A deep chuckle came from within her, a deep and growing guffaw so forceful that she could almost hear it, but it was in her mind.

Foolish girl. I have you where I want you and there's nothing you can do about it.

"You only say that because I'm killing you."

Drain away, witch girl. You can drain my energy, but not fast enough to kill me. Stop or I'm hatching out of this shell and eating my way out of your stomach. You'll die a terrible death and I'll fly away laughing.

"Do it. If there's no way out for me, you would have done it by now."

Nothing happened.

"Thought so. How do you feel now, getting weaker?" The dark energy flowing into her made Tonya giddy. With it flowing into her and filling her up, she didn't fear the height of the tower or the dragon inside anymore. She was winning. She was powerful. It was time for this wretched parasite to admit he was beaten.

He. You think I'm a he? After all this time and with all your sensitivity to life forces, I would have thought you'd have figured it out by now.

"So, you're a girl. Die like a girl, then."

I wasn't bluffing. And I'm so full of energy that it would take you hours to kill me.

"How?"

Let's say you and your aunt are powerful sources of power. But you could be a lot more powerful if you worked with me instead of trying to kill me like some naive brat.

"Why would I work with you. You're a murderer."

I'm not even born yet and already you accuse me. This is pure prejudice.

"You threatened to kill me."

You started it.

Tonya hadn't stopped draining energy out of the egg, but the source of power hadn't ebbed either. It reminded her of when she drew all the life energy, and eventually death energy out of Waldock. The giddy headrush, the sense of amazing power. Any minute now she was afraid the increasing power would cause her to lose grip on the ladder and float away.

Don't get carried away. The power won't save you from falling to your death. Make a deal or I'm eating my way out of here. Now or never Tonya!

"What do you want?"

I want to make you the most powerful witch in Loon Lake.

That was a surprise. Tonya was expecting him, er, her, to beg for her life, not cut her a deal. "And what's in it for you?"

As you may have noticed, the lifecycle of a dragon isn't exactly what you might expect from reading fairy tales about knights and princesses.

"You seem ready to eat a young woman."

Fair enough. But has it occurred to you why it's always young women? It's not because you taste any better.

"Please, explain." Tonya let the conversation continue. She had nothing to lose. Every moment more of the dragon's dark life force channelled into her, better than any energy she'd encountered before. Even if it didn't kill the dragon, if she drew away enough power, maybe it would weaken it, or at least slow down its development. The dragon was on the verge of hatching and if it did eat its way out of her body, she would die. "What is the life cycle of a dragon, outside of fairy stories?"

When dragons lay their eggs in some cold cave beneath the earth, they might be safe, but they take hundreds of years to hatch. To speed up the process dragon clans had to find some way of channelling life magic into the egg. Traditionally, they would gather up young women to sacrifice to their eggs. When the last drop of life energy was drained, the dragons would eat the young girls as an afterthought. This went on for generations, building up the legend of virgin-eating dragons.

"Seems like it's true."

They don't have to be virgins. They just have to be really alive and young people are bursting with natural life energy.

"How would you know any of this if you're still in the egg? What's really going on here?"

I have ancestral memory; the same way ordinary animals have instincts. Dragons don't have to everything from scratch like feeble, human babies. How would you expect an animal born knowing nothing to be able to fly? How could we survive when we have so many enemies?

A wave of vertigo hit Tonya despite the energy running through her. Her left hand slipped on the ladder. "Whoa!"

Don't jump. You don't need to sacrifice yourself for your people.

This gave Tonya an idea. "Maybe I do. I don't think this deal you're offering me has to be a trick. You say you want to make me the most powerful witch in Loon Lake, well guess what? I don't want to be powerful. I want to go back to studying and have a good life with my friends. Why don't you make this deal with my aunt?"

Impatient, aren't you? It's amazes me your species dominates the Earth when you have the attention span of parakeets. About thirty years ago, one of our kind, a powerful magic-using dragon learned from human scientists about a remarkable species. The parasitic wasp lays its eggs in the body of a caterpillar. When the eggs hatch, they eat their way out of the caterpillar but chemicals in the caterpillar's body cause it to weave a silk web around the baby wasp larvae, protecting them from predators until they are big enough to fly away.

"So, dragons lay their eggs in people now, but they didn't used to?"

The early experiments were failures, but it's getting better and I'm about to make the biggest breakthrough of all, if you'll help me.

"I'm not helping you. You're going to eat your way out of my body and kill me. The best thing I can do for my loved ones is leap from this crane and die."

I told you, I can fly. By the time you were halfway down, I'd break out and flap away.

"Your bluffing."

A sudden pain wrenched through the wall of Tonya's stomach. A blossom of blood appeared on her shirt. Seconds later, the dragon's beak broke through.

"Wait!"

Together we could have ruled but now you're going to die.

____________________

Want to read ahead? The full, edited version of this novel is very different from the Wattpad version. You can see the awesome cover (by a top-flight cover designer) and read the whole thing for free here: https://reamstories.com/maaja

Maaja