by Marc Secchia
Secondary said: I am raising and imprinting allies from the Islands of Wyldaroon and from the secret breeding chambers of the Drakes up to four hundred leagues South of the Straits. Tomorrow I fly North and repeat the process, as planned. Everything is proceeding according to schedule.
Tertiary added, more gruffly than the previous two: I have flown through the Straits and into Wyldaroon, seeking knowledge of a power over death. Legends of the notable deeds of one Azhukazi the Iolite Blue, a reputed Necromancer with the power to raise Dragon and Human bones from the grave, falls like warm fires upon my ear canals. Hearken, brothers, to the details of my report.
The three gave each other little quarter, Ardan had observed. This communication was typical, laden with superiority-indicators that trumpeted this Thoralian’s opinion that his task was far more important than the functions undertaken of his brothers. Oddly, a scene from his youth flashed into his mind, that of youths taunting each other and catcalling as they trained at wooden scimitars in the heat of the day in Ur-Naphtha Cluster. That had been a happy time. He remembered! This was the first time a clear memory of the time before he first transformed into a Shapeshifter Dragon had come to mind, and it staggered a man who thought he had lost his past.
The prospect is agreeable, the Thoralians agreed. We will seek this Necromancer. Adjust the plan to take cornering this feeble Marshal Azhukazi into account. Shadow, report.
The dark shackles tightened between his temples.
I am tracking and observing, he said. Much of the expected activity has ceased. The Runners clear paths for the Air Breathers but not to any reasonable depth. Thousands of carcasses still hem them in and they will not crush the bones of allies. Meantime, there is a hive of engineering activity around the peaks. No sign of the Star. The greatest Runner, this troublesome Leandrial, shows signs of recovery from her wounds but as yet rests upon the Elder Yiisuriel’s flanks. My full-spectral analysis has determined greater than normal concentrations of moisture, meriatite and trace metals, leading to the speculation that they prepare their Dragonwings and Dragonships for an all-out assault on the Drakes. Our battlefront formation must remain fluid in anticipation.
Agreed, intoned the Prime. Make it so, Shadow.
Aye, Masters.
Ardan blinked. Stared. Blinked again, and ground his knuckles into his eyes as if that could clear his disbelief.
What? Report! boomed the command.
She’s – oh, great leaping Islands!
The unbreakable bands tightened until the Shadow Dragon groaned, imagining his mind smoking like the peaks of those rising Air Breathers out there. Rising! Floating! That was what Aranya had been doing, and he admired her most ferociously for her genius. Clearly, at least five of the peaks had begun to rise perceptibly out of the Cloudlands, exposing many tens of feet of lichen-encrusted, never-before-revealed flanks to the bright afternoon suns-light. Their general eavesdropping on the mind – not shielded nearly as completely as those ancient Land Dragons of the Lost Isles imagined – had identified Aranya’s voice as the Prime, issuing commands and making plans together with Yiisuriel. The Thoralians had dismissed any kind of engineering solution to the problem of moving those Air Breathers. Aranya was not capable, they had adjudged.
Rising steadily, the slimmest of the peaks had already exposed an additional half a mile of her upper flanks to the air. Above the Air Breathers, the flotilla of Dragons and Dragonships resolved in his mind. Lifting power! Or, steadying power, linked as they were by heavy-gauge hawsers to the mountaintop. Thousands of Dragons fluttered above, supported by Dragonships. His spectral analysis revealed the presence of many, many Runner Dragons beneath, steadying the rising, urgently smoking mountain – the youngster acted panicked – whilst hundreds of Cognates and other mental giants stood off a small ways, supplying steadying and lifting power on the kinetic level. The mind pulsed in a relentless rhythm, synchronising all of the different parties.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
His mental bonds hissed. Remember, the Star is the enemy!
Air Breathers must of course possess natural buoyancy. Any creature that stood two to three leagues beneath the Cloudlands possessed a natural buoyancy related to the far higher air pressures at that level, just as a boat floated in terrace lake waters. But to toy with a balance so delicate – what if a mountain tipped? Without fresh air, the mountainous Land Dragons would die. How had they supplied so much lifting power?
