by Marc Secchia
Predictably, giggles followed as he switched hands and set to work on the right.
‘One, two, three for Aranya. Four, five, six for her love,’ he counted silently. ‘Seven, eight … may I be faithful, even in my mind … nine, ten–’
“Look. A shooting star,” said Shizina. “It’s … low.”
The note of alarm in her voice stopped Ardan in his tracks. He peered up past the indolent harem consorts, over the Island’s low, mounded green hills, to the skies beyond. Opaque skies. Storm. Where had those clouds suddenly appeared from, brooding and majestic in their serried ranks, like a dark army gathered to salute the pinpoint of brilliant light that hurtled from the storm’s heart? Curtains of sable swept aside to make obeisance to her, the star descending in the train of her majesty.
Mawkish fool. No way that was Aranya. It must be a meteorite … then why had his heart risen to strangle his throat? His pulse ran wild. He could not breathe. All his world was that star, and the hope it epitomised.
She blazed across the sky from the direction of the Rift. Low, as Shizina had said. Rocketing toward the Shadow Dragon as if expressly aimed at his inflamed forehead. Inanely, Ardan remembered Ri’arion explaining how if a shooting star came in at a shallow angle, it should either glance off the Island-World’s atmosphere like a river-stone skipped across the water, or burn up entirely. There was nothing about that approaching light that suggested a Dragoness, only the wild intuition of his heart. The rejoicing. The mad twitching of his toes.
Sapphire came to him, and he clutched the dragonet against his neck. Habit made him careful not to touch the Lavanias collar, but Sapphire could. He glanced at Bane. Rapt. And why ever not?
“It’s her,” he whispered to the dragonet.
“Ari?” squeaked Sapphire.
Immense speed. Eerie silence. The star drew a white streak across the sky, drawing closer at a velocity that beggared belief. Was it slowing? Trails of gossamer light seemed to hang off the star’s skirts, creating a shimmering silver-white veil that elongated before his astonished eyes.
As the apparition hurtled overhead, unknowable leagues above the Isle of his captivity, Ardan and everyone else watching, ducked reflexively and turned to watch it pass.
A high-pitched whistle followed, then the shockwave. KAABOOOMM!!
Pounded to his knees, he could not have heard a Dragon roar right in his earhole, but the Island swayed violently, knocking up against its neighbour as a tremor passed through the Archipelago. Rocks and ragions fluttered down into the Cloudlands, followed by fresh rivers as reservoirs within the dragonworm-honeycombed Islands cracked and spilled their contents. The shooting star vanished into the distance, below the horizon. Its echoes faded like choleric thunder, lingering far longer than the lustre of her presence.
Ardan found his feet. “Mercy. Was that you, Aranya?”
Then he saw a Red Shapeshifter Dragoness rising into the evening sky, her murderous gaze fixed upon him. He was deaf, but she had clearly overheard.
His brow drew down defiantly. Make of that what you wish, Marshal Tixi.
And tremble.
* * * *
Hold on, Star Dragoness. Keep your cool. Preserve your fires.
Strange, whispery voices surrounded her. Cajoling. Reassuring. Laughing in wild, stormy glissades of sound; caressing her scales with paws of wind.
Stay with us, Star Dragoness. Enjoying the ride?
Aranya tried to open her eyes, but immediately had to resort to squeezing her membranes shut and slitting her primary eyelids to combat the windstorm surrounding her. All was white. Gloriously white, in the way that starlight surpassed understanding, singing directly to her soul. Instinctively, she pressed up a tapered shield and was immediately rewarded by the sight of Islands swishing by. Whap. One Island. Whap, whap-whap. She blasted past them with outrageous abandon.
Another voice chimed in, Clouds are never rough, but she’s travelling too fast for one of her kind. Shake one of their hard little Islands, she will.
The Amethyst Dragoness gazed around her in wonder. Cloud-Dragons, she breathed. Are you–
Of course, sweet low-dweller, said one of the wispy clouds-with-wings, Dragons of the greatest heights are we, incarnate of the winds, blowing where we please. We call ourselves … how may we explain in your dialect? Perhaps, Wisp-Dragons. Wisps.
