by Marc Secchia
The disquiet in his voice galvanised them. Jia thrust Aranya forward. On the wings of panic she sprinted the first section to the stairwell, and even partway up it, before the tightness in her chest turned into desperate wheezing.
Aranya stopped, doubled over, blowing hard. “Leave me here, Jia. You go.”
“Are you ralti-stupid? We’re chained together.”
“It’s not the Brown Dragon, is it?” puffed the Immadian Princess. “Powers of earth–”
The stairwell shook. Rock and dust pattered down from above. Grimly, Aranya set her foot on the next step, then the next. No pain was too much. She had to escape. Jia yelled and leaped past her, swinging her hammer in a low, vicious arc. A soldier screamed as the hammer crushed his knee. He tumbled past them.
“Go meet Zip and Kylara,” said Ardan, his muzzle appearing briefly above them. “I’ll clear the way.”
The Shadow Dragon slipped back into the rock. Aranya shook her head. A neat trick if you could do it. No place was safe from him. Thump. The ground bucked against her soles. She slipped and skinned her knees on the rough steps. No time to pause. Using her hands to help her climb, Aranya pushed herself up the stairs. When she fell again, she crawled, seeing black spots dancing before her eyes. The Shifter pox had stolen more than just her looks. She knew it, and despaired.
At last, with lungs afire and her breath whistling like leaky bellows, Aranya broke out into the dungeons above. Level ground! She wanted to laugh with relief, but she had no breath left to laugh. Instead, she allowed Jia-Llonya to draw her arm over her shoulder and support her as they stagger-ran along the corridor, past a knot of guards Ardan had already butchered.
“Help me!”
The voice issued from a cell to her left as they dashed by.
“The doctor,” said Jia-Llonya. “We can use him.” Doubling back, she fumbled with the keys she had taken. She shouted through the bars, “Where’s Yolathion? Where is he?”
“Beside the machine,” said the strange man from Herimor. He blinked eagerly at them as Jia found a key that fit and swung the door open.
Aranya gasped, “You’re not taking Yolathion?”
“If he’s alive,” Jia insisted. “You can heal him with your magic, can’t you? We have to try.”
No, she was incapable.
“There they are!”
Shouting excitedly, a brace of Sylakian Hammers pounded toward them, brandishing their war hammers. Now, Aranya heard a clash of weapons up ahead, just around the corner of the secondary tunnel, which intersected the main dungeon corridor one hundred feet ahead. Again, the entire Tower of Sylakia jumped and trembled … under attack by some monstrous, unimaginable force. Aranya blinked as her mind served up a picture of a Land Dragon drawn from the hallucinations she had seen during the storm. No. Surely not. Why would a Land Dragon attack here, unless … it sought her.
A beastly chill made every hair on her body stand on end. But she had no time to dwell upon it. The ground’s movement knocked the two soldiers together. Jia-Llonya sprang into the attack, denting one of their shields with a powerful, ringing blow. She dodged a hammer-strike in return, bending backward with a supple flexion of her spine. Aranya flung the chain she was holding at the second soldier, capturing his arm more by accident than design. She yanked hard and raised her knee simultaneously.
Crack! The man tottered, holding his chin. Jia finished him with a roundhouse hammer-blow to his left temple. “Come, doctor.”
Soldiers spilled around that corner, most not intent on them, but on fighting for their lives. Kylara spun gracefully through the melee, lashing out left and right with her scimitar to deadly effect. Somewhere nearby, deafening Dragon-challenges shook the caverns. Aranya heard the distinctive sizzle of fireballs and a slap of flesh against stone. Gurdurion and his cronies, she thought, fighting to keep a wretched, magic-less Star Dragon’s daughter from escaping.
They had come for her! Gratitude warmed her soul.
Kylara attacked the remaining Sylakian Hammers from the fore while Jia-Llonya ambushed them from behind. The resulting skirmish was short and messy. Aranya booted a man on the ground with her heel, stopping him from hamstringing Jia with his dagger. She tried to pick up his fallen war-hammer, but could not manage the weight, dropping it with a gasp. Then Kylara was there, clasping her forearm with a glad cry.
“Princess? You are well?”
“Alive,” said Aranya.
“Aye.” The dark brown eyes measured her. Aranya hated the soft horror which registered in the Warlord’s gaze. She would have to become immune to it, for her heart would break otherwise. Nevertheless, she could not sustain eye-contact.