Gas. Meriatite degrades into hydrogen gas, Secondary Thoralian noted. Chambers deep within the Air Breathers have been filled under pressure. There is significant danger of completely flipping over, hence all the support.
Ardan’s hearts crammed into his throat. He knew this was Aranya’s signature pawprint, changing the Balance of events in the Island-World. The grey granite flanks of the Air Breathers poured majestically toward the heavens. Clearing two miles above the Cloudlands. Damp rock steamed energetically, creating great white billows of moisture that mingled with the light teal exhalation of their air spiracles. The mind made its calculations and fine adjustments while Runners swarmed about the base, pressing against a gentle under-Cloudlands air current.
Gently bobbling in the afternoon breeze, the Air Breathers began to float to freedom.
O Aranya, thou –
Enemy! The shackles shifted and settled, conforming more intimately to the patterns of his mind.
Beautiful Amethyst …
ENEMY!
Momentarily blinded by great sheets of sooty black flame, the Dragon shook his head as if broken-hearted. Then, his vision cleared. A new, vicious note entered his voice as he spat, Enemy! Attack!
* * * *
In an exhilarating, exhausting afternoon’s work, the Lost Islands Dragons lifted seven Air Breathers clear of the debris and wafted them away to better locations to the Southwest, from which they could walk – or more accurately, roll upon their foot-pods – unobstructed down to the Straits. Yiisuriel’s fast-moving scouts, the younger and lighter Runners, were already reporting from under-Cloudlands locations ninety leagues distant, mapping the world’s floor to find a viable route. No Air Breather had ever ventured into Wyldaroon. The terrain was unknown, and in many places, treacherous.
Progress? Aranya said tiredly.
Yiisuriel touched her mind fondly. Little one, you must take rest.
I’ll rest when we’re all moving, she replied, groaning as Brityx’s immensely powerful, blunt talons worked fragrant healing creams into the lesions upon her back and shoulders. Massage-aided work? These Herimor Dragon-kin were certainly an odd crew in many ways. They believed the right aromas and oils were beneficial for a huge range of healing and restorative functions, and had amassed over ten centuries of experience and scientific proofs to support their case.
Brityx smoothed the nape of her neck with the tips of her smallest talons. Aranya felt but a toy in the Dragoness’ paws, but her touch evinced the ease of many decades’ experience. Think healing thoughts, Aranya. Your muscles are one big knot. Unwind! Relax!
Not too much there, noble Brityx, or we’ll have an uninhibited Immadian on our hands, Zip quipped, sounding as if she was enjoying herself too.
The aged Grey-Green Dragoness smiled warmly in her mind. How fare thy egglings, o beauty of Azure?
Passably well, I believe, said the Remoyan Princess, who had been taking much instruction from Brityx in all matters related to pregnancy, birth, and raising ‘rambunctious younglings.’
Triplets! Hard work.
Even my buoyancy is reaching critical thresholds, Yiisuriel added. So far the inner pressure shields are holding well. One point seven more hours and I shall commence floatation. Enough time to deal with another meddlesome wave of Drakes. Your mate Ardan is up there, directing the attacks. He thought upon you earlier, but his mind has been subsumed into the triplicate once more.
Aranya stiffened again. He thought … of me?
Yiisuriel said, I distinctly heard something like, ‘beauti
ful Amethyst,’ as a zephyr upon the breeze. I was listening. He is not lost. Not yet.
To allow hope is hard. Aranya sighed, trying to force herself to relax as Brityx worked down her lower spine. Do I sense the environmental conditions worsening?
Aye, but your plan remains sound. Astonishing, but sound. Yiisuriel chortled massively. You conceive the inconceivable, o Aranya true-heart, o white-hearted ally. And I know we clash over some matters, but do not be afeared or cowed. As many as fight for our cause, t’would be strange if disagreement did not arise. My fires burn true for thy grandsire, the holy Fra’anior.
I value your counsel, Yiisuriel.
Your pods swim deep in the current of destiny, o daughter of Istariela.
