by Marc Secchia
“I’m highly toxic,” she snapped.
Whisper hopped backward, holding up the knife, seeing further movement behind her as the dull green whippet-draconids spread out, wary of approaching the larger drakkid with its poison-tipped mandibles. How did they follow so easily? How long had she been unconscious? Days, judging by her belly’s shouting.
The drakkid lunged. Whisper blurred aside, springing off her good knee, and buried the bone knife in the creature’s carapace right behind its thorax. Memory served her well. The drakkid jerked about in spasmodic movements, speared through a nerve-complex.
BOOM! The crystals leaped beneath her paws.
Whisper scrambled backward as a new Dragon joined the fray, thundering its fury as it stamped on the drakkid’s neck. Crack! From above, a dozen Chalky Cloud-Dragons, at twenty feet perhaps the smallest of the fully flighted Dragonkind, descended upon the whippet-draconids in a flaming fury.
“Our territory!” bellowed the flight-leader.
“Destroy!” roared another, whistling over Whisper to disembowel a draconid which had been creeping around to her rear. Creeping slime-face! She had not seen that one …
“Take the Whisper,” ordered the first Dragon, chewing happily on his victim.
Whisper squeaked, “But, I –”
Cream-coloured claws clamped around her ribcage. The Cloud-Dragons were named for their very light, slightly off-white colour that blended exceptionally well with cloudy skies and crystalline formations in the white range. Being white to yellow in colour, their primary affiliation was to wisdom and they remained neutral in most conflict situations – unless their territory was threatened. This much knowledge was vaguely comforting, but the mighty claws whisked the struggling Whisper away without an inch of compromise. She startled as the huge, wedge-shaped head curved down and a female Dragon blinked at her in a slow, friendly manner.
“Your kind are famously inedible,” said the Dragoness.
Whisper blinked back. What?
The lips peeled back to reveal flat, sharp fang-ridges. A Dragon-smile. “Some Dragons honour the Whisper-kind. Come to my nest, wounded one. These are not killing paws – see? Are my talons not sheathed?”
She glanced back; the crystal-covered ground rushed by as the Dragoness gathered speed, then with a powerful clip of her wings, shot skyward. Whisper’s heart lodged in her throat. By her tail – her poor, lost tail – this would be a sensation to revel in, if only she were not so sore, frightened and malnourished. She must stop mourning and live. She had Whisper-work to do.
Within a minute, gratifyingly pained howls sounded below as the larger Chalky Cloud-Dragons thrashed the smaller draconids paw, pith and plenty, sending them skittering away across the giant fallen crystals.
The Dragoness sniffed, “Filthy, paw-licking whelp of fungaslugs, daring to invade our territory. Back, my fierce hatchlings. We have a visitor.”
Whisper’s head jerked about in the confines of that paw. Five tiny, identical cream-coloured muzzles hung over the side of an uncomfortable-looking nest high up on the openside of the Canyon of Light, bugling tiny expressions of delight as the Dragoness, shortly, landed directly on top of them with a flutter of her huge wings. No problem. The four-foot mites wriggled out from beneath her belly, squealing happily. “Crystal, Mamafire! Where’s my crystal?”
“Settle down, my fiery beauties. Down. No talons.”
“She has talons,” squeaked a tiny female. “She bared her teeth at me, Mamafire!”
“Hold, Fieroona,” cautioned the larger Dragoness, wagging a warning talon at the eager hatchling. “This is a Whisper and her customs are different to ours. What have I taught you about Whispers, children?”
“Isn’t that when we talk softly?” asked one of the males.
“Aye, Gnashary, that is so.”
Another male snorted, “Gnashary is a null-brained fungus-eater. Mamafire taught us the legend of the first Whisper of Fire just one month ago.”
“Aye, and Whispers are good,” said Fieroona. “Sorry, little Whisper. You smell of meat and we don’t eat yucky meat. Deees-gust-teeeng. Crystal is so much nicer, full of tangs and crunch-music in our jaws.”
The hatchlings all laughed at what had to be a shared joke. Whisper nodded and said cautiously, “Thank you for rescuing me from the draconids, o Dragoness. I’m truly grateful. I must take my medicine and eat. But first, would you tell me this legend?”
