by Ravek Hunter
For two days, Senjit flew roughly southwest away from Hellas and over the Great Sea without encountering anything unusual. It wasn’t until he was passing over the eastern coast of the lands occupied by the Sicans when he was suddenly aware that he was being watched by something . . . powerful. Senjit didn’t know how he knew these things. It could have been an instinct common to all Dragons as far as he knew or something to do with his innate psionic aptitude. Whatever the cause of the feeling, it was always accurate. At first, Senjit feared the Black Dragon was nearby and had spotted him before he was aware, but the source of whatever creature noticed his passing was on the ground. Odd, thought Senjit. He was not far from the massive active volcano the Sicans called Etna. He could see the perpetual dark plume of smoke that it coughed into the air. As long as Senjit could remember, the volcano was always in the same state of near violence, punctuated by small eruptions every hundred years or so, disgorging hot lava and ash. For miles around it, the land was barely tolerable for human settlement. Why any intelligent being would be crossing this wasteland on foot was beyond his imagination.
The next day he rested on the west coast of Rasna a few leagues south of the city called Cara. There were no settlements along the jagged coastline, and he relaxed easily out of sight of the hilltops above and the water far below. Just after sunset, he took off again and started westward across the open water. Senjit was not sure where he was going, only that soon he would turn north if there was no sign of the Dragon he hunted.
The night was cloudless and beautiful, revealing a sky full of stars shining brightly from the heavens as Senjit flew across the calm oscillations of the waves below. Far into the distance, his gaze stayed steady on the flickering lights of a city in the darkness. He was sure it must be Gallu, a midsized port city on the eastern coast of Nurozieri. Senjit knew the Nurozieri well, an agreeable people welcoming of outsiders and trade and never aggressive toward one another or their foreign neighbors unless provoked. There were several city-states on the island, each controlling vast agricultural lands around it and ruled by a single dominant family. Their port cities employed modest merchant fleets for trade but no real navy to speak of and hardly presumed to control the waterways around their small island.
Unfortunately, their peaceful nature was viewed as a sign of weakness to those that would raid or invade their lands. However, their significant defensive structures were often overlooked, and their adversaries often found their cities and villages far less vulnerable than they anticipated.
Senjit spent a number of years among them a few decades previous, in the city of Ruju on the northwest coast of the island. He appreciated the Nurozieri style of construction, utilizing clusters of cylindrical towers of different elevations that were interconnected to form substantial walls for protection. To see one of their cities from the sea or air was awe-inspiring—the elegant towers were numerous, making up the bulk of the construction. The Nurozieri were clever builders, always erecting their cities on hills or gradations backing up to the natural slope of a mountain or cul-de-sac in a valley. With the additional height of their foundation, the towers looked even grander than they would have on a flat plain. At the central and highest point of the city, an inner complex of towers and walls rose high above all the rest. This was where the ruling family lived and played. The Nurozieri had reason to build the high solid walls to defend their people, for their enemies were not always human.
Senjit could recall the villages for their uniqueness as well, with structures of small stone huts and circular walls supporting a wooden frame with a ceiling of boughs, some erected on poles driven into the ground. The pavements were composed of limestone slabs of basalt cobbles or clay. The villages often had megalithic towers with a truncated cone shape that were defensible home sites that included barns and silos. He spent a year in one of these villages learning the language of the Nurozieri and the Giants with whom they shared the island.
Senjit found the Giants to be an unexpected surprise. The Nurozieri had a strangely symbiotic, yet servile relationship with the tribes of Giants that populated the island’s mountainous interior. Each of the city-states was obligated to provide the Giants with regular peace offerings of livestock, grains, and vegetables to keep them pacified.
Often, the priests preached that it was the will of their deity, the so-called Dark Mother. Senjit didn’t believe it and suspected that they had some advantage espousing such views. Perhaps control over the people. Sadly, the offerings represented much of the agricultural surplus of the island, and in lean years they were forced to import food stock to supplement their contributions. In return, the Giants kept the interior of the island secure from invaders and when called upon would quarry and transport huge stones from the mountains for the construction of dolmuns where the Nurozieri interred their kings. Otherwise, the Giants kept to themselves, not bothering their human neighbors as long as the offerings continued uninterrupted. Senjit had gotten the feeling that the Giants were in some way considered holy or divine, but the priests were deliberately vague on that point.
Once, while hunting in his Dragon form over the mountains near the city of Monte, Senjit came into close proximity with a few of the Giants he heard so much about. They were a furry, brutish-looking people who exhibited prominent brow lines, large eyes, broad noses, and weathered faces framed by blonde or red hair. Except for the fact that they were easily five times the size of a human, they would have been considered short and barrel-chested, with a robust build looking very much like the secluded tribe of wild people that lived in the Wilds east of the Western Kingdoms. Their dress was just as unusual, covering themselves with furs and scraped skins, with leather sandals on their feet. Most of them carried a huge club, spear, or axe made of wood and stone for protection and hunting. By the look of the skulls hanging from a few of their belts, animals were not always their only prey.
