Theria spotted an opportunity to grab a quick meal before heading back. But as she alighted on the rocky spur, her luck proved no better than it had all night. The girl dropped into the crevice between two of the rough blocks, and she was left holding a scrawny stick of a boy, hardly more than a toothpick.
Theria was considering how to best pluck the human girl out without getting too much foul-tasting seawater on the little snack when Berikarth exploded a fishing boat on the other side of the cove. His azure-scaled form certainly looked impressive while winging over the shallows and searching for another target to take his frustrations out on.
A desert dragon’s primary element was earth; Berikarth was almost as far out of his element here as Theria. Worse, his spirit manifestation was lightning, same as the storm dragons. Since his spirit breath was totally ineffective against his current foes, turning the sad little dinghy into kindling was the most amusing, if not actually the most useful thing she’d seen him do today.
She did have one water-spirit dragon supposedly on her team. Yiglelot, the ebony-scaled swamp dragon, flew high and wide around the cove where the storm dragons had taken to the sea. In his annoyingly whining way, he had made sure to tell Theria that he did not like salt water. His obvious fear of storm dragons colored his words.
She sat on the sun-warmed rock to watch what other foolish antics her unfortunate companions would do next.
Sad, stupid Irovnia was creating an iceberg at the mouth of the cove. Every fire dragon knew that ice dragons were notoriously not very smart, but Irovnia took stupidity to a new level. If the Dragon Master hadn’t forbidden it, Theria would have put the foolish cold-wyrm out of her misery long ago, if only to save the honor of all dragonkind from the embarrassment of her existence.
Theria certainly was tired; she almost bit the head off of the little twit in her claw without thinking and munched it raw. Eww, uncooked human spawn is the worst—who knows where the little vermin has been? She supposed she should barbecue it now, and the one in the crevasse, too. But you have to be careful; it was always hard not to overcook such small portions.
Just then, Berikarth launched another lightning bolt at a pair of men in the water. What really caught her attention was the way the bolt arched away from them. Standing in the surf, a short distance from the men, was a young girl holding a small glowing sword aloft. The lightning seemed caught on the blade for a brief instant, then it shot outward at a tangent and caught Yiglelot’s ebony form as he was flying over.
The redirected bolt from the sword was followed up immediately with a second, obviously more powerful bolt from the girl’s finger that also targeted the ebon-scaled swamp dragon.
Yiglelot spat acid at the girl and flapped rapidly for shore. The idiot was running instead of concentrating his attacks with Berikarth. Although, that second bolt had looked especially powerful and nasty and it left a jagged after-image in her eyes.
The swamp dragon’s acid spit seemed to roll harmlessly off the girl. She obviously had some kind of protection charm up. And to her credit, she seemed only mildly disgusted by being covered in dragon bile.
The girl gave Yiglelot and Berikarth a middle-finger salute, which Theria was sure, from her brief interactions with humans, was considered rude. She then dove into the surf, swimming strongly toward deep water, but angling away from the fishermen.
Interesting, she thought, the little one exposed herself to try and save the miserable humans. She had also concentrated her attacks on the one other water-dragon there, in an obvious attempt to secure their escape to the sea.
Reassessing the squirming morsel in her hand, Theria decided it might be more useful alive for a while. Her grumbling stomach disagreed, but she ignored it. It helped that the bony creature was so unappetizing, and she suspected he had just peed himself.
Theria carefully put the boy on the stone and lightly pinned him with one rear claw. These creatures were so fragile, she was afraid she would crush it before it was time. She cast a protective glamour against lightning on herself and began working on tactics.
The girl in the water continued to swim on the surface like a regular human. Did she actually think that they were stupid enough to believe that? Berikarth obviously didn’t; not bothering with another lighting attack, he swung around to cut the dragon-girl off from deep water.
That would be a good tactic, but he was forgetting one very important thing in his over anxiousness for a fight. There was a larger storm dragon out there, and Berikarth was over deep water himself.
