The long climb up the Dragon’s Mountain had required two overnight stays at hostels along the well-tended road. All around them, there had been emissaries, tributaries, soldiers, and all the denizens that made up Tania’s population. As they climbed, Calvin had stared out across the city that fell further and further below. It had always seemed humongous but from this view, it looked tiny perhaps even confining. And then they had left the road behind. The dragon-sized tunnel entering the mountain to Alerius himself had made Calvin feel small. He did not realize how truly small he felt until he had reached this glacial plain on the northern side of the mountain.
A huge pile of clouds covered the southern horizon, and though the sun beat down on them, the cold wind here whipped ice up into their faces making it feel as if they stood in a sunny blizzard. Calvin shielded his eyes and looked around for the thousandth time. His fingers and toes had long gone numb with cold. It felt like… “We’ve been standing here for hours,” a young lady nearby complained.
Someone else pointed and said they thought they saw movement. It had already happened so often that Calvin did not even look. Like the others, Calvin felt something about the mountain aware, watching, and full of malice. “White dragons are diametrically opposed to the fire dragons, but serve the Queen same as any other. Their breath weapons take the shape of cold… air, snow, frost, water or even air so cold it freezes on contact. But, they are also called cold dragons because, of all the dragons, they are the most emotionally-detached from this world. The things about mortals that intrigue our emperor, are of no interest at all to Whites. To most, we are food. To some, like Ynt’taris who allies with the Temple, we are at best tools.” Their instructor had been most specific on this point: “Remember, at best you are a tool. Think about a tool, the kind you would want to use. That is how you want Ynt’taris to see you. Would a saw run away from nail? Would a drill flee from wood? Would a lever complain against a weight? Does a pen flinch from ink and paper? Does a sword challenge its wielder in the midst of combat?”
Calvin moved his arms and stuffed his hands back under his arms. “Damn, it is cold here,” he whispered again.
Another student nearby agreed and stepped up closer to Calvin. In the cold breeze, Calvin noticed the person had a strange odor about them but forgot the thought when he saw the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had blonde, almost white hair, and blue eyes so blue they reminded him of a summer sky after a storm. She shifted back and forth trying to stay warm, “I don’t remember the last time I could even feel my toes,” she said. “I’m scared to stop moving for fear I won’t be able to move again!”
Calvin tried to laugh but the cold made it hard. “I just keep thinking of all the prep we’ve had for this. There were five dread lords at my Aging. It seems overkill to make us climb a mountain to meet dragons.”
The girl agreed with him. “There were dread lords at your Aging?! That’s awesome. Who were they?”
“One of the emperor’s sons – Blaze I think. Maybe it was the other one? I can’t tell them apart. And then a huge giant called Armageddon with Dar Shara. I never caught the others or who they were with. They were amazing but still.”
“I think I saw a red flying over my town once, but it was so far away I couldn’t tell. It was amazing. What was it like?”
Maybe it was the cold, Calvin could not tell, but he detected an edge to her question. It did not seem to matter and so he told her about the dance and the columns of flame. Through his chattering teeth, talking was an effort, but at some point, he must have mentioned Malcor.
“I’ve heard of Malcor,” the girl said. “He was the one in the central Temple, the one who went up the tower right?”
“Yeah, he and I grew up together.”
“Have you heard about him since? I wondered if he would be in our classes.”
Calvin had thought the same thing but as the days had passed and Malcor did not show up, he had stopped looking. “He must have died, or is in some other training. I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll hear from him eventually.”
A cloud drifted over the sun and the temperature plummeted. The girl shivered so hard she almost fell over and Calvin caught her. They stood held tight together for warmth. A minute later, when the sun reappeared, they remained close. Calvin noted the other knights looking at them and shrugged back. She must have too, and snarled at them, “What? It’s warmer together.”
Time passed and the sun began lowering in the sky. Even without the sporadic cloud cover and even colder temperatures, as shadows stretched, so too did nerves. Soon, like Calvin, pairs of boys and girls stood huddled together shivering and eventually the others stood into groups, and then everyone came together as one single group for warmth and protection from the icy wind. It felt like a death sentence when, amidst a beautiful and fiery sunset, the sun dipped below the western mountains and twilight fell.
The girl closest to Calvin and even those around had long since stopped shivering and a grim sense of freezing and death by cold have come across them. Several times people commented on how it must be a test to freeze to death, like the Rite of Pain, so that they could then be healed. Eventually, stars dotted the heaven and while the speculation never stopped, they all flinched when one of the boys on the outer part of the group fell over frozen to death. Though his collapse barely made a sound at all, and though a nearby friend called out to him and tried to pull him back up, the sound there on that plain was like a thunder bolt. The girl near Calvin cried out, “We’re all going to die! Either by cold or dragon fear, I knew I should have become a priestess!”
Someone else said they should have married and become a merchant and just like that, a torrent of regret washed over the group. Calvin thought about his life as the son of the mayor of a respected village. Even an outpost had honor and meaning, right? The girl asked him during a moment of silence, “What about you Calvin?”
It felt like an important question but the import of it registered as if far away in someone else’s mind. “I,” he stammered through frostbitten lips, “I will regret not having met Ynt’taris.”
