Vlad'War's Anvil

by Rex Hazelton

  When the source of the roaring drew closer, Kaylan thought, That's not a butterfly. Its wings are more like a bird's. With how colorful it is, could it be a hummingbird, though I've never heard that they can glide so?

  With a violet-colored breast ringed by a swath of bright yellow, followed by a swath of deep purple that was eclipsed by shimmering green that covered the rest of the body, it was only logical to assume the descending creature was a vibrant hummingbird until it grew so much in size that this became improbable.

  Then it grew more and roared again. As it roared, a long, sinewy tail whipped about behind the winged-creature. Green as emeralds, the tail had spikes as yellow in color as the swath surrounding the violet-hued breast. These protruded out of a ball-like formation located at the end of the tail. Continuing to increase in size, it was certain the creature was descending from a terrific height. And as it grew, its head enlarged accordingly until a brace of sword-like teeth could be seen in its long snout.

  A dragon! The startling thought shook the last of the cobwebs out of Kaylan's mind. No longer dazed from his plunge into the pool of water, he frantically added, I'm being attacked by a dragon!

  Fully aroused, Kaylan's arms slapped clumsily against the ice cold water as he tried to throw of the unwieldy cloak, for surely that's what was draped over him.

  Shouting out in fear over what was approaching, his cry turned into a roar that rose into the air to warn off the dragon. And where was Lylah anyway? Though beautiful by reason of its brilliant coloring and sleek shape, the dragon posed a threat. Terrified that Lylah would fall prey to the resplendent monster, Kaylan was worried that this was another manifestation of a Goar. So he shouted out Lylah's name.

  Again his voice was a roar that labored to vocalize the waterkynd's name.

  As the approaching dragon got so close it blotted out a fourth of the cold, steel-gray sky from view, it roared in reply, a brief roar that was a precursor to it speaking with a voice that, though deep in quality, was feminine sounding. "Kaylan, are you alright?" The colorful monster's inquiry was filled with concern. "Did the Goar hurt you?"

  It was Lylah's voice, filtered through vocal chords that gave it a rich, rumbling timber.

  At first snarling, though Kaylan wasn't accustomed to making such beast-like sounds, then snorting in consternation over what was beginning to dawn on him, he asked, "Lylah... is that you?"

  Seeing Kaylan clumsily flailing about as he tried to extract himself from the frigid lake sweeping out from the base of a wall of ice that mirrored Mythoria's own stony cliff in shape, though it was four times its size, Lylah laughed, heartily and dragon-like. The sense of relief she felt over Kaylan being alright made it hard for her to stay aloft as her wings, made of vast membranes of leather-like skin attached to long finger-like extensions, skin that was cleverly constructed out of ice crystals, struggled to maintain the rhythm needed to remain airborne.

  "Stop laughing," Kaylan demanded. "You're frightening me."

  Indeed, with her mouth open wide enough to release the rumbling laughter, Lylah looked quite imposing with all her long, sharp teeth showing. It was like a dog that was smart enough to learn to smile like its human master when it was happy.

  As a matter of fact, Kaylan had a friend who owned just such a dog. When he first came to visit the young man and his family, he thought the hound was baring his teeth in anger and withdrew the hand he had reached out to pet the animal with. Later, when he realized what the dog was actually doing, he gave the hound the enthusiastic greeting it was hoping for. But even then, the urge to give a warning slunk about in the back of his mind. After all, as Kaylan's primal instincts insisted on reminding him, biting dogs bare their teeth.

  "Silly," the dragon's laughter was replaced by a tight, beast-like smile, "of course it's me."

  "Then why all the roaring?" Kaylan flapped his arms about, trying to lift himself out of the lake. "I thought you were attacking me."

  "The way you were floating there, all motionless, I thought you were hurt."

  It seemed that Kaylan wasn't as quick to pick up Lylah's talents as she was his. Coming Together had enabled her to instinctively know how to use her N'Rah after briefly observing Kaylan using his in the battle with the Goar since Togetherness' bond included the transference of abilities between the couple. Kaylan, on the other hand, was struggling activating the dragon instincts that came with the physical transformation the waterkyd underwent in the Realm of Ice.