“Pull up!” she yelled to warn him, but it was too late.
The bronze-scaled form breached the water at incredible speed, arching into the air directly in front of Berikarth. Theria had to admit it was nice form; the insufferable storm dragons certainly had grace.
There was no way Berikarth could avoid her. It was a simple grapple, and they both plunged into the cool ocean depths. Normally it would be a bloody and near-even battle; Berikarth was almost as large and vicious a fighter as Theria. But this would be no contest; an earth-dragon had just been pulled beneath the waves by a water-dragon.
She suddenly realized that she had rather liked Berikarth; he was the least annoying of the flight. As the thrashing and bubbling waters grew still, Theria assessed the situation. Irovnia was looking around nervously from atop her crude ice fortress; not much help from that quarter. Yiglelot was sitting on the beach, licking his wounds and avoiding Theria’s gaze. By the five-headed lady, he was also a water dragon, and the craven idiot was afraid to go near the ocean!
In the sudden quiet, Theria noticed the human. The girl had climbed back up the rock and was using an oddly bent stick to beat on the hind claw that still held the other little tidbit. Theria hadn’t even felt it.
She almost laughed at the pathetic creature until she saw her eyes. The tears had dried, and in their place was a grim determination, beyond fear and desperation. The little human girl hadn’t run when she had the chance. She was here; knowing she would surely die, but willing to give it all for the slim chance of helping her pathetic sibling.
But most interesting to Theria was that there was hatred in the girl’s eyes. Certainly, there was hatred for the fire-dragon that was going to kill her brother, but more importantly, there was the spark of hatred of her own weakness for being unable to stop it.
Theria knew that hatred, it burned brightly inside her like the volcanic fires of her home. She had learned to hate her own weakness when she first encountered Garrikon, that cruel and vicious old fire wyrm. He had brutally shown her the true meaning of power when he’d had his way with her and left her near dead.
At first, it had been her hatred that had spurred her to hatch the egg he had given her. But later she had learned to care for her little Scorch, until their secret lair was discovered and Garrikon came to crush the life out of both of them.
She had felt the same spark of hatred when Garrikon had little Scorch beneath his mighty claw, the same way the little one now squirmed and bled beneath her own claw. Theria had learned the lesson of dragon mercy that day, and now she would teach it to these creatures.
She carefully raised her leg from the little vermin and noticed he stuck for a second, like some offal she had stepped in. The human had inadvertently been impaled by her claw while she watched the sea battle. It didn’t look like he would immediately die from it, but these things were so soft and weak that it was hard to say. The heat from her claws had mostly cauterized the wound, but enough blood was flowing to enhance his bait value, at least for the short-term.
As the human girl cradled the dying boy, Theria drew back a little, reared in her best dramatic fashion, and inhaled noisily. It was a glorious, overacted sham, she wasn’t sure if the storm dragons would believe it. But they had little choice; if they truly wanted to save these tiny morsels, as improbable as that seemed to Theria, they would act now. Otherwise, she would just eat and leave.
By the Third Head, the bronze-scaled little one was fast!
If Theria had not been tensed and ready for exactly this, she would have missed her. As it was, she just barely caught her tail as she pounced, but that was enough.
The young storm dragon didn’t roll on her back, claws and jaws up in typical dragon fighting fashion, but exposed her back, her forelegs forming a protective circle for the humans beneath her. The fool was still trying to protect them!
She was just thinking this was going to be too easy when the lightning blast arced along the bronze tail and hit her full-on. How the little storm dragon managed to channel her element outside her breath attack was almost as big a shock as the bolt.
Shattering her protection charm, the coursing energy flowed through Theria, seeming to sear every nerve in her body. It was a strange sensation for a dragon who had never felt burning before. A lesser dragon would have let go, but the damage only fueled Theria’s rage. Even so, her little bronze-scaled adversary might have made it to the water in the brief second Theria was stunned, if not for the two fragile liabilities still encumbering her claws.
This had gone on long enough; Theria wanted the pleasure of a real fight.
