by Marc Secchia
They were underway.
* * * *
Ardan turned to his companions. “Well, we have officially been jilted, gentlemen.”
“What do you mean, jilted?” growled Asturbar.
“I mean our ladies have flown for the heavens and left us men to tidy up down below. They are just now departing Fra’anior Cluster and from Aranya’s coded speech I understand they do not intend to travel to any horizontal point of the compass.”
“Success!” Ri’arion crowed.
The Shadow shook his head slowly. “Success is complex, my friend. Take a deep breath.”
His tan face drained of all colour with magical speed as he leaped to the right conclusion. “Zuziana? Tell me it isn’t true!”
“That bit isn’t – she’s alive. We think.” Ardan cursed his thick Dragon neck that would not allow him to look properly at Ri’arion, seated upon his back as they scouted above the Cloudlands level here in the far South. “Zuziana swapped her place with the Pygmy Dragoness.”
“She what?”
When Ardan explained what little he knew, the Fra’aniorian seemed to calm down. At least, his death grip on Ardan’s spine spike eased, and the pallor eased. Ardan finished in a low growl, “I’m not sure whether to call her stupid, or brave, or stupidly brave. She has heroism in her blood, Ri’arion. You know what her sacrifice means – we all do.”
“Aye.”
Asturbar clasped Ri’arion’s shoulders from behind. “Man, are those three kids of yours ever going to fly rings around you!”
The ex-monk’s laughter sounded at first as if it had been extracted from his throat by red-hot tongs, but it soon mellowed as his companions encouraged him and pledged themselves to her rescue. They scouted the barrens south even of the Southern Archipelago, before dipping below again to help the Runners work out the best route for the long run up past Mejia and Elidia, which were ancient Dragon strongholds now left desolate, to Jeradia Island. There they must find the correct location to replace the famous Academy. The Cognates, of course, had a few ideas about how to achieve this goal. They intended to use their flying and running brethren in order to create a perfect topological map of the Island and thereby reverse-engineer the most probable location for the volcano.
And then? All they had to do was catch it.
“Simple as that,” Ardan explained.
“Hope they don’t throw like most girls I’ve seen,” Asturbar snorted.
“Chauvinist.” Ri’arion turned around and clouted him. “Have a present from Iridiana.”
* * * *
Zuziana wished she could tell who was alive and who was dead in these parts. After listening at Silver’s flank for the better part of an estimated hour, she had still not detected a hearts-beat as such, but her best Human-Dragoness combined senses coupled with a healthy dose of intuition told her that these Dragons must still be alive in some sense of the word. A fire life hibernation, perhaps? Just like her.
So, Silver or Kassik? Pip would want Silver woken first; a shell son of Thoralian would likely boast a tinker’s miscellany of useful powers. He might also be a traitor and summarily obliterate her. Silver also looked rather more battered – ahem, make that deceased – than she was entirely comfortable with. Waking him in this state might just kill him for certain. Kassik the Brown had taken a decent pasting, but displayed no obvious mortal wounds, at least to one with her limited knowledge of draconic medicine. He would know if any of his forces possessed the ultra-rare power of healing.
Oh to have Aranya here! She had tried and failed to communicate with her best friend. The Ancient Dragon appeared to be ignoring her would-be dust-particle-sized mother.
Righto. To work.
Zip paused beside the Brown Dragon’s immense forepaw. What about waking Casitha? No, she had a nasty-looking burn upon her right knee and calf. Arosia! Well, pretty as she was, she did look a touch Sylakian, and she had rather bad memories of that people. Oops. Horrible prejudice. Making a face meant for herself, Zip vacillated. Back to Casitha. She would have Master Kassik’s ear, and besides, she looked Remoyan – the soundest possible recommendation, in her books!
“Double prejudice with lashings of sauce on top, anyone?” Zip growled. “Casitha. Casitha! I’m really, really sorry about this, but you need to wake up and it’s going to hurt something awful.” She patted the girl’s cheek gently, but she remained utterly limp. Her eyelids did not even flutter. “Casitha, petal. Kassik needs you.”