  After giving Kaylan a good once over with eyes as deep blue as the sky that separates a sunset from approaching night, she added, "You looked like... well... like you were dead. How could I keep from roaring?"

  When the two entered the Realm of Ice, the force they struck the Pool of Passage back in the Realm of Vapor hurled Lylah up into the air. Once aloft, Lylah's dragon form helped her gain quick purchase in the sky.

  Experienced in entering the Realm of Ice where waterkynd were given wings, Lylah kept her arms folded against her sides as she struck the pool to keep them from hindering her transition between realms by catching water in their expanse.

  Kaylan, on the other hand, who didn't have any experience with the transformation that took place in the Realm of Ice, was ignorant of the technique Lylah had used. Due to the haste with which he and Lylah had to leave the Realm of Vapor, Kaylan missed out on the requisite tutorial that would have prepared him for the event. Once his wings sprouted, and his dragon-form had been completed, they grabbed hold of the cold water like they were oars being used to stop a ship and tossed him about so violently that the lake's surface was still rippling with the waves his rude entrance had created. In the end, as Lylah shot into the air as effortlessly as an arrow released from a bow string, Kaylan was knocked unconscious as he wildly churned about in the water below. And by the time she turned around to look for him, he was motionlessly bobbing on the lake's surface, looking like a discarded wash rag floating in a frigid bucket of water.

  Seeing Kaylan looking at her like she was a hallucination, it was certain that Kaylan's wits weren't fully intact yet. "Here," Lylah said with her dragon voice. "Let me help you."

  Grabbing his shoulders with her clawed feet, the waterkynd began extracting Kaylan from the freezing bath. Using her massive, brilliantly-colored wings, she gained greater purchase of the sky with each powerful flap. In time, she was laboring through the air with Kaylan's body hanging limply beneath her. Streams of water flowed off his massive form as they rose above the Lake of Passage.

  "Don't try to fly yet," Lylah grunted out her words. "We need to get higher first. If you try now, all you do is tangle up your wings in mine. When I do release you, make certain you reach out with your arms and hands as far as you can. Then your wings will operate as they're meant to. After that... all you have to do is swim."

  "Swim?" Kaylan, who hadn't got used to his deep, rumbling voice yet, blinked in surprise.

  "Yes. Here, the sky is our ocean." Lylah's voice sent vibrations coursing through her body and down into Kaylan's dragon form. "Trust the transformation. Your brain has been adjusted to fit your new body. It'll know what to do if you give it a chance."

  Turning his long neck from side to side, Kaylan studied himself in amazement. The changes he underwent in the other realms were nothing compared to what he saw. The massive, sinewy form was replete with muscles that rippled beneath a scale-covered hide the color of star's blood. A ridge of spear-like protrusions ran the length of his spine, diminishing in length as they approached the tail that swung beneath him looking like a bull whip getting ready to be used.

  As he lifted a leg to get a good look at his clawed foot, Kaylan laughed as he thought, I'm scaring myself. Thank goodness there aren't any mirrors around. Then he looked down at the lake that had grown calm and saw his undisturbed reflection skimming along its surface. He was surprised to see horns protruding out of either side of his triangularly-shaped head. His eyes glistened like rubies. He watched as his wings spread out at his command, caref
ully, to make certain he didn't interfere with Lylah's efforts to climb higher into the sky.

  Feeling the drag Kaylan's movements made, Lylah looked down and growled delightedly as she shouted, "NOW!" Then she dropped her load, and as expected, Kaylan's wings filled up with air as he fell. A moment later, they lifted him skyward.

  "By all that is holy," Kaylan's voice rose in pitch and cracked like an excited adolescent's. "I'm flying!"