No sooner had he said this than a cyclone of snow swept up around them. The force of the wind, or maybe it was something hard that struck him, knocked Calvin backwards where he landed amongst fellow students laying in the snow. The whirlwind howled just behind them but there, from the center, the girl standing by him, stretched and split apart as her hands became talons and plunged into the snow as her arms elongated and wings erupted from her back.
Moment by moment and change by change, the transformation pounded in his veins. An overwhelming feeling of awe and dread and terror chased the cold away. Each shift and the sound of bones and skin built fright upon frightful until several of the students tried to run away, and vanished into a shredding whirlwind of ice. A momentary red spray of color in the wind and then they were gone.
Ynt’taris looked down at them all and shrieked, its dire breath slamming around them and hurling a few more students into the lethal wall of icy razors. The white dragon looked down at them and time froze as each felt the dragon looking into their character, picking apart their fears, and sinking its fangs deep into their most private insecurities. Though Calvin later learned that each heard something different, Calvin distinctly heard a voice whisper to him, “Though knightly, you will never be a paladin.”
His skin, already so painful from hours in the cold, prickled anew at the words and reminded him of what Dar Shara had said. Was that only a month ago? Ynt’taris raised his wings and hurled them forward. This time, those standing remained firm though all quaked and shuddered with fear. The dragon’s gaze held each and every one of them, and then the wind stopped. Everything fell calm and quiet. Freed of the raging storm, Ynt’taris gleamed in the night. Though dim, the white dragon scales acted like light amplifiers filling the plain with a clear and clean radiance. The cold threatening to kill them tangibly pulled out of them into the dragon leaving each warmer.
Ynt’ta
ris raised his head to the sky, to where the moon would have been if not hidden by clouds, and sounded a clear almost musical note. It rang up into the air and fell down around and through them. The note rose and hummed lightly and caused visions of more primal times to fill Calvin’s head and heart. He saw Ynt’taris as an eldar flying through a void that would become this world. The gleaming pleasure of creation as ice and snow and weather bowed to his will… and then Ynt’taris bowing before the Queen and offering his allegiance. The Queen, in this vision, stood as a titanic dragon with multiple heads each the color of the dragons giving fealty. As Ynt’taris bowed, one of Her heads took on white scales and writhed out to touch noses with him. A single snow white tear fell from Ynt’taris’ eye and the vision ended.
Calvin stood still, trembling, barely able to breathe. The emotions of boundless pleasure and infinite loyalty warred in him. “The White Dragons serve you eternally my Queen. Your test is complete. Go.” Without another word, Ynt’taris jumped into the sky and vanished into the dark clouds overhead. Immediately, the cold came back.
Calvin turned to note how few of his class had survived. All around them, statues of those caught in the ice razor wind stood still and frozen. For some, the ice wind had stripped flesh from bone and skeletal hands and faces rimmed by frozen blood caught the horror, pain, and terror they had felt as they died. Something in him awakened at that moment and he said, “Come, lets take them back with us.”
Chapter Thirty Seven - Seline Conquers Flame
Far beneath Calvin, in the Dragon Mountain’s many rooms, Seline sat with her new mentor in the Order of Fire. The room had a fire pit in the middle in which a dragon statue glowed red hot. Stone tile on the floor and walls held a mosaic of dragons at war. Dar Niss pulled a poker off the wall and turned around to face Seline. “We will mediate and then test your strength against fire. We will start at the furthest edge of the room.” She pointed to a sitting mat to Seline’s left and walked to a similar mat opposite. Sitting down, Seline did as instructed and recited verse from the Book of Flames. After a few minutes, a bead of sweat ran down her neck and back.
Dar Niss urged her, “Continue your recital, but know that we will move closer and closer to the fire. To endure, you must focus on your truth. Your truth is that you are a daughter of dragons! Dragons do not fear fire, not even winter dragons fear normal fire like this. As a dragon child, why should you?”
The recital continued with Dar Niss interjecting various thoughts, doctrines, and challenges. It took on a sing song kind of quality as Seline moderated her recital to the same rise and fall of Dar Niss' instruction. Soon, Seline’s conscious mind disengaged and took in the fire, her teacher, and the room’s mosaics. The dragon wars showed two Reds entwined in combat in mid-air. Fire snaked out of their mouths as they fought creating snake-like tendrils of flame that traced a path through the sky. “When a dragon breathes flame, they don’t think – I will breathe flame. No, the flame rises out of them with passion and fury. Does the flame burn their mouths? No. It is no different than you picking up a tool, or using a pen to write. Once you know, you know and it is then your nature to know. And knowing it, your nature to use that knowledge and make it happen. You are a daughter of dragons.”
At some point, Seline removed her clothing and large beads of sweat poured out of her skin as she moved forward to the very edge of the fire pit. She had long moved past the point where her skin and face felt like they were melting. At first she had fought to resist touching her hair to confirm it had not burned away. Now, with the fire right there, she stared into the embers and the glowing red hot dragon statue in the center. Dar Niss sat opposite her eyes meeting her own over the statue’s head. “You are at the edge of the fire. You have conquered the heat, now you must conquer fire itself.” She poured oil from a bowl at her side. So close to the fire, the oil had begun to boil but Dar Niss’s hands held it steady and firm. As the oil oozed out and hit the fire, it ignited burning hotter and more fiercely than would seem possible. The embers hit by oil exploded creating ripples through the flame pit. Seline imagined she could smell hair burning but resisted the temptation to confirm.