“Better still,” said the Dragoness. “I will teach my hatchlings the Dragonsongs of healing. The legend is of lesser importance. Tuck in beneath my wing, right here, Whisper. Closer. You will be safe here, with us.”
Safe? With a Dragoness and her hungry hatchlings?
She shuffled about until Whisper found herself tucked beneath a great, mothering Dragon wing. The Dragoness purred contentedly – her creamy scales were like semi-molten rock, at once soft and yielding, and as hard as only Dragon armour could be. Whisper felt warmth stealing into her tired, bruised body. Soothing. Miraculous.
Sipping from her gourd and then gulping down the last of the Arboreal Dragon’s medicine, she listened to the Chalky Cloud-Dragoness teaching her hatchlings the magical songs of paw and wing, fire and Dragonflight. Too soon, her eyes lidded. She wanted to respond to the tingling in her paws and to an odd itch along her spine, but the enervation of body and soul was crushing. She needed respite. She needed to rid herself of the oath-burden that even now, in her rest, pressed with increasing urgency upon her psyche.
The hatchlings began to sing together with the Dragoness. The alien, beautiful melodies of Dragonsong stole her away to a better place.
* * * *
Whispers of fire surrounded her embryonic soul. Unseen, seemingly arising from all around her, as if born of leaping, crackling flame, came a startlingly melodious voice:
“Once, all was flame. Dragons were nothing but flame, existing only as leaping fires. The prototypical Dragons had neither form nor function, but all their existence was bound up in the leaping, restless energies of flame, in the sport and laughter of stars. And the greatest of these ancestral Dragonkind were Thiorynflamme the Blue, called the heart of divinity, who did take unto her mate, Kaycintoryn the Violet-Gold, the noblest Dragon of all, and they did Whisper flame together, and from their communion of matchless enchantment, did arise the many colours and forms of Dragonkind. Each was a Whisper of flame, perfect and pure in conception, from the least to the greatest. And so it is said amongst the flame-born, that a Whisper is the truest, deepest and most beautiful song of fire; and again, that every Dragon-hatchling should learn to Whisper before they roar.”
She stirred restlessly in her dream.
“Hush, little Whisper,” said the voice. “One day you will understand, but not this day. Let it soak into your consciousness that Dragons of pure heart-fires and great Dragonsong hold Whispers in high honour. Let this certainty uplift your quintessence.”
Laughing, the insubstantial soul played in the cascades of flame, soaring and twirling, chuckling and dancing.
* * * *
When she awoke, it was to thrill to the deep, ever-rumbling song of a mother Dragon’s fires vibrating against her flank, and to groan at the torment of unrelenting need.
“Aye? Awake?” the Dragoness murmured, stroking Whisper’s back and flanks with one enormous digit. “Did you dream?”
“Fierily.”
“Ah. Perfect,” said the Dragoness, with so many nuances of meaning layered beneath her simple response, Whisper could not possibly understand them all. She stirred uneasily. Her head … oh … the shackles of this headache would only be assuaged in one way.
She summoned words from beyond the bounds of sleep, “I’m sure you know how thankful I am for your protection and aid, o Dragoness, but I must –”
“Aye, you must,” agreed the Dragoness, her eyes mellowing toward a fiery apricot colour. “You shall journey afar indeed, little Whisper. Would you allow me the privilege of setting your paws upon a good pa
th?”
“Aye, thank you.” She coughed weakly. “Dragoness, if ever I can help you …”
“I will ask. And likewise, should you ever need the aid of the Higher Dragonkind, you have but to Whisper. Like this.”
Bending her great head downward, she chuckled, Whisper of the Inferno-Spirit.
Words that seared Whisper’s mind with flames of friendship, regard and even – aye. Honour.
* * * *
Beneath the crystal roof of her domain, the Chalky Cloud-Dragoness winged steadily toward Arbor. As the changeable crystal light played along the supple length of her body, it refracted off her partially translucent scales, turning her flight into a play of rainbow colours.
It did not seem that the Dragoness wished to speak, but Whisper had a question. “O Dragoness, why couldn’t the Warlock’s armies simply fly to Arbor? I just don’t understand. Is it sunstrike? What about night-time flying?”
“Wyrms,” the Dragoness replied, unexpectedly.
“Wyrms – how?”
