Turner: Inevitable Change

By P.B. Cannon

Having recuperated from the critical wound she sustained during a battle on Earth with the scorbs, Juri Turner returns with Tet Sonicdragon to Mur, ready to finish her secondary education and continue her training in learning how to rule.
But she is beset with three problems: one, those big, venomous dinosaurs with huge claws known as Revishers, are causing trouble on Mur; two, Tet Sonicdragon gets abducted by a demon and taken to a place of no return; three, her recently discovered inner twin is trying to surface and inhabit their one body.
Will being the human-born dragon or a worker of the magic of Tyngrith be of any help in these instances?
Once again, the mettle of the human-born dragon is put to the test.

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.B. Cannon
• Release date: Nov 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370892785

P.B. Cannon

P.B. Cannon was born and raised in Charlotte, NC, and though she has visited other cities and states, she has a preference for Charlotte and expects to live there for the rest of her life.She is a teller of tales who enjoys concocting yarns of science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, and other stuff. She relishes reading, drawing and painting, walking, working crossword puzzles, and she likes to dance.She is a retired electronics technician and admits to having worked at a variety of other jobs during her life, including being a dishwasher, a busgirl, a housemaid, a motel/hotel maid, working in a fast-food joint, a telephone operator, and a store clerk. There have been other, even-less-glamorous jobs.She also daydreams a lot.

Book preview

After I recuperated from the wound I sustained during a nasty battle with the scorbs that nearly eliminated me, though the war wasn’t over, Tet and I had to return to Mur…

Chapter One

Recovery

The dark amorphous figure watched me with its shadow of a head tilted to one side.

Give me what I need, it intoned.

I snapped awake.

It was a dream I had experienced often over the last month. It was of my twin. When I met her, she didn’t speak, but within the dream, she always did, and it was always in my voice.

I learned only months before that I had a twin. She had no physical presence, yet she existed as surely as I did. In addition to being the reason I was both a sonic and a fire dragon, she was also the reason for the darkness that wound throughout my soul, threatening to send me down into madness.

When my heart was shattered during battle four weeks before, I was thrown into a place that I finally decided was a recess of my soul. It was where she existed, and that was where I met her.

I sat up shivering, even though I knew it was only a dream. My twin wasn’t exactly a whole personality and wasn’t capable of speech but was instead the remnant of what might have been. This rather unusual condition was attributable to the radiation from an antimatter weapon. While still within our mother’s womb, exposure to this emission melded us back into one body before we could become two fully separate embryos.

That went a long way toward ruining what otherwise might’ve been a semi-normal life. I suppose you could say we were the ultimate conjoined twins. Or, to be more accurate, we were re-joined twins.

I didn’t know what it was she needed, but I knew that ultimately, I was going to have to find a solution to the dilemma of two souls sharing one body. It was not a good arrangement. She had a separate soul from mine but wasn’t completely aware. Instead, she mostly consisted of emotions that sometimes raged, and I could feel them. She could also feel mine. I surely couldn’t give her a separate body, but if I didn’t soon find some kind of solution, I would eventually wind up apeshit. And that would be very bad. For everyone.

I glanced over at my husband sleeping peacefully beside me. Moving as quietly as I could, I climbed down from our bed and headed for the bathroom. I grimaced. Even after a month, there was the glimmer of a twinge in my chest.

It reminded me of the ache in my gut that lasted for a while after I was vivisected by three so-called upright members of society a few years back who removed my stomach - along with other vital organs. I have never been one hundred percent sure of exactly why they did that, although I believe it was simply for fun. After all, they were traitorous, butchering, drunk assholes.

They paid for their violent invasion into my anatomy, though. After they removed my innards, I made them into traitorous, butchering, dead assholes.

Those nuggets of my internal necessities grew back, which is a good thing as I really like to eat and especially needed my stomach for that. All that was left from that particular gore-fest were the scars, not all of which were physical. I was fourteen years old at the time.

Now, nearly four years later, there I was with another life-ending injury that, fortunately for me, didn’t actually end it all.

All dragons heal fast, and I heal faster than any other; still, I don’t suppose anybody was surprised it would take a teensy bit longer for me to completely heal from having my heart blown to smithereens. Getting hit in the chest by stray fire from an alien fighter airplane should’ve been all-she-wrote. For anybody else, including a dragon, there would’ve been a The End sign floating above them in bold letters, but I fooled everybody, even myself. I was still on this side of the living. The scars from that will never completely fade, either.