Aranya did not bother to correct her, for she knew that the Land Dragoness meant daughter in the general genealogical sense. It did start her thinking upon the whisper she might or might not have heard. Stardrop. No, /Stardrop./ Was that a variant upon Dragonish? When she put the question to Yiisuriel, the Dragoness deferred to the linguistic specialists, who expressed puzzlement but promised to investigate. So, if she understood a different language, was linguistic ability innate or learned? Or was there a difference between Dragons and Humans? The lore noted an innate ability to speak Dragonish as the hallmark of a Shapeshifter. Yet when she sang the chiming notes of the other words she had heard, the linguists definitely began to scratch their bearded or scaly chins, leaving Aranya greatly bemused. Perhaps she had imagined it? But no, they assured her in a chorus of breathless splutters, those cadences, nuances and dracotonic intonations definitely indicated a draconic language – just one of which they had not the first clue apart from her best translation of the concepts, which she immediately supplied.
She left fifty-three linguists in a flurry of great excitement. A new language! A star-language! It was as if the skies had opened to rain philological treasures upon scholarly heads, be they of the bald, the hairy or the scaly variety.
They were not the only ones perplexed by a matter that seemed to grow stranger the more she dwelled upon it. Only four words existed in her vocabulary, as if a few stars of a mighty constellation had winked alight in her brain, but the rest of – well, whatever that might represent – remained stubbornly dark and inaccessible.
Brityx prodded her charge’s backside. “Sleep.”
“Just a few more things,” Aranya protested.
“There will always be more. You’ve four other souls inside of you.”
“Five.”
“Making babies demands extra rest.”
“But Brityx …”
“But I will sit on you until you squeal, youngling,” growled the enormous Dragoness, drawing hoots of laughter from Zuziana. “Not one more word – nor worry, command, response nor any contemplation whatsoever. Not one! If you need a mother –” she hissed between her fangs “– ah, forgive me. You have a mother. What you need is a drop of common Isles sense!”
Her paw rested heavily upon Aranya’s back. The Dragoness breathed, O Fra’anior, I beseech thee, as it were with thy fiery creative breath of yore, breathe life into Aranya’s dear mother, that she might be hale and fire-filled once more. O great Onyx, let it be.
Finding a place of unexpected tranquil in spirit, Aranya’s eyelids drooped at last. O Izariela …
Hope must be cherished.
* * * *
By the roseate light of a blusterous evening, amidst a storming Drake-battle and rising winds, the greatest of the Air Breathers left her paw-pods for the first time in all the centuries of her life and floated serenely aloft. She was stuffed to the gills with highly volatile hydrogen gas and escorted by eight thousand Dragons and one thousand Dragonships aloft, whilst well over three thousand Runners swarmed about her lower flanks to supply a helping paw or shoulder. With the utmost precision and delicacy, the communal mind directed the enterprise, compensating for the changing pressures as the entirety of Yiisuriel’s bulk became subject to the variable tides and currents of the immeasurable below-Cloudlands realm. Ahead of her, tight-knit squadrons of Runners cleared a path through the remnants of the Thoralians’ allied forces with what they politely described as ‘vigorous’ measures.
Having slept dreamlessly for three hours, Aranya and Zuziana participated in the Drake battle in the only way they were allowed – supporting Ri’arion, Gang and Huari from afar by tracking and predicting where Ardan would be. By focussing deeply, Aranya found she could often sense him through the oath-connection. Feeding that data back to their forces, particularly the Land Dragons who felt that pinning an ultra-elusive traitor to the cause with an eye cannon shot would win them untold honour, provided so much disruption that his contributions became almost entirely ineffective.
The Immadian Princess hoped they would not strike true, however!
Eight hours later and one incredible kafuffle over a twofold increase in the deep-airspeed that eventually tipped Yiisuriel’s mass over by all of one point three degrees before it was corrected, the living mountain touched ground with the improbable grace of million-tonne butterfly, and heaved a suitably mountainous sigh of relief.
Congratulations, Star Dragoness – but I never wish to do that again!
The flying wasn’t good? Aranya inquired.
As you younglings would say, coursing the airy spaces is a highly overrated experience, Yiisuriel said, with a booming laugh than shook them all. Enough airborne nonsense for this old Dragoness. To the next adventure, onward ho!