Aranya gritted out, “Thanks for coming. Let’s go. Where’s Zip?”
Kylara pressed a dagger into her fingers. “Use this. To the galleries. We found Yolathion, and there’s a way out from there, but Ardan and Zip need our help.”
“Ardan needs help?”
Dragon-thunder eclipsed Aranya’s words. A body thudded against a wall, somewhere. A clear sound she associated with lightning, shhh-crack! And a softer, more feminine cry.
Zuziana! Hold on! Ardan’s voice …
The Princess of Immadia broke into a run as best she was able. Kylara and Jia easily outstripped her. When she entered the gallery in which she had seen Yolathion tortured, Aranya ducked involuntarily at the incredible din of snarling, snapping Dragons fighting in a confined space. Four or five reptilian monsters grappled with each other, splattering the walls with Dragon blood and bits of scales and wings. The cavern stank of smoke and sulphur, and the reek of burned flesh. Distinctly, she heard the basso rumble of Ardan’s laughter as the Shadow Dragon ghosted through his opponents’ grasp, only to re-solidify and drop on them from above with a crushing attack.
Azure flashed across her eyes. Zip! Tiny Zip, taking on a Red Dragon more than twice her size. A bolt of lightning seared Aranya’s retinae. Zip dodged a fireball, struck the far wall hard but four-pawed, and rebounded with a rapid backflip that landed her on top of the startled Red’s shoulders. Zip reached around his neck with both forepaws, and shredded his hide with all ten talons–not a killing attack, but one that made the pain-crazed Red launch himself blindly into the air. He struck a crystal outcropping and dropped with the grace of a stone, unconscious.
The din was incredible. Human-Aranya had never appreciated the primal fury of a Dragon battle quite so keenly. She was tiny. Any one of those Dragons could have smeared her against the stone with the ease of a person stepping on a beetle. But the Tower of Sylakia shuddered beneath their feet, and then, to her horror, rocked appreciably to one side before shifting back with a fractured groan.
Aranya shouldered Jia into a run. “Go!”
The Jeradian girl seemed dazed, but she followed as the Immadian ran along the high gallery above the Dragon-fight to the next cavern, hoping to find Yolathion. There. He lay on a rude stretcher beside the machine, unmoving. A technician had clearly been working on the device, but had wisely abandoned his tools and fled.
“This way,” said Kylara.
Aranya stumbled down the short stairway leading to the room below, breathless, coughing fit to turn her lungs inside-out. Her glance through the wide archway leading to the cavern they had just left, took in Ardan’s jaw severing a Dragon’s hind leg. There was Zip, scrapping with a smaller Orange Dragon, who was having the upper hand–or paw–of the encounter until the Shadow Dragon’s paws pulled her off the Princess of Remoy. Ardan disembowelled the Orange with a mighty stroke of his hind talons.
“Go to Aranya!” snarled Ardan, shoving Zuziana irresistibly through the archway.
The Shadow Dragon dived into a wall.
“Aran–oh, Aranya!” gasped Zip, putting her paws to her mouth in a very Human gesture. “Darling, petal, you’re–oh!” An expletive dropped from her mouth.
Aranya hid her face as Zuziana gathered her into a brief, awkward Dragon hug. Her chest was so constricted with mingled grief and happiness,
she feared her next breath would never come. Zip hiccoughed Dragon sobs, patting Aranya’s back as though she feared to crack her like an eggshell, murmuring something that had to do with sorrow and Thoralian’s death in a volcano.
Her friend’s revulsion was unbearable. Aranya had tried to prepare herself, in the few moments she had hoped for a rescue, for people to react like this. But this was a subtle knife, cutting in unforeseen ways. Now a sidelong glance, the sorrow, the horrified inability to stop staring at Aranya’s wounds …
Beyond Zuziana, she saw a lone female Red, panicked, scanning the cavern walls in expectation of what finally came from beneath her–Ardan’s attack. A paw speared out of the ground, running its talons directly into her second heart.
“Ready?” asked Kylara.
Zip snagged the chain and pulled it apart. “What’s this collar?” she asked. “It has magic–strange magic.”