Growing back a heart takes a lot out of a girl - even a magical dragon one like me. Dr. Monroe, head doctor at what used to, simply, be the resistance headquarters but was now, fancily, the Headquarters for World Government, wouldn’t let me leave the hospital for six days after I came out of my weeklong coma. He wanted to keep me in there longer, but he couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse, though I could tell he was trying to think of one. However, except for the aforementioned twinge, I was fine. My heart, and everything else, was working great, so, with reluctance, he released me with an admonition:

Don’t overdo, Juri, he warned while shooting me a stern look. I know you’re a magical little dragon with amazing recuperative powers, but your heart was blown to bits. Tetharia tells me there’re no records of any dragon having survived such a critical wound, so we don’t know if there could be further problems.

I know, Doctor, and I’ll be careful. I gave him my best earnest and open smile.

His face softened, and he shook his head with a little sigh. "Well, promise me you’ll let me know if you have any trouble. Don’t assume it’s nothing, okay?"

Yes, sir. I promise. I would’ve promised him I’d stand on one leg and sing an Irish ditty every two hours if he asked, so long as he released me.

Leaving the hospital made me happy because not only was I going stir-crazy, just being in that room made me antsy. It reminded me too much of the little space I occupied when I was locked up in the Institution for the Rehabilitation of Wayward Youth - more familiarly known as Haven - in my home town of Charlotte. The hospital was nicer, and I got fed a whole lot better, had lots of visitors, and the door wasn’t locked. And, nobody slugged me in the gut if I didn’t hold my mouth right.

Still, I was glad to leave. And my husband was happy, too. It meant he could sleep comfortably in his own bed for a change.

I swear to God, Tetharia Paj Erahn Sonicdragon Harvoroth had to be the most stubborn dragon in two worlds (maybe it had something to do with that mouthful of a name of his. I just called him Tet). No matter how many times I told him that he didn’t have to stay in that institution-green hospital room with me and sleep in a chair or on the floor, he refused to go get comfortable in bed at our suite.

I wish to remain with you, my wife, he rumbled while gazing solemnly into my eyes. I am your husband. I have an obligation to you. Then he smiled and added, It would be difficult for me to obtain any sleep without you by my side.

So he spent every night in that hospital room with me.

I confided to my friends, Linda Jones, Pepi Anthony, and Mary Ann Freemantle that this made me feel kind of good, and they laughed their asses off at me.

Remember when you said you’d never get hung up on a guy? Linda snickered. Well guess what?

A grinning Mary Ann answered that question with, "Ya got th’ biggest ole crush on yo’ husband!" Then, she actually chortled.

Pepi giggled, agreeing with them.

Okay, so they were right. When we were married eight months before, I wasn’t in love with him. Oh, I had come to like him over time, but as an immature dragon, I hadn’t felt what could be called romantic love for him. He was my friend. Though he told me he loved me, it was sort of an arranged marriage. I agreed to marry him because due to the rules of dragon society, I had to marry someone, and since I’d known him for nearly a year at the time it came up, it seemed to me that marrying him beat the hell out of marrying somebody I didn’t know.

However, things had begun to change about a month before the scorbs attacked. Those were the crab-assed aliens with whom we were at war that some folk still called Artesio. They were the cause of my nasty chest wound. I began to mature, and certain, er… adult hormones started to become active. I still didn’t know if how I felt about him was the same as the way he felt about me - he said he loved me from the first time he saw me - but I knew it sure made me see him in a whole different light. My friends called it a crush. I felt I loved him but had yet to say that to him.

After splashing cold water on my face, I crept back to bed and lay there thinking about the last few weeks.

*

The week after I left the hospital, Tet said, We must return to Mur, Juri. He gazed at me, waiting for my response.

My first impulse was to flat-out refuse. I wasn’t ready to go back yet, but I had three reasons for not following my first impulse.

In reverse order, number three was because it would be easy for me to come back for visits.

Reason number two: Tet could’ve made me leave Earth had he felt it necessary. After all, he was going to be a hundred and thirty-six years old soon, and I was a whole seventeen-going-on-eighteen. He was schooled in all sorts of martial arts and magics, beginning long before I was born, and though I didn’t really think he would force me to leave, I knew he could.

That I was the human-born dragon, the only one who could open the portals between dimensions, who was born to save both Earth and Mur by performing great feats of derring-do and shit, did not make me the most powerful dragon around. In fact, I was damned lucky to still be alive. I suppose I was kind of powerful; however, in spite of studying with the mages at the royal palace and Abbot Sather and the monks at the monastery at Atalis, I still wasn’t that knowledgeable in magic.

But, here’s reason number one and the main reason I didn’t protest leaving for Mur: Tet had to go back, and I found that I felt kind of obligated to go with him.

