Tales From Thac

by F P Spirit et al.

  But this was just the expected next play. The first stage to breaking a captive’s spirit was to tear down their pride. Her tormentor apparently didn’t know her spirit had already been thoroughly crushed.

  “Why?” Theria wheezed out. She might as well prompt the process on to the monologue stage, which leads to the ensuing torture and her eventual blissful oblivion.

  “Why save you?” Ruka said with a shrug. “No reason really, it’s just something I do—I save the weak and helpless who can’t save themselves. Today, that was you. Think about that the next time you have the weak in your own claws.”

  Not quite the megalomaniac bragging of a conquering dragon that Theria expected, but rubbing her snout in her own weakness and dangling false hope for future victories was a good play.

  This was such a young dragon, standing here pretending to be an inoffensive human. Yet Theria had seen her shrug off both Theramon’s subtle influence and the Dragon Master’s massive power. And even more impossible, this little dragon had casually broken her own spirit chains as well. Theria still felt the pain of that grip of iron that sent her to a drowned doom, and how those chains snapped like brittle bone at this dragon’s slightest touch.

  “How…” she started but broke into a fit of coughing again. This one was thankfully somewhat dryer than the last. Between hacking, she could only get out, “resist…Dragon Master…”

  “Wow, nasty cough,” Ruka mocked, “that’s what you get for smoking too much.”

  Theria just glared at her as best she could with only one eye available. Her tormentor knew it was vile water, not blissful smoke that she choked on.

  Ruka looked at her for a moment, then sighed and shrugged, saying, “Just don’t use dragon spirit, he can own that. Oh, and it helps to be mad.” She grinned and tapped her head at the last part.

  That made no sense, what power could a dragon use but dragon spirit? She didn’t buy the insanity claim either. Ruka was obviously unwilling to share the actual secret. For the first time since she awoke, Theria truly wished she had her fire back. She would beat the answer out of this smug human-loving dragon.

  A faint sound reached them, and Ruka looked behind her.

  “Oh good, they’re here.”

  Another light approached—this one, she sensed long before seeing it, was a flame. A small figure holding a torch came into view. He was a tiny bipedal lizard-looking creature that Theria was sure must be one of the Daiamanus. They were actually relatives of sprites who had taken on a draconic cast a few millennia ago due to some ancient vow or curse or something. They lived to serve dragons, and in the common tongue, they were known as kobolds.

  “Oh, glorious mistress of prodigious power, the tribe is prepared,” the creature said in a high-pitched and strangely accented version of high draconic.

  “Good job.”

  “I could never dream to comprehend your incalculable brilliance, oh glorious mistress of inscrutable wisdoms,” the kobold went on nervously, “but surely the humble Bendtail tribe could provide better tribute than what you requested.”

  “Don’t worry, Ratnosk, it’s not for me, and it’s exactly what’s needed.” Ruka cast a sly human smile at Theria when she said it. It might be the flickering torchlight cast from beneath her face, but she really did that creepy-looking-human thing well.

  “Send them in,” Ruka commanded Ratnosk.

  “As you wish, oh magnificent…” Ratnosk began, but Ruka cut him off.

  “Just go!”

  He scampered away with a ‘meep’ sound and Theria watched the open flame of the torch go with sad longing. It wasn’t for the light she pined; her vision was fine, the beach crisp and clear in the black and white of draconic darkvision. It was the glorious reminder of heat and fire she missed.

  A horde of kobold poured from caves out onto the beach. Three ostentatiously, but cheaply, jeweled ones approached Ruka first.

  “Oh, glorious and powerful master of spirit and elements, we have no greater wish…” all three began in unison.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Ruka stopped them, “not to me!”

  She walked over to Theria, and in a theatrical flash of lightning and deafening rumble of thunder, she assumed her true form. Theria had forgotten how small this dragon was, her spirit just felt so much more immense than her physical size.

  “Here is the mighty Theriaxus,” Ruka boomed in full draconic volume. “As you can see, she is a far larger and more glorious dragon that I. It is to her that the Bendtail should swear!”

