by Jon Hollins
Quirk didn’t have a chance to howl. She was too busy scrambling for a handhold, feeling her legs sliding free, feeling her chance at survival slipping through her nerveless fingers. Her head rang from the impact.
Below them something roared. Something opened a maw bursting with yellow light.
A dragon. Another dragon. One that had been … what? Waiting nearby? Just in the area? It didn’t matter. It was there. It had struck them. And now Quirk was plummeting to earth on the back of an unconscious dragon.
And then she ran out of sky to plummet through.
The impact was massive. It replaced the world she lived in with new forces, new geographies. Gravity was suddenly a racking, directionless beast ripping through her one way and then another. The ground was now scale and rock and dirt, hot then cold. The air she breathed was now the taste of blood in her mouth, the grit in her nostrils. Her body was a rag doll of spinning limbs.
And then, by some magic that was utterly beyond her ken, she was lying on her back, staring up at the swirling heavens, transported back to the world she’d always known. She seemed to have brought a lot of pain back with her. She took a breath. It hurt. She wondered if she’d broken a rib. It felt like a strangely abstract thought.
She tried to raise a hand to her face, found she could do so. That was a good sign. Still, the amount of blood on her fingers wasn’t. She tried to sit up. She managed it, though she gasped with pain, and her eyes watered.
Then she realized the thrumming she could hear was not the rush of blood in her ears. It was the beating of wings. She turned around very slowly. Everything was done slowly now. Her body had found a lower gear and was insistent about sticking there. She thought about trying to support her weight on one hand and balked. She shifted awkwardly onto her chafed knees.
A dragon looked at her. So did its friends.
Yorrax lay sprawled on the ground, a slack rope of muscle and scale, wings crumpled like discarded drafts of their escape plans. Around her were gathered dragons. And dragons. And dragons.
She hadn’t … So many … How could she have imagined? How could she have believed in this? A sight to give the academic in her chills. A sight to turn the bowels of the pragmatist in her to water.
They were gathered around her in a vast circle. Ranks of yellow eyes and long snouts. Myriad colors, from dark browns and grays to bright vibrant greens and oranges. Some were squat, others were lithe. Some had horns, others rows of sharp scales, and others were as smooth as snakes.
One stood slightly in front of the others, looming over Yorrax like a mountain peak. He was the color of day-old meat, lit by the flickering light of the fire he and his fellows had set among the trees around her.
“So,” the dragon said with a voice like the world ending, “the runt has brought a playmate home. She has made friends with our great enemy. She thinks one human enough to defend her.”
The dragon twisted its head away to look back at the others. “Perhaps she grows tired of being mocked for her weakness. Now she wants to be mocked for her stupidity instead.”
The noise that came next was so loud, so harsh, that Quirk had to close her eyes. Her head was still ringing. Her teeth hurt. She couldn’t tell what part of her mouth she’d bitten. All of it? Was that possible? She didn’t understand.
And then she did.
The dragons were laughing. They were … they were bullies.
The world was coming to her like shards of broken glass, interrupted by the needs of her aching body. She half collapsed backward, found a rock she could lean against. She spat out a wad of phlegm and blood.
The lead dragon reached out with one of his forelimbs, picked Yorrax’s head up off the ground. He was … what, three times her size? Four? Almost as big as the Kondorran dragons, she thought. Not quite as geographically massive, perhaps, but still a vast brute. He leaned his head close to Yorrax’s.
“Can you hear me in there?” he roared at Yorrax. Quirk slammed her hands to her ears unthinkingly, almost howled at the pain that shot through her left shoulder.
“Do you have the brains left to listen to me tell you how pathetic I find you?”
He laughed again. The other gathered dragons laughed again. The sound was like the bones in her ears breaking.
She had to focus. If she was to live through this, she had to get herself together. Yorrax had told her something about these dragons.