  Climbing up into the frigid air, that was surprisingly refreshing, the two dragons soared across the Realm of Ice. Below them, countless rocky peaks jutted up from the craggy landscape. Glaciers filled the steep valleys that wound their way between the mountains. Other than this, there was nothing else to see. Plants and animals were conspicuously missing in this austere realm. Even the Lake of Passage was devoid of fish. Only rock, ice, and waterkynd- all in dragon shapes- could be seen. Lacking clouds, the steel-gray sky had a piercing, almost painful, clarity to it. The sun, moon, and stars- that appeared in their proper order- looked more like bits of ice or flint-hard frozen snow balls. And it was so cold, it was a wonder the Lake of Passage didn't freeze over.

  Soaring, this way and that way, the two who had come Together in the Realm of Vapor explored the Realm of Ice with the kind of boundless enthusiasm that accompanies youth. In time, exploration turned into a game of tag as Kaylan's confidence grew. Laughing as they went, the two frolicking dragons almost crashed into others of their kind as they carelessly flew about. The warning roars that came from a scarlet-colored dragon, and one that was as black as a Goar, momentarily arrested their play. Once they flew around one of the jagged peaks, putting distance between themselves and the displeased dragons, the game was renewed with vigor.

  Later, Kaylan and Lylah rested near the top of a peak that looked down on the Lake of Passage, enjoying the frigid air that lowered their body temperatures below freezing.

  "All of the flying has made me hungry," Kaylan said as he lifted his head to let the cold air stroke his exposed neck and chest.

  "Then let's eat," Lylah replied as a toothy smile crossed her face that would have looked dangerous if it wasn't for the pleasure filling her blue eyes.

  "Eat what?" Kaylan's deep voice intoned the obvious. "There's nothing here but rock and ice."

  "Precisely." Lylah's smile broadened. "But avoid the ice. We wouldn't want to bite into a Mythorian by accident."

  Lylah went on to explain that waterkynd could take two forms in this place: they could meld into the glaciers and become ice or assume dragon form. As Kaylan learned, the Realm of Ice was a place where Mythorians could come and sleep; not the sleep one gets during a night of repose, but something akin to hibernation; a dreamless sleep that lasted as long as they were joined to the slow-moving glaciers; a sleep that could last a dozen generations. The duration was determined by the location they chose to meld in with the glaciers. The farther away from the Lake of Passage this was done, the longer the sleep state would last, for all the glaciers flowed into the wall of ice that fronted the lake.

  Here, in the Lake of Passage, the waterkynd were reborn when the wall of ice calved and icebergs fell into the water's waiting embrace. Bobbing about like apples in a barrel of water, the icebergs quickly changed into water and life was renewed. Then the water was shuttled off to the Realm of Vapor where it continued its transformation and joined the mists that waited for the beckon call of those overcome by the passion that accompanies coming Together, a call that drew them into the womb of the female who was engaged in the pleasant coupling. Until that time came, they sheltered the lovers by becoming a misty fortress that both protected the lovers’ privacy and kept the magic the union created from dissipating.

  "What are you saying?" Kaylan's long, star's blood-colored snout crinkled, and his ruby-colored eyes narrowed as he pondered what he had heard. "Have you melded with the glacier?"

  "Many times," Lylah replied while her scales reflected light like they were sheets of polished, triangularly-shaped metal, though ice was the medium used to make them. And as they did, the colors that adorned her dragon form changed hues as she moved: violet turned to blue, yellow became orange, blue changed to purple, and the predominant green switched shades that ran the spectrum from deep emerald to the verdant colors that predominate in early spring. "But don't be mistaken, though I've been called by many names, I've only lived one life."

  "And what of your parents?'

  "The ones I have now? I only have vague recollections of those I had before."

  "Yes." Kaylan was wrestling with the thought that any child he and Lylah would have together might have lived a life before, and could now be asleep in a glacier that crept inalterably towards the Lake of Passage, or might be one of the melting icebergs that, at this very moment, bobbed about in the frigid water, or had been a part of the mist that shielded the two as they came Together back in the Realm of Vapor. Even more than that, he wrestled with the idea that their love making had induced one of the mists to eneter Lylah's womb, a mist that had been someone else's child in summers now passed.

  "They're my parents silly, fully and no less than your own." It was dawning on Lylah how threatening this must all sound to Kaylan; who, she guessed, wanted his children to be just his, to be an extension of his life alone, and that he didn't want to be just the latest in a long line of parents they had known.

