Dragonseers and Airships

by Chris Behrsin

  Cini watched the boy with a cold gleam in his eye. “Look at me,” he said. “And tell me you love me.”

  Taka paused. “I love you with all my heart. You are the guardian that raised me, and my birth parents mean nothing to me.”

  And for a moment, a chilling silence cut through the room.

  “Okay,” King Cini said with a discerning nod. “I believe you.” He raised his head to me. “Dragonseer Wells, it’s your turn to convince me of a good reason I shouldn’t kill you right this moment.”

  My legs felt like jelly as I stood, adrenaline pumping to them and my heart pounding fast. I approached my quarry at more of a stroll than a drunk totter. I moved so fast, that I could see out of the corner of my eye how my guard had to rush with arrhythmic steps to keep pace with me. King Cini turned a shoulder away from me, as if entering a fighting stance.

  I forced myself down on one knee. “King Cini. You have asked me for fealty. You have asked me to join your cause. And to that, I can give you only one response. You are a swine and you are scum!”

  Before he even had a chance to react, I thrust myself upwards, and placed my body between him and the sword. I kneed him in the groin, and then I went for his throat. I ripped out his Adam’s apple first, and I clenched my hands around his windpipe. His sword clattered to the floor as I flattened him against the wall. Then I spat in his face.

  At the same time, I felt myself willing to change into a dragon. Scales crawled under my skin, tearing it apart. I was about to transform. I was about to give King Cini what he deserved…

  But then I remembered Charth, and how he’d lost himself to Finesia. I couldn’t claim her gifts. I couldn’t let the dragon gain control.

  I had nothing to defend myself against the blow that came to the back of my head. The butt of the gun hit me once, and I managed to keep the stance. But the second swing from the guard sent me reeling away from Cini. Travast hastened towards the hyperventilating king, and he popped his Adam’s apple back in place.

  The guard held me at gunpoint, and he had such rage in his eyes that I knew if I even budged, he’d shoot. What the dragonheats had compelled me to be so stupid? Where had that rage come from? I had thought I’d been keeping myself under control. But clearly, I’d been wrong.

  I looked up into the wild and cruel eyes of King Cini III, as he wiped my saliva off his face with the purple handkerchief that Travast had given him.

  “You are a fool, Dragonseer Wells. I offer you a place by the throne in exchange for your fealty, and I had hoped you might take Alsie Fioreletta’s place. But, like her, it appears there’s no changing you.” He turned to the guard – the same one who had hit me with his rifle. “Take her to the firing chamber. Travast bring a Hummingbird and set it to record. We’ll execute her now and have done with her.”

  “As you wish, your liege,” the guard replied, and he latched some handcuffs onto my wrists and pushed me towards the door. As he stopped to open it, I turned my head to see King Cini looking down at Taka who stared back up at him with wide and tear-rimmed eyes.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Artua,” the king said. “We have to make hard decisions in such tough times, and this woman has been doing you no good.”

  And I saw no more of the exchange because the guard jostled me out of the room.

  21

  I didn’t end up taking a direct route through the factory. Instead, our path winded through the corridors, as if they wanted to punish me by showing me the absolute power this factory held within. I must have passed thousands of automatons, some of designs I didn’t even recognise. Enough, in other words, to annihilate Fortress Gerhaun within hours.

  Eventually, we stepped out into the open, onto a field of snow lit golden by the waning sun. The guard pushed me over the hoary ground. I still walked barefoot, and pain shot up through my legs with each step. The guard led me to a boarded platform, on which garrets stood at the back – their ropes gilded with streaks of blood.

  The sun shone into my eyes as the guard pushed me up the steps, and it admittedly felt good for my feet to touch a warmer surface. Still, the wood hadn’t been heated by anything, and after a moment I realised such warmth was relative. I wore only rags, and so I couldn’t stop my teeth chattering as I moved.