The Amethyst Dragoness had the barest impression of filmy wings, of insubstantial threads of draconic fire-life, incongruously, speaking to her with chiming clarity. They were as puffy as clouds, myriad lives sporting around her as she imagined Dragons might play together in a terrace lake, spinning and leaping and shooting through the waters. Their speech was as ephemeral as their chosen environment, like a high, tumultuous descant that added musical runs of notes to denote nuances of meaning she could only guess at. Nevertheless, she sensed that they intended to help her.
She began to say, Thank you …
Compress her velocity, my cloud-brethren, came a cry. Compress, shield, bring her down where the Star indicated. Shape her flight.
Aranya blew past many strange, floating Islands, seeing waterfalls tumbling into space off their edges and new forms of draconic life lurking in cave-mouths and lumbering Dragons transporting weapons and floating Human cities and once, on a rocky isthmus, a dark, upturned face–Ardan! She ripped past him so fast that she could not tell through the bright light, even with her Dragoness’ eyes, if it was truly him she had seen. All she saw was a group of Humans flattened in her wake and an angry-looking Red Dragoness, already a speck on the horizon.
She flashed past mountains, hurtling along a trajectory that would have been fatal had she so much as clipped a single peak, but she passed between them by a miracle of precision. Suddenly the Amethyst felt as if she had pitched headlong into a bale of cotton wool. Feathers. Wings brushing her face, bodies folding more softly than the down of the finest royal bed, all around her muzzle and wings, not hurting–assisting. Tearing when they needed to tear, only to reform and leap alongside her with joyful shouts and bugles. Hundreds. Thousands. Together, the Wisps cushioned her headlong rush, and that was for the best, for Aranya flew so low now, leaves whipped her body and Islands rocked in her supersonic wake.
WHAM-BLAM-BLAM! She and her muffling Wisps ripped a canyon of destruction through the forest atop a large Island.
BOOM! She skidded off the surface of a lake, blasting water hundreds of feet into the air.
The water crystallised around her body as a sheath of ice.
More, sang the Wisp-Dragons. Pile in thick, pile her high! More, my wing-brothers!
She felt as if she must suffocate beneath the manifold layers of their presence, but she did not. Where was the heat of her draconic life? She was still colder than ice, so cold, she sensed the air whipping over her left behind a trail of crystals … Aranya tried to gaze about her, but the ice was so dense she could not shift her head. What she saw was as through the thickest pane of crysglass, her gaze fixed upon a great building ahead of her, atop an Island. No, five rows of buildings as large as warehouses … the Amethyst wished to shut her eyes, but could not. They were forced open by the freeze.
The impact was indescribable. Shocking. Battering her body and mind as though Fra’anior himself punched her repeatedly across his caldera. The first building imploded, as did the second. The third closed around her slowly, the fourth collapsed upon her sliding course. Debris rained down, thick beams and stone walls trapping the Amethyst amidst a maze of ice, rubble and ruin.
An unknowable time later, Aranya found herself staring at her left forepaw, counting talons. Five perfect, steaming claws. A whole pawful.
We’ll leave you now, whispered the Wisps. You must change yourself, precious Star. Hide amongst these Dragons for a time. Veil your nature. Hear us? Hide!
Their commands washed upon ears that heeded, but did not understand. Aranya knew she had travelled from a place outside of experience or imagination. She was a star descended to the Island-W
orld, beaten and bruised, and weaker than any hatchling, yet magical fire-life wuthered within her hearts and for that, her soul sang its thankfulness.
Debris avalanched to a standstill all around her. The Star Dragoness had come to rest within the caved-in shell of the fifth building. Nothing smelled familiar. Shards of ice surrounded her prone form, shattered by the impact. Smoke and steam drifted languidly over the scene. Her dulled senses took in splintered beams. A cart-wheel, slowly spinning on its axis. Mounds of rubble lit by flickering fires, juxtaposed with towering shards of ice. She had a narrow field of vision through the debris to an Island-forest that stood riven, as though a mad barber had shaved a path through its hair.
Aranya shuttered her eyes. Izariela, whatever this plan was, I salute thee. And we shall have words when you rise from your tomb–beautiful, aching words.
