Beautiful Fury

by Marc Secchia

  In a second, another voice broke through. Judging by its timbre it had to be Pip, but due to the heavy interference they could not understand a single word. Silver volunteered, “I think they’re torturing her, Master. Maybe we should revive a few more Dragons so that we have reinforcements against –” He jerked his head in Zuziana’s direction. “For my part, I’m feeling very weak …”

  Her glare informed him exactly how weak he would become if he continued that Isle of thought!

  Then, Silver’s muzzle almost clunked down on his forepaw. “That was Pip. She just called me a toad brain. Unfortunately, I missed the rest.”

  When there appeared to be no further communication due to increasing turbulence outside of their environment, Casitha said, “Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t we all listen to the person who bothered to wake us up to this present danger? We can work out the historical details of non-existent kings called Lorman of Remoy and our little injuries –”

  Kassik stopped rubbing his tender parts in order to bare one hundred gleaming fangs at her. “Little?”

  Casitha barely had to stoop to kiss him upon the knuckle of his left forepaw. “Alright, mighty leader of the Academy, most noble and puissant Brown, la la love your every magnificent scale, we can discuss this later. I, for one, would like to find my way home. The best way I see of doing that is by starting to wake and heal our allies. We’re going to need all hands and paws on deck – even these fallen Night-Reds. If half of what Zuziana says is true, we’ll need every last one.”

  Indeed, little ones, said a new voice, spine-tingling of resonance and mellifluous of tone. Indeed. Enough have I listened; thy hearts do I hear. How might a not-yet-born eggling supply that last paw?

  They whirled as one, and gasped.

  I am Zankaradia, said the Ancient Dragoness.

  * * * *

  Jeradia under Commander Ignathion, Yolathion’s father, had been genuinely eager to supply help up until the point that they learned that the Cognates wanted to run Land Dragons all over their Island. The giant Jeradian grew positively squirmy at the suggestion.

  Asturbar rumbled, “Indeed. Ardan will communicate with our allies at once. I can understand the need not to alarm the civilians.”

  “Oh, I think the mob sporting happily in our swamps down south have that matter firmly in paw,” the Jeradian replied. “It’s the squadron of freaking enormous Land Dragons peering over your battlements around dinnertime that tends to put the populace at their ease.”

  The Azingloriax warrior chuckled heartily.

  “Sorry about the crops,” said Ri’arion. “We did not realise how curious they would be about Human civilisation.”

  Leaning forward, the grizzled Commander said, “How’s Aranya?”

  “Safe,” said Asturbar.

  “Relatively speaking,” said Ri’arion. “How’s Yolathion, Commander?”

  “Really, really struggling,” Ignathion said bluntly. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not so much due to the Shapeshifter in him as the torture that preceded his transformation. It is grievous as a father to see one’s son brought to such a low place. And by no means do I cast blame. This war has been ruinous to far too many people and nations.”

  Ardan opened his eyes and said, “Regarding Aranya, Commander, could we request use of your observatory tonight? She’s –” He pointed upward.

  “Being a Star Dragoness,” said Ri’arion.

  Ignathion’s eyebrows shot in the same direction. “Right …”

  “So, I’ve confirmed that the Land Dragons will only need to climb key mountain peaks. We can map safe routes,” said Ardan. “Basically, we’re trying to figure out where the Dragon Rider Academy used to be and put it back safely.”

  “You’re returning a famous school to Jeradia? No problem.”

  “More like an entire dormant volcano populated by forty thousand people and Dragons, Commander,” said the Shadow. “If you happened to know any current members of the Order of Onyx, it would be incredibly helpful if we could speak to them, too.”

  “Those crazies? Might take a day or two to track them down,” said Ignathion, with a sidelong glance meant to reassure Ardan that he was firmly included amongst the number of ‘crazies.’ “Anything else you need before you turn my homeland upside down, gentlemen?”

  “I’m perishing for a decent meal,” said Asturbar, rubbing his belly. “Chasing Dragonesses is jolly hard work.”

  All four men around the conference table found themselves nodding in agreement. With a gruff burst of laughter, they stood and followed Ignathion to his private dining room.