  I thought the guard would lead me to the garrets, but instead he led me towards two poles sticking out from the platform in front of them, with two metal rings on each one – one at the base and one at head height. These had thick and rusty iron chains hanging from them, with manacles at their ends. The guard pulled out my arms and secured the manacles around my wrists. Another guard moved forward, with his rifle trained on me in case I tried anything.

  Slightly behind them, a Hummingbird automaton pointed a narrow camera lens at me. Part of me wondered if I should try to fight the guards. I’d get shot down on the spot. But that might have been better than a formal execution recorded by the Hummingbird for Tow and its Sovereign State’s civilians to watch over cups of secicao in their city halls.

  Still, I thought it better to use the time to formulate a plan for my escape. But no ideas came to mind. One thing I had to do, though, was keep my fears away from Taka. He’d already witnessed his mother’s death, and I didn’t want him to witness mine too.

  “Auntie, what are they doing to you?” He called out in the collective unconscious. “What you did was stupid. Auntie, please… Answer me!”

  I knew it was cruel to say nothing in response. But I felt whatever I said would hurt him even more. And so, I kept my mind calm and distant from both his and my own anxious thoughts.

  I took a moment instead to take stock of my surroundings. They had led me to some kind of open courtyard, with only a narrow gap in the rock face separating the factory from the open world. Several doors led back into the rock. One of these opened from my right with an ingratiating creak. King Cini stepped out, followed by Travast, trailed by one of those massive war automatons – the ones General Sako had called Ogres.

  This time, King Cini kept a few arms’ length between me and him, much further than I could spit. He carried no rifle, or even a pistol and I wondered for a moment what he planned to execute me with. Until I remembered the massive Gatling guns on the shoulders of the Ogre.

  King Cini looked up at the automaton, and then at me with a grin on his face. “Our previous conversations told me of how much you hate automatons,” he said. “So, it’s only fitting that you should get executed by one.

  Travast was looking at me with creases at the corners of his eyes. The delight evident in both men caused a wave of nausea to rise inside me. I swallowed down bile, rather than letting myself retch. I didn’t want to give these men the pleasure of watching me suffer.

  “Gag her,” King Cini said to one of the guards. The next thing I knew, I had a cloth in my mouth. Rough hands yanked it tightly behind my back, causing my head to throb in pain. I could feel my pulse beating there – heavy and fast. Then, I felt light-headed all of a sudden. The gag tasted funny, like something similar to grass.

  Then I realised. They’d soaked it in a drug. They wanted to sedate me a little. They didn’t want me to struggle before the camera. King Cini wanted his citizens not to see me as a fighter, but a weak-willed individual. He wanted to communicate that any resistance against him was futile.

  “Auntie,” Taka said once again in the collective unconscious. “I must do something. I can’t let them hurt you… I just can’t…”

  And then a sense of horror washed over me. Could Taka turn into a dragon? Could Finesia rein control over him and force him to lose his mind? But I’d never seen him transform, and I could only hope he’d never gained such an ability.

  King Cini observed me for a while through narrow eyes. I could only barely make out his expression with the sunlight streaming into my vision. The king strode forwards and pulled back my head. A gob of spit landed on my face, causing me to jerk my head away in revulsion. But that only caused his grip to tear at my hair, and
I grimaced in pain before he let go.

  The spit dripped down the crevice between my nose and cheek and crawled past my top lip before falling off onto the floor. King Cini turned back to the Hummingbird, and the lens rotated towards him.

  “This is an example of an enemy of the state,” he said. “Her name is Pontopa Wells. Down in the Southlands’ resistance, they call her a dragonseer. It’s a name that suggests great power. But look at her now. Do you see her calling dragons to her aid? Do you see her summoning fireballs from the sky, or any of the other nonsense I’ve heard spoken about her? No. And do you know why? Because she is as human as the rest of you. But despite that, she rides dragons and tries to use them to destroy our civilisation.