When the Giants interrupted Senjit, he was consuming a red deer he found for a meal. Apparently, they were just as threatened by a Dragon as any human, and they threw large boulders at him until he flew away. Senjit didn’t want to fight them over a deer; the Giants weren’t evil, just primitive and protecting their territory.
One aspect of the Nurozieri culture that Senjit never quite understood was their worship of a mysterious deity they referred to as the Dark Mother. Her consort was a bull “god” that the people thought to represent fertility. The Dark Mother was worshipped in religious centers featuring a pyramid-like temple built more in the style of the ziggurats he had seen in Kur-gal than the pyramids of Ta-Mehu and Ta-Shemau. The temple at Monte was considered the high temple of the Dark Mother and housed Orichalcum Crystals, projecting their power through a rotating quartz crystal in the shape of a pyramid levitating above its apex. Senjit was sure it would still be there, along with a handful of Atlanteans to look after it. There were other smaller temples in the country, but it was only this one that held the Orichalcum and was tended by Atlantean priests, or the “Enlightened Ones” as they were commonly known throughout that part of the world.
While living in Ruju, Senjit had the opportunity to learn a little of the Nurozieri magical arts through their priests. They did not know him as a Golden Dragon, of course. To them, he was a priest of Gersemi, sent by the Nymphs of Gades as a cultural ambassador. Senjit was more than a little surprised that the priests serving the Dark Mother practiced a form of necromancy and earth magic. Their magic was not evil, much like the necropolises that they painted in red ochre to represent the Dark Mother’s menstruation, the raising of the dead and speaking to spirits was a form of rebirth to the Nurozieri. Senjit did not understand it all exactly, but he did understand the spiritual connection they had between themselves, the dead, and their unusual goddess.
Snapping out of his reminiscing, Senjit realized that he was not far from Gallu, and he looked forward to experiencing the city and its people once again. He was already thinking about the variety of locally caught fish that their inns and taverns
prepared grilled, baked, and in stews that were always delicious. It was a delightful indulgence to consume cooked food once in a while, rather than what he plucked from the land or sea to devour raw.
Unexpectedly, Senjit was jolted by a sudden, urgent feeling in the core of his being, a sign of recognition, an instinctual sensation different from the one he felt before—he was in the presence of another Dragon somewhere nearby. Drifting quietly closer on the wind, he could begin to make out the shape of the creature flying above the city. Without warning, a band of fire lit up the sky, engulfing one of the towers and igniting fires nearby. Then there was another and another. Senjit was filled with dread. He had found his adversary.
By the gods, the thing is enormous.
Senjit was more than a little intimidated by the massive size of the Black Dragon. It was easily four times as large as himself, and it obviously employed a dangerous, fiery breath weapon. A Dragon of that size had to be at least a thousand years old or more. During the first few centuries of his life, Senjit explored nearly every part of the world and immersed himself in many cultures and civilizations, but he never met another of his kind. There were always rumors, legends, and myths of Dragons in every culture he encountered. Sometimes he filled the role in those traditions himself, and Senjit naturally assumed that he was the only Dragon in existence outside of Fomoire. He was a young Dragon with unique abilities, including psionic powers and a talent for magic—a very dangerous combination, to be sure—but a physically large Dragon he was not. Senjit watched the huge Black Dragon with trepidation; it was a giant compared to him.
He had to think this through. If it came down to brute strength, this thing was going to rip him apart. Senjit decided his best chance would be to go invisible, get close enough to ambush the monster, and possibly control his mind with psionic intrusion, avoiding a fight altogether. Even knowing the Dragon was possessed by a powerful Demon, he hoped to end the confrontation quickly, although he had little real confidence it was going to be that easy.
Senjit, camouflaged by invisibility, cautiously approached the Black Dragon circling the burning city. He opened his mind and began to gently probe at the other’s. Strangely, the Black Dragon’s conscious mind was devoid of thought, almost as if it didn’t exist at all. Then Senjit’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach when his adversary abruptly swiveled its head in his direction and stared directly at him. Senjit might have thought it a coincidence, except that the Black Dragon immediately altered his course to intercept.
Dammit to all the hells! Senjit swore. This was going to go down the hard way.
Even with Senjit invisible, the great Black seemed to know exactly where he was and flew directly toward him. Dropping his invisibility spell, Senjit hoped his unique appearance would make the other take pause while he conjured protections against fire, lightning, and mind intrusion. He had no idea what the other Dragon’s capabilities were, and as the Black Dragon quickly closed the distance, Senjit felt uncertainty creeping in. This was not how he planned this confrontation in his mind; he wanted to study this ancient creature for a while before they met in battle.
When the two were still well apart, Senjit opened with a volley of lightning that made the Black Dragon recoil against the sudden attack. It paused only briefly, then pressed forward, mostly unaffected—except that it was angrier. The Black Dragon countered with a stream of fire from its maw that burst upon Senjit like a violent wave against the bow of a ship, but his protective shield repelled the majority of its damaging effects, leaving him unharmed. After that failure, the great beast surged forth faster than seemed possible for a creature of its size, and Senjit, unable to avoid the rush, took the full impact of the more massive Dragon.