The conflagration Theria released made the rock glow red. There was no chance of her prey evading it while held. But instead of trying to protect herself, the fool used her precious wings to deflect the fire from the humans. The stark raving idiot wouldn’t be flying anytime soon, and just to shield some worthless sub-creatures!
With a great thud, an azure carcass landed on the near end of the rocky breaker, and in an instant, the large storm dragon, Vestiralanna, reared astride it. The winds seemed to have picked up, the few clouds in the sky drawing closer and darker.
Theria had never heard the roar of a storm dragon before.
It was impressive enough to give lesser dragons pause. The atmospherics were a nice effect, but this one was not yet in her prime, and no true tempest came. Theria imagined she heard a slight gasp from the beach where the idiotic swamp dragon Yiglelot was watching nervously.
This is more like it! She thought.
At first glance, the two dragons may have appeared close to the same size. They were approximately the same length and wingspan, but Theria was a fire dragon. Her powerfully muscled body massed half again as much as the smooth, streamlined bronze form of a storm dragon.
Theria had already carefully planned for this encounter; there was no way of keeping it to these rocks. She would have to grapple and pull her adversary to shore. The cove side was the best option; the water was shallow, barely to her shoulder. And Irovnia had serendipitously blocked most of the cove mouth with solid ice.
She would prefer to fight completely on dry land but didn’t think a sea dragon was stupid enough to give that advantage. The only thing that brought her true rival this far out of the water was the threat to the little one.
Theria noted that her opponent looked barely scratched in her encounter with Berikarth, and her spirit breath was certainly unused against the azure earth dragon, so it would be fully charged.
Also, Theria knew the little one was far from out of the picture. She was effectively neutralized only in her insane notion to protect the humans. Theria didn’t want a second enemy at her back, even a small one. And that one had an impressive electrical charge. She would be an annoyance while Theria concentrated on her larger foe. She was certain that bolt had to be the little one’s maximum power, so it would be a while before she recovered her spirit energy for another lightning attack.
Theria wasn’t really worried, but it was best to slant the odds even more in her favor. “Yiglelot. Irovnia. To the sky!” she called.
“I am Vestiralanna, daughter of Yatharia, daughter of Bilantilis, daughter of the great wyrm under the sea, Leviantianus. If you have quarrel here, I claim it is with me.” The pronouncement rumbled across the cove, like warnings of a storm to come.
The black and white dragons circled high and wide around the cove. Apparently, they were unsure of who to be more afraid of—the storm dragons or Theria. It was time they were reminded.
“I am Theriaxus, daughter of Helstragia, daughter of Perviltaxus, daughter of the great wyrm at the fiery core, Ignitanus. This one has tried to steal my justly caught prey—if she does not relinquish them, she will die with them!”
It wasn’t a bad presentation, but it lacked something. She really needed to light something on fire to get in the mood, but there was nothing here to burn! She wished Berikarth had not sunk that boat. She was a fire dragon—being surrounded by this much water was really starting to irritate her.
“Speaking of justly caught prey,” Vestiralanna said. “I haven’t quite finished with mine.” With a sudden and savage strike to the blue’s chest, a rather impressive quantity of water was expelled from his mouth. There was a cough and a ragged intake of breath.
Berikarth was alive! Her luck was just going from bad to worse this day, but for some unfathomable reason, she felt glad.
“I grow weary of this one,” Vestiralanna continued, as she shifted her weight on the unconscious dragon’s blue-scaled throat. His breathing became noticeably more erratic. “Perhaps a trade?”
A storm dragon was playing her! Theria laughed with a puff of smoke. There were two ways to handle this—the reasonable way that her annoyingly calm bronze-scaled foe probably expected, and the fire dragon way. She, of course, chose the latter.
In an instant, Theria, the savage, proud and mighty fire dragon, pounced on her adversary.
To Merry, it felt like the world was ending. The very air seemed to explode with fire and lighting, and they were suddenly off the rocks and falling toward the water.
