Page 137 of Pets in Space 10

Tyvaron

Before

Iflew.

The wind rushed beneath my wings, cold and bright and wild.

I soared.

No pain. No weight. No metal embedded in bone.

Just me – skin and scale, muscle and memory – riding the thermals like I was born to touch the stars.

The sun burned golden above the peaks of Valhyr’s Crown, catching the shimmer of my aquamarine scales with every beat of my wings.

Below, waterfalls carved through black stone.

Trees swayed in radiant hues – crimson, emerald, violet.

My people called this place Vareth-kai, the breath between worlds. Sacred skies. My skies.

Home.

I laughed.

The sound broke free before I could stop it – joy, uncontained and irreverent, echoing over the cliffs.

My horns were caressed by the wind as I spun into a steep dive, tail slicing the air behind me, my arms flaring for balance.

I wasn’t alone – others flew with me. Friends.

Kin. Winged forms dancing in synchrony, their laughter rising like birdsong.

We were fast. Strong. Alive.

Free.

Someone called my name. A voice like chimes in wind. Familiar. Loved.

But the memory blurred.

The light changed.

Pain.

A spear of sound shattered the air. Not a weapon. A trap. Something deeper. A frequency that sliced through bone and thought. Wings crumpled mid-flight. My body dropped like stone, crashing through trees, through light, through memory.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in darkness.

Bound.

Burning.

Everything that came after was steel and screaming. Agony and blades. Collars that made thinking hurt and obedience feel like blessed silence. They changed my shape, piece by piece. Fused metal into flesh. Made me forget my name. My skies. My people.

But not that flight.

Not that moment of perfect freedom.

I remembered it now.

And I would take it back.

***

Present

Pain.

Not the ripping, burning agony I remembered from the experiments – but something deeper. Like being pulled apart and stitched together all at once. A shattering. A rebirth.

I passed out. Awoke. Passed out again. Woke to yet more pain.

Then silence.

I opened my eyes.

The platform was beneath me, the cold of the metal pressing against unfamiliar skin. Smaller. Softer. And yet… still mine.

My hands – hands – rested on either side of me, claw-tipped fingers curling slowly.

My tail lay coiled against the platform, thick and muscular, but shorter now.

My wings flexed behind me, their span reduced but functional, the membrane intact.

I could not feel any injuries, no more blood seeping from gaping wounds. I had been healed.

I still had scales. Glimmering hues of aquamarine and dark turquoise shimmered across my body. My chest and shoulders remained plated in thicker, armour-like scales. But my shape… it was me again. Upright. Balanced.

Bipedal.

I sat up slowly, blinking as the world swayed.

My vision adjusted quickly – too quickly for an organic being. The implant systems remained. My metal enhancements had been… compressed, somehow. No longer overtly visible, but I could feel them beneath the surface. The fire, too. Folded away, like coiled serpents beneath skin.

A hiss escaped my throat.

Not in pain.

In wonder.

The machine had worked.

“Tyvaron?” Hazel’s voice – soft, uncertain – cut through the fog. I turned.

She stood a few steps away, her eyes wide, lips parted.

“H–Hazel,” I said.

It came out rough. Too low. I coughed. My vocal cords were still recalibrating. But the word had been mine.

Hazel blinked, stepping forward like she wasn’t sure if I was real.

“You did it,” she whispered. “You’re – ”

She stopped. Her gaze roamed across my body, lingering on my face, my chest, the curve of my wings. I didn’t think I looked like I used to – whatever that meant. My body didn’t quite feel like it did in my memories. But I looked like someone.

Someone she could talk to. Touch. Choose.

Someone closer to her size.

“I remember more,” I said, voice steadier. “Fragments. My name… it’s close. I can feel it.”

She reached out slowly. “Can I…?”

I gave a single nod.

Her fingers brushed my cheek.

“I think I can still become Tyvaron again,” I said, catching her gaze again. “This form – it’s not a replacement. It’s encoded. Quantum-compressed.”

Hazel tilted her head. “Like… folded space?”

“Yes. My dragon form exists in a separate compression field. I can access it. Shift at will. Like the tyvarin they first tried this technology on. Or at least… I think that’s what’s happening. I will have to try it. But not for a while. Not for a very long time.”

“So… you can be both.” Her fingers brushed my cheek – slow, tentative. Testing if I was real.

