by Marc Secchia
“Inside our friend’s cheek?” inquired the monk.
The Dragoness’ belly-fires burst into mortified life. “Ah … perhaps not.”
* * * *
The Azure’s first two trips above the Cloudlands, on days two and four after their slam-bang arrival in Herimor, yielded nothing of interest whatsoever. In accordance with Leandrial’s memory, this region was barren, and one of the few where Islands apparently stayed put. The vast majority of Herimor’s Islands were migratory after various different fashions–following currents, prevailing wind patterns, moon-cycles and draconic migratory paths, whilst others simply misbehaved for no apparent reason–making any attempt to map Herimor, fraught with ridiculous complication. Zuziana found no trace of Ardan or Aranya. On her third trip aloft, she was almost eaten alive twice over.
Upon returning to the enormous under-Cloudlands hole where Leandrial had necessarily withdrawn to imitate a caveworm for a few days, she greeted the Land Dragoness with a furious yell, “Barren? What the hells is barren up there–it’s crawling with Dragons, Leandrial! Crawling, I tell you!” Zip held up a wing. “Look at this. I’m … holy!”
Leandrial blinked her huge eye slowly, darkening the cavern before returning it to full light. “Ah,” she said.
“Ah?” So maddened was she, the Remoyan choked on her own fire.
Ri’arion leaped out of Leandrial’s mouth, drifting slowly through the thick air to a gentle landing on the sandy cavern floor. His boots float-stepped over to Zip. “She’s also lost plenty of scales,” he commented.
Missilo-ragions, Leandrial said. “Uh, that would be, missile-firing subdraconic lifeforms. Sorry, they didn’t inhabit this region when I left.” At Ri’arion’s forceful ‘humph’, she explained, “They’re pack hunters. Typically, they cluster over a Dragon, then when sufficient are present, they link together to attack it with a rude but powerful multi-mind psychic blast capable of overwhelming most Lesser Dragons’ shields, followed a millisecond later by a concerted discharge of gas-powered fang-harpoons. The swarm then attempts to disable their prey and eat them while they’re still conscious–is that what happened to you, Zuziana?”
“No, I invited them to share a gourd of lukewarm milk! What do you think?”
Leandrial blinked.
“Aye, that’s what happened! Only, stupid me, I thought they were friendly dragonets at first, so I let them cuddle my freaking shield, alright?”
“Are you alright, darling wife?” the monk worried. “Where are you bleed–”
GRRRAAAARRRGGGGH!! thundered Zip. Lightning flashed across the cavern, blowing a decently-sized crater in the nearby wall.
Ri’arion smashed his fist into his palm. “Precisely!”
“I’m fine–sorry, Leandrial. Didn’t leave my royal calling-card, unfortunately. I sort of … fled. Tail tucked between the legs. Rather humiliated and chewed upon, monk-love, but alive enough to be thoroughly steamed.”
“Next time, you’ll show them who’s the bigger Dragon, eh?”
The Land Dragoness said, “She’ll lick a few wounds first, like me. Then we girls will get out there and start kicking enemy hides around the Islands.”
Zip’s lips curled back to display every fang she possessed. “You shake their Islands. I’ll shred any that fall off. Like this! And that!” The Azure aped a few of Ri’arion’s martial arts poses, before tapping Leandrial’s fore-talon with her sadly mangled wingtip. “Deal?”
“I thought calling a Dragoness ‘girl’ was an unpardonable insult?” Ri’arion inquired.
“I was being culturally relevant,” Leandrial claimed.
As the females chuckled, one high-pitched and the other like a proximate earthquake, the monk was left rolling his eyes. He evidently decided that a stint of exercise was the best rejoinder.
* * * *
Using the word ‘steamed’ led Ri’arion onto one of his monkish brain-asides. He had Zuziana practising her water-based Blue Dragon attacks for three days straight, until she was heartily sick of swallowing water. To her relief, Leandrial finally declared her intention to move on. The rest, building on the foundation of the Amethyst Dragoness’ running repairs, had improved the worst of her wounds. Now she required good forage and ideally, medical help and communion with her fellow Welkin-Runners. For Zuziana’s part, she was amazed to note how her Dragon body had already begun to grow fresh membrane to close the fifty-seven holes neatly stitched in her wings by the missilo-ragions, and the exposed patches of hide developed a layer of fresh, diamond-hard scale-armour. Better than ever. She teased Ri’arion about his head needing as much regular polishing as her scales.
