by Marc Secchia
“Aye. Because this is Aranya the Assassin we’re talking about. Fra’anior’s kid grand-shell-daughter. She doesn’t seem to understand the word–”
“–impossible?” Ardan finished for him.
The Dragon snorted, “Or, enough, stop, slow down, be selfish, let it lie, play dead … anything! She has a ridiculously limited vocabulary for a creature of royal upbringing.” He aimed a talon at Ardan. “What’s not to love about that, eh?”
Man and Dragon stared at each other, sharing an appalled chuckle. Then, they charged off to battle. Surreptitiously.
* * * *
Aranya winged amidst starlight.
The night was light yet fey, the stars having an especial brilliance as only the White Moon was visible, far above the Lost Islands. It was unusual not to see so much as a sliver of the Yellow Moon above. Seen by starlight, the scene below seemed peaceful, just mountaintops peeking out of immaculate white Cloudlands. One could almost imagine an Island-World devoid of war.
Yet, another Island had struck the great shield as she traversed the hangar.
She must act. It was neither in her nature nor in her hearts to stand still when her friends were dying, and all knew that the Thoralians would never stop until all the Island-World bled upon the alter of his hubris and greed.
She saw nothing of the old Marshals, yet the Dragonsong of her hearts led her once more into the icy heights of the atmosphere. She knew she would find them there.
* * * *
Zuziana snapped, “See anything–Gang? Huari? Ardan?”
The other Dragons shook their muzzles. Strapped in upon Gang’s spike-saddle, which eschewed the usual girth-strap in favour of ratchets affixed to the spine-spikes, Ardan made a flat gesture. “No.”
“Then, follow the oath-magic.”
A chunky warrior Rode a chunky Dragon. Strange how alike they seemed, the Remoyan thought, both grizzled and scarred, yet possessed of mighty hearts beneath their gruff exteriors. She knew her command rubbed the Western Isles warrior against his natural grain, but he voiced no word of protest. Instead, he closed his eyes.
Gang said softly, Too quiet. I don’t like this.
You never liked the quiet before battle, said Huaricithe, her eyes bright upon the Gladiator-Dragon.
Got a fiery spot for that Scrap, he said, stretching easily. Kid gave her tears for me, and look what I got. New scales, new life. What do you think, noble Huaricithe?
After this battle, will you roost with me?
Zip felt her fires blush. Well, it was a romantic night, a night in which the White Moon’s light whispered upon Dragon-scales, and only a matter as trivial as the end of the Island-World happened to be looming–why not a liaison now? No Dragon knew if they would survive the battles to come.
Gang stretched out a wing. Further. It trembled. He warbled, Thou, whose eye-fires are purest starlight to mine third heart …
Thou, Huaricithe crooned back, touching his wingtip with hers. I have always … how foolish I have been, these many years, never to regard thee with true-fires, noble Gangurtharr. I shall be thine, if thou wilt be mine.
The Amethyst Dragoness stared at the White Moon. That was no moon! No!
Forever thine, Gang said.
There’s something I need to tell you, said the Azure, straining her eyesight to the limit. The quality of the light was strange and intermingled, and against that brilliant point, could she make out the shadow of a shadow, a Dragon the size of a forty-foot Amethyst?
What, that Brityx has found us out? said Ardan, pointing downward.
No. Zip shuddered. Look up. That’s not a Moon. It’s something … else.
Chapter 33: Sacrifice
THe thREE THORALIANs turned with one accord, and one mind, to gaze at Aranya as she approached. Backlit by the baleful, pallid light of their creation, the Yellow-White Dragon-triplet appeared almost translucent, their wings like skeletal struts lacking connective tissue, their hides smooth and snakelike, the fires of their eyes almost invisible against the intense ambient glare. Shivering, Aranya remembered Izariela’s teaching about the nature of corrupt forms of magic, that they were sometimes beautiful in their own right; that evil could parade a false beauty yet still be inimical, destructive and wholly abhorrent.
Now, she knew this for truth.
Above the Thoralians, a great ball of silvery-white light had formed against a backdrop of the blackest velvet, perhaps half a mile across, circumscribed somehow by the threads of magic rising from their circling flight. They orbited its base steadily, seeming to eschew the need for ordinary flight, which in itself was a statement of wing-shivering power. A mere hundred feet separated the Thoralians’ wingtips from the seething surface. That ball boiled not with heat, but with a brutal chill that made her once-injured shoulder twinge in recollection. Moisture in the air did not condense upon its surface, but fell away in a fine white dust that made the brilliant ball appear as if it sported a snowy white beard.