  * * * *

  After cramming a decent meal into their bellies, the menfolk rushed on. It seemed all they had been doing for weeks was rushing. Still, a week’s non-stop travel from the Rift to Jeradia was definitely shifting at a pace to be proud of. Not a Moon-catching pace, mind. That accolade went to the ladies.

  With his eye glued to the eyepiece, Ri’arion made minute adjustments. “Clear night. Fine gleam on Mystic, although this instrument is nothing on the ones the Dragons have … there we go – one fine Egg and – holy Fra’anior!”

  Asturbar pushed him aside. “What – I don’t see – suffering murgalizards!”

  Ardan took his turn to shoulder his way in. “What’s going on? I’d appreciate a few actually descriptive words!”

  When he saw what they had seen, his hands cramped into fists and a few execrations of his own leaped to mind. The blot of Infurion’s presence against the Moon’s gleaming face appeared to be throwing everything he had at … aye, the Egg. Could that tiny speck just upon Infurion’s tail, as insubstantial as a soap bubble floating against a clear noon sky, be the Dragonesses? They had not surely succeeded in flying into orbit, had they? What turned his knuckles whitest, however, was the scale of the white flares blasting off Mystic’s surface. He knew how large the Egg was. Those flares could likely be seen with the naked eye, which must mean they were tens if not hundreds of leagues wide and deep.

  Aranya would be engulfed. That much power? There had to be a point at which even a Star Dragoness bit off more than she could chew!

  Asturbar’s huge paw gripped his forearm. “Whatever’s happening up there, Shadow, it’s a battle royal.”

  He stepped back, feeling shaken. “I feel so freaking helpless!”

  Ri’arion scratched his head. “If only there was a way to send them a message – I’d tell them what we discovered about the Rift fires. Any advantage over Infurion could be crucial.”

  The three men gazed at each other. Suddenly, they nodded as one.

  “Aye,” Ardan grinned.

  “Yes.”

  “What do we have allies for?” Ri’arion finished. “Let’s roust those lizards out of the swamp and start them beaming information aloft – hopefully, before the girls disappear around the edge of the Mystic Moon, that is.” He jumped back to the telescope. “We have … no time at all. Great. They’re gone.”

  “Blame it on my stomach,” Asturbar cursed unhappily.

  “Aye,” Ardan agreed. “A recently pregnant man just needs his munchies, doesn’t he?”

  * * * *

  Aranya wished she could pace in tight circles, but she could not. They whistled low over the Mystic Moon’s surface at a blistering pace, both literally and figuratively speaking. Detonation after detonation threatened to rattle her fangs right out of her skull. Meriatonium fires sheeted over them as they hurtled low over ridges of crystal shaped like a Land Dragon’s blocky molars. Despite her best efforts at adjusting Auli-Ambar’s gravitational parameters, they were flying lower and faster by the second.

  Some unknown force was towing them in now. Nothing helped. She had deployed aerodynamic and kinetic shields in the oxygen-rich lower atmosphere, to no apparent effect. Even her best magical shenanigans left their course unchanged.

  Occasionally, they caught glimpses of Infurion battling doggedly through the billowing tempests of fire, his great body appearing t
o lose cohesion, only to reform; once they saw one of the Thoralians flitting above the Egg, floating along serenely as he patently enjoyed the travails of his pursuers. Hour after hour passed as they plotted a course around Mystic before suddenly, the ground dropped away and their shield juddered violently.

  Aranya found herself plastered against the side of their bubble right alongside the Pygmy Dragoness with Iridiana atop them both. “Get off my head!” cried Pip. They promptly tumbled in the opposite direction in a tangle of limbs and wings.

  None of them could move as their life-preserving bubble jinked wildly and then executed a turn of such sharpness that even the Dragonesses blacked out momentarily. Immense gravitational forces seized them like gnats held helpless to a whistling gale’s power. Suddenly, they gazed down the length of a gleaming tunnel some six or seven miles in circumference toward a vanishing point of darkness; a darkness of such utter absence of light or magic or fire or anything at all, that it was as though they were being sucked into a void more ravenous and terrible than any of the emptiness of space they had traversed so far.

  It was a wound pierced deep into Mystic’s flank.

  A maw that consumed and gave nothing back.

  This was the way to Dramagon’s Bequest, and Aranya knew one thing. She could not allow the Egg to be drawn into that place. It would be devoured.