She wept without tears.
* * * *
Dragon voices roused the Dragon-Princess. Dragons! Petulant, hot-tempered words washed into her ear-canals, cursing the destruction, the fires, the wreckage of the barracks. The speaker was an Orange Dragon of a size that made her brow-ridges twitch, stumping around in the devastation with a furious curl of his lip and lava-like orange fires leaking constantly from his nostrils. Her own nostrils twitched, taking in hundreds of evocative odours. Tropical vegetation. Unfamiliar Dragon-scent. Sulphur. Unknown timbers. And her own scent, like pure starlight …
The Orange Dragon was a bruiser, scarred by many battles, missing much of his left mid-wing near the secondary wing-joint. His helpers were all … Grey-Green? Aranya stared through her narrow peephole. All of them? Weird.
Hide, the Wisps’ last words echoed in her mind. Hide amongst these Dragons for a time.
How was she supposed to hide? She was a unique colour.
Dimly, her mind creaked into motion, as if her body were waking from hibernation–which perhaps, it was. Pathways long unused groaned and tingled as novel sensations spread through her listless limbs and unfeeling wings. Colour? The Dragons were discussing the probable path of the meteorite, eyeing the rapidly melting ice and fires with patent amazement. Mercy, they were all … monsters. Bigger than Ardan, and she had thought him–Ardan!
The Orange Dragon’s muzzle jerked about. Over here! The rubble trembled and collapsed as his massive tonnage pounded toward her. He pounced two hundred feet. KABOOM! A beam dug painfully into her flank. Dig here! I hear hearts. Dig, you scale-less drago-malworms! Curse your sires, your dark fires, the blighted wombs that deformed your eggs …
Hide? When her every fibre screamed from the renewal of blood and fire-life?
Aranya tasted this idea, watching as Grey-Green paws scooped up rubble and tossed aside beams the size of trees. The Orange was certainly feared, his rough commands sparking instant obedience. But if she became just like one of the rest … aye. Magic swelled within her being. That, unlike the rest of her, seemed primed for use. Aranya concentrated on her strange, Chameleon-like power. She must be just like them. Sleeker, perhaps, but exactly the same colouration. Her scales tingled as the change rippled through her body–a shame she could not just Chameleon away her ugliness …
The rubble shifted. Steam hissed somewhere. Her body was rapidly heating toward its proper draconic temperature, now, melting the last of the ice rimed around her legs and wings.
With a heave, four Grey-Greens levered half a roof off of the no-longer-Amethyst Dragoness. The Orange loomed overhead, scowling fit to set her tail alight. He cursed luridly. Dragonish so rough it made her talons curl, beat upon her freshly opened ear-canals. Why, it’s the ugliest freaking piece of windroc-filth I ever did see. Ugh! He spat sideways, a glob of molten rock. Get over here, you spukkuri flatworm!
A massive paw seized her throat and hauled her unceremoniously out of the debris. In a moment, Aranya found herself dangling in the air like a chastised puppy, given as the Orange was four times her size. With the air of a grizzled commander, he vented his spleen upon her at considerable, obscene and ear-splitting volume. His accent was so thick, Aranya understood barely a word in four, but those were enough to singe her ear-canals.
Eventually, a question emerged amidst the execrations. Where did you fly from, you pox-blasted wretch?
The sky, the Amethyst replied before sense intruded.
Bellowing in affront, the Orange shook her like a rat. Fire roared over her, but Aranya was too disoriented to do anything but let his rage slide over a tiny shield she managed to form around her head. Perhaps it was a mercy she was so limp; his ire did not appear to damage anything too badly.
Stupid, fire-spitting bully! Her fires rebelled, but Aranya withheld. She must not reveal any secrets. That was paramount.
When she emerged from a sea of roiling orange-gold flames, it was with a firm chin and steely mien. Aranya eyeballed the Orange, measure for measure, from a distance of twenty feet. The Orange Dragon’s mountainous shoulders stiffened perceptibly, a battle-reaction. Whatever he saw in her, the Dragon was not unimpressed, but he disguised it well.