Sitting down beside the girl, she began to massage the pulse points at her wrists. Zip reached out with her mind and heart. Casitha, darling. Time to waken. The Island-World needs you.
However long it took. She had time. Oodles of time.
* * * *
“We’ll make two stores, both based on gravitational manipulation,” Aranya explained. “Store one is for oxygen extracted from the atmosphere and liquefied under high pressure. Store two is for plain old water. As much water as we can carry inside of our vacuum-sealed shield, which will be a great deal since our friend is so fiendishly adept at manipulating gravitational forces at the subatomic level – and no, don’t ask me to explain the underlying science. I’m not even going to pretend to understand. Then, we produce our oxygen either by electrolysis or thermal decomposition, whichever works best. Another ridiculous overload of knowledge compressed into Auli-Ambar’s Scroll of Fire.”
“Water decomposes?” Iridiana asked.
“As I just learned, thermolysis is the splitting of water into its component oxygen and hydrogen parts, in various combinations,” she explained. “At 3,000-plus degrees, over half of water molecules will decompose. My starlight power can produce significantly higher temperatures, but the real trick is capturing the right end product. And, of course, we will need to remove and purify our waste.”
“That would be Iridiana’s job,” Pip said without missing a beat.
“Sounds technical, Sparky,” Iridiana said.
“Ferociously so, Sparkles – hey, we should think up a pet name for Pip, don’t you think?”
“Pet? You’re speaking to someone who spent seven years in a zoo being a pet!”
Aranya growled, “Excuse me while I just go gnaw off my tongue in a corner. Sorry, Pip. That could have been slightly more thoughtful.”
To her surprise, Pip stood up, walked up Aranya’s back and over her skull ruff, and seated herself upon her muzzle right where they could look at each other eyeball to eyeball. “I think I’m being the sparky one around here,” she said, essaying a wry grin. “Might a touch of forgiveness be found in that fiery Dragoness’ heart of yours?”
“Always.”
Iridiana said, “I say, make a snack of the rascal, sister –” she paused dramatically “– if she doesn’t tell us her story.”
Pip stuck out her tongue. “You first, Sparkles.”
“Well, for my part I boast one year locked up in my father’s own dungeon with extra torture thrown in free of charge, followed by seven years in solitary exile sanctioned by my loving family, so I reckon we’re around even on that score, Pipsqueak.”
“Hey! How did you –” Pip bit her tongue. “Scabby rats!”
Iridiana crowed in delight, “Found her nickname already! I’m so good at this.”
The pair regarded each other as if each lingered upon what the other had suffered, before Aranya’s amethyst nose became the setting for a huge, heartfelt hug.
Nyahi ruffled Pip’s curls. “A zoo? So cruel.”
“Your own father’s dungeon? I thought – King Beran … Aranya?”
“The man she thought was her father,” Aranya clarified.
Pip said lightly, “So, before a very necessary story time, Aranya, how can we help you with the next phase of our ascension?”
Affecting a pompous air and high dudgeon, Aranya declaimed, “I cannot concentrate whilst a pair of morsels chatter away seated upon my nasion – if a Dragon indeed possesses such an anatomical part. Correction. Vacate the nasal bridge
, varmints! Actually, I’d rather appreciate some help working out and holding together all the different layers that we need to build up. In true draconic style, subterfuge and complexity underpin the entire design.”
Nyahi asked, “Did you even work out if Auli-Ambar was a Shapeshifter?”
“Like you, my dear personification of fundamental unruliness, I could not work out what exactly Auli-Ambar was. She did state, however, that Chaos was an integral part of her realm; that it was birthed and venerated there. Sorry, I forgot to explain – uh, Iridiana!”
Iridiana’s wings froze mid-flap. Suddenly multiple iridium flares super-heated the air and half-blinded every eye. Fifty-odd Chaos Beast maws snarled furiously at nothingness for the briefest instant before Nyahi collapsed into a dracofloral form, quite unconscious.
Aranya scooped her limp stem-bundle up in her paw, and grimaced at Pip. “Mercy.”
“You could have broken the tidings of her heritage a little more gently,” the Pygmy admonished, with a strange tongue-clicking noise. “Come. We need to start.”