The night was unutterably still, here, four leagues above the Cloudlands.
Thoralian spoke in tones of three-but-one thunder, “So, the diseased whelp of Izariela has emerged from her hole at last. Well met, Star Dragoness. I never had any doubt you would cross the Rift-Storm to Herimor.”
“I can’t say the pleasure is mutual, Thoralian,” Aranya gritted out, soothing Sapphire with a touch of her paw.
“Ah, but this was always the plan, the moment of my crowning glory! And now that you have come, the cusp of our collaboration is at paw–”
“If you think I’ll ever serve–”
“What? No rescue of your precious mother? How unfaithful thou art, Aranya of Immadia!” Three muzzles scorned her. “Don’t forget, I still hold that secret.”
“I’ve spoken to Izariela. She’d rather see you dead.”
“You’ve … spoken? How droll.” Yet the oily nuances of his speech failed to disguise his surprise.
“We Star Dragons have our ways.”
Circling. Endlessly circling. Every one of Aranya’s Dragon senses was on the utmost alert, her reactions primed, her magic and storm swelling as Thoralian’s cold tones rolled over her.
You’re nothing but a blighted, ghastly eyesore, Aranya, sneered the muzzles. Once, you escaped my vengeance through your despicable Star Dragoness trickery. Never again!
I wonder what your liver tastes like? Aranya mused. Probably diseased and worm-ridden.
Brave talk from a broken Dragoness. So noble, coming up here alone, but I see your friends gathering below. My armies approaching from the North, chasing those pathetic Dragon Riders you think are going to save you. Aranya glanced both ways, very rapidly. Zip? No! And out on the horizon, just as an army of Dragonships had once broached the far shores of Immadia’s vista, she saw the dots representing a mighty force of Dragons. Aye, my drakes and Lesser Dragons hound them this way, pathetic sheep to the slaughterhouse I have prepared for you and your allies. Attend, Aranya. Below us lies Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron, for six hundred years, the mainstay of these pathetic Dragon-Haters. They think nothing can breach their precious defences. I think otherwise.
Aranya observed the three Yellow-Whites picking up their pace, still without any visible wingbeat. Magic swelled, the jarring song of urzul. Light began to elongate from the bottom of the ball, passing right between the three circling Dragons.
Three mouths opened as one. Now, o tragic Princess of Pox, you shall be a helpless observer to the fate of these, the last Clan of Air-Breathers in the Island-World, and my ancillary to the destruction of a civilisation that has plagued Dragons since the time of Dramagon himself. Once I have annihilated the Air-Breathers with my urzul-light-spear, I shall consume you, body and soul, Star Dragon–
You’re deluded!
The Thoralians smiled discomfortingly. Why do you think I risked all to cross the Rift-Storm, Aranya? Juvenile fool, you think in mere years, while I think in centuries, yea, in aeons! I have gained the knowledge to bring you and your worthless line low, the very knowledge
once possessed by the fabled Pygmy Dragon!
Aranya trembled, watching the light elongate, fearful of the awful power gathering behind that spear of light. She made no reply. Why did he not attack her with his mind, as before? With three of him it was the Thoralians’ best option, yet he seemed content to bluster, conserving his undoubted power. Why this posturing, unless he assumed that she could never defeat this light-spear he boasted about? It reeked of urzul, at which she despaired, knowing she had not yet worked out how to combat that foul anti-magic.
What if we don’t fight it? Humansoul whispered within.
The Thoralians roared, You shall learn, you foul spawn of a salamander, that not even a Star Dragoness can move faster than starlight itself! BE UN–
Mustering strength born in extremity, Aranya shifted.
She reappeared with a quick-fire, OPEN, BEZALDIOR!
–LEASHED!
Perhaps she could not move faster than light, but she had twice moved faster than Shadow. Aranya rematerialized a mere quarter-mile above her friends, reaching out with magic already fully formed and her talons outstretched. She bent the light.
