24A/N: I'd like to say I have no excuse for it taking so long to write this but the truth is life is hard and no one is hiring. Also I get sick often which sucks. Adulting sucks. Call me when someone invents a potion to turn people back into children.
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Heroes Born and Made: Zeia's Story.
In The Heart of an Empath.
Chapter Fourteen.
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"I think you made a big mistake." Iza sighed as she settled down beside her sister.
Rachel Cooper looked up from the book she was reading in confusion. "In what? Letting Zeia run? That was your idea sister."
"It was." Iza nodded. "That also wasn't what I was speaking of."
One of Rachel's eyes brows slowly slid upwards. "Oh?"
"The tea you put her on." Iza vaguely explained.
Rachel rolled her eyes and huffed in frustration. "What about Zeia's tea? It was neccary to suppress her powers."
"It's also toxic." Iza argued. Her eyes were lit with an inner fire and she was leaning forward in her chair. "She'll detox off of it like a drug addict with Pansage leaves."
Rachel blinked in shock before glaring at her sister. "Are you comparing my daughter to a blunt smoking urchin who hasn't got their latest drag?"
"That's not what I mean and you know it!" Iza finally lost her temper.
Her sister gave an aristocratic sneer. "Then don't be so Arcus damned vague all the time. You're just like Mother!"
Iza laughed. The noise was low and frigid as it echoed through the sitting room they were wasn't a nice laugh, and it sent shivers down Rachel's back.
"I'm as much like Mother as you are. After all, I didn't promise my kid to a rich criminal and send police after the girl just to keep up the family public face. But that is not what we are speaking of."
Rachel sighed but settled down. She could easily see the wisdom in her sister's words. "I gave her the least toxic version of the suppressant I could." She pointed out. "Zeia will just have to deal with the detox."
"Nausea, vomiting, dizziness, migraines, sudden fainting spells, the shakes, and sudden unexplainable weakness of the body. And that's on top of whatever symptoms she gets from her powers breaking free." Iza listed off from memory. "Yeah, the kid will just have to deal."
Rachel slowly rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. "We don't have a choice now. She should already be detoxing. We'll just have to hope that she'll be fine."
"We should have planned this better." Iza groaned.
Pale fingers slid down the spine of a worn, leather bound book. Rachel stared morosely at it before nodding. "We should have planned this better." She said at last.
"There was nothing else we could have done." Iza responded quietly. "She'll make her choices in her own time."
"All beings have free will, including Zeia. Her choices are her own to make." Rachel agreed. "For better or for worse."
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For the fifth time in the last three minutes Nurse Joy looked up at her clock. "This is silly." she murmured after a minute. "I'm sure that girl is fine. She said she was fine. Who would know ones health and limits better than oneself?"
The clock ticked away a little more.
"She better be fine!" Joy said. She shot a guilty glance outside before beginning to pace behind her desk. "Who would've thought we'd have a storm so out of season?"
The pink haired woman whirled around and tossed her hands up. "Someone needs to check if she's fine!"
"That who is fine Ma'am?" An amused voice broke through Joy's rever. "I might have seen them on my way in."
Joy blinked in shock. Standing just inside the center was a young lady. Her brown hair was dripping and her clothes were soaked. In her left hand she held a dripping umbrella that had clearly failed to keep its owner dry.
"Sorry for the mess Nurse Joy, but it's raining buckets out there." The girl gave a sheepish grin. "My names Ginna. Iris sent me to speak with a girl with a young dragon type, but I could spare the time to go find this female you're worrying over too if you'd like."
Joy's entire personage seemed to brighten at the offer. "The girl I'm missing might just be the one you're looking for. Her names Zeia and she has a freshly hatched Deino as her starter."
"That about matches my quarry." Ginna agreed. "Is she still out in that storm?"
The relief on Joy's face began to wane as she was reminded of her missing lodger. "Yes she is. I sent her out to the Dreamyard to train and she hasn't returned."
Just then a great gust of wind rammed into the shelter. The windows rattled under the sheer force of it and the lights flicker off for a second.
"I can't imagine anyone willing to stay out too long in that storm." Ginna said after a moment. "She should be walking back by now."
Nurse Joy shook her head. "I'm not that sure if she can." The nurse admitted. "She looked rather ill when she left. The storms been raging for half an hour now and she still hasn't come back. The dream yard is only ten minutes outside of the city; she should have returned."
"Don't worry Ma'am." Ginna said. "I'll go back out and get her. My dragons are big enough to help me through this so I'll be fine."
Nurse Joy gave a hesitant nod to the young dragon tamer. "Thank you. I'll have a room set up for you when you return."
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Zeia felt like she was trapped within her own skin. The very air around her weighed heavy over her, and she couldn't move her body. Distantly she registered being rained on, and that someone was dragging her somewhere. No matter how she struggled she couldn't seem to force the fog from her mind to move.
Her skin felt odd too. It seemed to be stretched tight over her bones like leather on a tanning rack. On top of that her skin was also overwhelmed with the feeling of bugs crawling over it. The feeling was disquieting and Zeia wished it would stop.
Pain ran from her stomach to her head in a jagged lightning bolt. For a moment she thought her head would explode. It didn't, but she was left immobile and racked with agony. She desperately tried to move or do anything but nothing happened. Her body simply wouldn't listen to her will.
Trapped inside of her own mind Zeia raged at the storm around her. She wouldn't give up without a fight.
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Ginna dodged another flying branch and snarled. She'd been walking through the storm for twenty minutes at that point and had just reached the entrance of the Dreamyard. The storm had been flinging branches about willy nilly as well as uprooting small saplings. She'd barely made it to the yard safely.