  “But you must first prove your worth,” Ruka went on to the rapt crowd. “Bring forth your tribute!”

  There were well over a hundred kobolds, the vast majority of which had large bundles of sticks or small logs on their backs. These they began placing reverently around Theria’s body. A large number had sacks that they disgorged coal from. And about a dozen had small casks of oil that they poured on the wood and coal.

  As they were about halfway through, Ruka leaned down and whispered, “You’ll either be cured or burned alive—either way, you’ll be a true fire-dragon again.”

  The kobold Ratnosk approached Theria, bowed, and said, “I am sorry, oh glorious mistress-who-could-have-been, but I am already sworn to another and must leave with her.”

  Ruka added still in a whisper only for Theria’s draconic hearing, “Just one is a headache, a hundred may actually make you insane.”

  With that, the dragon Ruka carefully picked her way through the throng. Turning back only once, she called out in common, “Good luck, I’m bailing on this barbecue!”

  As she left, she partially unfolded her wings as if stretching and Theria could clearly see the blackened burn holes on the shimmering bronze surfaces. That movement was no accident, but Theria had no clue what it meant. This dragon had great cause to hate Theria, yet she did all this to save the enemy who hurt her so.

  Perhaps Ruka was insane. But she was the only one who held the secret to stand against the Dragon Master. It was something to ponder during the long, slow burn it would take to restore her spirit.

  Ratnosk solemnly passed the torch to the clan elder, bowed, and ran to catch up with his mistress. As the elder placed the first lick of fire to Theria’s pyre, the chanting began.

  “Oh, glorious and powerful master of spirit and elements, we have no greater wish, and there is no greater fulfillment than to serve you in both our life and our death. Take of us what you will and we will give you our all.”

  A funeral pyre and a fanatically chanting cult? Theria supposed this could be the start to a glorious rebirth!

  They sailed out from beneath the starlit shadow of lover’s overlook just at moonrise. The sultry summer moon crept up over the ocean, swollen, orange, and at least to Merry’s imagination, fraught with a promise of danger and romance.

  She found herself at the tiller, as the menfolk fumbled jovially with the best way to set the unfamiliar rigging in the wan moonlight. The small but dramatic silhouette of Gully was at the prow, centered in the rising moon, eagerly scanning the sea and sky ahead with ‘his’ mighty sword Inazuma in hand.

  When Ruka had inevitably taken her sword back, Gully neither pouted nor sulked, neither action was in his nature. He immediately found the most appropriately sized stick and continued practicing his pretend sword moves. And what shocked everyone but Gully, both figuratively and literally, was that he could still shock people. It was a small minor charge, to be sure, little more than that generated walking across a thick rug. But he could generate it at will and force it down one of his pretend stick-swords.

  When Inazuma told him that was the basis of spiritblade magic, and if he practiced for many years, he might eventually evoke true tempest power on a sword, there was no stopping him. After Pa made him stop shocking her, Gully ran around the beach practicing his idiotic blade technique. It should have been obvious where he’d end up, and Merry could only fault her exhaustion for not realizing it sooner. Only Gully was crazy enough to shock a mostly-dead d
ragon awake.

  As they cleared the headland between the inlet and Fisheye Cove, Merry turned the boat from east to north, swinging the ever vigilantly posing silhouette of Gully out of the rising moon. Just before they rounded the ridge, a bonfire flared to life on the beach behind them. It was huge, to be seen at such a distance, a small but bright flare of light in the looming dark shadows of the cliffs behind them.

  Looking at the far-off conflagration, Merry imagined she saw great infernal wings spread out from the flames in rapture. Then in another moment, they were behind the promontory, and Merry wasn’t sure what she saw. No one else on the boat had noticed it—or at least they didn’t mention it.

  They tacked north along the coast on the nightly land-breeze, back toward Ravenford.

  The pale sands of the cove clearly caught the moonlight, so it was an even better landmark on a night such as this. As they were coming abreast Fisheye Cove, she began to hear a faint screaming.