“We’ll proceed in the direction we think Ardan flew, as agreed,” Ri’arion stated, with a grin that approved of Zuziana’s joke. “Leandrial will reconnoitre below the Cloudlands and we’ll take a turn above. Safely. No coddling deadly life-forms this time, Zip-Zip–right?”
“Can’t carry you then, can I?” She winked flirtatiously at him.
“And you need to feed your Human form,” he added, not without a newlywed twinkle of his own.
“I’ll meet you at dawn on a direct south-westerly bearing,” said Leandrial. “Did I understand rightly that you two are planning to make hatchlings this night?”
“Wha-wha …” Ri’arion spluttered.
“Kindly poke your Island-sized muzzle in somebody else’s business,” Zip said firmly.
The Land Dragoness’ deep chuckles shivered the Cloudlands as she turned to walk down the side of the Island where she had deposited her companions. She called back, May your roost-love be pure-fires, little ones.
Did she regret never having had the chance to have a mate, Zuziana wondered?
Oh Aranya. Oh, precious little Sapphire … it seemed her every thought was about their lost companions.
The Azure Dragoness flicked her wings restively as Ri’arion mounted up. She stood crouched at the base of a low, mounded Island, one of seven in this small cluster. Six were heaps of rock supporting the barest signs of life–a few spindly bushes, lichens and mosses, and lizards. Similarly to the North, no Humans lived this close to the Rift, for the ambient poisons were too concentrated. Leandrial had singled out two classes of bottom-dwelling, filter-feeding ragions, however, which Dragon scientists had discovered processed many types of toxins through a surprisingly complex physical and magical process, converting them into nutrients. At a depth of five leagues below the Cloudlands, they infested the lower reaches of these Islands in their billions, a living layer of perse Dragonflesh that resembled overturned dinner-dishes slowly waving yellow vacuum-tubes to suck air into their primary stomach-lungs.
The ragions represented the lowest and most generalised rung of the draconic ecosystem in Herimor, Leandrial had taught them. In contrast to the Island-World North of the Rift, Herimor crawled, buzzed and sang with a vast array of life-forms, many of them subdraconic or of lesser intelligence, while thousands were parasites or deadly to Lesser Dragons, having specialised in a variety of creative ways of infiltrating or ambushing Dragons that her academic monk patently found fascinating and Zuziana found … rather less so. Spreading her wings, she caught the soft but rank breeze flowing up the side of the Island and rode it aloft.
Four full moons spread their cheer across the barren Islands as Zuziana winged her monk south-westward into the night. Toward midnight, the Shapeshifter Dragoness landed on a small, mossy Island and transformed into her Human form; after a certain amount of tarrying with intent and un-monkish waywardness, they rested beneath the swelling Yellow Moon. The Remoyan Princess snuggled against Ri’arion’s shoulder as she gazed up at the night sky.
“Soo …” she tickled his chin. “Alone at last. Beautiful night.”
Ri’arion quoted:
Midnight beauty was she; molten silver was he,
Like White Moons and night skies,
Silver darkness intertwined.
Zip chuckled. “That’s a rather risqué version of the Pygmy Dragon’s ba
llad, Ri’arion. Are you trying to suggest something? Wasn’t she a teenager–”
“Oh, merciful heavens, how I have sinned with thee,” he chuckled. Zip grinned over the fingers she was pretending to bite. “Alright, growler, you’re seventeen, irresistibly gorgeous and of age on all the major Islands. Most records show Pip must have been young indeed–if nothing else, her Dragoness’ purported size declares it.”
“What’s wrong with petite?” asked the Remoyan, archly.
“Nothing …”
“Then prove it, thou despicable Enchanter.”
Zip giggled as Ri’arion floated her above him with a curl of his magical power while he pretended indolence, arms folded behind his head and legs crossed as he looked her over with innocent glee. She covered her ruined torso with her arms, about to protest, when she realised his frown was directed over her shoulder. What? Traitor!
“Oi! You don’t just leave a girl floating,” she said crossly.
