by Marc Secchia
“Do I hear some little Pipsqueak taking my name in vain?”
With a gasp, Pip whirled towards the cave entrance. There, outlined by the ever-burning magical lamps, was …. “Master Bal–Arosia! Oh, my Islands! What are you doing here?”
She flew across the sand. Pip crashed into Arosia, making her stagger, and then they were hugging and laughing and exclaiming all in a happy babble. Balthion said something about moving his family to the Academy. Arosia accused Pip of actually growing an inch. Kaiatha, Maylin and Yaethi looked on in bemusement.
Seizing Arosia’s hand, Pip dragged her over to meet her friends. “This is Master Adak, a Pygmy like me.” Arosia greeted him in respectable Pygmy, making his white teeth flash into a grin. “This is Arosia, Duri’s little sister.”
“Little? Look who’s talking, squirt.”
Pip was far too happy to snap up Arosia’s bait. “Yaethi, a magician with all things scroll-shaped; Maylin, a terrible tease–oh, and they all have Dragons, you have to meet them, Arosia–and this is Duri’s girlfriend, Kaiatha, who lives on top of an active volcano.”
Arosia seemed miffed. “Girlfriend? That brother of mine. Couldn’t he string two words together to tell me as much? Kaiatha, you and I need to talk.”
Maylin butted in, in typical Maylin fashion, “You tell us the rajal’s paws about Duri, Arosia, and we’ll give you the last hair on its tail about our Kaiatha. Deep Islands and all that. Isn’t that so, Kaia?”
Shuffling her feet, Kaiatha mumbled something unintelligible.
“Well, what’s the mystery?” asked Master Balthion. After Yaethi explained quickly, he quipped, “I knew I should’ve borrowed your leg to study. There are some unknown runes. I’d need to get my notes–Yaethi, is it? You strike me as a studious sort of girl, unlike that Pipsqueak.”
Yaethi threw Pip a not entirely friendly look. “She came second in the exams without finishing half of one paper.”
Balthion waggled his ears, making Pip giggle. “Fell into the old trap of setting rote knowledge questions, did they? I need to have words with Master Kassik.”
Maylin took Arosia by the arm. “Mercy, you’re a beauty, too. Stay away from any boys I like, alright? We need to teach you the Pygmy salad song. Did you hear that one?”
“Hey,” Pip protested.
“Come along, Pygmy Dragon.”
Arosia stumbled on the sand. “Her nickname’s ‘Pygmy Dragon’, Maylin?”
“Nooooo.” Maylin seemed keen to draw out the suspense. “She’s a Shapeshifter. As in, she is a Dragon. Your friend is the cutest, sweetest little fire-breather I ever did see …”
Clapping both hands over her mouth did not prevent an ugly snarl from emerging. Pip blushed so heatedly, she thought her ears might catch fire. Arosia’s face was a picture.
“Dragon fire,” drawled Maylin, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Human-Pip wanted to shout at her friend to stop. She wavered as the magic surged inside of her. Please, no … “Watch this, everyone. I’m thinking about hulking, muscular, sexy Dragon backsides, Pip.”
“Maylin!” snapped Adak and Balthion, simultaneously.
“What about searing fireballs and flying battles and Dragons thundering over the Cloudlands …”
A Dragon’s bellow shook the cave. Pip lunged at her friend. But Master Adak, who had already sprung into motion, knocked Maylin aside before the Dragon tore into her.
Master Adak shouted, in Pygmy, “Pip, remember who you are!”
She shuddered, fighting to still the singing in her blood, the bloodlust that raged through her body. All she wanted was to kill. Her claws worked, scoring and scraping the rock underlying the sand. Her muscles trembled; her breath rasped as a heated wind in her throat. For a long time, Pip just stared at her friend.
She said, “Satisfied, Maylin? Happy I nearly killed you?”
Swallowing her furious sobs, she fled the cave.
* * * *
Throughout the following day, Pip stalked her friends from the shadows.
She could not help it. The rage lingered. How could Maylin be so selfish? Now Arosia hated her. Or feared her. Probably both. She watched her friends gather in Balthion and Shullia’s apartment, located in a recently re-opened section of the Academy with a view of the beautiful white plume of a waterfall which fell from the volcano’s rim almost to the caldera floor. They were discussing the diary. They had guessed a secret Word of Command was scribed in those runes, and were determined to find it. She knew three. Surely, three was enough. The strike, the stop, and–she shuddered–the forbidding, which had wrenched Hunagu back from the spirit world.