Her progeny and family, including those so far left behind, shared her relieved laughter.
Two days of hard labour remained before the last of the Air Breathers, heavily injured in the battle with the S’gulzzi and thus less able to hold sufficient hydrogen gas in his lower-third chambers, was able to be lifted free – this only by clearing far more debris than had been shifted for the others, and moving him with great care.
You must leave me behind, Kiisan-ap-Yandon had argued.
None of my family shall be left behind, Yiisuriel insisted.
I’ll only slow you down.
Aranya, will you try to heal my kin-brother?
In the end, they found a way, but it cost Aranya dearly. She decided she was highly allergic to being put to bed by those who were correct about the matter, and made a terrible patient to boot, so Yiisuriel threatened to shut her out of the communal mind. Gang, being a pragmatic soul, stationed himself across the doorway of her chamber and went to sleep – for five days – only allowing the entry of Huari to bring her relative food or scrolls to peruse.
Thus, she entered the realm of Wyldaroon which she had conquered in the guise of Aranya the Assassin, spending her days reading Hualiama’s lore as broadly and deeply as she could, reminiscing about her mother and, incongruously, that faraway call she had heard out of her Storm but had been unable to locate since, wondering how Beran, Nak and Oyda, Yolathion and Kylara and many others they had left behind fared. By way of relaxation, she painted a full-length, life-size portrait of Zuziana of Remoy in her bridal gown as a gift for the newlyweds.
What a bittersweet delight to retrace her best friend’s physical form.
Ari sad? Sapphire asked her one morning as she stared pensively at her depiction of Zip. Ari inside-sad?
Aye. I suppose so, Sapphire, said Aranya, chuckling as the dragonet imagined sniffing around her brushes and paints. A happy-forlorn feeling accompanied her wish. I’m feeling very low these days. The loss is so … it aches, my darling, and every touch of love that I enjoy around me, such as from your fiery sweetness or even that spavined old codger blocking my doorway –
Heard that, Scrap, Gang murmured.
Aye. All this faithful, unchanging love seems only to grow this ache within my breast, until I feel perfectly hollow, Sapphire, and feel I must fill it with art or effort or … making myself useful. Why can’t I stop? Who or what is driving me beyond the mortal coil, and why can I not stand for others to labour alongside me – is that a misplaced desire to snaff
le the glory for myself? To be the Star I so desperately need to be …
The dragonet said, Is the shining not enough, Ari? When shining not enough? Star born a star, star shine … she clucked her tongue and expectorated a frustrated spurt of fire as she failed to find words to express her thoughts.
Wise mite. The Princess could only stare unseeing at her picture, paintbrush frozen in hand.
Eventually, Sapphire said, Star-Ari born to shine. You fight the shine. Fight everything, even Ari self! Not patient, not to wait for this Balance big Leandrial talks about.
Balance must wait upon the tides and times, Aranya quoted.
Hualiama had taught her to dance. Dance, like painting she supposed, was a synthesis of many forms which could each be learned individually, but eventually, had to be released as easily and simply as breathing. Unbidden, her bare toes traced a tiny dance-step between her paint pots. Music rose in her soul, then subsided amidst a welter of self-recrimination. Dance was Hualiama’s expression. Painting was her own forte.
Pensively, Aranya returned to touching up the lustrous chestnut curls of Zuziana’s Shapeshifter-length hair with languid swirling motions of her brush, wishing she could create fate with the masterful ease of a Fra’anior. Sapphire was right. She fought everyone and everything, because she was impatient, driven and never satisfied with anything bar perfection. That quality was a single coin of both strength and weakness. She supposed what she needed to learn, was how to harness her core strengths and turn them against the Thoralians without killing herself in the process. That would be a trick. Beran would strategize. He would count the cost and the opportunities; Aranya could not face knowing the cost. Not anymore.
No, what she longed for most, was to follow her heart, and to a Cloudlands volcano with all thought of consequences. Could she not sing of Harmony and Balance? She was supposed to be a Star Dragoness, and she had no idea what to do next – all she knew was that the pursuit of evil had thrust her unimaginably farther than she had ever imagined, and cost more than her soul could surely bear.