“I’ve never seen that star before,” he said, shamelessly ignoring her pout and a come-hither crook of her forefinger. That would not do!
In her most ominous Dragoness-voice, she said, “Ri’arion of Fra’anior, if you don’t start apologising right now for your despicable behav–mmm.”
Shortly, he surfaced for air and a quick gasp, “But Zip-Zip, that star–”
She sealed his mouth with an implacable Dragoness-kiss. “Certain men should learn when to shut the trap.”
* * * *
After a round of apologies that threatened to leave the moons themselves blushing, Zip and Ri’arion returned to their stargazing. “You mentioned a star?” she murmured sleepily.
“Forgot all about it.”
“Sweet liar,” she accused, loving him for the untruth.
His fingers curled a lock of hair at her right temple before he dropped a warm kiss on each eyelid. “Certain women should learn when to shut the trap.”
“Fighting talk, Ri–mercy!” With a yell, Zip leaped to her feet, socking the monk’s jaw with her right elbow by accident. “Where’s that star? Where? Apologies, but … oh great heavens, Ri’arion–noooooo!”
Her scream had barely begun to echo around the small Island when a strong pair of arms encircled her shoulders. “Precious petal, we know that’s impossible, don’t we?”
Shuddering, she snarled into his chest, “Want to reconsider your word-choice where that feckless friend of mine is concerned? She doesn’t … do … impossible.”
Salty tears smeared upon her lips.
“Star Dragons don’t … become stars, do they?” Ri’arion groaned, never bleaker of voice.
He knew, or at the very least, suspected what she did. Zip’s eyes rose to the smoky grey wall of the Rift-Storm. They surmounted the ash-clouds drifting above that ever-burning realm, lighting upon a strange upwelling … like vast wings of the most insubstantial cloud drifting across the face of the Yellow Moon … a Cloud-Dragon? Such was the legend; such was its ethereal beauty, a girl could only wonder at the boundary between imagination and reality, for the clouds opened oh-so-fleetingly upon a dance of translucent wings backlit by the White Moon, before veils of ash obscured them from sight.
A sharp pinpoint of light hung higher still, over the Rift. A soul-lost shiver caused Zip to wish to burrow beneath Ri’arion’s skin for comfort, like a babe returning to the womb. So fresh and new it was, its light seemed to sparkle with especial meaning for the two pairs of eyes that beheld it from a lonely, deserted Island in northern Herimor that night. That star had not been present when they first beheld the Rift. It hung low against a velveteen tapestry of star-dusted darkness, brighter and more breathtaking than she had ever imagined, yet her melancholy seemed both travesty and injustice as Zip craned her neck to gaze upward, rising upon her tiptoes as though she could imbibe the wondrous magic of starlight.
Amethyst winked into her soul.
She wiped her eyes. “Aranya watches over us, monk-love.”
Ri’arion made a narked noise in his throat. “What, first I can’t cuddle my wife inside our friend’s cheek-pocket, and now the nights are no longer sacred? Must we hide beneath stones?”
At this, even more a shock to herself than to the monk, Zuziana dissolved into helpless fits of laughter. Eventually she subsided, claiming an episode of moons-madness. Was it lunacy to harbour hope in her breast? She had seen a forty-foot Dragoness whirl on a brass dral to pitch an entire Land Dragon over her shoulder and out of the Rift-Storm. Perhaps the greater madness was not to believe the evidence of her eyes.
Come back to us, Amethyst star, she whispered.
Ri’arion kissed the crown of Zuziana’s head tenderly. Was her oath not to rise again?
They shivered. Oaths were not meant to come true. Not like this.
Aranya’s star had indeed risen.
* * * *
Over the course of the following week, Zip, Ri’arion and Leandrial swam steadily out of the Barrens into the Northern Kahilate region of Herimor, where they tarried for six days with a nomadic group of Flash Stellates who had wandered far from their usual foraging grounds two thousand leagues to the south. Zuziana knew that Leandrial had been hurt more severely than she cared to admit. She was a venerable four centuries old. Even Dragons did not heal as easily given such great age.
