The smaller, golden female Dragon was slightly in back of the other one, sitting on haunches, more frail in constitution and brighter in color with tints of brilliant orange. She was stunning.
I took a deep breath, admiring their shiny, fire-colored scales.
The larger Golden Dragon drew in his wings, and spoke in a language familiar to me, but I didn’t understand it, not at first. But then, like an old memory, it came back to me. His face was very near mine, sharp-tipped snout and a row of yellow spikes starting on his head going back. “I am Suko, distant cousin to who you once were. And this is my mate, Sardi. She is not related to who you once were.”
I took the knuckle part of my talon to my snout to feel if it was pointed like Suko’s and Sardi’s, but it was much broader. I said, “And that was?” I rubbed my knuckles over my head that seemed covered with massive spikes, broader and more varied in height than the Golden Dragons’ shorter and evenly aligned spikes.
Smoke seeped from Suko’s elliptic nostrils, the question clearly aggravating him. “After a brief orientation to acclimate you to this world a bit, Quen-tan wants you brought to him at the inferno.”
I traced the knuckle of my claw along my nostril. It was much wider. “The inferno?” I asked.
Sardi stepped forward, batting her Dragon eyes coyly. “Yes, the inferno.”
Not inclined to obey orders, I inquired, “How did I get here?”
Suko stepped forward, clearly annoyed by Sardi’s advances toward me. His low voice rumbled, “You tapped a power that transcends our consciousness. Quen-tan felt it. He helped you get here. He wants to speak with you.”
“I am not level ten. Why do I have Dragon form?”
Sardi blinked her pale yellow eyes. Her elongated black iris was stunning against the pale yellow, wonderfully hypnotic. “Because the Dragon spirit within you is almost fully resurrected.”
Suko turned his head to Sardi. Flames flickered around yellow fangs and rows of cerated teeth. “Stop flirting.”
She stepped back and glared at him. “You know who he is.”
Suko puffed his chest, raised his head and gave me a sidelong glance while speaking to his mate. “Who he was, Sardi, who he was.”
Sardi tossed her head. “And will be again.”
I asked, “Who was I?”
Suko glared at me with jealous, deep yellow eyes, snout poised to belch fire. Ignoring my question, he bellowed, “You have acclimated enough. Follow us!”
Sardi turned away. Her yellow scales glimmered speckles of brilliant orange as she took flight.
I sighed. She was gorgeous.
Suko turned and followed her up into orange and yellow sky.
I’d been curious about Quen-tan for a long time. I leapt into the air to fly with them, but my feet thudded on the flaming ground. I grumbled, wanting to take off before my predecessors viewed my ineptness. This time I took a running start, like Fred Flintstone in his prehistoric car. I leapt again, thumping back down on the sea of flames. I could barely see Suko and Sardi, they were so far ahead, probably laughing at me.
I decided to concentrate on the exact trajectory and thrust needed to lift me. I used my mind to see my body flying up this invisible shoot that felt real. I jumped. I was up. I tipped to the right, then left, in danger of losing my balance. Then I steadied.
These wings were massive and cumbersome compared to the black webbed wings that normally propelled me. The tips sported giant spikes, like the ones on my tail. Combat would be most exciting in this body.
I flapped my wings slowly two times and found I could glide in the sky for 66 beats before having to flap again. To gain speed, I flapped perpetually, closing in fast on Suko and Sardi. I discovered a new odd feeling. Humans might call it . . . glee. Not the sadistic kind of glee I had when torturing others. No . . . this was like . . . elation. Flying as a Dragon was elating.
I approached Suko and Sardi’s tails. I was surprisingly attracted to the Golden Dragons, even though Golden Dragons are servants to the Black Dragon Kings. And then I had a realization. And that was this: Golden Dragons can activate quintessential wisdom in Black Dragons. This wisdom, mixed with the Black Dragons’ ferocity is what makes them known as the Lords of Destruction. Kinder Dragons inhabit other sectors of the sky, but they seldom dare interfere.
