Blood and Scales

by Kevin Potter

  The Platinum guided him through a few more twists and turns of the tunnel, during which his flesh returned to its natural warmth. The pair turned another corner and found a small archway.

  Much too small to allow the pair to go through side-by-side. Balhamuut pushed him through first, then followed after him.

  The metallic stone here shone brighter than in other places in the caves, seemingly lit from within. The glare was almost painful to look upon.

  A short distance down the tunnel stood another archway, though the shine from the walls did not touch this one. For almost a wingspan before the archway, the tunnel was dark.

  Narrowing his eyes, Gravv looked into the archway. He saw only blackness beyond. Darker and more absolute than anything he had ever seen.

  He raised his brow ridges questioningly at Balhamuut.

  The larger platinum wyrm nodded and gestured for Gravv to go through. After hesitating only a moment— he had learned long ago that Balhamuut did not tolerate disobedience —he moved down the tunnel and stepped through the archway. He had to lower his head to avoid striking the top of the arch.

  How will he fit through this? Gravv wondered.

  The moment he passed through the arch, however, it was as though he had passed into another world. The stone of the cave walls drank in the light from hundreds of lit torches spread about the chamber. The walls weren’t black, or any other color, but seemed to be composed of nothingness. As though they were not solid substance, but rather an empty void.

  Only with tremendous effort did Gravv pull his attention away from the solid emptiness and drag his gaze around the chamber.

  Two enormous wyrms lay sprawled on the cavern floor, one silver and one garnet. Gravv almost choked, his breath caught in his throat, before he realized they could not be his sire and dam. Their gender/breed combinations were reversed and the garnet’s color was all wrong; she was much too pale.

  Both bled freely from numerous wounds in their exposed backs, not unlike the wounds Gravv himself had suffered at the hands of Balhamuut’s torturers.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What is this?” His voice was little more than a gasp.

  Balhamuut chuckled. “This, my boy, is your reward for obedience and for being a good student.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Platinum Lord laughed harder. “Nephew, I usually come here by myself for my monthly large meal. Don’t you wish to partake with me?”

  “Are you saying… what I think you’re saying?”

  The chuckles abruptly stopped. “Tell me you aren’t truly this dense. I’ve always taken you for an intelligent wyrm. A little on the slow side at times, perhaps, but always intelligent. Have I misjudged you? Did I make a mistake in bringing you here?” The red and gray eyes sparkled with malice.

  “No, my lord,” Gravv said, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel. “I understand, I was just slow to take it all in. I didn’t sleep well last eve.”

  Balhamuut eyed him with narrow, suspicious eyes.

  After a moment, however, the expression cleared. “Tell me then, nephew, what is going to happen here?”

  Gravv gulped. This must be, he thought. There is no choice, I must comply. “Once each month, you come here to make an arcane meal of a Great Wyrm. Today, you are showing your immense magnanimity and allowing me to consume one as well.”

  “At least you’re not a total loss, then,” the wyrm muttered.

  “What about Bal?” Gravv asked.

  The Lord scoffed. “With the state of his mind, I can’t see how that would be a worthwhile investment.”

  Gravv nodded his understanding with a blank expression, though deep down he seethed. Not only was the wyrm wrong about his brother— he grew more certain of that every time he thought of it —but the idea that the death of a creature thousands of years old was nothing more than an “investment” galled him.

  He had been taught since hatching that all dragon life was precious and sacred. He could see taking that life for a purpose— such as defending his own life or to gain the power needed for a specific goal —or if the dragon was already dead or dying. After all, what would a dying wyrm do with its power anyway? But Balhamuut’s ideas that wyrm lives were only there to fuel his own power disgusted Gravv in the extreme.

  “You seem to have developed a taste for garnets,” Balhamuut said. “I assume you will maintain that preference today?”