“Escape first,” said Aranya. “I’ll explain–”
Zuziana snatched her up with her paw. “You’re coming with me. I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Jia and the doctor handled Yolathion’s stretcher. Aranya could not believe he was still alive, but that was the point of Sylakian torture methods, which aimed for the most lingering, excruciating death possible. Thoralian’s orders, no doubt.
“Easy on the strength there,” gasped Aranya.
“You kidnapped me like this,” said Zip, who began to bounce along for sheer joy behind the Warlord, before suddenly settling into a more stately lope. Ardan had pretended that nothing was wrong, but Zip would feel every moment of her pain.
“I can’t transform, Zip.”
“We guessed as much. Sharp left, Kylara.”
They saw light; ruddy, welcoming light at the end of this new tunnel. Cool, sweet air gusted into their faces.
A Brown Dragon alighted just inside the tunnel’s entrance. A blast of sound reverberated down the tunnel, making every Human skid to a halt.
“You’re not leaving my tower,” snarled the Brown. “Ever.”
“Watch out,” shouted Zuziana. “Back up before he–”
Gurdurion’s magic pulled the ceiling apart with sharp retort of overstressed rock, causing an avalanche. But the Shadow Dragon was suddenly there, his arched back taking the brunt of the falling boulders and dirt, allowing the Humans to retreat beneath his belly and flee the way they had come.
Aranya began to cry, Ardan! But then she realised what he could do. The Shadow Dragon simply shimmered through the crushing weight of falling boulders and swam out of the rockfall with the ease of a trout exploring a still pool. He stalked after them with a discomfiting Dragon grin, one which reminded her just how vast the differences were between Dragons and Humans. Ardan gloried in his power. Aranya shivered, remembering Thoralian’s words. Would this beast turn upon them all, or was there another explanation for the coincidence between his Shadow powers and those of the creature who had once ravaged the Island-World?
The Shadow Dragon’s enigmatic beauty filled her stomach with a fluttering like dragonets’ wings. Beauty, even for a male–no other word sprang to mind when she considered his sleek, hulking Dragon form.
How could she deny the soul-fire’s ascendancy? If she did, another storm might engulf the Island-World. If she embraced Fra’anior’s vision for her future, choosing Ardan, then the Island-devouring fires of a hellish volcano might be preferable to unleashing that doom upon the world.
Aranya squeezed her eyes shut, and let herself be carried by her friend.
* * * *
As the group rushed back into the caves to take another route, they ran into a full squad of Sylakian warriors, fifty elite Crimson Hammers. The Azure Dragon drew breath, summoning up her lightning powers. But, dropping Yolathion’s stretcher, Jia-Llonya and Kylara sprang forward with sharp cries,. She could not fire. Aranya raised her dagger, but the Dragoness did not release her friend.
The Sylakians flinched as the impacts from whatever was attacking or perturbing the Tower from below, intensified. The Tower groaned and vibrated like a tree being felled by a woodcutter.
Ardan surged into the wide tunnel from her left and bulldozed the Hammers with his tail, crushing them against the far wall, sixty feet away.
Kylara put up her scimitar. “Leave a few for us, would you?”
The huge Dragon crooked a claw. “There, that one’s still moving.”
Jia brained the man with her hammer.
“No, he isn’t,” scowled the Warlord, striking a muscular, arms-folded pose.
Ardan swaggered into the wall with a bizarre magical rippling across his form, and vanished. Zuziana chuckled. Dragons. She understood exactly why he behaved as he did. Such a show-off.
Aranya seemed to feel the same, goggling at the Shadow Dragon’s display, but there was also an unfamiliar reserve in her manner. Zuziana gazed at her friend, the pulsing of her hearts thickening with grief and anger. Roaring rajals, what had the Sylakians done to her? Her face was deeply scarred, her high-arched left cheekbone clearly visible through the mouth of one of the wounds, her lips twisted, the skin bruised and lumpy. Then, bile surged into her throat. The Princess of Remoy knew about torture. Garthion had tied her to a bed and methodically whipped her torso until not a square inch of skin remained whole, aiming solely to disfigure her and gratify his base lusts. Evidently, the father was a leopard who shared the same spots. Had he branded her with a heated metal rod? Sliced the holes open with scalpels?
But there was more. Her friend moved poorly, every breath soughed roughly in her lungs, and she squinted even in the semidarkness of the larger cavern they moved into now.