Seething with self-directed anger, Aranya produced the Scroll of Fire from her mind – another Auli-Ambar talent which she marvelled at – and ran through its details with Pip. By then Iridiana had recovered, planted a pawful of dragonet kisses upon her sister’s ocular membranes, and dived into the work with aplomb.
Aranya blinked. This Chaos business took whole Islands-full of getting used to.
Great streamers of golden light irradiated Fra’anior Cluster, reduced now to a green-rimmed crimson eyelet far below. The partially eclipsed suns provided welcome warmth as the Dragons ascended beyond the three-league mark. The thinner air made for much harder going. Aranya passed the moisture extraction routines over to Pip, while she initiated the gravity inclusion which would compress oxygen for storage. Iridiana had meantime set up the basic structures for the eventual full-vacuum shield which they would require higher up. Climbing into the everlasting blue dome of the sky, she remembered flying above the Rift where she had communed with her mother’s spirit. Her re-entry had been aided by Wisp Dragons, the ultimate high-flyers of the Dragonkind – but now she understood that there were Dragonkind living as deep as the core fires of the Island-World, as high as the stars, and perhaps protodraconic or non-draconic creatures which called the darkest abysses of outer space, home.
From below, the pair of Dragon Astronomers would be watching through the Celestial Stargazer and hopefully should be attempting to issue course information at intervals using the powerful light-producing properties of the magical scopes.
Aranya wondered again at how blind Auli-Ambar had seemed to scan the sky before commenting upon their enemies’ progress. That girl!
Suddenly, a Nak phrase popped into her mind. Not so many months before, when they had been trying to work out what under the suns had become of the Academy volcano, in a moment of frustration, Nak had cried out, ‘Am I speaking the ancient language of stars?’ What a fiery frisson played down her spine at this memory!
“Aranya, are you alright?” Pip’s voice intruded.
“I’m just thinking that Nak wasn’t so senile after all. Can I fly something past your muzzles, both of you? I also wanted to ask you about that phrase you used, Pipsqueak – ‘child of his spirit.’ Does that mean Fra’anior has adopted you?”
The Pygmy girl growled something unintelligible.
Aranya chuckled merrily, making Pip growl more loudly still. She said, “Pip, I’d be over the Moons if that were true. Don’t you see? I’d be discovering random sisters every other week at this rate! Nothing in Fra’anior’s own hoard could compare to the treasure you would be! Ah, silly magic. I’ve got this piece upside down, now … let me see …”
After distracting herself quite thoroughly with conundrums related not only to Auli’s backwards-logic ways of implementing magic, but her complex and scholarly use of Island Standard besides, Aranya peered back over her shoulder as a tiny sniffle registered in her awareness.
“Pip?”
“Push off – you nosy – why do you have to be so confounded nice?”
Aranya opened her jaw, and decided that closing it again was the flight of wisdom.
Iridiana blurted out, “We can be totally awful if you’d prefer?”
“No!”
The twins glanced at each other, somewhat at a loss to explain this outburst. With an almost imperceptible lurch, the gravitational poles of their world switched places and they began to fall upwards, as best Aranya could tell. “Ooh!” all three chorused as their stomachs protested. The feeling went against everything they had ever known. Solid ground was meant to be down there. They were falling away from safety!
“Gentle hands catch the butterfly dragonet,” Iridiana counselled Aranya, who was trying to bring their bubble back under control.
“Oh, because Chaos girl is in her natural element here?”
“Naturally.”
“Liar.”
Aranya did ease up, however, as they checked and rechecked the gravity-bending magic that would keep them alive. No-one knew if Mystic would have any kind of atmosphere. Moisture steadily seeped into their slightly glistening holding tank, while the liquid oxygen built up a decent head of pressure.
“Needs a couple of hours,” Pip confirmed. “So, who brought the games?”
“You promised a bedtime story,” Iridiana pouted.
When Pip just hooted, Iridiana managed to switch into a six foot-tall, glowering amethyst-throated maw fringed with flaming purple tentacles. The Pygmy yelped in horror as she flashed into her Dragoness form; Aranya admonished the ‘children’ and bade them perk up their wings and do the impossible.