  Gravv nodded again. He would never say it, not even think it without running a mental commentary to block the platinum, but he had come to distrust metallic dragons over his time here. He still loved his family dearly, but he had no wish to absorb the essence of a metallic dragon. Least of all a platinum. He had no wish to be infected with their deceitful taint.

  “Good. I trust you recall the ritual.”

  Gravv nodded and flashed a half-smile with his brow ridges contracted into a tight V.

  “Do not fear,” the Lord said and Gravv almost laughed. “They have been immobilized.”

  Gravv shrugged. He had expected as much. Balhamuut would never put himself in a position where one of his prisoners might actually have a chance to fight back. Although powerful, the Platinum Lord would never risk his life in such a manner.

  Gravv moved around to the front of the garnet wyrm. The face was gaunt with hollow cheeks and a snout which seemed unnaturally elongated.

  Exuding excitement in his surface thoughts, Gravv wondered how long it had been since these two wyrms had been fed.

  “The day has finally come, Sire,” Balhamuut said and Gravv froze, even holding his breath to listen. “I knew when I pulled you from the rubble so long ago that one day I would have a use for you. Today, you’re going to help me kill. I’m going to need your power to succeed.”

  The tortured platinum form rolled toward Balhamuut then, scales scraping the stone floor.

  “That was very good, Baalhalllu. Not nearly good enough, but impressive nonetheless. You may even have eventually broken free of the paralysis, given enough time. You were always a strong one, but your time here is at an end.”

  Baalhalllu? Gravv thought. Am I truly witnessing this?

  With a glance toward his uncle from the corner of his eye, he watched Balhamuut stare into the older platinum wyrm’s eyes. After a moment, the platinum reached down and bit into the soft flesh of Baalhalllu’s throat, spraying blue-gray blood to splatter on the cave wall.

  Balhamuut spat the chunk of flesh to the floor and began the transference ritual.

  Now! a small voice shrieked from the back of Gravv’s mind. Kill him now, while he’s distracted!

  But no, it wouldn’t work. The wyrm wasn’t nearly distracted enough, and Gravv simply didn’t have the power to do it. Not alone. He would need help to have any chance against the platinum. Much as he wished it otherwise, the fact was inescapable.

  Gravv looked back to the garnet in front of him and found jade-within-emerald eyes glaring at him with utter hatred. Murderer, they seemed to accuse.

  “I’m sorry,” Gravv whispered. “I do this not because it is my desire, but because I must. I have to reunite with my family, rescue my brother, and kill that egotistical wyrm over there. And I need your power to do it.” The eyes didn’t cease their glaring, though they did seem to soften a bit.

  With care, trying not to cause any more pain than necessary, Gravv reached down and eased his sharp teeth over the wyrm’s tender throat. He gently bit down, easing his teeth deep into the soft flesh beneath. Slowly, he clenched his teeth together, severing muscle, tendon, and organs from the body.

  Allowing the mass of flesh to fall to the floor, he looked down into the wyrm’s dying eyes again as the body shuddered and exhaled its last breath in a ragged sigh. The wyrm’s body stilled and almost immediately began to cool.

  Gravv gritted his teeth and blinked back tears of shame. Drawing in a deep breath, he touched his Apex and drew forth the arcane energy to power th
e ritual.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The hurricane of arcane force which tore through the chamber after the wyrm’s spirit left its body was like nothing Gravv had ever seen. Dozens of tornados formed and dissipated every few seconds with winds stronger than anything he had imagined could exist whipping at him from all directions. His scales seemed to lift from his hide and his eyes burned.

  The storm seemed to go on for eons.

  Then, as though a torch had been doused in a river, the storm vanished and the hurricane of force hammered into Gravv’s body, throwing him backward.

  His vision seemed to magnify, allowing him to see the pores in the rock ceiling and floor, and the seams between Balhamuut’s scales.

  He caught the scent of the dead wyrms, just beginning to decay, over the scent of a female somewhere in the cave system who was ovulating.

  Through his scales, he felt the imperfect shaping of the floor beneath him.

