by James Duvall
And yet, they smiled at those who would come after, having no regrets, for every drop of blood had been shed for the Great Task, and was well worth the price. Each had been brought together in this kinship of sacrifice.
And so I turned back to my journey and faced the darkness before me with the great hope that should the night come I would find myself worthy of such company.
~The Roads of Glory
Chapter 1
Book Wyrm
Cahen, Tandor Shard
Luminarians were never out of place on the streets of Cahen, but there were certainly eyes out there searching for Sapphire Nightsong. She watched the market from a safe vantage point where even if she were recognized she could easily fly away and disappear once more into the anonymity of just another street dragon. Somewhere down there, in those streets clogged with humanity, was the man that had stolen her book. It had been three years since Sapphire had last returned to her home. The market had grown and the booksellers had moved.
Despite the time spent in distant, unfamiliar shards, the market's ever-present aroma of food felt familiar. It was strongest at the center, a medley of cooked meats and sauces rich with spice and herbs rising into the air. Sapphire drank it in as she sailed over the market's heart on feathery wings. From there the market radiated outward like the petals of a flower, colorful cloths bridging from roof to roof to keep out the summer sun and prodigious spring rain. Through the gaps Sapphire could see humans moving up and down the streets, stopping to barter or browse. They could see her as well, but they paid her no mind. Humans tended to only notice luminarians when they got underfoot.
There.
On a narrow street with blue cloth canopies draped over it Sapphire caught sight of a heap of books. She landed lightly on one of the rooftops and poked her head in through the gap between two rain sheets. The alley smelled of old pages and binding leather. Here the patrons were younger men and women mostly, all dressed in colorful uniform robes.
Other luminarians lingered in this street, mostly sleeping in curled up heaps of fur and feathers in out of the way places, though a few were awake and weaving around the bigger clusters of mostly human university students as they shopped for books. Three of her kind sat watching with great fascination as a man operated a machine that produced popped corn, which the students would sometimes throw one piece at a time to be caught by the hungry dragons.
Sapphire descended a stack of crates to the street below and kept an apparently attentive eye on the popped corn vendor while she stole furtive glances at the piles of books, seeking out a particular deep maroon binding. Slowly, deliberately, she made her way down the row of booksellers trying to find the book she needed while at the same time not betray her interest in the books. Food vendors were accustomed to dragon attention, but booksellers... well, she wouldn't make that mistake again.
A word rose from the steady murmur of conversation: Alchemy.
Sapphire pricked her ears, looking in the direction she thought it had come from. A small cluster of students lingered in front of a stall heaped with older books.
“Alchemy is more expensive than I ever imagined,” a young man complained. The bit of emerald set in his amulet meant he was in his third year.
“Thought it would be free? I thought you had to be smart to get into this place,” one of his friends observed. Sky sapphire amulet, a fourth year.
The female with them rolled her eyes. Another third year.
“What I mean,” the first boy said, “is these alchemy books are an entire order of magnitude more expensive than the novels they're selling in the exact same city. Look at this one, Ketterson's Herbs of Kenti, I could get twenty of those other books for the same price. Twenty!”
The girl took it from him and turned it so he could see how thick it was. “First off it's much longer and second they don't get to make as many, so of course it's more expensive for one.”
“That's right,” the middle-aged bookseller added helpfully. “I can come down a little, but you won't find many more copies of this one. I'm afraid they've all been bought up.”
Sapphire watched them for only a moment and then scanned the table for the distinctive maroon cover. There, at the end of the table, was that it? Sapphire squinted, trying to imagine it without the slight cast of blue from the flapping rain guards overhead. By then the bookseller and the cash-strapped boy were haggling over price, providing Sapphire with the distraction she needed to cross the street and dart beneath the table, hidden from view by a dusty cloth. Luminarians were not particularly large and Sapphire was no exception to this, easily hiding beneath the table so long as she kept her tail up around her paws.