  The sound was growing louder and was definitely approaching from the aft. Scanning the glittering waters behind them, Merry could see a wake of white heading directly toward the boat.

  Everyone could hear it by this point. The menfolk stopped their debate on the best set of the foresail and looked to each other nervously. Gully came bounding back across the ship in a nimble leaping dance around mast and men.

  “What is that?” Gully asked, pointing the sword toward the approaching creature.

  “Don’t know,” said Uncle Vic who stood on the starboard rail to try and get a better view. He was leaning out, holding a line with his good arm for balance.

  It sounded like some high-pitched banshee. They could now make out a small figure near the center of the wake. And it was approaching fast.

  “You two get in the hold,” Pa said as he came back to take the tiller from Merry.

  After everything they had been through and done, Pa wanted to protect them? They should be the ones protecting him. She was at a loss of how to say it without hurting him.

  Gully, of course, had no such restraint, declaring, “Stand back, I’m going to blast this creature out of the water.”

  Uncle Wex cried, “Wait!” at the same time that Inazuma commanded, “Hold!”

  A familiar dragon head rose out of the water as Ruka slowed and pulled up behind the boat. She plucked the now-silent Ratnosk from her back and deposited him gently but unceremoniously on the deck, where he promptly collapsed.

  “You brought him?” Uncle Wex asked, sounding both surprised and annoyed.

  “Tried leaving him,” Ruka said with a rise of eye-ridge and tilt of the head that Merry interpreted as a dragon shrug. “He’s insistently dedicated.”

  She could tell that Ruka was trying to sound irritated, but was in too good a mood to pull it off. In fact, her voice sounded happy now, and Merry took her first real good look at their benefactor in dragon form.

  The moonlight made her emerald dragon eyes seem to glow with an inner luster. And her lively serpentine form beneath the waves also caught the moon’s radiance and reflected it back in sparkling flashes through the water. They had a magically shimmering dragon-wake as Ruka easily kept up behind the boat.

  As beautiful a sight as that was to her eyes, when Merry looked beyond sight through her new magical senses, her breath failed her in a quiet gasp. Ruka’s spirit-form glowed with a blinding radiance and hummed with a happy tune that resonated with the joy of the open ocean under the moon. Here, she had relaxed enough for the full nature of her dragon-spirit to shine through.

  It was something that Merry knew she would never forget. She longed for ink, paper, and the elusive words to try and capture the feeling it evoked in her. But she knew that even if she had her book, she wouldn’t dare to look away for fear of waking from the dream.

  “Wow,” Merry whispered to herself when she remembered to breathe again.

  Ruka seemed to notice Merry’s scrutiny of her unguarded spirit. And in a second, she clamped down on it. But like a shuttered storm lantern, some of it could not help but leak out. It was still powerful as you would expect a dragon-spirit would be, but just a dim reminder of the unfettered glory of a moment before.

  “Anchor at the cove,” she commanded their little group, “and let’s scavenge as much of your gear as we can.”

  “It’s too dark,” Uncle Wex pointed out.

  “Oh,” Ruka winked one glittering draconic eye at Merry, “from what I hear, we have a mighty sorceress. Light will not be a problem.”

  Merry’s light, although useful, was one of several, and secondary to the bright glow of two moons. The real one, now risen completely above the waves, and an illusionary one. The false moon was a silver disk which glowed brightly a dozen feet over Gully’s head. For a sword, Inazuma seemed to have an artistic streak; the dragon-in-the-moon image on it was subtle, but distinctly beautiful.

  “Behold the legend of Gulhawk the mighty,” Gully intoned.

  Having his own personal moon caused what would have been endless ‘chosen one’ posturing by Gully. Ruka had to rap him on the head with one claw-knuckle to get him back on track.

  “Focus,” Merry admonished him.

  There was one more light for their party—Ruka made the spines down her back glow. Although not the brightest light, to Merry it was the most dazzling. Illuminated with a soft multi-hued glow, Ruka had her spines raised nearly straight up. Looking closely, Merry could make out the pattern for light on each. But it was subtly different; the loops were shifted slightly, creating a different color and warmth to the light. And they were shifting more as she watched.