So I said, Okay. When do we leave?

There are still several items that have to be finalized with the Coordinator and with Captain Hadrotia, and you must undergo a final physical examination. Dr. Monroe insists, and I concur. We will remain here one more week, then we must leave. There are issues to which we must attend on Mur, some of which are details that have to do with preparing for the return of the Artesio to Earth. Do not forget, little dragon, that we are two-thirds of the rulers of Tausarae and, as such, we do have obligations. Also, he continued, there is that you still have your secondary schooling to complete.

Tausarae. The dragon kingdom of Mur. Having an eidetic memory, I never really forget anything, and he was right. He was the king, and I was one of the two dragon queens of Mur, even if I didn’t know diddly about ruling. The other queen was my sister-in-law, Terinia Nij Lel Firedragon Sankordoeth-Harvoroth (yeah, they all had those mile-long names; however, she told me it was okay to shorten it to Teri). She was handling the issues of the kingdom while Tet and I were on Earth, and I was betting she was ready for our input after almost three months of carrying the load of ruling alone. Or rather, for Tet’s input since I certainly wouldn’t be of much help.

And, he was right about school. By the rules of Mur, I had to finish, and he knew I wanted to as soon as possible. He had promised that being married to him wouldn’t prevent me from doing so. Besides, I wasn’t being allowed to do much of anything on Earth anyway. Oh, I got to open a portal every now and then - which doesn’t require physical labor, only a bit of magical energy - but everybody kept acting as though my new heart might fall out of my chest at any given moment and kept cautioning me to take it easy, Juri. Hearing that had gotten old.

All right. Will Nickel be going back with us?

He will be needed here for a while longer, little dragon, then he shall return to Mur.

My friend, Nickel Newcomb, was now a magical and a mage. That was kind of my fault, but it was unintentional - it’s a long story. He lived with us at the royal palace while serving an apprenticeship with Master Percival Anthony, a human royal mage of Mur. Nickel came back to Earth with us to serve, along with Pepi, a Mur-born magical and Master Anthony’s daughter, as battle mage for one of the squadrons sent to capture scorb spaceships.

It had been their first assignment as brand new mages, and not only had they not gotten killed, they’d performed quite well. But right now, they were in the mountains studying shielding spells with the witches that lived there in what had become sort of the magical center of Earth. The witches were similar to the royal mages on Mur and acted in about the same capacity.

I hoped Nickel wouldn’t be too long in coming to Mur. Before we returned to Earth for the war, what with his apprenticeship and my school and servant training, he and I were as busy as a hill of ants, but during those ten minutes when there was nothing else to do, he was always happy to be my partner in a video game. I would miss him banging around our quarters.

All of my friends were in the military, and along with everybody else, they were busy doing various jobs from clean-up to helping patrol what was left of our world. Well, all my friends were busy except for Spence Reid, who was recuperating from having been wounded during the battle. Linda, who was his girlfriend, was spending most of her spare time taking care of him. I didn’t really get to see much of any of them.

All the civilians of Earth that went to Mur as refugees were back now. Mr. Haskins was the Coordinator of Earth, which was kind of like king but more like president except he wasn’t elected, just sort of pressed into the job because he led the resistance movement. He was busy appointing committees and people to help with getting the world back into some sort of shape. This was in addition to preparing for another visit from the scorbs, who no doubt would be bringing an even greater number of ships and soldiers sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Nobody was certain of when that might be, but since it had taken them thirteen months from the time of our rebellion to when they sent thirty ships with the intent of wiping us out, it was supposed it would be longer than that. After all, they were likely to send a larger fleet the next time to ensure themselves a win, and that surely would take more time to prepare. We hoped. Mr. Haskins and company were taking steps to try and find out.

Mr. Haskins also appointed one of his generals to handle provisioning an expedition to go to the moon in Alpha Centauri where a group of humans had been held captive. Those folks managed to escape and get to Earth, but remaining on the moon were members of another race the scorbs had subjugated.

Before the last battle, a message was received that this race, called Tymians, had overthrown their scorb masters. The message also asked us to bring needed food supplies, but that was determined to have been a ruse by the scorbs to capture humans for interrogation. Still, everybody thought it was a good idea to go take a look after we whipped the asses of the last batch of scorbs sent our way. The expedition would be prepared to fight if the remaining scorbs on that moon wanted one.

When I expressed an interest in going on the expedition, I was told no - in words that amounted to, When Hell is full of igloos. By everyone.