  “Here we found her trying to infiltrate an automaton factory. She knew that we have a mechanical army ready to march on them, and she knew that we know of their base’s exact location. But she didn’t seem to realise the limits of her own mortality. This woman who stole away my nephew and tried to topple the throne. Now, witness the execution of one of your beloved empire’s most dangerous enemies. And when you do, applaud, because your loyal king, your protector, is watching out for you all.”

  He bowed to the camera, clearly imagining the uproarious applause coming from its people as they watched it on high screens – the recording projected by Hummingbirds, and his voice spoken out by other Hummingbirds carrying massive loudspeakers. The king stepped off the stage, keeping a hard stare trained on me, as he continued to back away. The Hummingbird automaton pivoted around a little, and then it moved in for a closeup.

  “Remove the gag,” King Cini said.

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said from behind me. Though, his voice came kind of muffled now with the side-effects of whatever chemical they’d put in the cloth floating around in my brain. But I could still feel pain, and they’d stretched my arms and legs that my chest and groin felt as if they would tear apart.

  There came the sound of someone drawing a knife from a sheath behind me, and I felt a sting of a blade against the nape of my neck. The gag came free in my mouth, and I unclenched my teeth to let it fall to the floor. I tossed back my head and snarled at King Cini.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, Miss Wells,” he said with a chuckle. “Please behave, will you? Remember you’re on camera. And we will only display the highlights, and not the bad parts, so there’s no point trying to manipulate the show.”

  I rattled at my chains. “You will never get away with this, Cini.”

  “And here, I was going to ask you if you wanted to say any last words? Any expressions of love to your parents? Or maybe a plea to your dragon queen to fly over and help?”

  “You want to hear my last request? Curl over and die.”

  I don’t know where my last words came from. They didn’t feel my own. And strangely, I didn’t feel afraid. I felt empty. I felt fulfilled. As if this was my destiny, about to unfold.

  And then I remembered the dragons on the carrier. I sang a song to call for their aid, and their spirits rose in the collective unconscious in response. Maybe they’d come in to save the rest of us, but for me it was certainly too late.

  King Cini shook his head. “Always such a disappointment, Miss Wells. I never thought you’d live up to the legacy of Sukina Sako.”

  The cloth returned to my mouth, and this time it was tied so tight that it took an exceptional amount of control not to scream out in pain. The drug entered my head again, and I went all bleary-eyed so I couldn’t even focus on the machine-gun barrel that would soon riddle me with bullets.

  This was it. I had truly reached the end.

  “Prepare,” King Cini said and raised his hand, and then he lowered it in a vigorous cutting motion. “Fire.”

  There came a great roaring sound from the guns on the Ogre automaton. I closed my eyes, and I prepared to die.

  But nothing pierced my body. I felt no pain. I opened my eyes and raised my head to see a volley of twelve-inch bullets edging towards me at snail-pace, a white swirl visible behind them. King Cini, Travast, and the Hummingbird automaton were completely still, their faces skewed with active expressions as if posing for a painting.

  How the dragonheats could this have happened? Was it magic? Or was this what you saw before dying – the last seconds of your life playing out in agonizing motion.

  “Well, well, Acolyte Wells.” Her voice came finally in my head. “Welcome to death.” She’d been gone for so long, I’d almost missed her.

  “Finesia,” I replied. “What do you want?”

  “To save your life, of course. Or would you rather I didn’t?”

  “Yes, I would rather die than succumb to your will.”

  “And what good will that do for the world? Are you prepared to let these lesser mortals defeat one who has the power of a god?”

  “I’ve kept you from controlling my thoughts,” I said. “And things will stay that way.”

  “Oh, but have you? The way you behaved before the king, do you really think that was your doing? I have much more control over your mind than you think. And now it’s time to show these imbecilic mortals your true power.”

  A rush of air came into my ears, and I felt the clarity of time restoring itself. The bullets hit my body, as if hitting a bag of meat. It felt like someone had hit my chest with a sledgehammer.