Assessing the situation with great haste she determined that there was little risk of him spotting her tail or wings. Her largest risk was that the bookseller might glance down and catch a flash of her vibrant cobalt mane or snowy white pelt through some small gap in the tattered old tablecloth. Sapphire addressed this with a tiny piece of onyx from her satchel. As she held it up between two claws the space beneath the table darkened as though the cloth had thickened, casting a more complete shadow.
Also in the space was a small shelf containing the leftover crumbs of the bookseller's lunch. Sapphire felt a plaintive growl from her stomach as she sniffed at the empty paper. Beside this was a small book, which she nearly overlooked, assuming it was a novel the bookseller passed his time with. The title caught her eye, embossed on the cover with silver leaf.
Lost Alchemy
She opened the book and turned the pages deftly with a claw. The book presented like a travelogue, but instead of detailing places the author had been, each chapter described a place of significance to alchemy that had somehow been lost in the Shattering. Sapphire's chest swelled a little with pride as she mentally checked off more than a few of them and quickly skimmed past. Toward the back she found an entry she had personally considered the alchemist's equivalent of hammering the vault, a fool's errand. It seemed a strange thing to include the well-known ruins of Forrander University, destroyed during the Shattering, but the text contained something she did not expect.
Because of risk of fire, the university's primary alchemy lab was constructed on nearby Isla Merindi to isolate it from the university's main grounds. I personally attempted to visit this second location and can attest that the building still stands but the local dwarves would not allow any agent of the crown to investigate the relics here, as the property fell back into their dominion after the Shattering.
The location immediately rose a few notches in Sapphire's estimation. Through a gap in the tablecloth the bookseller rose to reach for the young boy's money. Sapphire reached out the other side and quickly snatched one of the books at the far end where she thought she'd seen the deep maroon cover. The first cover was obviously wrong, deep green, a history of famous alchemists. Two more quick grabs and she had procured two more books on alchemy, though neither was the title she was after. Wood groaned as the bookseller settled back into his seat. Sapphire grimaced as the students marched on down the row. She needed another distraction.
Digging through her satchel she came up with a few options, most of which were more aggressive than the situation warranted. She needed something that would catch the shopkeeper's attention but wouldn't draw a crowd or worse, Fletcher Street. She needed... She needed... Something vibrated against her chest. Just across from her another dragon materialized as suddenly as a flame springing from a struck match. Dawn's immaterial chest formed partially around the bookseller's shelf. His white and orange wings stretched out fully, fuzzing through the tablecloth on both sides.
“Good morning!” he announced cheerfully, smiling ear to ear.
Sapphire gawked at him wide-eyed.
Dawn's eyes softened as his expression flashed to one of worry. “Oh, is this not a good time...?”
The bookseller bellowed in alarm and shot back from the misty wings, his chair toppling over. A moment later he threw the curtain back. Sapphir
e snarled at the man, startling him back again. She lunged out from beneath the table and reversed direction with a wing-assisted leap, landing atop the table and scattering books. There, the deep maroon cover. She snatched it up and found the author's name in silver leaf, Nicholas Carrol.
“Sapphire you can't just steal it!” Dawn protested.
“They stole mine!” Sapphire shot back, then readied herself as the bookseller came at her with a broom.
“Yes, but he didn't,” Dawn said, gesturing at the shouting broomy man.
“This is not the time!”
The broom came in for a swat. It would be effective against most luminarians as they could not breathe fire like their distant mountain-dwelling cousins, but Sapphire was more than prepared to deal with something like this. Fire formed in her claws and she swiped it through the air, catching the broom in an arch of flame. The dry bristles burst into flame and the bookseller dropped it in alarm.
“Not on the books!” Sapphire shouted.
The bookseller backed away, horrified. “Someone help! It knows how to summon fire!”
Sapphire snatched up the burning broom and threw it into the streets, quickly beating out the flames with her tail. Now dozens of sets of eyes fell upon her. In the corners she could see the other luminarians slinking away, apparently having no desire to be associated with this aberration in behavior. Dawn flickered into nothingness and reappeared at her side. This made everyone take a big step back. Emboldened, Sapphire raised her head high and proud.