  "You have grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. Is it so different? Wasn't the potential of all you now are in your parents before you were conceived? And if this is true, didn't you also exist in Laz and Aryl even before they sired your parents? And don't they still live in you now, echoing who they once were?"

  Hmmmm. Kaylan's ruminations leaked out in the kind of noise that often accompanies thought, even though it sounded like the deep purring of a large lion. He was surprised that the things Lylah was saying made sense to him, though he could have argued the details. And why shouldn't it make sense? He had never taken the simple answer for anything. When he read a book, he always searched between the lines as he did. He was a seeker of truth and accepted it wherever it was found. What did he expect anyway? Lylah was a Mythorian. If he had learned anything while being with her, it was to expect the unexpected. After all, wasn't this part of her allure?

  Think, he told himself, you're a dragon. If you can come to grips with this, you can come to grips with all the lives Lylah has lived, and those that our children- yet to be born- have lived too. None of this diminishes the present. After all, isn't that the only thing we really have.

  Having come to a conclusion on the matter, Kaylan winked a ruby-red eye at Lylah and said, "A woman of mystery is always appealing. Maybe that's why I love you so much?" Then laughing, with the loud cracking noise of ice calving from the glacier wall echoing through the mountains, he added, "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  The experience of being transformed into a dragon was so overwhelming that taking time to consider the last moments in the Realm of Vapor had been put on hold. Learning to fly and the subsequent playtime that followed only exacerbated the neglect. But now that Kaylan's mind was free to roam, he asked, "Speaking of mysteries, tell me about the Goar. Can it come here?"

  "If it does, it will regret doing so. This is the home of the dragons that guard the waterkynd who sleep in the glaciers below. Of all the realms, the Mythorians are the most dangerous here. For here, we are always ready to fight. That's why the Warl's Magic chose this form for us. In this place we are warriors entirely, and the mountains that grow here are our food."

  As if on cue, a rumbling groan rose out of the mountain range filled with towering peaks that stabbed at the cold, gray sky. The groaning, that was so loud it blotted out the couples' voices, heralded the arrival of a great earthquake that shook the entire Realm of Ice. Tossed about, along with the peak they were perched on, as the geological tumult continued, the two dragons exerted all their strength to maintain hold of the rock they dug their claws into.

  Dragons that were closer to t
he quake's epicenter weren't so lucky. Scattering into the air like a flock of birds fleeing a predator, the magnificent beasts stayed aloft until the shaking ended. Afterward, they settled back onto the peaks like a swarm of mosquitoes returning to the exposed flesh they had been shooed away from.

  "See how they feed?" Lylah surveyed the vast expanse of jagged peaks as she spoke, watching the dragons who were busy eating the day's meal. "The mountains grow like grass in a field, and we are the winged-herd that crops them down. Stone is the bread we eat here. Like the glaciers themselves, we break the mountains down and carry them away in our full stomaches. And like the food we eat, we dragons are as hard as stone."

  As if to prove her point, the winged-beasts on a nearby peak started bashing away at the cliffs they clung to with tails designed to break rock apart. Spikes, and what looked like ax heads made of bone, protruded from the ends of the tails that were swung with terrifying force. An equal number of large, misshapened balls, whose sole purpose was to bludgeon whatever they were set against, were seen as well.

  The stone that was broken away was snatched up in powerful jaws that crushed the rocks into a size that could be easily gulped down. Time and again the dragons' long, sinewy necks flashed into the sky with viper-like speed as their tooth-filled mouths snatched up the morsels of gray stone that spun about in the air a moment before they fell onto the mountainside below where a herd of Ice Dragons were grazing on the fragments that escaped the jaws that failed to catch them.

  Kaylan was surprised how easily the mountain gave way to the force of his whip-like tail striking against it once he joined the dragons in the meal that followed the earthquake. Is the stone here as hard as it is in Nyeg Warl, he had inquired. With the physical laws governing each realm varying to one degree or another, he thought the rock here must be less dense and more vulnerable to being broken down.