Plunging into her memories felt like walking into a swamp. Everything was cloying and slow. The smell of the dead bodies in Tarramon. The sound of Yorrax crunching bones. The accusing stares back at the estate. The almost audible sound of Svetson’s heart breaking.
And Afrit. Behind it all, Afrit. Her face. Her calm words. Her … everything.
More dragons were coming, flocking down. The night air was alive with their wings. Their sound like a storm coming.
The lead dragon turned away from Yorrax, brought its attention to Quirk instead.
“Human,” it growled.
Quirk had to focus now. Right fucking now. Because Yorrax had said something. About this place. About Natan. About the dragons. About who was here. Who had gone to Avarra.
The dragon was very close. And she could see the jowls on it. The way his skin hung on him, looking loose and baggy, almost as if he was …
Old!
The old. The sick. The weak. The young. They had been left behind. They had not been part of the invasion force. They were not strong enough.
Bullies.
These were the dragons not taken to Avarra. Those judged by the brethren to be unworthy of conquering a world. And this … this was how they were coping with rejection. They found someone even weaker to dominate …
Which meant there was only one way to deal with them.
Oh gods, this is going to get me so killed …
Standing up hurt. Keeping the pain off her face hurt almost as much. Dragons were gathered all around now. They encircled her. Rank upon rank of rough wedge-shaped heads, row upon row of eyes—yellow orbs of fire and hatred. They were thick in the air above her. Darker slices of night cutting the sky apart. She could feel the heat of them, the fire in their guts radiating out to crowd her further.
But she understood them. And she understood fire.
So very killed.
She reached into herself, found what she needed. Not quite courage. Not quite desperation. Not quite madness. Something born of all three, though.
And then she summoned a fiery whip and crashed it with all her might into the dragon’s nose.
It reared back, roaring, bellowing—more shocked, she suspected, than hurt. But she kept at it, slashing again and again with the fiery whip. She pulled another into existence, held it in her left hand, made clumsy strikes with that one as well, scouring at the softer skin beneath its chin, its neck.
Around her was chaos. Other dragons roaring. She was caught in a maelstrom of sound. The force of the sound battered at her. But she did not give an inch. She fought forward. She was screaming defiance. She was hurling her refusal to be cowed in their faces.
Old. Weak. Frail. And these were dragons, so everything was relative, but perhaps—just perhaps—she could find a crack in their self-regard and wedge her chance of survival in there. And so she slashed, and she slashed, and she slashed.
The dragon recovered, spread its wings, beat up at air, rose to hover above her. It opened its maw.
She sent the fireball arcing straight into its gut.
For just a moment, the roaring stopped. There was a collective inhalation as the dragon crumpled and fell to earth.
And for just a moment, nobody killed Quirk.
She seized the chance with both hands. “Do I have your fucking attention?”
They were so bewildered by what was going on, they forgot to kill her for another moment. She thought perhaps some of the dragons farther back found her defiance amusing, but gods, she would take that over fiery doom.
“You are not here because you are
strong!” she howled at them. “You are not here because you are wise! You are not here because of your value to your fellows!” She shouted as loudly as she could, punctuated her words with blasts of fire. Nothing capable of killing, or even of injuring. More sparks to dazzle and sting. To keep them focused.
“You are here because you were duped. Because you were made fools of. Because you are scared. You sit here and you hide.” Gods, this better be true, or at least close enough to the mark to sting. If she missed her target by even a hair …
“You mock this one.” She lit Yorrax up with another fireball. “The runt. The weakest, most pathetic of you all. And yet of all of you, only she had the guts to go to Avarra. Only she had the stones to brave Barph’s wrath. She charged him down while you all sat here and cowered like worms. You mock her, and yet you are too scared to do a tenth of what she has done. She has charged down Barph himself, bathed his face in her fire. She has stood by my side as we took the fight to his very feet.”
She was exaggerating wildly now, but she thought the circumstances allowed it. Only adrenaline was holding her upright.