“I've only come for what's mine!” she declared, retrieving the book and stuffing it into her satchel. “The mages took my copy of Nicholas Carrol's Treatise on-- Ow!”
Somewhere behind her someone had thrown a stone and bounced it off the back of her head. She turned to face them, hissing and snarling. The three alchemy students.
“Who threw that?” she demanded, her eyes watering with tears. Damn that hurt. Two more rocks soared past her. One of the boys had a handful of rocks which the other students replenished from. Sapphire was only a few feet tall, they easily towered over her. Slowly the circle of humans tightened around her.
“I should be wearing one of those amulets!” Sapphire protested, standing her ground against the alchemy students. The next rocks bounced harmlessly off her shield, leaving little cracks like broken ice which quickly resealed. Spells followed soon after, pathetically weak. How dare they.
She took a step toward them, growling. Somewhere behind she could hear Dawn protesting, urging her to go while he 'held them off.'
She would go but she was going to take one of those amulets. Heaven knew she'd earned the right. All three of the students seemed to realize that something was very wrong when their best spells failed to leave lasting damage on Sapphire's shield. As she advanced they withdrew until all at once their courage broke and they fled. Sapphire surged forward, quickly overtaking them and tackled the boy with the more advanced amulet bearing the sky sapphire. He screamed in terror as she yanked at the chain, shattering the clasp. As soon as it was free she hopped back and let him run.
Sapphire lifted her prize overhead, beaming in triumph as the students bolted away like startled rabbits.
A blast of energy hit her shield like a sledgehammer. The impact sent her rolling and she only barely held onto the amulet. She found her feet quickly, claws scraping at the earth as she surged up to face her attacker and met him through a spiderweb of cracks that had already begun to heal but much too slowly. Another direct hit like that would be trouble.
This mage wore a professor's robes. His jaw was set in a grim, stonelike scowl as he advanced toward his prey. Dawn materialized at his feet but the man stepped through his misty form without hesitation; he had already fallen for Dawn's ruse once. Thinking quickly, Sapphire flung the small bead of onyx his direction, fully activating its enchantment. Darkness sprang up all around, plummeting the a section of street into apparent night. The mage too was caught in this and looked around in confusion, hands groping blindly for some point of reference.
“I am only taking back what is mine,” Sapphire shouted to him. He did not answer. He readied a spell but didn't risk firing it blind. Under cover of the unnatural darkness Sapphire made her silent escape.
Two hours later Dawn finally returned to her as she sat sulking near the skyport. Nicholas Carrol's Treatise on Alchemy was open on the bench next to her but she hadn't read much of it. Instead she gazed down at the broken sky sapphire amulet, slowly turning it over in her claw.
“Are you alright?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“I'm fine,” she said, her voice and attention distant.
“Why did you bring that?”
In answer she heaved a deeply frustrated sigh.
“I thought... you didn't want to go back there?” Dawn asked, peering down at the amulet.
“I don't,” Sapphire answered. Exhaustion gnawed at her, tugging her toward the ground as though gravity were somehow stronger in the aftermath of her bungled heist. Leaving Dawn's amulet on while she was trying to sneak around?
Stupid.
“It was a stupid thing to do. All of it. I let my emotions get the better of me. Those... those people were alchemy students. I heard them talking before you arrived. I just thought...”
“After what happened? I imagine that was hard,” Dawn said, his voice gentle. His misty form couldn't produce any form of real contact but he leaned in close as though to press his forehead against hers. Sapphire returned the gesture, closing her eyes and thinking back to that last firm touch before she'd begun this most recent journey.
“It is a difficult thing,” Sapphire said, “when you've poured the passion of your life into something only to find you are not wanted. I can pass their tests. I've done it.”
“I know,” Dawn said gently. He gave her a sad, sympathetic smile.
For a moment the two sat in silence, Sapphire slowly collecting herself and putting to rest that deep sense of loss for the life she'd been denied.