Instinctively, Pip flew into the waterfall. Hanging onto the slippery rocks with her claws, she allowed the torrent to pound against her head. Maybe the roar would help her forget. Maybe she could just wash it away.
Where did such knowledge come from? Three words she had known, without being taught. They simply existed inside of her. Pre-existent, even. Fully formed. Potent. Was that what Kaiatha’s aunt had meant by suggesting that the Onyx Dragon Fra’anior lived on in her–worse, that he would inhabit her spirit, like some inner demon breathed into life? How else could one explain those words? ‘Poor girl,’ she had said. Words to paralyse a soul. Why not fortunate girl?
She wished the waterfall would pound that memory right out of her.
Later, Pip searched for Hunagu. He was nowhere to be found. Even the messenger monkeys had not seen him. She asked them to track him down.
Pip flew to see Shimmerith. A ferocious growl from within the roost kept her outside, however. She stole a whole leg of ralti sheep from the butchers’ shed behind the kitchens and lugged it over to her friend, only to collect a fireball in the teeth for her trouble.
Thank the heavens above for Dragon fangs and hide.
She soared back to the first year dorms through the storm winds, lashing in once more. It was late in the evening, past the students’ bedtime, and very gloomy out. Steely rain battered the volcano, hissing and spitting on the open magma pits, battering the ground so hard that the droplets leaped upward upon striking as though the ground itself trembled. The giant tortoises had retreated into their shells, just another patch of slick boulders. Lightning forked across the sky. She had a crazy desire to ride the storm, letting the thunderclaps drive all thought and memory out of her mind.
Pip’s gaze fixed on the first year building. She hoped her friends were asleep. She could not face them. Who would want to befriend a Dragon who had so little self-control, that she tried to kill her friends over a teasing word? Poor Maylin. Stupid Maylin, more to the point, but her heart balked at the name-calling.
Odd. A messenger monkey bolting out of her dormitory window?
As she stared, a long, thin scream carried over the roaring of the rain and the hiss of the wind to her ears.
Pip’s body jerked. Fear seared her throat. Fear, and fire. Her wingbeat stuttered, then drove her forward as though she had been shot from a war catapult. Another monkey! Ten, a dozen monkeys now pelting in the other direction, into the dorm, banging the shutters as they swung through. Hunagu’s bellow. He was hurt!
A serpentine body, half-seen through the window. Pip folded her wings, making herself as small as possible. It was moving to her left. Instinct shaped her flight path. Next window. Pip exploded through the shutters as only a Pygmy Dragon could have, smashing out blocks of stone with her shoulders, claws extended in the strike position. A long, centipede-like creature, thicker than a Human torso, flashed in her gaze. She saw girls fleeing, shrieking, hiding beneath beds, tossing a blanket over one of the heaving beasts. She struck. The impact threw her and her prey across the room, smashing a bed into kindling. She groaned, Unnh. Pincers gnashed at her wing. Pip bit deep, and severed the thing’s spine. Still it writhed and fought, the head end snapping toward a group of girls huddled in the corner.
She saw Maylin, bloody, wielding Pip’s Immadian forked daggers, facing another of the creatures. Hunagu, stuck in the dormit
ory doorway, his body jerking as something attacked him from outside. Whooping messenger monkeys rode a centipede into a wall. Pip flipped onto her paws. She snapped at the half-creature attacking Maylin, catching its skull between her jaws. She crushed it. Another! It rose above a broken knot of student bodies, hissing at her. Metallic, oily chitin, a spit of violet poison, a many-legged, many-segmented body fronted by champing mandibles slathered in blood and gore. Pip slashed instinctively with her claws. The centipede creature lunged open-mouthed at her. Pip didn’t even need to think. A fireball rocketed into that gaping maw, striking the back of its throat.
She whirled, searching for more enemies. None left.
Pip rattled, “Maylin. Help Yaethi. You. Those students. Use the sheets, girl. Come on.”
Hunagu bellowed, striking something with his massive fist. Past his back, through the gap, Pip saw Mistress Mya’adara lopping off the tail of another of the creatures with her scimitar. Somewhere, the school alarm began to sound.