  On the blood of the garnet wyrm which lingered in his mouth, he tasted the hunger the creature had suffered since her capture almost two years ago.

  Most shocking of all, above the caves on the surface, the sound of a beetle skittering across the igneous rock came to his receptors.

  Hopefully this tones down soon, he thought and was immediately bombarded with the thoughts of thousands of creatures for leagues around. The cacophony was so intense, he couldn’t differentiate the voices enough to hear any of the individual words or feelings, much less shut any of them out.

  With a backlash of his now-immense arcane power, Gravv reacted instinctively with a telepathic shriek. He sent it out in all directions to strike every mind he could reach.

  The sound hung in his mind for several long moments while he looked at the blazing glory of his Apex in wonder. If his original Apex had been a single spark, then what he’d had a few minutes ago was a bonfire. But that bonfire was, at best, a spluttering torch next to Ryujin’s Blaze when compared with what now shone forth from his Apex.

  Thank you, he thought as his eyelids drooped closed.

  NO! he screamed inside his mind. I will remain conscious this time! I will witness the changes wrought on my body!

  But the gesture was useless. In spite of the blaze of euphoria dancing in his mind, in spite of feeling as though he were Master of the Earth and nothing could touch him, his lids again drooped closed and he couldn’t find the strength to open them again.

  Within moments, the replica he saw of the cavern in his mind’s eye was replaced by a surreal background of shifting walls and twisting tunnels. A place where even the learned would become lost and confused. A place where anything was possible.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Gravv jerked awake, leaping back onto all-fours before he finished opening his eyes. He yanked his head around wildly and found he was back in his own chamber. Alone.

  His senses had dulled somewhat, but he found that if he focused, he could bring them right back to the extreme level he’d first experienced.

  With a glance down at himself, Gravv’s jaw fell open in amazement. Scarcely one scale in twenty retained the shining, bluish-silver color which had once dominated his coloring. The rest were all deep garnet, almost the color of human blood.

  Am I imagining things? he wondered, looking over his limbs.

  Perhaps he was, but it seemed to him that he had grown considerably during his sleep. He felt certain his legs had grown a full wingspan in length.

  Is that even possible? He wondered. Such a spurt of growth in so short a time is unheard of.

  “What is happening to me?”

  “You’ve made a conscious choice for which side of your heritage to embrace,” said a familiar voice from the entryway to his chamber. “Just as I did. Well, not the same, I suppose, but it’s the same idea.”

  It can’t be.

  Gravv looked up sharply and found his older brother smiling down at him, his platinum scales shining almost as bright as his smile.

  “Bal?” he asked, incredulous.

  Bal spread his wings in a placating gesture. “Please, little brother. No more wyrmling nicknames. Call me by my right name.”

  “Of course, Balhalumuut,” Gravv said, too shocked to say anything else.

  “It looks like I owe you one, Graavvyynaustaiur,” Balhalumuut said, testing the full name for the first time Gravv could remember. “Without you, I don’t know that I ever would have come out of that… stupor.”

  “What happened to you, brother?”

  “We’ll have to address that later. And a great deal else, I’d wager. Not the least of which being how in the name of the Astral Dragon we’re going to get out of this mess.”

  “Shhhh. You must be careful. He monitors every creature within his domain almost constantly. You must be careful of your thoughts. We can’t let him know we aren’t his until we’re ready to strike.”

  Bal–

  No, Balhalumuut. I must call him by his right name, even in my thoughts.

  Balhalumuut turned to leave. “I’m going to have to try very hard to act like a vegetable at my lesson. Meet me in my chamber in an hour, brother. We’ll talk then.”

  Gravv nodded, entirely unable to keep his excitement, his joy from showing. This was the best thing to happen since before they had left home!

  The wait was interminable, though. Thirty seconds after Balhalumuut walked out the doorway, Gravv started counting down the minutes until he could go and meet his brother.