The physical force of such a great body was almost overwhelming as it propelled Senjit violently backward, nearly causing the two to tumble end over end through the air. Then there was a sharp pain in his sides . . . the Black Dragon sunk its sharp claws deep into his flanks. With a gasp, Senjit could not think for a moment from the pain, let alone concentrate enough to cast a spell, and the two of them, wings flapping chaotically, began to plummet toward the sea.
Senjit knew he was not prepared for a physical struggle with such an overwhelming adversary; he couldn’t have been more than a quarter of the other Dragon’s size. And the pain from its deeply piercing claws, impossible to ignore, was excruciating. Senjit involuntary threw his head back and emitted a roar of pain. The sound was cut off mid-release when the Black Dragon snapped his jaws tight over Senjit’s exposed throat in a final death hold. Somewhere in Senjit’s reeling mind, he admired the skills of his rival and acknowledged that if he didn’t do something quickly, his struggle would be at an end.
With supreme effort, Senjit calmed his mind and reached out to the Black Dragon. Immediately he sensed the anger and rage coming from a dominant source inside—the Greater Demon of Anger that Metis warned him about. Probing further, he detected an impression of the former Dragon’s consciousness. Belthagore was his name, and he too far gone to be of any help. The Demon had done his work well. Senjit’s only hope was to attack the Demon’s mental hold on the Dragon directly, with the danger that if he failed, the Demon might be strong enough to control and subjugate his mind as well.
What choice do I have?
Aggressively, Senjit brought his formidable psionic abilities to bear and attacked the other’s mind with everything he had. With a sudden gasp, the Black Dragon released him, and the two arrested their fall. Apparently, the Demon was shocked to find that his adversary could attack him mentally, and as the two bodies separated, they mutually flooded each other with fire.
Then time seemed to sit still.
To anyone else, the two great beasts must have looked as if they were frozen high in the air, facing each other, with the only hint of what was happening beneath the surface of their scales betrayed by the intensity in their eyes. Senjit threw devastating psionic attacks at his foe, and the Demon, a worthy opponent with similar psionic abilities, rebuffed his attacks at every turn. Outwardly, neither of them twitched a muscle except to magically hover in flight.
It was an impossible struggle. Senjit assumed that he could easily dominate the disembodied consciousness of the Demon. How could I have been so arrogant? This Demon was not just as capable of using psionic power; he was the most adept with it that Senjit had ever encountered. Even more so than the Atlantean wizards of the Yellow Hall that he had met in the past.
In an effort to disrupt the Black Dragon’s focus enough to give him some little advantage, Senjit combined his mental attacks with a physical assault. Sharp rakes with his claws and vicious bites drew deep gashes in the scales of the Demon Dragon, sending blood misting into the air between them. Conversely, the blood loss from Senjit’s neck and torso wounds were starting to take their toll, and he was slowly becoming cold and fatigued.
His time was running short. Senjit allowed a small part of his mind to close his wounds. He would have to heal them properly later—if he managed to escape from this beast.
“Foolish little Dragon,” the Demon laughed inside Senjit’s head. “Do you think your paltry few centuries of life on this pitiful rock have made you a master of the mental arts? I have existed for millennia! I will block your feeble attacks until you are exhausted and then take your mind. Yes, little one. I can control you and the Black with little more effort.” The Demon’s laugh trailed to a quiet echo.
Senjit knew he would have to find a way to evict the Demon from the Black Dragon if he had any hope of surviving this battle. Physically he was outmatched by the much larger Dragon, and the Demon had brought their psionic struggle to a stalemate. Still, he was not hopeless or despondent, merely pragmatic about his current situation. With part of his mind continuing a relentless attack against his opponent, Senjit had to consider self-determination. Under no circumstance could he allow the Demon to take control over his own power and do harm to others.
His situation deteriorating by the m
inute, Senjit accepted that he was not going to win this battle. There would be only one of two outcomes: he would either escape or die. Then it occurred to him that the Black Dragon had not demonstrated an ability to use magic. That could be the only advantage Senjit had over him, and he quickly developed a plan that might just get him out of this alive.
Partitioning off a section of his mind, Senjit conjured a series of spells that would activate in a precise sequence that he hoped would give him enough time to break off and flee. He knew of a place in the mountain range called the Spine of Cel between Rasna and the Sicans. This place was known to the humans as Vers Patna—or Bowl of Fire in the language of the Rasna—and it was quite literally hell on earth. If he could reach it before the Demon Dragon overtook him, Senjit hoped he could use the treacherous terrain to his advantage.
With an enormous intake of air, Senjit built his fire deep in his chest. He would expand it until it reached capacity and exploded within his body, perhaps even taking them both out together, if it came to that. His mind fought the psionic battle, and his physical claws brought him closer to the other Dragon. It was an enormous effort of concentration to do both, but if he failed he would not survive.
Forgive me, Lysithea, he thought sadly. Forgive me, Alseid.
They were nearly locked together. Soon the time would be right, but he needed a small distraction before he triggered the first spell. “You seem challenged by a mere mortal so much smaller than the physical form you have taken, Demon!” he taunted.