Why was Hunagu hunched over like that? Why was he not charging, as a male Oraial would do by instinct? Her wings flared. Pip leaped over the bunk beds, scraping her wings and smacking her nose on a bedpost, but she did not care. She was Dragon-Pip. She was mad. The scent of blood, her friends’ blood, incensed her.
“Hunagu. Let me through.”
“Pip. Good-good,” the Oraial grunted, grabbing one of the creatures by the tail and smashing it against the wall repeatedly.
The Onyx Dragon squeezed past him. He must have broken through the outer doors to reach his position, blocking access to the dorm with his bulk, facing up to half a dozen of the centipedes. Twenty feet long, bristling with sharp spines on their segments, three of the creatures attacked Hunagu in concert. Another stalked the Mistress. Pip caught sight of faces hid against the Oraial’s fur. Mya’adara’s children! Students … fire rocketed out of her throat, engulfing two of the creatures. They thrashed and screeched around the hallway. The sickly-sweet stench of burning flesh assaulted her nostrils, stoking her fires. Bodies, so many bodies, the horror … three female Jeradian soldiers lying still, faces twisted in gruesome agony–poisoned? Another two fighting their way in from outside. All was mayhem. Pip knew no reason now. Dragon fire drove her, rending, slashing, biting, burning, tearing until there was nothing left before her and Mya’adara was there, soothing, a touch of her hand restoring sanity.
“It’s over, mah dark beauty,” she panted.
“Where are they? Are there more?”
“Enough, Pip. Calm down.”
Outside, a Dragon thundered his challenge. Brushing Mya’adara aside, Pip darted through the door. Dragons swarmed over the buildings, hunting, killing. More, a dozen more of the centipedes must have attacked the boys’ dorm–but the door was locked. As it should be. Emblazon hurtled down from the storm-dark sky, mashing two of the centipedes on landing as his weight drove footprints two feet deep into the soft sward. A group of soldiers, the guards who had been placed to protect the student dormitories, fought in a tight knot behind their shields as a centipede charged them repeatedly, clicking its mandibles in a killing rage.
Pip closed the hundred-foot gap between the buildings with a bound. Gripping a centipede with her claws, riding it like a Dragon Rider, she tore it asunder in a spasm of wrath.
“Thanks,” gasped one of the men.
She ducked reflexively as Kassik whooshed overhead. He arrowed toward the field. A massive fireball burst from his throat, detonating as it struck the ground. Bits of centipede briefly joined the rain to patter down on the grass.
Up the building. A centipede had broken through the fourth floor shutters. It slithered inside with sinuous grace. Pip followed. Smashing her head through the slatted wood panels, she sank her fangs into the creature’s back–but not soon enough. A boy lay beneath them, his throat torn out. She knew him. Tanda, a Western Isles warrior, second year. The centipede coiled up, a violent paroxysm that yanked her into the dormitory. Pip attacked with tooth and claw, finishing the job. Her eyes pierced the gloom. Nothing more, here. Only boys, horrified, some gagging as they beheld their slain friend.
She forced herself back out of the window, ignoring the rising shouts behind her. Her neck swivelled, her Dragon sight piercing the night.
Now, it truly was over.
Pip rushed back to her blood-splattered dormitory. It was ghastly. Bodies, wherever she looked. At least four of the centipedes had made it past Hunagu–or entered before he blockaded the doorway. She had never seen so much blood.
Kassik pushed his muzzle against a window. “Yaethi! Get me Yaethi.”
Kaiatha knelt next to their friend, twisting a torn-up sheet around the stump of her wrist. Yaethi seemed about to faint.
“Dragons, take these students to the infirmary. Mya’adara, organise it,” said Kassik. “Find those who’re still alive. Yaethi, I need you. Slap her cheek, Kaia–quickly. Get her to tell us the treatment for Giant Heripede venom.”
“Yes, Master. Yaethi?”
“What? Roaring … where’s my hand?”
Kaiatha leaned over her. “What’s the antidote for Giant Heripede venom, Yaethi? Tell me.” Yaethi’s eyes glazed over. Kaiatha slapped her cheek gently. “Yaethi. Stay with us, girl.”
She said, “You don’t get them here, Kaia.”
“That’s what attacked us. Yaethi–”
“Uh … extract of raba berry … three times … hour.”