  But then an even more excruciating pain emerged. The sensation of thousands of scales tearing apart my skin. The screams segued into a roar that caused the ground to quake in front of me. I tossed my muzzle to the air and craned my head over a long growing neck. My shoulder blades lashed apart, and two massive wings shot out of them. My wrists and ankles widened, and all four manacles snapped off at once.

  Some bullets fell to the ground in front of me. Many more ricocheted off my leathery skin, causing Travast Indorm and King Cini to dive for cover. I beat my wings as I gnashed against the guards who had rifles raised against me. One of these guards, I lifted into the sky, and I dropped him from high above.

  Then, my consciousness became no more, and I entered that frightening place between dreams and oblivion.

  22

  The land beneath me doesn’t belong to Orkc, or at least not the country that I’d entered a few days ago. It isn’t covered in snow, but secicao resin. Here, secicao clouds roil around the bare roots and branches that have cut into and consumed the planet.

  Here I am, a servant of Finesia scouring the world to rid it of our enemies. The demons who want to strip away the gifts of immortality. Those lesser mortals who are so consumed by their own petty lives. They fear death, and so they try to defy it. But they can’t do so forever.

  I open my mouth and roar out, and a black dragon joins me. It flies alongside me, and we swoop across the sky in brilliant aerobatic patterns. If swallows still existed, they would stop to watch in awe.

  I turn my head to look at the dragon. “Rastano?” I ask. My beloved has come back to join me at last.

  “Yes, darling,” he replies. “I’m here, and I’m yours, always.”

  “And Alsie Fioreletta? Where is she?”

  “You know, Pontopa, that it’s our duty to vanquish her together. Me and you, we shall live until eternity. You as the master, and me your loyal slave who you can do with as you please.”

  My mouth curls up in a reptilian smile, and I swoop down to get a closer look at the earth beneath. There it is – the Tree Immortal, the source of all life and the place where I shall one day claim my dominion as Finesia’s right hand. Its roots dig down so far into the soil, and come up again so sharp, that it’s hard to tell them and the secicao apart. Its branches twist through the sky, rising above the secicao clouds. Around it, the clouds eddy as if the tree is singing out to the world.

  The melody is haunting. It resonates out through what once was the collective unconscious. The channel that once thrummed with the echoes of life, is now filled with the screams of regret of the dead.

  It’s the most beautiful song I know.

  I
fly down below the Tree Immortal’s branches and focus on my enemy. There they are, concealed beneath the secicao. A covert force of shades who have come to take it all away. They approach the tree with their daggers because they want to peel off its bark and eat it to claim some power for themselves.

  Inside that tree lives the spirit of Finesia. She claimed its power herself ages ago, and I helped her plant its seeds again. Now, I shall not let our work become undone.

  The shades reach the tree and hack away at it with their knives. The bark is tough. It will take them hours to extract even a slice. But still their actions are insults to Finesia and the world we have created. I cannot allow these creatures to roam.

  “This is your destiny,” Finesia says in my head. “To rid the world from those who oppose us. To wipe the planet of our enemies and create a new and beautiful race of dragonmen and dragonwomen. Your kind, secicao, and the Tree Immortal are the only things this world needs.”

  Her words fill me with exultation, and I toss up my head to the sky and let out a thunderous roar. My voice reaches out over the land, sending out a command to the very corners of the world. It orders those in power to come and join us, as we wreak destruction. And, as my call resounds over the land, I swoop down – Rastano trailing slightly in my wake – and I unleash my fires upon the shades.

  And there are other trees around us – replicas of the Tree Immortal – with other shades chipping away at their bark. The shades only have their knives, which are useless against airborne dragons. One by one, they go down in the brilliant flames that lick their tongues over the land.

  This is the way it was meant to be. The beginning of the end of the world.

  Another wave of men rises over the horizon. These carry swords – as if such weapons will give them a better edge. They charge as one. But their slashes can’t reach us, as we continue to spray the land in a brilliant display of fire.