Yiisuriel’s trick saved the Air-Breather’s life. A spear of pure, urzul-infused light flashed down past her flank, passed right through a theoretically impenetrable shield, and lanced into the depths of the Suald-dak-Doon. Before any Dragon could even blink, an incalculable explosion rocked the area. Funnelled by the Land Dragons’ shield, the retort blasted into the night sky like a volcanic eruption, tossing Zip, Aranya, Gangurtharr, Huari and Brityx aside as though they were flies slapped by a hurricane blast.
The Lost Islands rocked … and did not topple.
Yet, the first sound Aranya heard when her ear-canals recovered was the triumphant screech of the Thoralians, howling, THE FIRST EGG! IT RISES!
Then, animate darkness flowed over the shining Egg and a second eruption began.
S’gulzzi!
By Fra’anior’s beard, what had she done?
* * * *
Ardan was just beginning to follow the yearning of his heart upward into the skies, when the not-Moon shot from above like a harpoon cast into a dark lake. Only a crooked scar of light on his retinae remained to inform his disbelief. Aranya had just seized light in her paws and despatched it in another direction. Away from them. Into the Pit.
Then, a detonation ripped out of the depths, smashing into the shielded Dragons. Meriatonium might deny all magic, but an explosion of untold megatons was a different matter altogether. As they tumbled away, he saw, ever so briefly in the depths of that vast pit, a shining, jewel-like Egg of a size that surpassed his wildest imaginings. It had to be half a mile across. Iridescent. Mesmeric. The greatest magical prize in the Island-World.
Then, darkness lurched within the pit.
Gangurtharr pumped his wings, shooting across the divide as though he knew the tenor of Ardan’s fires, even if his Rider was just catching up. Snaffling the Amethyst Dragoness’ lolling body in his huge paws, he growled, “Aranya! What have you done?”
“Unleashed … ancient enemies …” she whispered. “Mercy, I’ve made a terrible mistake–”
“Correction. You saved a nation,” rapped Huaricithe.
The Thoralians plummeted from on high; still, from that height, they would take minutes to arrive. Brityx mentally triggered the alarm. Immediately, the blast-doors crashed open and the battle-ready Dragonwings poured out. Yiisuriel struggled to re-form the shield which Aranya had so casually ripped open. Ardan could not believe the Star Dragoness’ nerve, but what choice did she have?
Flanks first, the Air-Breather ordered her kin. The mental presence of the Air-Breathers merged, strengthening the shield that protected the cliffs of their flanks.
“Long-range data indicates five thousand Dragon Riders incoming,” said Brityx, briskly interpreting the information fed to them by the Lost Islands communal mind. “Every Land Dragon in a hundred leagues is headed in this direction–it’s the final assault.”
“Look at the Mesas,” said Zuziana, pointing. “Against the snow, do you see that? Actually, they’re already halfway here.”
“Dragons and drakes,” Huaricithe confirmed.
Suddenly, the forces of Lesser Dragons and Shapeshifters rising from the peaks of the Inscrutables did not seem so many or so brave. Seeing the numbers ranged in opposition, and knowing that the S’gulzzi rose out of their pit, the Lesser Dragons shivered and Sapphire leaped from Aranya’s paw to her shoulder. This would be a three-way battle, spoils to the victor.
Ardan said, “You did right, Aranya. Now, we must finish the Thoralian-triplet and these S’gulzzi. How can I help?”
Her eye-fires turned upon him, apricot and carmine, azure and white. “I need my Storm, Ardan.”
His body went rigid in the saddle.
“I need you to think badly of me. Think, this is the kind of woman I could never … marry. Think about my ugliness.” Her voice wept even though her decision seemed set in granite. “Hate me, Ardan. Hate the oath; abhor what it did to us.”
Heat exploded in his head. “You ask the impossible!”
“No sacrifice is too much for our Island-World, Ardan.”
“I cannot … change … what is immutable.”
“Then go freaking kiss Dhazziala–Ardan! Please! I forgive you already … just do it. If you must, do it for me, but you must fool the oath-magic. It is the only way.”
Wretched woman. This was one way, but was it right? Must he once more toss his integrity to the windrocs?
Immadia, you cut my very soul! he growled, letting the nuances of Dragonish suffuse his response with so much more than words. It was all he could think to say, but anguish sang eloquently in her eyes before Aranya lowered her gaze.