But the dragons, she realized, were silent now. They were not roaring. They were not laughing. They were … they were …
Oh gods. They were listening.
For a moment she didn’t know what to say. She was caught utterly off guard by her own success, almost undone by it. And there was a very thin line between a dramatic pause and mumbling like an idiot.
“You are better than this.” She made the turn. She had to. There were only so many insults creatures as self-important as dragons could absorb. “You are dragons!” Her throat felt raw. She sent an arcing gush of flame at the heavens. “You ruled Avarra! You had it in your grasp. It was taken from you. Not by strength. Not by force. Not with honor. It was stolen. Through trickery. Through deceit. Barph thinks that he is smarter than you.”
Gods, she thought, I pray that I am smarter than you.
And she still somehow wasn’t dead.
“You are dragons!” When she had heard Barph speak, he had always seemed to have a refrain. Will had too. This might as well be hers. It didn’t mean much to her, but it seemed the sort of vacuous platitude that people often liked. In fact, it was probably the sort of thing that she should have said to her rebels more often. But this was not the best moment for hindsight.
“Avarra waits for you!” she howled. “Avarra demands to be saved by you.” That felt like a misstep. What did these dragons care about liberating her home? She tried to dance around it. “It begs to bow to your might. Save Avarra from Barph. Burn his world down. Build your own from its ashes. Take your rightful place! You are dragons!”
She was babbling now, and she knew it. She reached for the next sentence, but found it wouldn’t come. She had reached the end of her plea for survival.
Shit.
The dragon whose guts she’d made a punching bag of still lay before her, not unconscious, but curled up and cowed around its singed belly. She turned to look at the others, trying to meet as many eyes as possible. She tried to project power and defiance into her gaze. She felt like the most abject of frauds.
“Another has come here before …” At first she couldn’t place the voice. She stared around the crowd. Then she realized it was Yorrax. The dragon had picked her head up off the ground, was staring at her. And was this betrayal or collusion? She couldn’t tell.
“Another has made promises to us.”
Quirk took a breath, thought as fast as she ever had in her life.
“I make you no promises,” she spat back. “You could all go to Avarra and die. Barph could laugh in your faces, turn you all to dust. Because perhaps the others were right. Perhaps you are old and weak and frail and pathetic. And perhaps you cannot seize what is there to be taken. Maybe you are not dragons. Maybe you are lizards and worms, skulking through the earth. Maybe you were not weaned from your mother’s teats. Maybe dying here pathetic and alone is all you are good for. But I do not know that. Only you do.”
She was shamelessly playing on their pride, but she was also well beyond shame.
“Your words,” Yorrax said, and Quirk could see now the effort they were costing the dragon, “could kill us all.”
Gods piss on it. Quirk was fairly sure that Yorrax wasn’t actively trying to undermine her. Their fates were too intertwined to make that likely. Yorrax was probably trying to encourage her to weave a denser fabric of half-truths and platitudes. Unfortunately, Yorrax had significantly overestimated Quirk’s inventiveness.
Then a massive claw reached out of the crowd and slammed down on Yorrax’s head, plunging it into the dust once more. A dragon the same size and texture as Quirk’s nightmares stepped into the center of the crowd.
It leaned a tar-black head down level with Quirk. Its eyes flashed yellow in its skull.
“You mewl for your life,” it growled. “Your words smack of desperation.”
Well, it was a good run.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. And yes, they do. Look at me. Look at you. I am not a fool. But at least I have the courage to fight.” She set her feet. “So let’s fucking do this.”
She was just tired. And frustrated. And sick of being afraid and outgunned. If this was not going to work, then she might as well get it over with.
The dragon stared at her. And she was so infinitesimal a threat to it. This little stance of defiance was so absurd. It would barely have to chew her.
Its black maw opened. Teeth and a tongue and stretching, stretching fear coming down to consume her.