Just by being here, I seemed to be remembering the way it was. And I hoped I would remain long enough to recall all I had forgotten.
I loved flying as a Dragon. I wanted to go faster, higher, farther, forever and ever. But to my dismay, my guides descended into an immense black chasm packed with electrical storm, absent rain. Beyond the electricity, we flew through layers of fire and landed in a tidy row on a surface of molten lava that sloshed around our talons.
I thought we were facing a thick, rock wall lava formation, but it was a coal black Dragon at least a least a yard taller and wider than me.
I tried not to gasp, but steam escaped my mouth, and smoke curled around my nostrils. I was not used to the feeling of surprise, although I’d been feeling it a lot lately.
I gathered my wits. “Quen-tan, I presume?”
His chest shimmered blue with a hint of violet. Orange flecks glimmered in his black diamond shaped eyes. He lowered his big, black, thorny, spike-covered head to my face. He spoke in a deep hypnotic voice, showing massive rows of assorted teeth. “Welcome to Dracovar Prime.” Then his head turned to Suko and Sardi. “Depart.” I was a bit awe-struck by the long spikes on his chin.
I touched my chin. I had them too. I suspected I looked somewhat like Quen-tan, given my earlier self exploration. If so, I was bloodcurdling.
“As you wish,” Suko and Sardi replied in unison. They jumped into the air so high, they disappeared into the flamed ceiling.
“Ixion,” Quen-tan’s fiery breath blew around me, soothing my anxiety, “you made level nine, motivated by Diego, and accomplished by your ingenuity to draw upon ancient powers.”
So that’s what was happening. My adrenaline surged. Finally, I was in a position to obtain some answers.
“Ixion. You have not changed since you left us long ago. Still, you answer to no one. Still, you are a lawbreaker. What once made you great, also made you fall, and is even now hindering your progress. You must abide Draconian Law.”
My curiosity exploded. Questions flew all over inside me in the place questions begin, but none touched my mind, lest Quen-tan read them. And none touched my lips lest Quen-tan witness how human I’d become. Uncontrolled behavior was beneath a Tazmark’s dignity. “I break laws,” I said. “That’s what I do best.”
“This I know. That is why you became earthbound in the first place.”
I pressed down my excitement and asked nonchalantly, “What rule did I break?”
“Still, you do not remember?”
“I remember only fragments.”
“You are now my grandson. But long ago you were my,” he squinted one dark orange-flecked eye, “father.”
My tail jerked, giving away my surprise. Damn. I wasn’t used to controlling a Dragon body. “Are you saying that I ruled this world?”
“You once ruled all six Chaos Dragon worlds.”
“Six?” My excitement slipped through, but my tone held cool. Quen-tan must have thought me so human. “You rule them now?”
“Yes.”
“How did I fall from power?”
“You loved one from the rain world. One who lived in white air. One who played with cosmic snow, showering it upon the seven worlds in her corner of space. Earthlings know it as the Seven Sisters, and Panacéa was her name.”
“How did this happen?”
“You were on a mission to locate and destroy her and her worlds. She had radiated an abundance of Divine Light—or Divine Love I should say, as they are one and the same—in the Seven Sisters. It overflowed onto many other worlds, and the universe became imbalanced. The love spread like a disease that killed challenge and opportunity. Our Dragon Worlds were threatened.
We had to retaliate, lest we disintegrate under her influence.”
“I take it, I lost the battle, or maybe I never located her.”
“You located her, but before you could destroy her, she gave you the disease, promising a love conducive to your essence. For some reason, and to all our surprise, you wanted that. We still fail to understand why.”
“So, I sold you all out for some cosmic fling?”
“You sold us out, and you did not even get the fling. She did not keep her promise. Though she was a being of unconditional love, she could not extend that to you. Loving you unconditionally in a personal way would have changed her too much. She cared for you, but rejected who you were and how you lived.”
Sounded familiar; sounded like Jen. I said, “Wouldn’t I have destroyed her at that point?”