I sure didn’t envy the Coordinator his job, but due to his ability to formulate a workable plan, we now had a number of spaceships to add to our nascent fleet. We’d gone from eight-and-a-half to thirty-eight-and-a-half because of his idea to have us capture scorb ships instead of destroying them. Hadn’t been easy, but it worked.

But, added to the Coordinator’s piss-pot load of hair-tearing troubles was the fact that not only had he found out that in addition to trying to strip Earth of natural resources and valuables, the scorbs also stole people other than the ones who managed to escape from Alpha Centauri. He also learned the real reason Earth was attacked by aliens from clean on the other side of the galaxy some twenty-two years ago.

He put two-and-two together after learning from one of the scorb POWs that they originally come to Earth because they’d had persistent and overwhelming ideas about coming in this direction and had finally acted on them.

Ideas was what the scorbs called dreams, and Mr. Haskins correctly guessed that they began to have those particular ideas because the mages of Mur had sent compulsive dreams to them. He knew that could only have been done on orders from the sovereigns, and he confronted Tet about it.

Tet’s father was king at the time the decision was made to send those compulsive dreams, but to my husband’s credit, he hadn’t tried to wiggle out of taking responsibility for it. He’d told Mr. Haskins why it had been done and had met with him privately a couple of times since.

I didn’t know what was said at those meetings as I was still in the hospital and not allowed to go. Tet put up a privacy screen and never discussed what he and Mr. Haskins talked about.

However, I do know that everyone else who knew about the compulsive dreams was sworn to secrecy, indicating that the Coordinator didn’t want that particular information to be spread around. Fortunately, not that many other people knew. Only three, one being Dr. Hinson, our resident psychologist who conducted the actual interrogation. The other two were Miz Lyra, who was a medical assistant and also Mr. Haskins’ wife, and my mother, both of whom were in my hospital room when Mr. Haskins came in and made Tet aware of the fact that he knew.

I wasn’t surprised he didn’t want that information to get out because hearing about it was bound to piss off nearly everyone. To say our world had been badly damaged by the scorbs is like saying there’d been a minor brush fire after the whole forest went up in smoke. Our world had been damned near wiped out, and our society destroyed. There would probably be a whole bunch of folk who’d want to run everybody back to Mur. However, the help of the dragons and humans of Mur was still needed by Earth because, though we won the last battle, the war wasn’t over. The scorbs would be back.

Mr. Haskins took time from his busy schedule to visit me before I left the hospital. I was surprised to see him because when he came to my room the day I awakened from the coma, he was awfully upset and barely said anything to me. That had also been the day he learned the reason for the scorb invasion. But, a few days later, there he was, back again.

I was alone and reading a book when he walked in and pulled up a chair. He leaned back, regarding me. I put down my book and watched him warily.

He was the first person to touch me after the negative emission that I call the hate-Juri aura dissipated - and thank God that thing finally wore off, or shit would’ve been a whole lot different. Actually, there’d probably be no shit if it hadn’t gone away. It’s kind of hard to save the world when everybody loathes you, and half of them are running away from you while the other half tries to kill you.

Touching me cured him of his intense aversion toward me, so he was the first person to like me since I was three years old. As the administrator at Haven, he had been the one to remove me from the youth prison and bring me to the resistance headquarters near Asheville to protect me.

Because of that, he was sort of a father-figure to me, and I was afraid that now he’d hate me again because he was aware that I knew about the scorbs being directed to Earth - and hadn’t told him.

How are you, Juri? he asked in a quiet voice.

I’m fine, sir. My stomach tightened with tension.

I guess he didn’t have much time, so he didn’t waste any getting to the point.

Juri, why didn’t you tell me when you learned what the kings of Mur had their mages do?

I swallowed before answering, trying to get a little moisture into my dry throat. For the same reason you don’t want everybody knowing about it now, sir. There wasn’t any way to change it, and I was afraid that if our people found out, they’d want to kick the Mur people out even though we needed their help. I felt it would be a whole lot easier to work with them if nobody knew.

He looked at me solemnly.

So, the emissary didn’t prohibit you from telling us.

Oh, no, sir! He was forbidden by his father to tell us, but once I forced it out of him - it happened the day y’all were arguing about whether to open up a portal into space right before the second battle - he was going to tell you, but I told him not to.

His eyebrows went up. "He was going to tell us?"

Yes, sir. I advised against it. I shrugged. "I didn’t see where it would be helpful at that late date. I felt it would do more harm than good. That was also the day I learned the other reason I was born. Actually, for Mur, I suppose it was the main reason. I guess what they did is understandable, sir, since they didn’t want to die. They had to have a human-born dragon to fix the core of their planet, and since conditions on Earth hadn’t been bad enough for one to be produced the usual way, they made the decision to induce the birth of one.