“Tonight I am moving on to Pendric Shard.”
“Pendric Shard? Why there?”
Sapphire explained about the book she'd found. Dawn grinned sheepishly at his untimely interjection into the story.
“There are probably a few books in the tower on Pendric Shard, or the region in general,” Dawn said. “I will do some research while your ship is underway. How uhm... how long...?”
“Longer than I would like,” she said. “I found a ship already. It's already lifting off. If I can get to a secluded place I'll put the amulet on I promise.”
Dawn frowned, his ears drooping. “Be safe, Sapphire.”
“I will,” she promised.
Nearby the airship rose from its cradle, a powerful glidestone engine lifting it high overhead. Sapphire pressed her forehead toward Dawn's and then stuffed the amulet in her satchel before rising up to meet the airship as it approached the gate. The gate was one of the few ways through the shardwall surrounding Cahen, and during preparations to pass through it was one of the most opportune moments for a dragon to sneak aboard.
Sapphire spiraled up to meet the airship, taking advantage of the warm air updrafts along the shardwall. She touched down on the aft deck and found her way into the ship's cargo hold. A faint thrum of magic passed through the air even in the interior spaces as the airship passed through the gate, leaving Tandor Shard and the city of Cahen behind.
Chapter 1
The Lighthound
Trade Route outside of Beronn, Telluria Shard
The advent of the Shattering brought the arrival of the shardwalls and a great number of changes to the ancient world. City-states that would no doubt have warred with one another until only one power remained suddenly found themselves divided by impassible barriers which no practicioner at the time could pierce. For this reason, great nations whose capitols were separated by spans of only a few miles went unvisited by their neighbors for many hundred years.
From Shardwalls, A History
Hot and dry, the air in the crew quarters stung Timothy's eyes with the taste of smoke. A mess of playing cards lay scattered across the aisle. He trod through them as he pushed aside the overturned table. The spine-shattering impact of the airship's crash had torn several bunks loose and tipped them into the narrow aisle, creating a forest of broken frames and torn, stained mattresses leaking old straw and deep brown whiskey from someone's private stash. Timothy climbed over and through them as quickly as he could, calling out for survivors as he felt his way along. Above him, a stampede of boots on the airship's deck drowned out shouted orders and cries of alarm. Below him, the crashed airship's glidestone engine ground its crystalline blades against the mountainside, growling like an angry, caged beast. The boiler's relief valves blew open and began to scream. Their shrill whistle cut the air, sounding the airship's death wail.
“Is anyone down here?” Timothy called, shouting over the din of the struggling engine and the scream of a boiler poised to explode.
“Help!” a young voice called, mercifully not from beneath the pile of broken furniture but down the hallway beyond.
“I'm coming!”
Timothy sprinted toward the source, passing through a hallway already made dim by a thin haze of smoke. The ship shuddered. Somewhere below something gave out with a thunderous crack. Timothy's world rolled toward starboard, tossing him against the bulkhead and tipping glowing crystals from their wall sconces. The crystals flashed as they crashed into the floor and shattered, their broken pieces giving off pale memories of their previous light. The deck continued to tilt, the ship rolling until it found purchase again on the bare rock and came to a sudden, shuddering halt. Timothy stumbled, crunching glowing bits of broken glass beneath his boots as he made a mad grab for the door frame. He heaved himself inside the cabin and steadied himself on the unsteady, sloping deck. It was brighter in here, several crystals still illuminating the room.
For a moment Timothy stood silent, watching the survivor with disbelieving eyes. He was in a well-adorned stateroom, containing a large bed, a chest of drawers, and tapestries and paintings on all the walls. Flames flickered below, casting light up through the floorboards and bathing the scene in dark reds and oranges. At the stateroom's center, a gryphon fought to gain control of a heavy sea chest, shoving and heaving it toward the door against the steep incline of the floor. Eagle's wings pushed back the gathering smoke while talons and lion's claws fought gravity and the great weight of the sea chest.