“What is your name, human?” It was not fire that leapt from the dragon’s jaws, or a roar, but a question.
“Quirkelle Bal Tehrin.” She didn’t know where this was going anymore.
The dragon turned away from her. Quirk tried to suppress a wince as it ground Yorrax’s head into the ground. “This human,” it roared, “is Quirkelle Bal Tehrin. Let her name be remembered. She is our enemy. She is of the race that stole the world from us. She is of the race that condemned us to this stinking isle of imprisonment. And it is she who reminded us what it is to be a dragon.”
What … what now?
“It is she who came here, alone, and reminded us of our destiny. Of the wrong that was done to us. It was she who lit the fire of revenge, when we could not do it ourselves.”
Quirk suddenly had the feeling she had wandered into this play halfway through, and that she had misunderstood the playwright’s intentions utterly. Because what was happening now?
“It is she,” the black dragon thundered, “who came here and demanded the vengeance we should have demanded ourselves. Barph has wronged us! Barph has laughed at us! Barph has forgotten how we made the world tremble. He has forgotten how we made the world burn. He has forgotten to fear us. So now we shall remind him. Now we shall make the heavens themselves burn!”
And then every dragon was roaring. Every dragon was launching fire into the sky. And then Quirk realized that, against all the odds, she was not going to die.
Quirk had seen it before. She knew exactly how fickle the mob mind was. How quickly it could turn. She knew it better than most. And yet still it always left her gasping. The madness of it. The idiocy.
But it was idiocy that let her see the sun again. It was idiocy that allowed her to feel the wind tousling her hair again. And it was undoubtedly idiocy that put her again on Yorrax’s back, riding at the head of an army of dragons, heading back to Avarra.
16
Anarchy in a Teacup
Barph watched the woman as she crossed the temple square. She was, he thought, quite beautiful. The gentle jade of her eyes and the subtle curves of her body were all picked up and accentuated by the green robe she wore. Her movements were careful and considered, the product of long study and years of practice. She knelt slowly. There was no hint of the effort such movement must cost. Everything remained smooth and graceful. She reached out and took the first teacup from its prescribed place. She le
aned forward at a precise angle, whose elegance and suitability had been written about in a legion of texts, and poured the first cup. Liquid splashed happily. The kettle gurgled slightly. Arrayed around the woman, ten others each permitted themselves the slightest of smiles.
It was as if they were openly fucking mocking him.
A tea ceremony? A gods-hexed tea ceremony? Barph looked about for someone who could appreciate his exasperation.
No rules. No rituals. No imprisoning themselves in the petty constraints of prescribed thinking.
Had he not been clear?
He didn’t even bother explaining it to them. He didn’t go in there and chastise them.
He reached out his hand. Lightning flooded the temple. Filled it with crackling, screaming white light. He squeezed. A lot of the screaming stopped. The bricks crumbled, fell. He waved his hand. The lightning dissipated. The dust that had been the temple blew away on a sudden wind.
There was no beautiful woman pouring tea now. No appreciative crowd. No perfectly glazed kettle. Barph looked around him again, for someone who could either nod in sympathy or shake his head in disappointment. But there was no one. There were not even any witnesses to learn from this lesson. He was alone in a temple full of corpses.
He shifted his focus, let his mind slip away from this plane of reality, and when he was paying attention once more his body had followed his mind. He was in the heavens, poised above Avarra, impossibly distant from that sad little temple and its sad little scorch mark on the ground.
He looked down on creation. His alone to rule. Yet still the nagging thought was there: Someone somewhere was defying him, refusing to be free. Someone was trying to impose order on his beautiful chaos.
He narrowed his eyes, scoured all of existence. He would find it. He would eradicate it. The last essence of Lawl would be gone from the world. It would be his design. His turn now. He would unlock the beautiful potential of the world.
But he saw … nothing. No order. No hierarchies. No laws. No justice. No queuing. No rituals. No defiance.