Her voice squeaked at a higher register than she had intended. The Cloud-Dragoness flexed her multi-jointed wings, before spitting, “Fly over one and you’ll soon learn, Whisper!”
Whisper startled in the Dragoness’ clawed grasp as a fireball roared out of her throat, making the creature’s flight jerk and almost stall, before she smoothed out with a deft ripple of her wings. Take note, Whisper. This was how to fly. Only, a Dragon’s wings were furnished with thousands of braided muscles arrayed along the main bones and supporting struts, allowing marvellously fine control of the flight surface. The Dragoness powered ahead now for several minutes, making the wind fairly whip past, until she mastered her emotions enough to growl:
“Whisper, the origins of our enmity are lost in the fiery dawn of draconic creation. Suffice it to say, the Wyrms claim the highlands and the Sundered regions. They are many and highly aggressive. Their sunstrike-cannons are deadly.”
This time, Whisper wished she could coil her tail about herself for comfort. She said nothing, but the Cloud-Dragoness must have heard her unspoken question.
“Sunstrike powers a Wyrm’s delving through the earth and debris,” she said. “The Thundering Wyrms are the great harvesters of light energies and every form of rock. They transform what they ingest into pure, solid bulwarks of emforite, and expel as waste a basal ore called semiorite. In turn, the Lesser Wyrms take over, ingesting semiorite and sunstrike to produce ores according to their colours and abilities, up to seven different types per Wyrm – from plain sandstone to pure gold, all is created by Wyrms. Thus, they writhe and thrive and travel across the land, building our world of Xisharn.”
“What we also know is that the Wyrms will strike down and consume any and every creature that dares to approach them, using their sunstrike-cannons. Nothing and no-creature can stand against, save the great protodragon Swarms of the highlands and mainland.”
“How do the Swarm –”
The Dragoness’ massive chuckling accompanied the flapping of her wings as she air-braked sharply, bringing them to a precipitous landing three miles up the openside of the Canyon of Light. Her talons gripped the vertical crystal cliff with ease as she settled. “I love your questions, little Whisper. So like a hatchling, you are, full of fire and curiosity and magic. Sweet companion of these few hours, the Swarming boasts numbers in the tens and hundreds of millions. Thus, even a mighty Wyrm might be overrun by its tiny enemies. Remember this lesson.”
Hours. She remembered, now, that the sunstrike of daylight varied between twelve and nineteen hours according to the seasons, and night accordingly by as long as twenty-one hours, and as little as fourteen, making up the thirty-three hours of a conventional day.
The Dragoness extended her paw to place Whisper at the head of a pitch-black tunnel delving unexpectedly down between the pale violet semforiole crystals in this location. She said, “May you run like a Whisper.”
Whisper said, “May you roar like a Whisper, o Dragoness.”
Really? That was the right response? Evidently, for the Chalky Cloud-Dragon inclined the powerful, seven-foot-wide wedge of her head gravely. Then, without a further word, she sprang away, wheeling with grace and freedom to return to her roost.
Whisper watched enviously, imprinting the glorious sight upon her mind.
Then, she turned purposefully to the tunnel. Her nostrils flared. What an evocative scent! She must use every ounce of health and strength she had just gained to rush ahead of the whippet-draconids and the Warlock’s army.
Filling her lungs with scent-traces, she trotted into the darkness.
Chapter 5: Whisper of Doom
AS WHISPER TROTTED through the stippled streaks of light that periodically lit her tunnel, which she had not left for seven hours – this must have been bored out by one implausibly straitlaced, straight-digging dracoworm – she realised a new truth.
I’m wearing clothing.
Risible. Her mindfulness seemed connected to the oddest, most inane details. She plucked her close-fitting russet shorts with a careless talon – “Ouch!” No, the truth was more fantastic still. Her skin made her own clothes. How? On this subject, her memories held only a ringing silence. There they were. Slightly leathery, worn, rust-red shorts covered her from the severe grazes at the level of mid-thigh up to her lower torso. The imprint of fur was clearly visible beneath, but an exploratory touch assured her that the hide-like covering was undoubtedly skin, and furnished with nerve-endings.
Alright. She frowned at her sensitive but thought-defying second skin. If she could turn her hide into armour impervious to draconids, that would be a trick. Until then, she needed to keep moving as much as the wounded left knee would allow. The scabs from her whipping had grown crusty and unpleasant, but the discomfort in her tail region still beat every other ache and pain into submission.