Privately, she wondered about Pip – gusty, spark-a-minute, vivacious Pip. The Pygmy girl had not suggested as much, but she could deduce the implications of Fra’anior’s spiritual adoption. In the draconic sense, the notion of kindred spirits was far more profound and wide-reaching than the Human idea of special connection or understanding.
Fra’anior could not make a Star Dragoness by fiat, could he?
That remained to be seen.
Maybe he whose Word had raised Islands could do far more. He had created the magnificent spectacle now almost four leagues beneath them, the lush Islands that dotted the cloudscapes, the dark patch of the Spits, and the low toothy ridge of the Spine Islands sawing through the southern horizon. Life abounded everywhere she looked. All this was her grandsire’s paw-labour, and she was tasked with being its guardian.
Mighty Fra’anior, she whispered, we’ll need your fires beneath our wings.
So it was that as they rose on dawn’s inaudible exhalation, that her soul exulted even as her undivided attention turned to Pip’s tale; how she was born amidst the mighty jungles of the Crescent Isles, Named with a mighty warrior name tattooed upon her calf, and taught the ways of the jungle. Then, destiny swept her into seven years of repulsive captivity as a zoo exhibit. Iridiana wept. Aranya choked up as Pip described her first Dragonflight to the Academy.
In listening intentionally, a soul expanded her boundaries.
A Dragoness learned to soar.
Chapter 31: Mystical Mayhem
AFter a week spent rising into orbit, three Dragonesses confined to a very small space might have been forgiven a few testy moments. However, there were no more black eyes. No split lips. No arguing over how to divide the meagre rations.
Instead, there was wonder.
The planet curved beneath them, infinitely greater than they had ever imagined; more varied and wonderful than Fra’anior had ever hinted at. It was an immensity of blue – a sparkling cerulean palette sprinkled with green and white Islands no bigger than fine grains of sand seen from this height, and dappled with cotton-puff clouds and ominously grey, ribbed storm fronts. A great, ridged grey ring carved into the midst of these oceans, framing the giant crater created by the impact of the First Eggs, its belly replete with the tan-grey Cloudlands they knew so well. The ever-black contour of
the Rift cut through this ring well above midway, like a painter’s bold brush stroke.
Within, larger Isles and Archipelagos were easy to pick out, such as Yorbik, the Western Isles and the sprawling arc of the Southern Archipelago. What they had known was only an isolated biome in a far greater world. Their realm was cut off from, as best they could tell, unending leagues of water broken up by threadlike bracelets and spiders’ webs of Islands. Tens of thousands strong. Perhaps millions, arranged into distinct areas bounded by what had to be uncrossable tracts of water.
What mysterious creatures dwelled there? What wonders?
At the top and bottom of their planet were vast caps of white. Permanent ice, Aranya noted, which clasped the Rim over a thousand leagues North of Immadia in frigid arms. That was the reason for the cold climate of her home. As for a third sun, they saw no sign of it anywhere, but there was a vast region South of Wyldaroon which appeared to be obscured by an unending grey-white spiral storm the size of Wyldaroon itself. That was a tempest worthy of the name!
Iridiana thrilled to look upon that hurricane. One could only imagine the windstorm within.
When the suns rose over the glistening curve of their planet, or Jade loomed closer and brighter than ever before, Aranya grew faint with awe.
When she returned, she would paint this. Every image. The incomparable geography of her Island-World. The water – such an incredible reach of water! She could not imagine the waves storms might create there. She thrilled to the spectacle of the suns chasing away the night over tens of thousands of leagues; the way the stars gleamed unadulterated by the atmosphere which they had now left behind. They traversed that narrow, shortening link between their world and the Mystic Moon. All around was the unfathomable darkness of space, broken only by the gleaming jewel they called home.
Pip said, “So, what we call our Island-World is only a great crater blasted in the side of our planet, protected by the Rim-wall mountains. All else is this – this word you call ‘ocean.’ You say it is meant to be salty water?” She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. How can anything survive in brackish water?”