The peace-loving Stellates were ambulatory fortresses, very similar in outward body structure to the giant land tortoises Zip had once seen at Telstroy Island, but they boasted one thousand two hundred legs per beast. They walked with a centipede-like rippling motion. Their carapaces were perfectly circular mountains up to a league in diameter and half a mile tall, sporting fantastical spiked gardens that supported entire ecosystems of unique life-forms atop the back of each and every Stellate. Many shell-denizens aided the Stellates in one fashion or another, such as providing cleaning or defensive services, or even foraging for special titbits to supply the ever-busy beaked maws of such massive beasts.
It was special to Zip and Ri’arion, however, to observe how respectfully the Stellates treated Leandrial. Every utterance to her was punctuated with ‘o voice of ancient wisdom’, their honorific for a Dragon Elder, while the eleven youngsters of their Clan, mere mites sporting shells eight hundred feet in diameter, were far too overawed to speak with her, at first. Instead, they sang over, communed with and fed the great Land Dragoness. Then, they healed her with touches of their unique Flash Stellate power, an amber flare of Harmonic magic that emerged from the tip of each point of their stellated shells, and bathed Leandrial in a restorative light-aura. The technique was a very different branch of Harmonic magic to Leandrial’s, but apparently no less effective. Then, they offered their same services to the Azure Dragoness. She could not refuse.
Afterward, she flew aloft to meet Ri’arion on an uninhabited floating Island, which had already moved three leagues from its position at dawn, sixteen hours before.
She found the monk doing handstand press-ups on a flat, West-facing boulder. Shirtless–scrummy! The suns-set burnished his torso into lean planes of muscle. He was all hers to slaver over. The Remoyan Princess clicked her jaw shut before she started dribbling fire too shamelessly.
The suns-set diffused richly through the constant ash-clouds in these northerly latitudes of Herimor, making the twin suns resemble open meriatite engine furnace-windows, the fired-glass portholes that gave a view of the inner furnace. Hazy yellow-orange striations formed by the differing densities of airborne particulate matter lent the scene the air of an artwork roughly brushed by an enthusiastic artist, but the overall effect set her Dragoness-hearts a-dance. Gorgeous. Just look at the flame-burnished effect on Ri’arion’s granite abdominals!
She purred blissfully.
Sweeping into a compact landing on the boulder-strewn slope near her monk, the Azure Dragoness cast another glance at the Rift-star, as she and Ri’arion had dubbed the new phenomenon, which now lay low upon the northern horizon, above the storm’s dark smudge. The star twinkled cheerfully.
Perhaps four hundred leagues from the Rift, life had finally taken hold, and ran riot on the Islands. This unnamed archipelago boasted some fifty-two small Islands which at their orbital apogee approached within two hundred leagues of the Rift; this showed in a dense layer of mineral-rich but apparently toxic ash and dust which supported its hardy plant-life. Leandrial said that these Islands orbited a magnetic core deep inside the Island-World, returning to this position once every eight years. Zip’s nostrils tested the scents of damp ash–it must have rained–and the cloying honey-like scent of the clumps of carnivorous, violet skortik-flowers, the plant ubiquitous to this archipelago. The next archipelago would boast a different variant of skortik, Zip understood.
Oh, the joys of draconic science–what a load of twaddle and paw-tickling piffle. The Azure leered at the monk, finding him far more diverting.
Descending smoothly to his feet, the monk said, “Does draconic romance always come accompanied by fifty gleaming fangs and a curl of smoke?”
“You make my furnaces purr,” Zip pointed out throatily, then giggled more like a girl than a Dragoness. “Oh dear. Sorry. This Shapeshifter life takes some adjusting to, doesn’t it?”
“I’d better bathe before my man-stink offends those sensitive nostrils.”
“Mmm. Monk-smell.”
Ri’arion’s pulse leaped in his throat. “Alright … is there something different about you?” He cocked his head to the left, a mannerism that always accompanied an inquiring mind, Zip had learned. She stood still, but her paws clenched with sudden hope. Could it be? He said, “You stalk me with apparent intent, Remoy, but the tenor of your fires strikes me as pensive. And–”
He stumbled forward to lay his hand upon her lower chest, at the height of his shoulder. He touched the scales with a soft, knowing hiss.
“Aye,” Zip choked out.
“Thou wert ripped asunder, precious petal.” Ri’arion bit his lip, gulping awkwardly. “It … it is not … restored. Not entirely. The Flare Stellates sang for thee?”