Dar Niss looked at her and confirmed eye contact. Slowly she turned and brushed her hair aside. There on the back of her neck was a burn scar the approximate shape of the glowing red dragon figure’s head. “The Order of Fire marks its members with the fire dragon. Some mark their wrists. Others their leg. It can be anywhere. I leave it to you Seline. When you are ready, enter the fire and take your mark.”
The figurine, while not large, looked heavy. She could not say why the red hot metal seemed more terrible than the flame. To have marked her neck, the priestess must have picked up the statue and held it just so.
She stood and tried to stretch. The movement made her dizzy and drawing any breath at all caused a terrible desire to cough. She choked it back and tentatively put her foot into the flames. She felt the fire but did not feel it burning. She stepped down into the glowing embers and felt her foot’s weight press down through the upper crust. Sparks swirled up from her foot and landed on her face. “Good, good,” Dar Niss cooed. “You are doing well. You are a daughter of dragons Seline!”
At last, when her foot firmed in the embers, she lowered herself almost knee deep in the embers and walked forward. Her imagination tortured her with images of disfigurement but soon she stood at the feet of the figurine, looking slightly upwards at its eyes. They burned like gemmy blood alight with an inner fire. She caressed its chest with her fingertips, again feeling the heat, but having faith she would not burn.
Strengthened by her faith, she grabbed the statue and tested its weight. Though heavy, she thought she could lift it and brought it off the pedestal to her back. Finally, she positioned it correctly and pressed the head into the back of her right shoulder. For the first time, she felt searing pain and blisters. She almost cried out but bit her lip. And then Dar Niss jumped into the fire pit and began dancing around her! “You did it! Welcome sister, welcome! May the dragons ever guide you!”
Together they placed the dragon back on the pedestal. Dar Niss splashed liquid fire and burning coal at her. She deflected it and then, encouraged by her instructor, did the same. It felt amazing to play with fire. It stopped being hot and felt refreshing, almost cold. Somehow, at some point, and looking back she could not remember why, she tackled Dar Niss and they dropped below the embers into the fire. Surprised she could see, she laughed at the sparks of fire and red magic that danced through the fire and outlined their bodies. “This is…”
Dar Niss just nodded. “This is how the red dragons see the world, as flame and fire and magic. Well done Seline. Welcome to your baptism of fire!” So saying, Dar Niss clasped Seline to her and held her tightly as the red magic and fire rose up through her into her and the surrounding pit of burning and filled them with divine magic.
Niss' flame strike transformed the natural fire into hot chaos and Seline winced against its brightness. She could not look away though from the hypnotic dance of energy. So electric, so sensual, so alive. She stopped feeling the individual coals and embers and reveled in becoming a creature of fire. With each movement of her hands or the parts of her own body she could see, she sent waves of energy crashing out to the edge where it then rebounded back at her. The turbulence had its own chaos and rhythm that coiled in and around her like a serpent. She never wanted it to end.
Time passed but she lost track and stopped caring until a deep masculine voice interrupted her. She had forgotten Dar Niss, lost in the sensation, but both of them sat up from the fire and saw a dread lord clad in mages robes. “Dar Niss, is this our newest member?”
She stood, completely uncaring of her nudity, and helped Seline stand. “Lady Seline of Dutchy, this is Dread Lord Blade, second son of the dragon emperor Alerius and head of our Order.” Seline dropped prostrate in the ritual bow of worship, which took her below the fire. She heard Blade laugh and call her to rise.
“Lady Seline
, does fire bow to flame? In the Order of Fire, we do not bow to each other. Though I am my father’s son, I am not the god emperor. My Mother’s gifts are towards magical fire and, like my father, I seek to uplift and uphold this world for the Queen and Her Children. I see you branded yourself in a place of painful distinction. The others will be envious.”
Seline stood taking it all in. The emperor’s son, in human form, would never be mistaken for a human. His skin had a red scale quality to them and his eyes felt overly-large and slit like a dragon’s. They glowed red with heat energy streaming forth and rising from their corners. Unlike other dread lords though, this one stood not as tall, still taller and broader than a human, but less muscled and more refined. As much as she regarded him, she became aware that he regarded her. Suddenly aware of his eyes trailing over her body, she felt exposed and vulnerable and very much aware of her nakedness.
And that was when it happened. Like a lance through her chest, she felt her heart stop and impale on sheer terror. Her breath, her breathing, her awareness condensed into that dreadful moment and she knew. Beyond a shadow of doubt, she knew that this dread lord held her life in his hands and could take her, own her, destroy her, obliviate her, possess her, and she could do nothing about it. The terror threatened to overwhelm her and, as if from a distance, she heard that dreadful voice say, “She sheds a single tear.”
Malcor's Story Page 27