  Could he truly have been the cause of his brother’s miraculous recovery? Or was it more likely that it was all a ploy by Balhamuut to catch Gravv in a trap? Was the platinum that devious?

  That’s a stupid question! Of course he is!

  But was it possible the platinum would conceive of such a plan? Would the Lord even think to try to entrap him in such a way? That was the key question. It seemed unlikely, as his uncle had just given him a powerful reward for obedience and loyalty–

  Wait a minute, he thought. Turning his eye inward, he looked at his Apex again.

  No, he hadn’t imagined it. This altered almost everything he thought he knew about continued use of Essence Transference.

  True, he’d never absorbed a wyrm so ancient and so powerful before. The garnet he’d worked the power on had to have been nearly so, if not just as ancient as his own dam. The strength of the female’s Apex had been immense, no question.

  But in the past, every time he’d used the power, the effect had diminished each time. The first had been incredible, enhancing his Apex by nearly a hundred-fold, but after that the increase had been marginal. Even the ancient he had used it on had gained him only a fraction of what he already possessed.

  What is the secret? he wondered. This time was easily as great a transformation as the first, perhaps more so. What made this one different?

  Graavvyynaustaiur spun his mind around the question every way he could imagine, considering everything from how long the wyrm had been conscious, to how long since she’d eaten, to how deep beneath the ground she was, to what magic was laced into the stone around her, and even what Gravv’s state of mind was when he used the power.

  But he’d discussed this with Balhamuut before as well, and his uncle was under the same impression he was. At least, that was what he said.

  So what is different this time?

  The shadow of an idea entered his mind, but he ruled it out immediately. It wasn’t possible. More importantly, though, it was impossible to test it for accuracy.

  “Get back to the matter at hand,” he growled to himself.

  Instantly snapping his mind back to his previous train of thought, Gravv considered that even though Balhamuut had just rewarded him, he couldn’t afford to disregard anything. This whole thing could easily be a trap.

  Unlikely as it was, Gravv couldn’t decide what he believed. The platinum was certainly capable of devising such a plan, there was no question about that. But could he replicat
e Balhalumuut’s manner so perfectly?

  More than anything else, though, Gravv had difficulty believing the Platinum would think of using his brother in such a way. Love, caring, compassion, and devotion were alien to the massive wyrm.

  What if he somehow could? What if Balhamuut is so skilled in telepathy that he could delve into Balhalumuut’s mind well enough to realize how important family is to us and to learn every minute detail he would need to perfectly replicate my brother’s behavior? What if, even after all this, he still doesn’t trust me? What if he is brilliant enough to think of using Balhalumuut against me?

  It’s simple, I suppose, Gravv thought, careful to veil his mind in a plume of exuberant joy. If he can do all that, then I’m dead. We’re all dead.

  Which brought him to the larger point. The trick to the whole situation was if Balhamuut hadn’t orchestrated the whole thing but he alienated his brother out of fear, then just what in Infernalis was he working toward? Hadn’t he just told a dying garnet wyrm that saving his brother was one of his primary goals, along with killing Balhamuut?

  Well that settles it, he thought, sure of his course for the first time in months. In spite of the risks involved, I will trust Balhalumuut. He is my brother. If I can’t trust him, then I can’t trust anyone and there’s no longer any point in continuing to fight.

  Gravv began pacing the floor of his chamber, both as an aid to the passage of time as well as an aid to his planning. There had to be a way for both he and Balhalumuut to escape this place. Gravv’s desperation to end his uncle’s life was undeniable, but even with his newfound power, he very much doubted he could manage the feat on his own, or with Balhalumuut’s help.

  Even with his brother, the Platinum Lord was too strong. He simply had too much raw power to be defeated by the pair of them. It couldn’t be done.

  Not without outside help.

  Therefore, escape had to be the priority. If he could bring back enough help, then they could do it. He could kill the deceitful beast and free Abby and his family from Balhamuut’s twisted spirit.