The Azure Dragoness glanced up, startled by a scuffle and a roar ahead of them. Fireball!
Dragon instincts caused her to throw up her shield in a split-second. Fire splattered against an invisible barrier just six inches in front of Kylara’s nose. The Warlord dropped to her knee, and then rose with studious unconcern.
Aranya said, “You can shield, Zip? Wow.”
“Ri’arion’s a great teacher.”
Up ahead, Ardan smashed a Red Dragon against the cave wall, flipped him over, and stood on his neck while his massive jaws champed in search of a disabling or fatal bite. The Shadow Dragon roared in pain as his opponent fought back with raking strokes of his hind paws, gashing his lower belly in a number of places.
Zip’s captive squeaked as the Azure Dragon took a running leap into the air, looping over the stretcher party and Kylara, before extending her neck to shoot a fireball at the Red Dragon’s head. The electrical discharge sizzled, stunning the Red for long enough for Ardan to finish him off.
I had it under control, snapped the Shadow Dragon.
Zip cooed, I’m in a hurry. Lead on, o Master of dark and scary places.
* * * *
Ardan blinked at the Azure Dragoness, stung by her cheek. He mastered his fires with an effort, rumbling, Follow me. The entrance lies just ahead.
His nostrils flared, checking the breeze. No Dragons. Turning the final corner, Ardan found himself teetering on a cliff-edge. The pre-dawn light was just beginning to illuminate the Cloudlands, making Sylakia Island’s shadow stretch to the horizon. His claws scraped on the rock as he steadied himself–Islands’ sakes, what was making the Tower behave like this? No amount of craning his neck could identify anything amiss, except … magic? Was he sensing magic, as Aranya had once tried to describe it to him? A tiny frisson on the scales, an awareness of impending doom?
Turning, he rapped, “Hurry. On my back. No time to lose.”
“How are we taking Yolathion?” asked Jia-Llonya.
“One of us can hold him, Jia,” said Kylara. “Sit between the spine-spikes above his shoulders. We’ll lay Yolathion across your lap. Doctor, would that work?”
“He won’t feel anything,” shrugged the doctor.
“How do I mount up?” asked Jia.
“Islands’ sakes!” snapped the Azure Dragon, seizing the Jeradian
girl by the waist. “Up here. Ardan–yee … what was that?”
Jia and Zuziana both squealed as the greatest perturbation yet shook the Tower of Sylakia. Rocks tumbled down the cliffs. A faint shriek came from somewhere within the caves. Zuziana scrabbled for her footing, before simply leaping onto the Shadow Dragon’s back to set the Jeradian atop his left shoulder.
“Sit,” Zip hissed. “Aranya?”
“I’ll mount up, Dragon,” said Aranya.
“Good. Two paws for Yolathion. Help me, Doctor Chikkan.” Zip scooped up the stricken young man. He did not even moan–he was too deeply unconscious for that.
“Dragons incoming,” Ardan warned. “And–”
KRRAAAAACK!
With an ear-splitting report, as if the loudest peal of thunder since the dawn of time had struck from clear skies, the Tower finally split off its base.
Bundling Aranya into her paws on top of Yolathion, Zuziana jumped onto Ardan’s back a second time. He swept Kylara and the doctor up in his right forepaw.
The Shadow Dragon launched off the side of the toppling Tower.
Chapter 25: A Flight of Dragons
Zuziana OF REMOY clutched her ride as best she could as the Shadow Dragon spread his mighty wings, trying to manage all of their weight at once. He accelerated into a long, steady swoop, aiming a growl at the shouting chaos on his back.
Can’t you sort out the mess up there, Zip? Ardan said. And put up a shield? And make room for Kylara? And stop clawing holes in my back with your teeny little talons?
Zip knew that the Shadow Dragon was grinning by the timbre of his mental voice. Aye. Fly straight and I might manage.
Shall I mount up now? Aranya asked.
On me, said Ardan and Zip, simultaneously.
The Immadian laughed. Sounds uncomfortable, you two. Zip, here. Let me help with Yolathion. Gently, now …
Together, they slid Yolathion into position across Jia-Llonya’s legs, face down. Aranya helped Jia belt herself to the spine-spike behind her, while Zip saw to Kylara and the strange doctor, setting them into position in front of and behind Jia, respectively.