  She could almost envision how pattern variations like that could create a multitude of colors. It would take a phenomenal amount of power and control, but from just that, could you form intricate illusions like Inazuma’s old-man ruse? Looking inward to that place in her mind where the light pattern was stored, she wondered what would happen if she just altered this or that strand a little…

  A very light tap on her head brought Merry back to awareness.

  “Focus,” Ruka made an excellent attempt at echoing the scolding tone that Merry usually had for Gully. And, although it wasn’t physically visible in her draconic visage, Merry envisioned a friendly, ironic smile from her.

  So, they split into two groups to begin their salvage. Ruka, Pa, Uncle Wex, and Gully worked on the main wreck of the Foam Lady. With a dragon hauling gear up in great bundles from underwater, the two uninjured men sorting and untangling lines and sailcloth, and Gully providing Inazuma’s light and hopefully staying out of the way, they began making quick work of it.

  Uncle Vic and Merry were delegated to search the beach for any useful flotsam. Rather than head along the waterline, Uncle Vic made a beeline for a shadow up on a small dune that was a good distance from the water and the area of the wreck.

  When she got closer with her light, Merry realized it was the picnic basket that Ma had packed for them. How Uncle Vic had spotted the basket in the moonlight from such a distance was almost as big a mystery as how it got over here. But Ma always said Vic’s one magical power was never missing a meal.

  The sand across a good portion of the beach, including most of the way over here, was churned by heavy dragon claws. But in this area around the picnic basket, there were no dragon tracks. And other than theirs, there was just a single set of human-size tracks going to and leaving this otherwise pristine area of beach.

  “All the fishcakes are gone, but the honey rolls and jam are still here. Awesome!” Uncle Vic declared after a brief search of the basket. “And your sunhat is also here, with the brim pinned politely under the basket so it won’t blow away.”

  “Irovnia?” Merry guessed.

  “No, it was a woman who sat here,” he stated, pointing to an indentation in the sand next to the basket.

  “You can’t tell anything from that,” she held her light closer to examine the amorphous marks in the sand.

  “I’m a studied expert in the shape of woma
n’s rears, and this one was certainly endowed.”

  “Gross, you pig.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not wrong. It wasn’t that little dragon-kid sitting here.”

  “Who then, someone from the ship? Maybe the princess? Can your pig-powers tell if it was a royally endowed posterior?”

  Uncle Vic just flashed his most irritating smile at her, grabbed the basket, and placed the sunhat on her head.

  “Come on, we have a lot of beach to cover.”

  It was kind of sad to find the guts of their trusty old boat strewn down the beach, with a lifetime of old tackle and fishing gear mixed in. They found so much, they had to make piles, and return to the boat for something to carry it all in. Luckily, the old three-handled fish basket was among the items recovered from the wreck.

  Ruka was recharging Inazuma; his bright moon illusion had depleted a large amount of his power. Gully was standing nearby, disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to hold the blade while it was being blasted with dragon lightning.

  As the men hauled the large basket, filled with the flotsam of their life, back to the new boat, Merry took the opportunity to head out on the south breakwater. She wanted to look once more on the place where mighty dragons had raged. It seemed like a lifetime ago, rather than just this morning.

  The stones were fire-blackened across most of the large end-boulder. Only an area near the center was clear of the burn marks. Merry imagined she saw the outline of a valiant and noble little dragon that had shielded a pair of kids with her body. Ruka had refused to show Merry her wings, but even folded, they looked terrible.

  A reflected flash caught Merry’s eye, and she saw the broken remains of her ink bottle on one corner of the stone. It was the symbol of her art and love, smashed there on the rocks. An even blacker mark than dragon fire upon the stone.

  Then, near it, she saw the book, and her heart leaped with joy. Somehow, thank the gods, it was securely wedged between two rocks, and well above the tideline. As she snatched it up and held it to her breast, Merry felt a tingle like magic in her old worn tome. The feeling was gone in a flash of her over-wrought imagination.