Toward evening, Whisper entered a region far more damaged than anything she had encountered so far. This was little more than narrow, twisting gorges filled with a mix of tumbled-down boulders and crushed sentikor trunks, smothered in a new-growth layer of hardy plants and purple trumpet-flowers. She delved beneath, steadily climbing three miles downward before she sniffed out the beginnings of a way through. Scent led her to scramble through tightly constricted gaps and under mossy boulders; a strangely evocative, a slightly caustic scent mixed with many other fresh, clean odours, bringing to mind awesome, wide-open spaces, and when she finally made the connection, her limping progress gathered speed.
Wriggling through the jumbled maze for a further four hours, she selected one tunnel of seven by scent and followed it into a realm of increasing light. Her oath-response began to complain at once, but Whisper did not care. This had to be seen. She knew it in her soul’s bones.
At last! Hissing angrily at the pain radiating from her knee, Whisper came to an opening that led at last to fresh air, and an unbroken view. She had to steady herself against the wall to her left paw. Magnificent! Seen in the dying rays of sunset, the Brass Mirror was a glorious, slowly-rippling and ever-changing vista of ruddy furnace colours, an expanse of deathly seawaters that stretched to the horizon. She shrank instinctively from direct sunstrike, but did not need to. Her perch stood five or six miles above the ocean, right at the base of the mid-reaches. To her left paw she saw serrulate ranks of headlands, broken and eroded, jutting out into the burning ocean and reddened in the burnished atmosphere until it was hard to imagine that sunstrike did not set the entire world ablaze. To her right paw lay the tremendous destruction of the Sundering, which had blasted rock fragments many miles into the ocean, creating several dark Islands which already, even seen from this distance, played host to the great grey-green coils of sleeping Leviathans.
Whisper caught her breath. Wow! To see serpent-Dragons of such magnitude lying at rest put into perspective just how tiny she was. Their coils alone had to measure hundreds of feet wide. And, how long? She had no clue.
For an endless time, she stood stock-st
ill. Wonder stole her breath. She watched several Leviathans slowly snaking out through the swell to investigate and claim new islands. She drank in the sight of the stars and nebulae appearing in the darkling skies, and tracked beams of light flaring from the devastation beyond the cliff-face of debris to her right hand. The Wyrms were certainly awake, at last. She had wondered why these barrens had not attracted immediate attention – the rebuilding should proceed at once. Did that make a Sundering the enemy of her world? How did Wyrms arise and make their way to a Sundering? Did they always hibernate somewhere below the bulwark, only to be roused by a searing blade of sunstrike, their great furnaces and forged stoked into wakefulness by pure sunlight streaming through their mighty bodies?
Slowly, darkness claimed the Brass Mirror. Despite the lack of moons, the starlight was enough to gently sparkle off that metallic expanse, making the night seem curiously febrile, as if alive. Whisper sat and listened, but all that she perceived was the stark majesty of the vista over the oceans and her awed response. This was her world: harsh, draconic and enthralling, a place in which a whisper should count for as much as a single leaf’s stirring amidst quadrillions, yet by an antecedent law she did not understand, those very whispers seemed fraught with repercussions of fate out of all proportion to their inherent impact.
A tiny damask beetle-drakkid’s wing-flip should thus spark a storm.
An invisible umbilical cord stretched between her and Arbor. Tightening. She resisted the call for an hour more, but by then, the pain of her headache began to eclipse that of her wounded knee.
Keep moving. That was all a Whisper could do.
* * * *
Three evenings later, she had successfully wormed her way through forty-three miles of rubbish, grateful to escape a short, sharp squall by virtue of being far underground, and stood on a ledge overlooking the lands slashed and scorched by the Sundering, where the Wyrms busied themselves at their mysterious tasks. As she watched, a quarter-mile-wide mouth cracked through the desolation, raising a booming thunderclap that shook the stones upon which she stood. Dust, flame and dazzling light accompanied its advent, so much so that Whisper was forced to shield her eyes. Without warning, further beams sprayed out in multiple directions, charring a flight of dragonets foolish enough to be flitting along the cliffs nearby. How did the Wyrms do that? Why?