“Take a breath!” she heard a girl’s voice call out to them. The dragon that held them rolled onto its back as they hit the surface and they were spared the worst of the impact, but they were pulled under the cool water in a grip of bronze.
They sped just under the surface for a brief moment, and then descended rapidly. Looking up, Merry saw the bright sky shrinking in a dwindling round disk. She felt her heart clench as a dark dragon shape appeared, silhouetted in the disk of sky.
There was no more than a slight tingling in the water as a lightning bolt blasted up and into the dragon above. The silhouette vanished.
“Ha! Eat that!”
She heard the voice again. It sounded almost childlike, and it was perfectly clear underwater. Merry felt she must be going mad, or the sudden water pressure was getting to her.
In the brief flash from the lightning, Merry had seen they were in a round shaft of worked stone. The dragon made a sharp turn into a side passage and they were in total darkness. She could only feel the unbreakable clawed grip and the water rushing against her. They were moving fast, but it seemed an eternity, and her lungs were ready to burst.
They shot from the water still in total darkness, then she was placed roughly on a cool, hard, wet floor. The slight sloshing of water echoing off stone walls gave the impression of a large chamber. The bulky presence of the dragon was there for a second, and then it was gone without a splash.
“Poor little guy is hurt pretty bad.” Merry heard the voice again; then a soft chanting incantation and a faint blue glow appeared briefly. The glow dimly silhouetted a humanoid shape bending over the pale, unmoving form of her brother.
Standing in the returned darkness, it was all too much for Merry. The dragon had left them here, probably to eat later. Her left arm throbbed with pain from burns she had barely noticed before, and now some ghoul had come forth from the darkness to devour her poor dead brother before it attacked her. She felt something hard in her right hand and realized that she had somehow held onto Gully’s stupid stick.
She staggered forward, raising the club weakly.
“Good idea,” the voice said, and then chanted a single word. In an instant, the room was ablaze with light shining from the end of Gully’s club. It was just a young girl who was leaning over her brother; she was touching the end of the now-glowing stick Merry held.
; The girl turned back to Gully, and Merry froze at what she saw. Horrible blackened burns covered the girl’s back; her garments were a tattered and fused mess in that area. Was her first fear correct? Was this some undead ghoul child? No one could survive burns like that, let alone be doing… doing what to her brother? Merry looked, and in the light, she could see Gully’s wound closing, his burns fading. She was healing him with magic! His breathing came in shallow gasps, but he was alive.
The realization flooded through her, as her shocked mind finally began to right itself. When the second dragon suddenly grabbed them, she had struggled against it, thinking they were just scraps of food being fought over by great beasts.
The vision of the flames dancing hungrily over the rocks and washing around them came to her. Just the air from it burned their exposed skin. Yet they’d survived because the other dragon held them and took the brunt of the inferno. At that time, she imagined she heard another girl’s cry of pain. That same voice had spoken to them while they were carried to this chamber—this girl’s voice. This must be that dragon, and she had saved them! Merry sat heavily on the floor.
“You look pretty out of it.” The dragon-girl was kneeling in front of Merry now. “You better rest a bit.”
She took Merry left arm in her cool fingers while chanting a quiet incantation. Soon the throbbing pain subsided and the red burns began lightening.
“My name is Rukastanna Greymantle. Please call me Ruka,” the dragon-girl introduced herself when she finished the spell.
“I’m Meriwynn Fichgotz.” Merry went to rise, but Ruka’s hand on her shoulder stopped her. She wasn’t sure how one should introduce oneself to a dragon-turned-girl; she was going for a curtsy.
“Merry fish guts?” Ruka pondered off-handedly. “Cool name.”
“Shouldn’t you be healing yourself?” Merry asked. She didn’t correct the girl; her hated childhood nickname wasn't important now.
“I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” But the grimace of pain that crossed Ruka’s face as she stood up gave lie to that statement. “Light cures would just be a drop in the ocean anyway.”
Tales From Thac Page 29