She whispered, Oh, Ardan … it can never …
So much hurt! Ardan at once admired her denials, made for the sake of the greater cause, and hated what they meant for him. Was he man enough to do the same?
Rasping of breath, the Amethyst Dragoness wriggled out of Gang’s paw to measure the Thoralians’ approach with narrowed eyes. She had already dismissed him from her mind, he thought angrily. Now, he caught fragments of her distress. The Immadian Dragoness thought upon Thoralian’s torture. The pox. Yolathion’s poor, crushed body spread upon a ghastly machine, screams so piteous they turned his blood to ice, and the dying of thousands of souls trapped upon the Islands Thoralian had launched across the Cloudlands. She had the clarity and imagination of an artist born. Details seared his awareness like acid rivulets, mirrored by tears spilling unheeded down his scarred cheeks.
Aye. For what Aranya had seen, and suffered. For unrealised grief, certain to come at the Thoralians’ paw. He must act.
Darkness boiled over the lip of the Air-Breathers’ inner shield. The S’gulzzi seemed akin to huge bats, having appendages similar to wings and paws and tails, but they were strangely twisted, as though some ill-formed template had become corrupted in the womb. Nor were they fully embodied. Ardan had the impression that these accursed creatures had sought to copy physical forms based on a misapprehension of the world far above their natural realm, hoping for bodies that could survive the enormous pressure differentials–even as he watched, some bodies crumbled or slumped in lifeless heaps upon Yiisuriel’s flanks, where they hissed and steamed and ate into the rock as though they exuded acid. Yet those few were instantly overwhelmed by the millions rising behind, filling the pipe to bursting with their innumerable congregation. Many took to the air, rising in a dark cloud above the softly moonlit peaks of the Air-Breathers. Their eyes were slits of lava; dark, reddish-orange pits in the head region, sometimes four or five in number.
Then, Ardan realised that he was looking over his shoulder at a receding view, as Gang sprinted for the North. For Dhazziala.
* * * *
The skies filled with the chittering of the deadly drakes and the swishing of tens of thousands of Lesser Dragons’ wings as the massive forces converged. Below the Clou
dlands, Zuziana knew that Leandrial and Ri’arion commanded a running battle as they sought to return the depleted Land Dragon forces to the beleaguered Lost Islands, already under attack by Thoralian’s Theadurial-infested allies. It seemed to her that the entire draconic world had received the command, ‘go feral’. Dhazziala, in close communication now with the communal mind, had just committed her entire force to the air.
The Thoralians descended upon the rising tide of S’gulzzi, flying in a complex helical pattern that gathered white ice about them even as she watched.
When the forces collided, it was not with the booming concussion of Islands, as she expected. Instead, the impact seemed despicably delicate–far too soft and quiet, a hateful lie considering the magnitude of destruction that immediately ripped through the disparate forces. Dragons locked together, fang and claw. Metallic Fortress Dragons fired all of their Bullets at once, scorching the air with a hail of projectiles. Dragon armour sizzled and bubbled in the grip of S’gulzzi tentacles and limbs; many already raining from the sky, clinched in mortal struggle. Such an eruption of fireballs scorched the air, the skies turned into a ghastly, reddish radiance, as if a bloody eclipse ripped the night’s innocence asunder, and the stars themselves bled.
The Yellow-Whites fell upon the S’gulzzi like three vast white war-hammers, striking such devastating blows with their Ice-attacks and another, shrieking attack that Zuziana realised must be the fabled Shivers, that they singlehandedly stalled the dark tide rising over the shield and spilling onto Yiisuriel’s back. Then, the dust-covered mound of bodies heaved and fresh S’gulzzi swarmed upward, still inestimable in number. The plummeting Thoralian-triplicate vanished beneath the throng of sooty black bodies as though swallowed by a single vast maw.
He wants the First Egg! Aranya roared.
With a jerk, Zip clapped her wings together to shadow the Amethyst Dragoness into battle, with Brityx and Huaricithe, her fellow-Blues, hot on her tail. Now, in the press and adrenaline and snap of combat, the Star Dragoness began to find her fire. Pfft! Pfft! Two signature blue-hot fireballs raced away, blowing apart a knot of drakes. The three Blues tidied up with Lightning strikes as they looped rapidly over Genholme’s back, hunting the Thoralians. Aranya began to change colour again, moving more toward her gemstone Amethyst, gleaming as though lit up from within.