after our escape; we had no inclination to wander
around the universe. We were among the first spirits to arrive and
watched as the rest of the host made their peaceful
entrance.
    In the distance I felt
Agatha’s presence and turned to face her, while she was still some
distance away. She glided straight toward me, looking shaken and
less sure of herself.
    “ You will never get me to
change my mind,” I told her, when she was near me.
    “ I know,” Agatha answered
casually, like the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.
    “ Then what are you doing
here? Trying to see what happy spirits look like?” I said
smugly.
    “ My version of happy is
different from yours. You know, Tess, there are some spirits who I
like and some who I hate, you…I happen to hate. Nothing personal, I
just do, can’t help myself. Just thinking about all the different
ways in which I will enjoy making your mortality miserable makes me
happy,” she added brightly.
    “ Well, that sounds like
fun…for about two millennia—then what? How long can you really
stand to watch others from the side lines without being a player
yourself? Even if you succeed in making my life miserable, it won’t
last. I’ll still have periods of enjoyment that will far outweigh
the misery that you might happen to cause me.”
    From the distance we could
hear a fresh wave of laughter from my clan, they had been
recounting the story about Legion to Celeste and Max—proving my
point beautifully in the process.
    “ So that’s why you are
here? To tell me how much you’ll enjoy making me miserable?” I said
with irony.
    “ I just wanted to make
sure you were aware of how things are really going to be. It might
help you in your…preparations,” She said without her usual
arrogance.
    “ Thanks for the warning.
I’ll keep that in mind while I prepare. I’m curious though, why did
you guys choose Max, of all spirits, to torture?” I
asked.
    “ Because, he has a hero
complex. He would sacrifice himself for any of his loved ones, even
Eros who so obviously betrayed him.” She said with a sneer. “The
rest of you are not so self sacrificing.”
    “ It sounds to me like Max
is not the only one with a hero complex,” I pointed out.
    “ Oh yeah, tell me please—I
do want to know,” she said greedily. “Any information you can give
me will be