“You tried. You tricked her into coming here with a lie that our world needed her compassion. Once here, you could have easily vanquished her, because she trusted you. But you didn’t vanquish her. You couldn’t. Love had made you ill. Nevertheless, as the job needed doing, you ordered our most apathetic Dragon soldiers to vanquish her.”
“And?”
“It never happened.”
Quen-tan paused and I feared he’d reveal no more. I threw my fear back to the place where fear begins and remained silent. Chaos Dragons enjoy causing disappointment. I had become all too human, and tiring of it quickly.
Quen-tan raised a scaly brow, as if hearing my thought, “Ah, not so human yet that you can’t be saved. And for that I shall tell you the rest of the story.”
Seems there were no thoughts I could hide from Quen-tan. However, he would reveal the truth anyway. At last the puzzle would come together.
“Panacéa cleverly split into seven pieces, for she was of seven energy rays akin to the rainbow, and of seven vibrations of glandular centers like that of humans. A different piece flew to each of the six Dragon Worlds. Her fragmented essence soaked into each world becoming a part of it.”
I was beginning to get the picture. I said, “So because she smartly soaked herself into our worlds, we could not destroy her. In destroying her, we would destroy ourselves.”
“Precisely,” said Quen-tan. “To this very day, her greater consciousness waits for the pieces to reunite that she may resurrect. We also want her resurrected that we may purge her from our Worlds.”
I asked, “She can’t do it herself?”
“No, she has become too fragmented.”
“How is it to happen then?”
“You can make it happen, Ixion. Ixion was more powerful than even I am now.”
“Jenséa. She is connected to Panacéa? Am I right?”
“You are. I spoke of seven pieces—one piece going to each of the six Dragon Worlds. The seventh piece was Panacéa’s heart. It fell into space, as far away from Draco constellation as she could drift. It was drawn to a place that could know love. Earth.”
“Jenséa . . . is Panacéa’s heart? So, Jenséa is only a piece of Panacéa?”
“Was only a piece. She is becoming more of Panacéa with each move toward full power.”
At last the answer was clear. They never wanted Jen deceased, not yet anyway. They needed her restored to purify the Dragon Worlds, and they needed me to do it, which brought to mind a question. The question.
“How is it I came to earth?”
“It was Panacéa’s heart you had wanted all along. So you tracked her heart to earth. You found it in a woman’s womb that grew a fetus. Panacéa’s heart was birthed into a human. As a human, she viewed your phantom presence as the devil, and your attempts to touch her, as torment. You did not want to enter the human pattern by birthing into a body, so you remained in the sixth realm—but there, near her. Ever there. There in her dreams, there in her mind, but never there in her heart. That was one place she could keep you from going, never to trust you again.”
“But why do I pursue her so intensely, and why am I not willing to destroy her? There must be a reason fitting for a Black Dragon King.”
“If there is, we do not understand what that reason could be. However, you did not endlessly pursue her even though you never got over her. After a few thousand years, through the course of her many lives, you tried to return home. But we would not have you. You had abandoned us for a piece of a Goddess. You had inadvertently brought Divine Love to our worlds, lessening our power. We united to ban you from the Dragon Worlds.”
There it was . . . the answer to that biting sense I’d always had that earth was somehow my punishment.
Quen-tan continued, “We summoned the Tazmark, Diego—my son—to mate with the Tazmark, Aruka. We used—”
“Wait,” I said, “Diego is your son?”
“Yes.”
“How is it that he and Aruka became Tazmarks?”
“I forced their essence to shed their Dragon shells and birth into Tazmark bodies on earth, making them earn their powers from scratch. They, like you, were being punished, as all Tazmarks are, by being relegated to creating chaos in a world they cannot destroy, lest they destroy themselves.”
“Why were Diego and Aruka punished?”
“They were being punished because they were attempting to overthrow you before you, in a sense, overthrew yourself. When you left, I—as your son, was next in line to rule the Chaos Dragon Worlds, and they challenged me. I won. And so it goes.”
“So I became the spawn of those who were plotting to overthrow me?”