With a grunt, Huh! Sputum-flecked piece of fodder! he tossed her to one of his minions. We’ve matches tomorrow and one more piece of windroc bait shall serve to fatten the lists. Blasted expensive to buy fodder nowadays. Put her in with–his craggy jaw cracked into possibly the most unnerving Dragon-grin Aranya had ever seen–aye. Lock this gruesome eyesore in with Gangurtharr. A well-matched pair.
His booming laughter hounded Aranya for long minutes as two Grey-Greens dragged her off by the wings, down a wide tunnel, and into their underground lair.
* * * *
The cell door clanged shut behind her tail. Enjoy, stupid fodder.
I’m not fodder! Aranya snapped, stung. What the volcanic hells was it with the name-calling?
The two huge Dragons moved off with mirthful snorts of fire, leaving her behind a locked, Dragon-sized cell door furnished with bars eight inches thick. Grief. At least her fine dungeon was clean. And occupied by the fattest Dragon she had seen since Thoralian’s oversized kin had emerged from their enforced hibernation at Yorbik. The male Dragon’s hide was a horrible mass of trench-deep scars, as though he had been burned by acid in his youth and never recovered. The scars ran over his left eye, leaving it a milky, fireless white.
The other glared at her. Seen an uglier Dragon somewhere?
She did not know why exactly, but Aranya swung her muzzle about so that he could appreciate the bone-deep crater in her cheek. Seen an uglier Dragoness somewhere, Gangurtharr?
He made a noise between a startled howl and a derisive growl. Then, he snapped, I’m napping, dead-meat. Don’t disturb.
I have a name!
Truly shocking. Fodder, was it? Shut your unsightly fangs, witless fodder. His right eye closed; the left, apparently lidless, remained staring at her. Freaky. Aranya had never been dismissed quite so crassly. She had no rejoinder.
In the end, she packed away the huffy Princess of Immadia and her even huffier Dragon Shapeshifter, and pressed her muzzle against the cell’s talon-scored, granite flagstone floor. Aranya breathed in the scents of dust, Dragon blood and death.
Soon, her eyes lidded.
* * * *
Aranya clawed her way up the impossible mountain. Who waited above, Thoralian or … her Human form? She regarded her paws in surprise. This time it was her Dragoness’ turn to crawl up the mountainside, bellying along like a worm? On cue, her fire-stomach punctuated her thoughts with spurts of fire from her nostrils.
She spread her wings to wheel away.
So there was a storm up there–she lurched again, more violently than the snap-catch of her wings against the breeze. A storm of amethyst clouds and distinctly violet lightning. Now what? One day, she really must spend a few minutes trying to actually understand what was happening to her, instead of just flying slap into trouble. Actually, that was the best part. Trimming her wings to an acute angle of attack, Aranya stormed up her peak. If the Yellow-White cannibal was up there, even in this spirit-w
orld, then she would greet him with a fistful of talons and a super-hot fireball up the left nostril.
Storm was her realm. The Amethyst Dragoness did not slow in the slightest as she whipped into the storm. The wind promptly seized her and tried to splatter her against the mountainside.
What? Flying is cheating? she laughed as lightning skittered off her scales. Riding the blast, she looped around the thin column of black rock. The wind changed direction. With a cunning cupping action of her wings, Aranya harnessed its power to launch herself higher. Ha! Want to fight? I’ll just–
Aranya yelped as a violet lightning-barrage smacked her against the cliff. Half-dazed, she fluttered away, only for the wind to seize her by the scruff of the neck and dash her against the rock a second time. Clucking hubris, hubris, o Immadia, to herself, Aranya spread her talons and gripped the cliff once more. Lightning skittered off her scales. Perhaps Dragons needed the odd lesson in humility–something along the lines of keeping their fires honest, or white, or whatever the equivalent saying was.
If she had to crawl to save her Island-World, she would bloody her knees crawling.
If she had to inch along, she would inch her way into eternity.
Perhaps an hour later, or perhaps ten, for she had no way of knowing the passage of time in this place, Aranya’s outstretched paw clutched only a fresh breeze. No more lightning, she realised, tiredly. The wind had vanished. The scent of ozone faded from her nostrils. The Dragoness hauled herself over the edge like a wet hound exhausted from swimming.