  Chapter 32: Ancient Mimicry

  Zankaradia the Corundum Red peered over a landscape trembling arguably as much as the five Shapeshifters and Humans standing upon it. Words tumbled from the hatchling; words of welcome and encouragement and infantile joy at discovering other intelligent creatures she could converse with; the first living creatures she had known.

  Her slanted, brilliant yellow eyes peered at Zuziana with particular affection. Shell mommy. Mommy heart. BLESSED SUMMONER OF MINE LIFE’SFIRES! Oh … oops.

  That was a little more enthusiasm than could keep a Dragoness on her paws.

  Zuziana picked herself up and dusted off her wings with a delighted wriggle. Hail, Zankaradia! She is born! Er … maybe? In principle, she was still inside her eggshell and therefore not born.

  Technicalities! Toss those cares into a Cloudlands volcano.

  Kassik sang softly yet poignantly:

  She is born, fire of fire,

  Blessed eggling, heart of living Dragon flame,

  Born to fly!

  Zankaradia went very still. Only her eye-fires flared like translucent crystals as she absorbed the import of his song. Each eye was a slanted ovoid larger than Kassik himself, set in a sleek muzzle of an appearance that struck Zuziana as Eastern in origin. She had hair-like barbels depending from her chin, the lower edges of her jaw, nostril edges and where the skull ruff would ordinarily be; each armoured tendril was tipped like a flanged spear point with a toxic-looking, barbed tip of crimson gemstone-cross-Dragonhide armour. Her body was longer and sleeker than any Dragon Zip had ever seen, twining around the entire Island-fragment they stood upon and perhaps beneath it, too, in miles-long, ever-writhing sea of corundum-red coils. Even as a babyish and slim eggling, she was immense, and possessed of an unearthly, lethal brilliance that was a hallmark of the Dragonkind. Ardan could arrive with the stealth of nightfall. Aranya outshone stars. Fra’anior embodied the shattering immensity of Storm. Zankaradia had a wild, fey beauty all of her own.

  She was beyond awesome.

  She was also apparently on their side. All in all, a useful development, Aranya might have noted with her dry Immadian sense of humour.

  She and Zankaradia spoke in highly compressed bursts of information. The eggling wanted to know everything: all about the danger that faced her egg, the enemy, and the grave scene which had greeted her eye-fires upon ‘reforming’ herself from her nascent eggling-fires. Eventually Zuziana just gave up and threw it all at her at once; every memory, every thought, every reflection that she could summon up, even her dirty washing as Remoyans would say.

  The eggling blinked rapidly. This is – must assimilate – epic victory – AH, CAN SUCH FOULNESS EXIST? Thou, Fra’anior mine progenitor – he is titanic! she gasped. O Zuziana, Remoy’s heart, I grieve for thy pain! Oh … this is love? This friendship love, Rider love, Human love, hearts’ love, mother love, fiery and righteous world-love!

  Her long nose snuffled toward the Azure Dragoness, breathing in her scent. Thou … I see now, I was not born to tarry here. Mine presence engenders terrible danger to thee and thy kind, little ones.

  Zip cried, You are wanted here, and loved – thou paragon of all draconic fires, Zankaradia! Thou art never alone. Never!

  The eggling’s voice burbled in wordless approbation. Again the nostrils breathed deep, causing a breeze to stir the long-stagnant battlefield, and then a slim paw appeared, setting down beside Casitha and Yaethi before, with almost laughable care, the eggling curved her elegant talons toward Zuziana. Such yearning. Such innocent, vulnerable fires enflamed her eyes.

  The Azure reached out to caress her gleaming Dragon hide. Thou, Zankaradia.

  Thou, Zuziana, adored of mine hearts. She touched them each in turn now, pronouncing each name solemnly. Silver. Kassik. Casitha. Yaethi.

  The Egg shuddered as it came under increasingly powerful attack from without. For the first time, Zankaradia’s expression betrayed alarm. Her neck twizzled in all directions, examining some property of their surrounds that Zip did not understand. When she spoke to soothe the Dragoness, however, the Corundum Red said at once:

  Following mine coalescence, the Egg’s magic changes. It must crack soon.

  Oh. What can we do? Silver blurted out.