“You’re warm,” she whispered.

“I still have blood,” I said softly. “Still breathe. I’m just less likely to roast you alive with my fire breath.”

She didn’t smile. Not yet. Her gaze roamed over my face like she was trying to connect this version of me with the dragon she’d slept beside.

Her fingers lingered for a moment longer than they needed to, then drifted down to hover near my collarbone – near the place where scales shimmered softly under my skin.

“So this is you,” she said at last. “The real you.”

I shook my head. “It’s part of me. One shape of many. But I… feel closer to who I was.” I met her gaze, the fire behind her eyes stealing the breath from my lungs. “Because of you.”

That caught her off guard. She blinked, her breath hitching.

“You’re not just saying that because I cleaned your wounds and brought you moss for your fire, are you?”

“No,” I said. “Though I’ll admit, the moss helped.”

She laughed then – short, breathless, a little too quick. And I saw it: the flush rising in her cheeks. The way her fingers curled slightly, like she didn’t trust them not to touch me again.

I stepped closer. Just enough to feel the warmth of her. Not touching, but almost. My voice dropped low.

“I haven’t been like this in a long time. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Me neither,” she murmured. “But I keep… wanting to be closer. Even when it’s terrifying.”

I let my hand brush hers. Scaled knuckles against soft skin. Her fingers didn’t pull away.

Her eyes met mine, wide and uncertain.

“If I stay too close,” she said quietly, “I might forget how to leave.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

We stood like that beneath the machine – not kissing, not touching any more than that faint brush of fingers – but it was enough. The air between us pulsed with something fierce and unspoken.

I didn’t have a word for it.

But the shape of it was forming.

The machine powered down with a sharp hiss, making us break apart as if we’d been caught doing something forbidden.

I stood still on the platform, rolled my shoulders, shook my wings.

My body felt strange yet also familiar. I was lighter now – not in mass, but in mind.

The cold metal that had once threaded through every nerve and thought no longer sang with commands.

The collar was gone. And beneath the thickened armour of my hybrid form, I could feel the echo of what I had once been.

More than a tyvarin. More than a weapon.

My name was close, so very close. My memories were lingering behind a layer of fog, just out of reach, but I got enough glimpses to know that I had been part of a clan, a family. I had been loved. I’d had a good life, before I’d been taken from my world.

And maybe, just maybe, I could return to that world one day.

Would Hazel join me? Meet my kind? She was from a different planet.

I realised I didn’t even know what species she was.

She’d mentioned it, hoomin, something like that?

But it didn’t mean anything to me. And she likely wanted to return home to her people, if we found a way off Kalumbu.

But those were worries for later. For now, we had to get out of here before the guards returned.

I stepped off the platform, wobbling slightly. I wasn’t used to walking on two legs anymore. My tail helped me balance my unfamiliar shape, but the wings dragged slightly.

Hazel moved to meet me, cautious, searching my face for something. Maybe for reassurance that I was still me – still the beast who had cooked her dinner and carried her through the skies. I was. And I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure how to explain that yet.

But her hand slipped into mine.

She said nothing. She didn’t need to.

We left the room together.

Back through corridors that had once echoed with screams. Through the wreckage of the lab’s dark history. But this time, I saw it with different eyes – not just the suffering inflicted here, but the systems. The network.

The possibilities.

“I wonder…” I said, stopping in front of a closed door that I recognised from my tyvarin memories. It was much smaller than the others and I wouldn’t have been able to fit through it in my monster form.

Hazel looked at me quizzically. “Yes?”

“We should go in here. I want to check something.”

I reached out, placing my clawed hand – now more hand than talon – against the door panel. A soft click answered.

It opened.

Inside was a narrow room filled with consoles and glowing interfaces. Long-dead screens sparked to life at our presence.

“What is this place?” Hazel asked, stepping in behind me.

“Control,” I murmured. “I think this is where they sent orders to the collars. Where they managed the network that linked us all. I remember this place. I saw it once, long ago… I wasn’t supposed to, but I got a glimpse of it. Enough to know that this room is important.”

I crossed to the main console. Screens flickered, displaying strings of data in the old language of the masters. I’d been under their control long enough to understand the basics.

Hazel hovered beside me. “Can you… turn it off? Free the other tyvarin?”