Pip shouted this information to Kassik, who backed away from the window, only to insert his paw into the room instead. “Let me take her. Quick. Any others?”
After transferring three students onto the Master’s paws, Pip turned to Hunagu. His arms and shoulders were deeply slash and punctured, his fur splattered with gore. Maylin helped check the soldiers in the hallway, but none lived. Inside the dormitory, the beds nearest the door were soaked in blood. None of those girls had survived. Dazed, the unwounded sat on beds or sobbed or wandered aimlessly about. Mya’adara had her children in her arms.
She said to Pip, “Yah friend saved these girls. They’d all be dead if it weren’t for him.”
“What happened?” Maylin asked.
“We’d had dinner with Master Balthion and Kassik, late, and Ah was coming back to put mah children to sleep when Ah saw the dormitory door open. Ah looked inside. The two guards in the hallway were dead. They were murdered.” She turned at the sound of Kassik’s low growl in the doorway. “Ay. It was done from inside. Ah was about to sound the alarm when Ah saw yah friend, Pip, coming running right on the tails of these monsters. He grabbed them but some got past and they went for mah little ones and he got us in his arms and protected us, got over and blocked the doorway …”
Mya’adara put her fist against her mouth. “Mah girls, they’re dead.”
“Not all,” said Kaiatha. “Hunagu saved us.”
Kassik had returned. His huge eye assessed the situation from the window. He said, “Pip, get Hunagu down to the infirmary. He’s been poisoned. Kaia, is that a cut? Go.”
Maylin checked the guards in the hallway. “She’s right. Their throats were slit.”
Suddenly, her bravery melted. Maylin lurched aside and threw up. “Great Islands,” she said, wiping her mouth. “Sorry. I … Pip, where were you? You weren’t here.”
“I went to Shimmerith,” she said. “I was, well, sulking–you aren’t thinking …”
Kassik nodded gravely. “She’s right. Why this dormitory? None of the Heripedes went up the stairs. And, before you ask, these are creatures from Herimor. They don’t live north of the Rift; I only know them from a picture I once saw in a scroll. Pip …”
“On my way, Master. Hunagu. We go to sick place. Quick-quick. Bad poison.”
Pip knew she would never erase the memories of this night from her mind. Friends she had eaten with, trained with, teased, been teased by … their bodies torn apart in their sleep by monsters who should never have lived in the Island-World. The Silver Dragon was responsible for
this. He must have smuggled them into the Academy grounds. He had planned this attack. Her dorm-mates had died because he was hunting an Onyx Dragon.
She was the one with the power, yet she lacked the power to save her friends.
Chapter 30: Cloud Cover
The storm raged for three days. Although the Academy’s security forces and Dragons searched high and low, the murderer was not found. Fourteen students and nine Jeradian soldiers died. Yaethi lost her right hand, bitten off at the wrist.
“Good thing I’m left handed,” she said. “I can still beat you at exams, Pip.”
The Pygmy girl smiled wanly. “How’s the, uh–”
“Stump? Healing up. Rajion’s a miracle-worker.” Yaethi seemed far too cheerful about her loss, Pip thought. Maybe she was just glad to be alive. “How’s Hunagu?”
“Hunagu fine,” replied the Ape, in careful Island Standard.
“Hunagu brother-brother,” said Yaethi.
“Brave-brave,” Human-Pip corrected her. “Your Ape is coming on, Yaethi. Although, that’s also a compliment in Oraial culture. Hunagu says you’re his sister.” She chuckled. “He also says he doesn’t appreciate having his fur shaved so that they could stitch and bandage the wounds. He says the females will laugh at him.”
“Tell him I say that I will have words with any female who dares laugh at him.”
Hunagu thumped his chest. “He gets the idea–and, mercy, I’m not repeating that.”
From the other side of Yaethi’s pallet in the infirmary, Maylin put in brightly, “Ooh, is that a blush, Pipsqueak?”
Pip said, “Why don’t you go kiss Hardak or something, Maylin?”
“I will. Oh, here comes … more bad news. Great.”
Master Kassik marched down the infirmary steps, looking so very dour that Pip’s heart leaped into her throat and stayed there, quivering like a frightened bird. He moved over to Yaethi’s bedside and nodded to her, but then stooped to take Pip’s hands in his.