She glanced about worriedly before continuing on. "I hope that girl is okay." She said to herself. The storm seemed to be centered around the Dreamyard, and only got nastier the closer to the center she got.
"At this rate there won't be a yard left to find." Ginna huffed. She ducked under another branch before continuing on. "Or the hatchling will be crushed by a falling log and me coming out here will have been completely useless."
A sharp sting on her made the dragon tamer look down. A thin line of red was already beading up across the exposed flesh. "Fuck it." Ginna sighed. "I'll hunker down until the storm stops."
It wasn't hard for her to find a spot to settle into among the half crumbled concrete walls and oil drums. She shot a morose look at the entrance way she hadn't managed to stray far from but shook her head. Risking life and limb when waiting would be safer was a beginners mistake she wasn't willing to make.
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Supernatural romance novels were lying pieces of shit, Zeia decided. She could remember reading about happy young maidens 'bonding' or whatever with supernatural beings and 'being sudden able to feel everything' during those bonding experiences. The books had always described it a kind of overwhelming pleasure.
That, she decided, was a great big crock of shit.
Zeia could feel everything, and it hurt. It felt like there were live wires under her skin and acid running through her veins. She could feel each raindrop hitting her like the punch of a bullet and each rock in the ground beneath her as if it were jagged glass. Black spots swam across her vision at an infrequent rate while her head pounded to a different rhythm.
Hypersensitivity sucked and when she could move again Zeia was going to personally visit all those romance authors and strangle them. They practically deserved it for deluding young girls like that!
A great roaring tide of something swelled through her. It felt like it started at her core, wherever that was, and began to wash through the rest of her. It was agony and terror, hunger and thirst, rage and hopelessness all coursing through her in an ever raging tide. But on top of that it was bliss, safety, contentment, happiness, and courage. It was overwhelming and all consuming and Zeia would've been afraid of being devoured by all of it had she been capable of feeling anything concrete right then.
She wept.
She cried and she broke and she let the strange thing swell up and smother her until there was nothing of Zeia left. Trapped inside herself Zeia gave up.
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"That's not good." The Zorua winced.
Fluffy shifted closer to his trainer and glared. "What isn't good?"
"Well..." Zorua let out a nervous laugh. "She may be a few minutes off of frying her brain unless we stabilize her."
The Deino snarled. "And we do that how?"
"By grounding her in the physical plain? I don't know I'm new at this!" Zorua shook his head.
Fluffy nodded before scrutinizing Zeia's scent. "Please forgive me Mother." With that said he lunged and slammed into her side.
Zeia's body moved slightly under the assault but she remained unresponsive. Fluffy simply backed up and tried again.
Zorua stood and watched awkwardly as the Deino desperately attempted to awaken his trainer. The smack of flesh forcibly hitting flesh was almost sickening.
"Enough!" He lashed out at Fluffy. The blow landed against the dragon's muzzle and split the still fragile hatchlings skin.
Fluffy hissed. "What?"
"Try something else before you break her ribs!" The fox made an angry guester at Fluffy before remembering that the dragon was bind and slowly putting his paw down.
Out of lack of anything better to Fluffy reared back and sunk his bloody teeth into Zeia's arm. There was an instant right after he bit her that Fluffy could taste her blood in. It was strange and full of bitterness, but underneath all of that was something that tingled on his tongue like lightning. Then a vast wave of power swept through him and stole him away.
The Zorua stared at the two passed out beings before him and sighed. Thunder cracked above him as the rain continued to pour. He looked up in defeat and shouted at the sky. "Now what?"
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It felt like Zeia had been adrift within the storm inside of her for time immeasurable. She was floating on the eddies and currents of power in a pain filled daze. Several times she'd tried to tame the storm only to find that when she caught one current another swiftly pulled her away.
She'd just about given up hope of ever halting the storm when something latched onto her senses. Some part of her, the part that understood all the new feelings and things flooding into her, recognized the new bond pulling on her. That part of her seemed to label the bond with happiness, scales, softness, and power.
Now that she had an anchor to hold her in the storm Zeia could relax and focus on taming the tangled mess of power and rage that whirled around her. Now that something else was holding her and preventing her from losing herself Zeia could turn all her attention towards wrangling the storm of power around her into some semblance of order.
Now pulling the threads of power to her was much easier. She untangled them like she would her tangled yarn or thread. It took some time but eventually smaller ones started to come loose. Each one felt a little different to her and appeared a different color to her gaze. They had a multitude of shapes and twists. Some appeared to made of lightning, some light, and others of shadows and smoke. They were heady and touching them made her feel so many different things. It gave her a head rush.
Although it was exhausting work she kept at it until all the strands were separated and the storm was tamed. In time all the different strands of power were sorted until they swayed in a neat circle around her. Cocooned in their presence Zeia felt safe.
With her task done she slept.
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Ginna watched in amazement as the raging storm slowly calmed and then petered out. Gale force winds slowed down to gusty breezes while clouds dried up and parted. Soon the storm was gone and all that was left was a rather cold evening.
"Well." She laughed. "Looks like I'll live to meet this mysterious trainer after all."
The dragon tamer stood from her shelter and carefully began to move forwards. She had to be careful because of all the debris lying about but she made good time nonetheless.
After a few moments of wandering about the Dreamyard Ginna came upon a strange sight. There was a blacked haired girl lying unconscious on the ground with a small Deino curled up beside her. The two were slightly bloody and covered in debris, but she could clearly see that the two were breathing and not obviously injured.
Ginna summoned her Haxorus with a sigh. "You carry the girl and I'll take the derg." She told him grimly. "We're taking them back to town before they freeze to death."
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