Tet hadn’t known about it, and when he found out, he disapproved, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Even if he’d been there from the start, he wouldn’t have been able to stop it. His father and the human king made the decision.

He stared at me, his storm-cloud gray eyes puzzled.

Tetharia didn’t tell me that he hadn’t known about it from the beginning.

"Well, no, he wouldn’t tell you that, sir, because since he’s a member of the royal family, he feels responsible anyway. You heard the vow he made: in order for his world to atone for causing the invasion, he has pledged their help until the scorbs are defeated, and they will also help find the people who were stolen and bring them home. And I know even you non-magicals felt the vibes when he made it, so you know it’s a magical vow."

Yes, I did feel… something… though I wasn’t sure of what it meant.

Well, for one thing, if the vow is broken, Mur will pay in some ugly way - I’m not sure how in this case - and it also means that I’ll retain the ability to open the dimensional doorways instead of losing it as would’ve happened. I thought for a moment then added, "Although, even without his vow, I probably wouldn’t have lost it for a long time anyway, because Mur was already obligated to help us fight, and there are a lot of scorbs in the universe, and they seem determined to wipe us out."

He nodded. "You’re right, Juri. And, you were right to prevent Tetharia from telling us originally. What’s done is done, and it would serve no purpose for anyone else to know about this, indeed, to ever know about it."

He chuckled dryly. Some of my new generals would probably want to start a war with Mur, and that would be suicide for us. Besides, I’ve had time to think about it, and while what was done stinks, I suppose I can’t blame them for doing whatever it took to save their world. On reflection, I’m entirely certain that under similar circumstances, we would’ve done the same. Shaking his head, he blew out a heavy breath. "Still, I wish they could’ve come up with something different. Not only has the damage to our world been devastating, look at what it has done to you."

He got up from his chair and gazed down at me for a moment, then surprised the stars out of me by leaning down and dropping a kiss on my forehead and giving my shoulder one of his comforting squeezes.

He smiled at my open-mouth, wide-eyed stare.

Don’t worry, Juri. Both Lyra and I think of you as a daughter. Nothing will ever change that.

I was so relieved I could have cried. I was still in my bed, so I got up on my knees and threw my arms around his neck. He hugged me and patted my back, then he left. He was a remarkable man.

He came to see me on one other occasion before I left the hospital. He had managed to find some silk flowers from somewhere and a small stuffed teddy bear to give me. That time I wimped out and burst into tears. I made a silent vow that someday I would repay him in some way for his kindness.

I never told Tet about that conversation, even when one day he wondered why the Coordinator seemed less upset with him than he was when he first learned the truth.

*

Beside me, Tet turned over and snaked his long arms around me, bringing my thoughts back to the present. I peeked up at him. The golden-edged scales left over from when we were on the Isle of Narlom stood out against his otherwise shimmering black ones. He was peering back at me, a look of concern in his eyes.

Are you well, little dragon? Is your wound troubling you?

Oh, no. I’m fine, Tet. Dr. Monroe gave me my final check-up yesterday and said I’m completely healed. No, I had to go to the bathroom, and I was lying here thinking about going back to Mur. The small twinge hanging on was nothing. It would finally fade.

No point in mentioning the dream to him. He knew about my twin because I told him after the entity Magic let me in on what the dark coil within me really was. But, I hadn’t told him about meeting her while I was (within my soul) in a coma and regrowing my heart. It was something I wasn’t ready to share with him yet.

Not that I thought he wouldn’t believe me because I was sure he would. All dragons are magical, and when you’ve grown up in a world full of magic as he had on Mur, experiences such as the one I had wouldn’t be a huge surprise or hard to believe. No, I didn’t tell him because I first wanted to have a notion of what I was going to do about it, and at that point, I had no clue.

We still have two days before we must leave, my wife, and do not be of concern for you will be able to come back for visits.

I guess he could tell I wasn’t too thrilled about not being able to see everybody as much. I was mainly thinking about Spence. He was only brought out of his induced coma the day I was released from the hospital, and while I knew Dr. Monroe said he expected him to have a full recovery - and Linda would take good care of him - I still worried.

Spence was a member of our group of friends that everyone fondly called the Musketeers. Including me, the others were Linda, my brother Mike, Mary Ann, Nickel, and Pepi. We’d also become good friends with two of the young dragons we trained with before the war, Treca Firedragon and Eran Sonicdragon. They were in the military and stationed at the same camp as the Musketeers. I would miss seeing them all.

Then, there was the matter of my parents. Having to go to Mur was going to interrupt our efforts at reconstructing the relationship