“Yes. We used our collective magic to force you into the fetus created from that union. You were birthed into earth’s realm, part human, part Dragon—a Tazmark. On earth, you would be trapped in a place that you would yearn to annihilate, but could not, lest you annihilate yourself. You would learn how precious is the gift to destroy a world, and you would long to be free again . . . . bored with the limitations placed upon you. And even though you had ended your attempt to unify with Panacéa’s heart, and you did not know of her when you were born a Tazmark—over the centuries you came to want her again, not knowing who she was, or why you yearned for an energy presence such as she. You just did. And now that you are almost as close to her as you were once so long ago, you will complete the task you failed then. You can. You will.”
I raised a scaly brow. “And if I do not?”
Quen-tan’s eyes grew bright orange, infrared, ultra violet, then shocking white. A sheet of energy sliced through me. Thick coldness eclipsed my heart. I felt like the old me—stoical, newfound emotions vanquished.
“You will make her summon the remaining one and three half pieces.”
“One and three halves?”
“She came with her heart intact. You restored her seventh aspect—the etheric crown when you taught her to use Divine Light last year, to heal and kill.”
I thought about how I’d showed her how to heal herself, and the Montana battle where she’d killed Chord, a Tazmark that was after her.
“You restored her fifth aspect, the etheric pharyngeal plexus when you coerced her to shine through her voice at the debate in the park last summer where she influenced so many.”
I thought of how the calls came in for her to speak here and there on behalf of various social service groups. And then I flashed on her speech at the Boulevard St. Michel to inspire the crowd to aid Russia.
“You half restored her third aspect—the etheric solar plexus, when you coerced her to fight Tazmarks in Montana. Until she takes charge in a fight, full restoration will not occur.”
I remembered how I’d guided her through the Montana battle, and helped her to relentlessly burn the Tazmark known as the Dark One, despite his screams of agony. She would have given up without me.
“You half-restored her sixth aspect of psychic ability when you trained her to fly. Until she can proficiently mind shield, mind read, and manifest water substances, full restoration will not occur. Her reproductive aspect still needs full restoration. That will make six pieces. The last and hardest for her to recover w
ill be her first aspect—the etheric Coggyceal Plexusm, for it beholds survival, the body, the material earth. As the Goddess, she had used that aspect to birth love into the physical, though she had never experienced the physical realm. The material body is foreign to her. But as she is on earth, she must ground herself to it, and fight for its preservation, which in all the lives she’s had on earth, she has never done it. We expect that to happen at the showdown in Chile. You will coerce her to fight for earth against us. Then, when she is all together, you will destroy her with your inbred deceit. This is the only way you will be allowed to come home and reign the Dracovar Worlds once again.”
I narrowed one eye. “Why would you surrender your position to me?”
“I do not possess the wisdom you once had, nor the power you once did. Our Worlds are in trouble. There is too much harmony. I am not as you once were, able to traverse galaxies, and ferret out hidden worlds that call for Chaos. We need more strength to regain our equilibrium in the universe. You would better serve the Dracovar Worlds, opening doors for us all that we cannot—protecting us in ways we have failed. You have forgotten much, but you would remember, once you found your way back. You carry a power to draw from the Dragon’s source of creation. You are the purest, most original Chaos Dragon we have known. You’d be equivalent to what humans call a prophet, or a messiah to us.”
I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. It was not in my nature to trust. “What’s in this for Diego?”
“He too knows we need your help to restore our power, so he supports the plan. However, he will be allowed to govern one of the six dragon worlds, and he will be second in command to you.”
“And you?”
“I am prepared to retire, Juan. Once Panacéa is destroyed, and you are reinstated as leader, I will move into the next form beyond Dragon.”
The glacial feeling wore off. The emotions I’d attained with Jen, returned. I wondered if there was a way I could rule The Dracovar Worlds without destroying Jen—Panacéa.
“There is not,” said Quen-tan, reading my mind. “Besides, your devotion to her puts you at risk. She deceived you once; why not again?”
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