  I see I must breathe upon these all the breath of revival. This skill I do possess, for thou showest me much, o Zuziana. Even thy mistakes art mine teachers. She giggled, a curiously sweet and melodic sound. Hearken. And Silver, wilt thou mine instructor be? I fear mine untrammelled power must surely snuff out many lives – the image I have from thy mind is of a lens, or a filter?

  The young Dragon drew himself up at once. This I can do, noble Zankaradia.

  Zankaradia paused. I see thine beloved, o Silver, a Dragoness cast of Fra’anior’s own stormy beauty – and I wonder, who wilt mine beloved be? No mind. As you little ones say, one paw before the next!

  The Dragoness drew in a mighty breath, and then exhaled. Golden motes shimmered upon her breath as if the suns themselves, cast low and golden at their eventide waning, gleamed richly through the volcanic atmosphere of Fra’anior Cluster. Slowly and deliberately, she curved her neck to spread her breath far and wide. Zz-shaah … was the song of her wind. The golden motes washed across the fallen and right up to the volcano’s flanks, descending upon each and every person like the most delicate blanket, like a dream of golden times of yore.

  There was stillness within the Egg, and a dull, escalating thundering without.

  Then, as if a primordial voice had spoken the very first command of life, a second stirring rippled around the battlefield. Wings rustled and leather armour creaked. The injured groaned as they shifted position. Voices began to mumble and buzz. Here and there, a head popped up to gaze about in bewilderment. The dominant tone of the murmuring was one of confusion, or shock as Zankaradia stepped overhead with a lithe flexion of her long body. Placing her forepaws upon the volcano’s rim, she raised her muzzle and then breathed within, a second profound exhalation.

  Gleaming dust puffed up and spilled over the rim as if the volcano had erupted.

  Zankaradia smacked her lips in apparent satisfaction.

  Some of the Night-Reds woke with memories of battle at the forefront of their minds. They began growling and roaring, baring talons and fangs and casting about for the enemy. In the main they were so weak that the Dragons simply flopped along the ground, unable to raise wing or spring into the air as their brains told them they must. Officers and wing leaders began to shout orders. Every living creature upon the battlefield braced themselves for the wrath that must surely erupt.

  Zankaradia vented a sibil
ant screech, “Stop!” The first flame of her life billowed out of her nostrils as her ire peaked; the Dragoness startled as crimson fire licked up around her jowls, and she brushed it away with her paw. “Listen to me – nay, listen to my mighty right paw, Zuziana the Azure! Zuziana, arise and issue your orders!”

  Belatedly, the Azure sprang into the air. I, uh …

  I shall amplify thy tiny voice, Zankaradia assured her. Speak thy will.

  Alright. Nothing to it.

  Forty thousand lives rested in the palm of her paw.

  Swallowing away a boulder of a lump in her throat, Zuziana channelled her inner Princess of Immadia, and in a voice that boomed off the volcano’s ramparts, she thundered, “The time for battle is over! Re’akka is defeated! You Night-Reds, therefore, will tender your surrender to … to Kassik the Brown Shapeshifter, right away, or I shall have you squashed! Summarily and, er … forthwith!”

  Roaring rajals, she was not the most eloquent orator. But having an Ancient Dragoness standing right behind her was clearly more than enough reinforcement. The Night-Reds might not ordinarily have obeyed a pint-sized scrap of sky, but veneration for physical stature and power was inbuilt in most Dragons. Heads dipped in acknowledgement, flared wings rustled back to flanks, and the tenor of their fires changed to a low drone of abasement.

  All across the battlefield, the Night-Reds examined their paws.

  Grandly, Zuziana gestured, “Kassik is over there! Surrender to him! The rest of you, start helping the injured while I brief you on what has been, and what we must do next. This sanctuary is under attack and I will require every paw and hand to aid our cause, or we shall not survive this day!”

  She had just told them the battle was over. Now it had begun afresh? Zuziana gnawed her lip with her fangs. The potential for confusion loomed large.

  Recalling the Herimor obsession with honour, she cried, “Dragons shall have a chance to prove and regain their honour this day! This I declare in the holy name of Fra’anior himself: All honourable service shall be redeemed; all creatures of dishonour shall be cast into the accursed, everlasting darkness inhabited by null-fires cowards!”